BERLIN — Matthew Dietel remembers accompanying his father, a passionate art collector, on Sunday visits in the 1950s to the Angermuseum in the East German city of Erfurt.
Now 62 and living near Boston, Dietel is trying to get back some 80 objects from the museum including glass, porcelain and furniture that belonged to his father. He argues that they were taken illegally by the East German communist regime and he was deprived of his inheritance. Erfurt’s city authorities are resisting his claim.
“Art was my dad's life,” Dietel said over coffee in an Erfurt hotel during a visit to his hometown. “I want to leave some things for the museum, but I want some back. It belongs to my family.”
The regime sought to increase diminished hard currency in the 1970s, a time when the art market was booming. To replenish depleted coffers, the state tightened control of art sales, targeting private collectors and dealers.
Accused of operating illegally as an art dealer, Heinz Dietel was sent to jail in 1974. He was released six months later without charges.
Security officials used his absence to take an inventory of his collection and hit him with a tax bill of about $380,000 - an amount he could never afford from his meager pay of a few hundred dollars a month as a graphic designer. Such tactics were frequently adopted, according to a 1993 German parliamentary inquiry.
“It is suspected that the state organs of the German Democratic Republic worked systematically,” the report concluded. Citizens who refused to sell artworks “were subject to forced measures,” it said. “The forced measures usually took the form of accusations of violations against tax regulations.”
Dietel was ordered to sell part of his collection to state dealers who exported for western currency. He paid half the tax bill with the revenue before his death in 1975, according to Matthew Dietel.The rest of his collection was later sold to the Angermuseum to cover outstanding tax debts. His son says he never gave his permission for the sale.
Dietel first approached authorities in the city of Erfurt, which owns the museum, in 2004. In January this year, the official in charge of culture, Tamara Thierbach, told a news conference that Erfurt wanted to reach a settlement, and it needed to know which objects he wants back.
Since then, the city has refused repeated requests from Dietel’s lawyer, Ulf Bischof of Bischof & Paetow in Berlin, for copies of the index cards listing the artworks in the museum’s collection that belonged to Heinz Dietel.
“If we can avoid going to court, we will,” Bischof said. “We are telling Erfurt to stand by its public announcements. We want to get negotiations on track.”
In a telephone interview, Thierbach refused to comment on the exchange of lawyers’ letters, saying only that negotiations were “nota public process.” Thierbach is a member of the Left Party, which includes the former East German PDS, the successor to East German leader Erich Honecker’s Socialist Unity Party.
“All the items in the Angermuseum are the property of the Angermuseum,” shesaid. “Legal procedures are continuing.”
Thomas Hutt, a retired lawyer who is a member of Erfurt city council’s culture committee representing the opposition Christian Democratic Union, said he is disappointed with Thierbach’s response and the length of negotiations.
“Mrs. Thierbach is treating this as though the East German regime acted according to the law,” Hutt said.
With no index cards, Dietel doesn’t know exactly which items from his father's collection are in the museum. He has an old list with brief descriptions, such as “coffee pot with landscape painting, Limbach, 18th century,” and “walnut table, 16th century.” The collection also includes Thuringian figures and a large quantity of glass, he said.
Heinz Dietel used his connections in the art world to acquire antiques, often from private individuals, his son said. He would take trips to the country to scour local shops.
“There were auctions, too,” Dietel said. “Sometimes he would be at breakfast reading the paper and see there was an auction on, and he wouldn’t even get dressed, he just put on a coat and rushed out.”
Dietel, who sells engineering equipment for a living, left Erfurt with his mother in 1960 for Dusseldorf and later moved to the United States.
The Angermuseum celebrated its reopening on June 12 after reconstruction. Dietel had hoped for an invitation. He didn’t get one.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 06/27/2010