Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 32. (Budapest, 2018)
Hilda HORVÁTH: Golddosen vom „Goldzug“. Die Sammlung von Hugó Hoffmann
successful identification. The owner himself, Hugó Hoffmann, and the Hungarian government presented this evidence in their request for compensation based on the unlawfulness of the auction. The auctioning of Jewish property Jeszenszky called attention to the foreword of the above-mentioned catalogue, written by W. Haliam Tuck, the secretary of IRO. Tuck remarked that identification of the owners and countries of origins of certain jewellery and precious items found by the Allies had been unsuccessful. As a result, in accordance with part 1, article 8 of the final agreement of the Paris Conference on Reparations (1946), the goods had been declared unclaimed and were put up for auction. In one of his letters, Hugó Hoffmann also referred to this agreement, but posited that the items had been declared unidentifiable, as no country of origin or owner had been discovered, based instead on the 1946 agreement between the five powers (USA, Britain, France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia). The Americans’ justification for the sale, however, did not correspond to reality: the treasures were transported in Hungarian railcars with Hungarian signs. The auction was unlawful in many respects: the American authorities had made their decisions arbitrarily, and goods linked to Hungarian owners were auctioned without any discussion of returning them. American official policy distinguished between the Hungarian state as an owner and the victims and intended to use two different approaches to settle the issues. The Americans were reluctant to hand over private property to the Hungarian state, fearing that the goods might be used to pay reparations to the Soviets or simply be nationalized. Because of the complicated political relationships after World War II, the fate of the Jewish Gold Train remained undecided for a couple of years. American politics, international and domestic representatives of Jewish interests and the Hungarian government all played a role in this, although the last mentioned was least involved. Hungarian Jewish interests were not uniform. Some considered the return of Jewish property natural, while others did not believe the future of Hungarian Jewry lay in Hungary. This second group therefore hoped for a form of compensation other than restitution— one that would better pave the way to this different future. American policy makers, after a brief period, took advantage of the opposing forces and differences of opinion, and then used the aforementioned Article 8 and the agreement between the five powers as legal justification for their actions. To achieve its political goals, the American Department of State expanded on Article 8, which stated that non-monetary gold (that is, not coins or bars) found in Germany could be used to help the displaced. The US, however, expanded this principle to include all kinds of objects, not just gold, and not only those unclaimed goods found in Germany, but those in any region occupied by the US. This meant goods discovered in Austria too. Ultimately, American political leadership did not find it worthwhile to search for the owners or their heirs even when the object in question was an exceptional, distinctive gold work. The Americans knew the goods were Hungarian in origin, but they did not provide the opportunity to verify this when the Hungarian material was still together. This made it impossible 102
