17 Jun 2009: ISS Seminar, Pretoria: Art and Cultural Heritage Restitution. Issues Between Europe and Africa

ISS Seminar: Art and Cultural Heritage Restitution. Issues Between Europe and Africa
Pretoria, 17 June 2009

 

Speaker: Stefan August Lütgenau, Historian

 

Respondent: to be confirmed, Heritage Section, Department for Arts and Culture

 

Chair: Dr Wafula Okumu, Senior Research Fellow, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS

 

Date: Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Time: Seminar starts at 11h00 (Tea/coffee served from 10h00)
Venue: ISS Conference Room, Block C, Brooklyn Court, 361 Veale Street, New Muckleneuk, Tshwane (Pretoria)
(Parking in Brooklyn Mall and ABSA court)

 

RSVP: Ms Premie Naidoo, Tel: 012 346 9500; Fax: (012) 460 0998; Email: [email protected]

 

Stefan August Lütgenau, historian, has focused over the past years on Holocaust Era Assets and restitution and compensation in Austria post 1945. His works include studies on forced foreign and Jewish salve labour in different Austrian companies as well as the city and municipality of Vienna 1938 – 1945. Furthermore he had been active in the area of restitution and compensation with a special emphasis on stolen art. He was commissioned with a study on the Dorotheum, a public owned auction house, the largest in then Nazi Germany, in Vienna. From 2007 to recently he was active as an independent provenance researcher for the Federal Austrian Provenance Commission, commissioned to research the holding of the Austrian Theater Museum. More than 20.000 works of art had been commissioned for restitution by the Federal Minister of Culture and Education followings his studies and advice. Currently he commissioned with a research study on contemporary letters, diaries and testimonies of racist persecuted Jewish authors from Vienna 1938 -1945 by the Zukunftsfonds (Futurefund) of he Republic of Austria.

 

As Programme coordinator of the Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Human Rights (unpaid), Stefan is active in Human rights protection in Austria and human rights networking. Founding member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, Copenhagen, he has served as convener a mixed Israeli, Palestinian, European expert working group on human rights in Israel & Palestine since 2002. In this capacity he had been an active promoter of human rights education in Austria, mainly for pupils and teachers.

 

Next to this Stefan has served as an expert adviser and programme manager of a number international development cooperation projects. These projects ranged from building up an state-of-the-art national archive for the Western Saharaui people in the deserts of the Sahara to projects related to human rights and a Middle East process, commissioned by he Austrian Foreign Ministry.

 

In 2009 Stefan has started to set up a private foundation in Eisenstadt, Austria, to promote regional political structures, decentralization, transnational regional cooperation, and regional development in East Central Europe.

 

His publications include:

 

  • Esterházy Pál (1901 – 1989). Az utolsó herceg sorsa a szélsőségek évszázadában. Balassi Kiadó Budapest 2008.

  • Human Rights and a Middle East Peace Process. Analyses and Case Studies from a New Perspective. Transaction Publishers, Rutgers, Piscataway, NJ, USA & StudienVerlag Innsbruck 2007.

  • Paul Esterházy 1901-1989. Ein Leben im Zeitalter der Extreme. Studienverlag Innsbruck 2005.

  • Zwischen Staat und Wirtschaft: Das Dorotheum im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Firmengeschichte., Oldenbourg Verlag, Wien München 2005.

  • Mit anderen Augen gesehen. Internationale Perzeptionen Österreichs 1955 – 1990. Österreichische Nationalgeschichte, Bd.2., herausgegeben von Oliver Rathkolb, Otto M. Maschke und Stefan August Lütgenau, Böhlau Verlag Wien, Graz, Köln 2002. (Mitherausgeber) • Zwangsarbeit in der Österreichischen Bauindustrie. Die Teerag Asdag AG 1938 – 1945. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2001.

Seminar Documentation