A new report clears the Hunt Museum's founders of traffickiing in wartime loot, writes Paul Cullen.
They enriched their adopted homeland while they were alive and left their lifetimes' collection of antiquities to the State when they died, but John and Gertrude Hunt ended up damned with the taint of alleged Nazi links long after they were in a position to defend themselves.
Now, more than three years after allegations first surfaced that they had Nazi connections and had traded in stolen loot, vindication has come in the form of a report published by the Royal Irish Academy. Author Lynn Nicholas, a world authority on Nazi looted art, concludes in her report that "the presently available information and research provides no proof whatsoever that the Hunts were Nazis, that they were involved in any kind of espionage, or that they were traffickers in looted art".
Her verdict has been warmly welcomed in Limerick, where the Hunts are still fondly remembered and the Hunt Museum in Limerick is a major tourist attraction.
Yet this story is far from over, it seems, with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC), the organisation which first gave the allegations international currency, claiming the report is not exhaustive or complete.
The Hunts came to Ireland in 1940, and settled first at Lough Gur, Co Limerick. They worked as advisers to Sotheby's and to wealthy private collectors, and moved in the rarefied world of the international art market for much of the last century. John Hunt died in 1976 and his wife died in 1995.
The allegations relate to their collection of paintings and artefacts, which has been on display in Limerick since 1997. The Hunt Museum won the Museum of the Year award in 2003 but, within months, Dr Shimon Samuels of the SWC had written an open letter to President Mary McAleese, who had presented the award, requesting that she take it back. Dr Samuels alleged the couple were suspected of being German spies in 1940, had close personal ties with the head of the Irish Nazi party and had done business with "notorious dealers in art looted by the Nazis".
His claims, which received prominent coverage in The Irish Times and in the world media, deeply embarrassed the Government, which has funded several reports on the matter, the latest being Nicholas's.
The manner in which the allegations came to light in recent years is almost as complex and disputed as the wartime period to which they relate. Samuels drew on several sources for his attack on the Hunts.
The first was information from archaeologist Erin Gibbons, who in an article published in 2003 had referred to "the extensive pre-war Nazi connections" of the Hunts. However, Gibbons would later say she had no evidence to suggest any of the items in the Hunt Museum were looted.
An essay by Limerick historian Judith Hill also seemed to implicate the Hunts in the post-war looting of art, yet Hill would later insist that she had never said they were Nazis or had relationships with known Nazis. National Museum files show they once met a known Nazi, Adolf Mahr, who was head of the museum in the 1930s. However, there is no mention of the couple on numerous blacklists of Nazi sympathisers.
The principal and perhaps original source for the allegations seems to have been a recently unearthed file on the Hunts in Irish military archives, which has been thoroughly scrutinised by Nicholas in her report. This 30-page report shows that the Garda kept a close eye on Gertrude Hunt, who was born in Germany, during the war, yet there is no evidence of wrongdoing. There are three letters from Alexander von Frey, a Swiss-based art dealer who dealt with other dealers who traded with the Nazis, but none of these refers to business matters.
Nicholas clearly views the file as innocuous, and makes the point that the relationships between dealers in the small international art world of the time have to be viewed in their historical context. Just because the Hunts knew people who knew people who traded with the Nazis was not reason enough for assuming they shared a political viewpoint or participated in looting.
For many of the Hunts' supporters, the real issue is not the alleged background and links of the English-German couple, but the manner in which the SWC has pursued its campaign.
"What has happened to the Hunts is outrageous," says Brian O'Connell, director of Shannon Heritage. "The story here is how and why a powerful international Jewish lobbying organisation ever got involved in attacking an Irish art historian and benefactor who was dead for nearly 30 years. In more than three and a half years the SWC has not come up with one piece of credible evidence to support its claims." The SWC has nothing to do with the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal and has no expertise in the restitution of looted art, he says. "There are 11 Jewish organisations who have this expertise but SWC is not one of them."
The way O'Connell sees it, the centre already had "form" on Ireland, having clashed with Mary Robinson during her tenure as UN human rights supremo as well as attacking Ireland's role on the UN Security Council, both in relation to Israel. "The allegations given to them about the Hunt Museum would have been manna in their campaign against Ireland."
Nicholas, in her report, is equally cutting about the role of SWC. The "sensational and calculated manner" in which Dr Samuels first announced his suspicions in an open letter at a time when Ireland held the EU presidency was "both undiplomatic and offensive," she writes. "The decision to challenge the Irish authorities in a sort of blackmail game was unprofessional in the extreme."
Undaunted, Dr Samuels is calling for a "transparent and independent" investigation of the issue, with the involvement of the SWC. "I have nothing to apologise for - the opposite; apologies are due to the SWC."
In response to the controversy, the Hunt Museum has thoroughly archived and documented the 2,000 pieces in its collection, all of which can be viewed on its website. Last year, another report to the Royal Irish Academy found that most of the items were unlikely to have a "problematic past", but noted there were no provenance records for most of the items that were likely or known to have been in Europe in the second World War period.
With the passage of time, it seems ever more unlikely that these gaps in provenance will be filled. Equally, it would be surprising if new evidence were to emerge now that would prove the Hunts' guilt or innocence conclusively. In that context, the closing paragraph of Nicholas's report seems particularly apposite: "There has been much talk about moral obligation during this inquiry. It is, of course, important to recover and return items unlawfully taken during the second World War, but it is equally obligatory, in the pursuit of justice, to protect people and institutions from unproven allegations."