Volume 48, Number 19 · November 29, 2001
Bruno Schultz's Frescoes
By Mark Baker, M.B.B. Biskupski, John Connelly, Ronald E. Coons, Patrice M. Dabrowski, István Deák et al.
To the Editors:
The recent removal of frescoes by the Central European artist Bruno Schulz from the city of Drohobych, Ukraine, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum raises a number of troubling questions. Much of the discussion has centered, so far, on the question of Schulz's identity (Jewish and Polish), and on questions of international law and museum practices. As scholars of the history, art, and literature of Central Europe, we would like to raise a different concern.
The region in which Bruno Schulz lived, worked, and died has for centuries been perceived, by its more developed and more powerful neighbors, as incapable of tending to its artistic, human, or environmental capital. It has long been the lot of the peoples and countries of Central Europe to be assumed backward; too often, outsiders have been determined to impose their own solutions to deficiencies real and imagined.
The removal of a series of priceless frescoes from a private apartment by trained museum professionals is but a small affront after a century of horrors. Like many others who have come to Central Europe, Yad Vashem was acting, we trust, with the best of intentions. Nevertheless, this act represents an unconscionable statement of moral and cultural superiority; indeed, a Yad Vashem spokesperson is quoted (The New York Times, June 20), as asserting a "moral right" to the fragments of Jewish life scattered around Central Europe.
Such a statement is an insult to the people of Central Europe, and to all those who care about the region, and who believe that Ukraine and its neighbors are worthy of giving Bruno Schulz the honor and respect he deserves. The work of Bruno Schulz, after all, reminds us that this region was long one of unique cultural richness and diversity; an effort by any single group to monopolize his memory erases this history of pluralism.
The expropriation of Schulz's art is doubly damaging to the local Jewish population which has remained in Drohobych, and seen both its community and material heritage destroyed and expatriated over the last sixty years. The removal of the murals appears to anticipate that community's extinction, and implies that in this part of the world, religious and ethnic pluralism cannot be reconstituted.
We urge Yad Vashem to return the frescoes to their home in Drohobych. Further, we suggest that the proper role of wealthier artistic and philanthropic institutions is to nurture the respect for artistic heritage they believe Central Europe lacks. We suggest that Yad Vashem join with other institutions to sponsor a Bruno Schulz Museum in Drohobych, a museum to celebrate the many cultural traditions that nurtured Bruno Schulz's work, in the city he loved so much.
Padraic Kenney
University of Colorado, Boulder
István Deák
Columbia University
Gale Stokes
Rice University
John Connelly
University of California, Berkeley
Nicholas Sawicki
University of Pennsylvania
Victor Hugo Lane
Polytechnic University
Brian Porter
University of Michigan
Laurie Koloski
College of William and Mary
Owen V. Johnson
Indiana University, Bloomington
Ronald E. Coons
University of Connecticut
David M. Luebke
University of Oregon
Patrice M. Dabrowski
Harvard University
Mark Pittaway
The Open University
M.B.B. Biskupski
St. John Fisher College
Douglas Selvage
Independent Scholar
Alexander Maxwell
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Anita Shelton
Eastern Illinois University
Rebekah Klein-Pejsova
Columbia University
Sylvia M. Meloche
University of Michigan
Katherine Lebow
Columbia University
Marysia Ostafin
University of Michigan
Samuel Robert Goldberger
Capital Community College
Hartford, Connecticut
Mark Baker
Harvard University
Norman Naimark
Stanford University
Letters
May 23, 2002: Aharon Apelfeld, Bruno Schulz's Wall Paintings