Professor Carla Shapreau will discuss her discovery of the 1709 Mendelssohn Stradivari violin, stolen in Berlin in the fog of World War II and missing for nearly 80 years. This case study raises questions about Nazi-era looting, authenticity, provenance analysis, issues of transparency and access, the havoc resulting from inconsistent laws, and the restitution of cultural property. The aspirational, ambiguous, and internationally embraced “just and fair solutions,” established by the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art, reaffirmed by subsequent declarations and best practices, will also be discussed. This research is part of the Lost Music Project, which seeks to reconstruct the history of Nazi-era musical material culture losses, and the aftermath. Learn more at https://www.carlashapreau.com/1709-mendelssohn-stradivari

Carla Shapreau is a Senior Fellow in the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, where she conducts cultural property research. She is a Continuing Lecturer in the School of Law, where she teaches a course on art and cultural property law and is also affiliated Faculty with the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law. She is also the Curator of the Ansley K. Salz Collection of Stringed Instruments in the Department of Music, drawing on her background as a violin maker and restorer. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and an American Musicological Society award in connection with her research.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact ies@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.’