Report clears Hunts of dealing in Nazi art

The couple who amassed the Hunt collection in Limerick have been cleared by a new report of involvement in Nazi-era spying and trafficking in looted art.

Currently available information and research provides no proof that the late John and Gertrude Hunt were Nazis, or that they were involved in any kind of espionage or trafficking in looted art, according to the report prepared for the Royal Irish Academy.

Report author Lynn Nicholas, a world authority on Nazi looted art, says that while it was important to recover and return items taken unlawfully during the second World War, it was equally "obligatory" in the pursuit of justice to protect people and institutions from "unproven allegations".

The board of the Hunt Museum met yesterday to discuss the report and a statement is expected to be issued today. Privately, museum sources expressed delight at its findings.

Ms Nicholas's research arises from allegations against the Hunts made by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris in 2004. Dr Shimon Samuels, the centre's international affairs director, alleged that the couple were suspected of being German spies in 1940, had close personal ties to the head of the Irish Nazi party and had done business with "notorious dealers in art looted by the Nazis".

Dr Samuels has failed to provide specific evidence for his allegations since. Attempts to contact him yesterday were unsuccessful.

An earlier report prepared for the RIA found there were no provenance records for most of the Hunt Museum items that were likely or known to have been in Europe during the second World War. However, this report did not look at the allegations surrounding the Hunts, saying these were outside its remit.

In her report, Ms Nicholas says this approach was misguided as the private and professional lives of freelance art dealers such as the Hunts could not be separated.

She reserves her harshest criticism for the Wiesenthal Centre. 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".

"The decision to challenge the Irish authorities in a sort of blackmail game was unprofessional in the extreme."

Her report examines a 30-page wartime intelligence file held in the Irish Military Archive, which she says is the basis for the allegations of trading with Nazi dealers; the existence of this file was publicly revealed only last year.

Documents on the file show that gardaí kept careful track on Ms Hunt, who was German-born, during the war and advised against her working at Foynes, which was a flying boat station.

However, Ms Nicholas says there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Hunts and Ms Hunt was actually engaged to advise on the decor of the terminal.

The file also contained three letters from art dealer Alexander von Frey, who is known to have been involved in the trading of confiscated art during the war. Ms Nicholas says it is clear they were friends and that Ms Hunt communicated with her mother in Germany through von Frey.

However, she says the relationships between art dealers should be viewed in their historical context. The art world of the 1920s and 1930s was small and unregulated and most of the dealers would have known and traded with each other for many years before the war.

As the political and economic situation deteriorated, art deals became a matter of survival for many Jews attempting to escape the Continent, as von Frey was, she points out.

The Hunts came to Ireland in 1940, settled first in Co Limerick and moved to Howth in 1956. Mr Hunt died in 1976 and his wife died in 1995.