EHVB wrote:
This one was stolen from the Dutch by Herman Göring when he visited Schiphol in June 1940. It was stored for the future museum there (which was prevented by the war). By the Germans stolen paintings and art objects were for a part returned to Holland, this one never was.
You touch on a very interesting historical point, there, Roger. Actually it wasn't 'stolen' I suspect, but 'spoils of war'; the difference being something that keeps lawyers happily employed for years. Huge quantities of the art and related items lifted during W.W.II have never been repatriated; in the case of many Jewish collections throughout Europe, because the owner and their families were murdered in the the Holocaust. A common element in the history (provenance) of most great art is some dubious changes of owner during by right of conquest.
In this particular case, while my sympathies may be with the Dutch, there is a degree of ironic natural justice in that Mr Anthony Fokker also 'stole' a number of German commissioned, and probably paid for aircraft of his name that he loaded on a train and transported unofficially and probably illegally at the war's end from Germany to Holland. Pots and kettles, if referring to Anthony and Hermann.
Were all the aircraft in museums that were acquired in war returned to their 'rightful' owners the world would be a less diverse place. The excellent collection of Great War German aircraft fuselages (the train with the wings was lost) in Poland sent there for 'safe keeping' from the Berlin Museum certainly shouldn't be in Poland - but they are, and good arrangements have been made between the modern Poles and the Germans to straighten that out, I think.
As the Deutsches Museum had much of its collection destroyed, and thus today is mainly a postwar-traded one, they do need a D.VII. As the MLM Museum in Holland has a lovely D.VII in postwar Dutch colours (Don't mention Anthony...) no-one is the looser here, IMHO.
Just my opinion, of course,
Regards,