Do Government Decrees Prevent the Destruction of their Cultural Heritage Sites? Not in the Case of Croatia’s Matulja House

By: Douglas M. Johnson

It’s safe to say that no-one would look at Rome’s Coliseum and think they could get away with destroying it. Everyone has heard of the Coliseum and its important place in not only Italian and world history is unquestioned. The average person considers such cultural landmarks like the Coliseum and its equals[1] as permanent terrestrial fixtures, never once concerned that they could disappear forever. Now, consider the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, in Oak Park, Illinois;[2] does the average person view its permanence in the same light as the Coliseum? The answer may be yes in the Chicago-area of the United States, but elsewhere, apart from architectural community, Frank Lloyd Wright is probably just a name. What about taking this discussion one step further—could a person destroy a relatively small cultural landmark, significant only to the small country in which it resides? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The case of Croatia’s “Matulja House”[3] illustrates this unsettling truth and the underlying issue of the unscalable legal walls created by governments’ poor administrative practices.  

The Matulja family home (the “Matulja House”) was completed in 1965 and sat on a bluff overlooking the sea in the Croatian town of Sibenik.[4] The house was designed by the renowned Croatian Architects, Ante and Vlasta Vulin. It won the Zegrab Architecture Salon in 1970 and later assumed its role in the cultural pantheon of the country as the preeminent example of Croatian modern architecture for family houses.[5] In March 2014, the Šibenik Cultural Department issued a decree placing the house under a three-year period of “preventative protection” while a decree giving it permanent cultural heritage status was considered.[6] Proposed permanent protection would be administered pursuant to the Act on the Protection and Preservation of Natural and Cultural Objects (the “APPNCO”).[7] Unfortunately, these preservative measures were only taken in response to the recent acquisition of the property by an Austrian couple who planned to demolish it in preparation for their new home.[8] The owner’s appeal of the protective decrees was denied, leading them to file a lawsuit seeking annulment of the decrees, asserting generally that the first decree did not adequately provide grounds for preventative protection pursuant to the APPNCO.[9] The court found the plaintiff-couple’s argument persuasive, annulling the decrees and ordering the Šibenik Cultural Department to re-issue the first decree in accordance with the law.[10]

The court’s judgment became unappealable on December 23, 2015, and the Šibenik Cultural Department did not timely comply with the court’s order to re-issue the decree, and instead looked into the legality of the decision while also commencing procedure for permanent protection of the House as a cultural heritage object. The procedure moved with no urgency whatsoever as the Matulja House sat vulnerably, with no temporary protective status.[11] A decree giving the Matulja House permanent cultural heritage status was finally issued on November 15, 2016, but to the “utter shock” of the Croatian architectural community the new owners had demolished the house prior to “officially receiving” notice of the decree, making it legally unimpeachable.[12]

How can it be that the Matulja House was allowed to be demolished when it was clearly the will of the courts and governing officials that the house be preserved under protective status? The answer, as unsatisfying as it may be, is that the house was destroyed as a result of administrative incompetence. It is not disputed that the new owners won their procedural challenge against Sibenik, thus annulling the initial decrees that would have prevented demolition the house. However, the appeals court had, at the time of annulment, concurrently ordered that the decrees be reissued in accordance with proper procedure—timely reissuance should have halted any attempts to bulldoze. A decree granting the house cultural heritage status and protection was eventually issued but notice of the protective status was not timely served upon owners, and they demolished the Matulja House just three days after the protective decree.[13] Astonishingly, because the decree took its sweet time in coming to be, and notice was not received by the owners prior to demolition, there was no violation of law from which to base a lawsuit. Even more irksome, the original plans for the Matulja House are still intact, but because there is no recourse against the demolishers, there is no means with which to reacquire the land nor to fund the Matulja House’s reconstruction project.[14]

This frustrating case illustrates that there is a “legal vacuum of sorts,” because no person or entity seems to be liable for the destruction of a cultural site within Croatia’s official status of cultural goods.[15] And further, it can be categorized as nothing less than a colossal administrative failure that the house’s demolition occurred only three days after the exceedingly late issuance of the decree formally granting protective status but before serving the decree. While it is true that the owners who carried out the demolition of the Matulja House could be pegged immoral for their destructive actions, they are not likely the last couple on earth with no concern for the importance of history and culture. Therefore, governments need to create more effective administrative systems for carrying decrees of protection for cultural heritage items that they see fit to grant such protection. Sadly, the empty lot and the pile of rubble that was once the Matulja House will likely be an everlasting reminder of legal failure, given that nothing has occurred on the site since the demolition.

#Croatia #Decrees #Heritage #Johnson #International #Law #BlogPost

[1] Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza and the India’s Taj Majal are a few such “household names.”

[2] https://flwright.org/visit/homeandstudio

[3] Ivana Kunda, Report on the Regulation of Cultural Heritage in Croatia, Univ. of Rijeka, Inst. of European and Comparative Law, § 2.1.2.5 (April, 2018).

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] See Šibenik Conservation Department, Decree of 31 st March 2014, Class: UP/I -612 -08/14 -05/0012, Reg. no.: 532 -04 -02 -14/5 -14 -2.

[7] UNESCO Database of National Heritage Laws [for Croatia], UNESCO, https://en.unesco.org/cultnatlaws/list; Croatia passed the Act on the Protection and Preservation of Natural and Cultural Objects (the “APPNCO”) in 1999 as a means of codifying within Croatian Law the directives of the World Heritage Convention at the local level. Id; Croatia ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1992, which identifies sites within its member states that have cultural significance to humanity as a whole. Croatia, WHC UNESCO (last visited Jan. 26, 2021) https://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/hr/.

[8] Kunda, supra note 3, at § 2.1.2.5.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.