Rather than freely returning artworks stolen from victims of Nazi persecution, U.S. museums offer heirs less than fair market value, usually under secretive circumstances. This type of systematic extortion has been condemned in many other countries, such as Austria, which engaged in similar practices folllowing World War II.
Below, Walter Westfeld's heir describes how the Museum of Fine Arts Boston insisted on a confidential settlement, rather than returning a stolen artwork in its possession. Check the MFA's website here, there is no information on this transaction.
I tried to find some information on the provenance on Eglon van der Neer Portrait of a Man and a Woman In an Interior (1666). My access to that portion of the MFA's website was blocked.
A puff piece on the MFA's purported provenance research here. The MFA claims that it prepares reports by a woman named Victoria Reed, but none of these reports appear to be made public. Ms. Reed is a "curator of provenance" - which appears to be a synonym for a launderer of stolen artworks.
At issue is the role of U.S. museums in buying stolen art on an industrial level before, during and after World War II, profiting from the misery of murdered European Jews. The role of U.S. museums in acquiring stolen art has largely been ignored by academics, with U.S. museums cloaking their actions in secrecy. Although U.S. museums claim to engage in provenance research, little or none of this research is published, few original documents are made available, and no research is available on how much of a burden this traffic in stolen art has placed on U.S. taxpayers.
In U.S. v. Davis and The Painting Known as "Le Marche" by Camille Pissarro, 2011 WL 2162897 (June 3, 2011), the Second Circuit rejected the "innocent owner" defense to a civil forfeiture action brought by Customs to enforce the National Stolen Property Act. The monotype was stolen from the Musee Faure in Aix-Les-Bains in France on November 1981. Once the government established probable cause that the painting was stolen, the burden of proof shifted to the possessor of the artwork to show that it was not stolen. The work was consigned for sale to Sotheby's, where it was seen by the French police, who notified customs. Decision below.
We recently filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the heirs of George Grosz in Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art, accessible by the link below. The certiorari petition describes how in federal courts around the country, museums and holders of artworks taken from Nazi persecutees have successfully advanced doctrines of constructive notice that have eviscerated the right under state law to recover stolen property that Congress thought existed when it enacted the Holocaust Victims Redress Act of 1998. As the cert petition shows, museums told Congress that state law remedies were sufficient for victims and their heirs to recover stolen artworks. After 1998, with Congress off their backs, museums then argued to the courts that no remedies were available under state law to those who actually tried to reclaim artworks. Several museums even retaliated against Jewish heirs by suing them. By filing these pre-emptive strikes, museums successfully avoided scrutiny into the question of whether or not the art was stolen. By leaving potentially looted artworks in our museums, such "quiet title" actions have stained our national conscience.
Unfortunately, very few voices have been heard to draw attention to this tremendous crime. Media coverage is anecdotal. Each time stolen artworks are uncovered in museum collections, the museums feign horror and surprise, but the reality is that in the high-tax Cold War years, laundering stolen art was a major function of the U.S. museum community. We are all now paying for those Cold-war "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" policies. A generation of wealthy Americans dodged taxes by flipping stolen property to museums, thus passing the societal cost of their misdeeds onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers.
In turning their backs on restitution of Nazi-looted artworks after 1998, American museums have betrayed our trust and have become international scofflaws. This is a major problem and inconsistent with the traditions of common law under which no one can take good title from a thief. It is also inconsistent with the traditions of equity, which do not unjustly enrich those with superior knowledge, such as the museums, that should have known better than to profit from the world's worst crime. Everyone in the art community, thanks to U.S. government warnings starting in the 1940's, knew that acquiring an artwork of European provenance that entered the country after 1932 but was created before 1946 was a "red flag". Art historians now pretend to have no knowledge of this and instead play a game of blaming the victims and waiting until enough people die or are discouraged so that they can assert the defense of laches. While museums throw up endless new buildings, they claim they can't even afford to figure out what stolen art is in their collections. And by refusing to share documents and publish provenances, they ensure that no one else can figure out the stolen property trail either.
American museums, having unclean hands, should not be heard to invoke equity. American museums, which should be taking the lead in opposing Holocaust profiteering, have instead set up impenetrable legal defenses and hide the truth behind spurious claims of privilege. This is both morally and legally untenable. If U.S. museums don't do the right thing and show world leadership in returning the property of Holocaust victims, no one will.
Historian Richard Evans' thoughtful piece on art looting in wartime. It is not surprising that one of the leading scholar of Germany in World War II would turn his attention to art.
Great essay in University of Pennsylvania's PENNumbraGuarding the Historical Record from the Nazi-Era Art Litigation Tumbling Toward The Supreme Court here. Highly critical of the Museum of Modern Art.
A truly astonishing interview with law professor Jennifer Kreder on Illinois Public Radio here.
Great interview with law professor Jennifer Kreder on Illinois Public Radio on artworks looted by the Nazis that are now in US museums that were smuggled into the US through Switzerland. Get the shocking story here.
Nazi art looting will be a major topic at an upcoming conference in Vienna Austria on March 23-25. Details of the conference are here.
Austria has invited Laurie Stein to chair a presentation on Alfred Flechtheim.
Alfred Flechtheim was a German Jewish art dealer whose art gallery was Aryanized. Many works stolen from him are currently in museums around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The Museum of Modern Art refused to make its provenance documentaton relating to works from Alfred Flechtheim in its collection available to researchers working for the family of artist George Grosz.
The Center for Intellectual Property Law & Information Technology, the Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law, the Art and Cultural Heritage Legal Society and the Center for Jewish Law & Judaic Studies present Arts Law Colloquium Series - Jennifer Kreder Judicial Amnesia and the Historical Record in Nazi-looted art litigation
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 11:45am – 12:45pm DePaul University Lewis Center - Room 805 25 E Jackson Blvd Chicago, IL 60604
This presentation will demonstrate the wave of dismissals of claims to Nazi-looted art on technical grounds such that, with few praiseworthy exceptions, the courts of the United States no longer act as beacons of justice for the Holocaust restitution movement. In fact, they are being used by some museums to circumvent federal executive policy and distort the historical record. Tales of our most respected institutions acquiring what they knew or should have known was trafficked and laundered art likely seem outrageous and counter to common sense to those unaccustomed to hearing about the widespread infection of the market with art that had been stolen or extorted from Jews between 1933 and 1945. The truth, however, is that the modern claims are legally viable when viewed within the true historical context of the Holocaust and U.S. executive policy during the War, through the Cold War period and now. DePaul University College of Law is an accredited Illinois MCLE provider. This program had been approved for 1 hour of CLE credit. Please RSVP to Cecelia Story at cstory@depaul.edu.
Professor Kreder is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center. She has published extensively about and given many presentations in many domestic and foreign venues about legal issues affecting the international art market. With Norman Palmer, she is co-authoring the second edition of Museums and the Holocaust published by the Institute of Art and Law. Read more (...)
Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here
The United States won World War II. As part of the postwar cleanup, the US did everything in its power to undo the damage the Nazis had wrought. Nowhere was this damage more atrocious than in what the Nazis inflicted on the Jewish minority. The Jews were a non-violent, law abiding minority. Nazis expropriated and murdered them wholesale.
Some escaped. Some watched helplessly from abroad as their relatives were murdered. Such was the fate of the Westfield family. Residents of Tennessee, their relative was murdered, his assets auctioned off, the money went to finance the Nazi war machine.
In 1954, the Second Circuit, at the behest of the U.S. State Department, stripped the Nazis of sovereign immunity.
On February 2, 2011, the Nazis got sovereign immunity back in Westfield v. Federal Republic of Germany (6th Cir.).
I have posted the Westfield case below and the full text of the Second Circuit's Bernstein case. This appears to be a circuit split over whether the Nazis were a criminal conspiracy or whether they were a legitimate government, a question that was resolved against the Nazis at Nuremberg in 1946 in the negative.
The Sixth Circuit held that murdering Westfield and auctioning off his art collection (part of which is at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts), did not have a "direct effect" in the United States, even though the Nazis knew that his heirs resided in Tennessee. Art museums in the U.S. today are actively concealing their role in laundering artworks stolen by the Nazis and battling all efforts at disclosure of Nazi-era and post War collecting practices. U.S. museums now claim that they have a "fiduciary duty" to conceal documents and research relating to the provenance of stolen artworks in their collections and to force dispossessed Holocaust survivors and their heirs to litigate to track the artworks.
The U.S. State Department should intervene in the case and ask the Sixth Circuit to reconsider in light of Bernstein. Tennessee shouldn't be the only state in the U.S. that lost World War II.
BERNSTEIN, v. N. V. NEDERLANDSCHE- AMERIKAANSCHE STOOMVAART- MAATSCHAPPIJ
(Chemical Bank& Trust Co., Third-Party Defendant). No. 21193. United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. Submitted Jan. 11, 1954. Decided Feb. 5, 1954. Bennet, House & Couts, New York City, for plaintiff-petitioner; Victor House, Albert I. Edelman and Werner Ilsen, New York City, of counsel. Burlingham, Hupper & Kennedy, New York City, for defendant Holland-America Line; Harold M. Kennedy, and Harvey C. Allen, Jr., New York City, of counsel.
Sherman & Sterling & Wright, New York City, for Third-Party Defendant, Chemical Bank & Trust Company; John A. Wilson, M. VanVoorhies and Edmond K. Leach, New York City, of counsel.
Petition to amend the mandate of this court handed down in a prior appeal in this case, 173 F.2d 71. Petition granted.
Before AUGUSTUS N. HAND, CLARK and FRANK, Circuit Judges.
Petition to amend the mandate of this court handed down in a prior appeal in this case, 173 F.2d 71. Petition granted.
PER CURIAM.
In the prior appeal in this case, 173 F.2d 71, 75-76, because of the lack of a definitive expression of Executive Policy, we felt constrained to follow the decision of this court in Bernstein v. Van Heyghen Freres Societe Anonyme, 2 Cir., 163 F.2d 246, certiorari denied 332 U.S. 772, 68 S.Ct. 88, 92 L.Ed. 357, by ordering the plaintiff to refrain from alleging matters which would cause the court to pass on the validity of acts of officials of the German government. Following our decision, however, the State Department issued Press Release No. 296 on April 27, 1949, entitled: 'Jurisdiction of United States Courts Re Suits for Identifiable Property Involved in Nazi Forced Transfers.' The substance of this Release follows: 2
'As a matter of general interest, the Department publishes herewith a copy of a letter of April 13, 1949 from Jack B. Tate, Acting Legal Advisor, Department of State, to the Attorneys for the plaintiff in Civil Action No. 31-555 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. 3 'The letter repeats this Government's opposition to forcible acts of dispossession of a discriminatory and confiscatory nature practiced by the Germans on the countries or peoples subject to their controls; states that it is this Government's policy to undo the forced transfers and restitute identifiable property to the victims of Nazi persecution wrongfully deprived of such property; and sets forth that the policy of the Executive, with respect to claims asserted in the United States for restitution of such property, is to relieve American courts from any restraint upon the exercise of their jurisdiction to pass upon the validity of the acts of Nazi officials.' 4 The letter from Mr. Tate is then quoted, pertinent parts of which follow: 5 '1. This Government has consistently opposed the forcible acts of dispossession of a discriminatory and confiscatory nature practiced by the Germans on the countries or people subject to their controls. * * * 6 '3. The policy of the Executive, with respect to claims asserted in the United States for the restitution of identifiable property (or compensation in lieu thereof) lost through force, coercion, or duress as a result of Nazi persecution in German, is to relieve American courts from any restraint upon the exercise of their jurisdiction to pass upon the validity of the acts of Nazi officials.' 7 In view of this supervening expression of Executive Policy, we amend our mandate in this case by striking out all restraints based on the inability of the court to pass on acts of officials in Germany during the period in question. See 173 F.2d at pages 75-76. This will permit the district court to accept the Release in evidence and conduct the trial of this case without regard to the restraint we previously placed upon it. . Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here
On Monday January 24, 2011 I will be part of a panel organized by the New York State Bar Association' Entertainment Arts and Sports Law Section, flyer above, direct link and program description below.
1:35-3:30 p.m. NAZI-ERA ART RESTITUTION: RECENT CASE DEVELOPMENTS
This program will address recent cases brought by heirs of Holocaust victims concerning the ownership of artworks claimed to have been looted or sold under duress during the Nazi era. When the art resurfaced – often decades later – in the hands of museums, collectors, galleries and auction houses, ownership disputes have raised complex procedural, substantive, and policy issues. This panel includes lawyers representing both sides of several high-profile cases, including the eleven-year battle which resulted in a $19 million settlement with the Leopold Museum in Vienna in the Egon Schiele - Portrait of Wally case and the seven-year battle with the Republic of Austria, which resulted in the restitution to the family of Holocaust victims of a number of important works by Gustav Klimt, valued, in the aggregate, in excess of $300 million. The esteemed panelists will also discuss cases involving the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and descendants of families who are laying claim to works by Picasso, Pissarro, Schiele, Kokoschka, Klimt, and Lucas Cranach the Elder
Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here
Coverage of the Bakalar v. Vavra case and interview with me in the wake of my victory for the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum at the Second Circuit at the West Reference Attorney Blog under the heading "A Thief Cannot Pass Good Title" here.
I met a number of West Reference Attorneys when I took a tour of the West HQ and printing plant in Eagan, MN. They are a great group, check out their blog for the latest topics in legal research/news.
More on Fritz Grunbaum and the theft of artworks from him when he was in the Dachau concentration camp here.
For a translation of the Second Circuit's Bakalar v. Vavra decision into German, go here.
Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here
Egon Schiele's Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (Torso)
The headless woman who invaded my life five years ago, a well-known fixation of mine known to readers of the Copyright Litigation Blog. She is pretty much single handedly responsible for me learning a great deal about Nazi art looting and adding that dimension to a blog that started out with other intentions. People seem to like the mix!
Article from NYLJ on Second Circuit reversal in Bakalar v. Vavra here.
More on the litigation and Bakalar v. Vavra decision here.
A major international issue is whether a government can purchase a pile of stolen art and then claim immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act 28 U.S.C. 1604 when it then makes the stolen art a tourist attraction and markets it to Americans.
Under U.S. law, receiving stolen property is a crime. 18 USC 662.
Spain scored a cultural coup in the 1990's by purchasing the tainted Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection which was compiled by a famous Nazi family. Spain put the art collection into a "foundation" and tried to insulate it from claims from an American Jew named Claude Cassirer whose grandmother Lilly had been spoliated by the Nazis in the widely-reported case Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain.
Austria did this by creating the "Leopold Foundation" to "own" the Leopold Museum. These "foundations" are legal fictions set up to shield the stolen art from legal claims in violation of international law. Creation of the Leopold Foundation violates the Austria State Treaty Article 26 which unconditionally requires Austria to return property stolen from Nazi persecutees. Art 26 has no time limitations and is a continuing obligation that Austria has spent decades avoiding, with the complicity of the U.S. State Department. More on Rudolph Leopold and the Leopold Foundation here. Rather than treating Rudolph Leopold as the serial criminal that he was, purchasing stolen property and laundering provenances over the course of decadek, a fawning international art press lionizes him as a "collector" downplaying the facts that he died on theeve of his criminal trial in the U.S. in the Portrait of Wally case.
Now Spain is in the game by snapping up artworks with creepy Nazi provenance and plastering famous Nazi names all over downtown Madrid. See
The late collector Heini Thyssen forced himself to forget his family’s Nazi involvement, but so did the countries that vied for his and his father’s pictures in the 1980s. This well documented book gives the details.
By Anna Somers Cocks Posted 01 March 2007- From The Art Newspaper
It was the Allies themselves, especially the Americans, who decided to let bygones be bygones and help revive the Thyssen empire in the interest of the German economy and opposing the Soviets. Before Berlin was even taken, Thyssen Gas and Water was working with the Allied Military Governor and by 1948, Bremer Vulkan, the Thyssen shipyard that had made U-boats for the Nazis, had orders from the Allies worth DM11.25m. The fact that in 1946, Averell Harriman, who in January 1941 still nominally held the Thyssen shares in their BVHS bank, became Secretary of State for Commerce almost certainly helped the family get back their banking assets.
Forty years pass and in 1986 the word gets out that Heini Thyssen is thinking of moving his collection from the Villa Favorita on Lake Lugano. Countries fall over themselves to get hold of it (including Prime Minister Thatcher—the only time she takes a direct interest in the arts) and the Nazi past never gets mentioned. As Heini intended from the outset—because it was what his new Spanish wife, Tita, wanted—Spain wins, and in 1993 pays $350m for half the collection.
But check out Wikipedia on the Thyssen-Bornemisza family - not a single mention of the fact that the collection was built from stolen artworks and money from a family that ran its own concentration camp:
In addition, Heini’s brother Stephan, who remained in Germany during the war, was chairman of the board of MABAG, a company that sank mine shafts, built machinery, including parts for the V1 and V2 rockets that bombed Britain, and built petrol storage installations. Together with IG Farben, it constructed the Reich’s main fuel-storage depot in the Kohnstein mountains. By the end of 1943 there were more than 10,000 forced labourers living underground and by October 1944, it had become a concentration camp in its own right, Mittelbau, which would hold 60,000 prisoners of whom 20,000 were worked to death. In addition, a US government memo in the Washington Archives says that in 1943, one in two miners in the Thyssen’s Walsum mine was a slave labourer.
So it's a good thing that on August 12, 2010 the Ninth Circuit decided en banc that Spain's Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation is not immune from suit in the United States under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) 28 USC 1605.
The Ninth Circuit decided two good things: 1. that Claude Cassirer was not required to "exhaust" his remedies against Spain in a Spanish court prior to bringing a claim in the US and 2. that Spain's possession of expropriated property together with its commercial activities in the US (e.g., selling pictures of the stolen work to American consumers) exempted Spain from claiming sovereing immunity to suit.
Below is the YouTube video where attorney Thad Stauber of Nixon Peabody gives the Ninth Circuit's panel a "shout out" from William Barron of Smith Gambrell, who represents both Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Leopold Foundation in the Portrait of Wally case. The argument is really worth watching, kudos to the judge who analogizes the case to the "pawn shop" scenario.
Getty museum has received a National Endowment for the Humanities and German Research Foundation grants to digitize German art catalogs from 1930 - 1945 and to make them available to the public. Press release here. This is a step in the right direction and will provide an excellent tool for tracing artworks looted during the Nazi era. More will be necessary, since pre-war catalalogues show where property was before World War II and at the time Jewish people and other persecutees bought it and is often critical in establishing provenance in favor of families who were looted.
Chief Judge Loretta Preska approved a settlement in the Portrait of Wally case. Herrick Feinstein's press release reporting the settlement terms of the Portrait of Wally case here - Portrait of Wally Case Settles
This is good news for heirs of Holocaust victims and a measure of justice. It also gives a flavor of just how tainted the Leopold Collection is. Congratulations to all - the courtroom battle started in 1999 has finally ended.
A very nice touch is that Portrait of Wally will be displayed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City. This is a very nice vindication for Robert Morgenthau's 1999 seizure of Portrait of Wally at the MoMA.
Dead City III, stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, is still hanging in the Leopold Museum. For more information on Dead City III, go here. My posts on Egon Schiele here.
If you have an interest in the topic of Nazi art looting, go here. There is an incredible amount of stolen art remaining in U.S. museums. Learn about Nazi agent and art dealer Curt Valentin here.
A really huge scandal and breathtaking example of Holocaust denial in the American museum community, the sad story of Alfred Flechtheim here.
I have copied the text of the press release below:
The United States of America, the Estate of Lea Bondi Jaray and the Leopold Museum Settle the Long-Standing Case Involving “Portrait of Wally” by Egon Schiele
New York, NY (July 20, 2010) -- The Estate of Lea Bondi Jaray (the “Estate”) announced today that the United States Government, the Estate and the Leopold Museum Privat-Stiftung (the “Leopold Museum”) have agreed to settle the long-pending case of United States of America v. Portrait of Wally, which was about to go to trial before Chief Judge Loretta Preska in federal court in Manhattan on July 26, 2010. The case involves Portrait of Wally, a painting by Egon Schiele (the “Painting”), stolen from a Jewish art dealer and collector by a Nazi agent in the late 1930’s in Vienna. The major terms of the settlement agreement, which has been approved by Judge Preska, are as follows: (a) the Leopold Museum pays the Estate $19 Million; (b) the Estate releases its claim to the Painting; (c) the United States Government dismisses the civil forfeiture action it brought against the Leopold Museum and releases the Painting to the Leopold Museum; (d) the Leopold Museum will permanently display signage next to the Painting at the Leopold Museum, and at all future displays of the Painting of any kind that the Leopold Museum authorizes or allows anywhere in the world, that sets forth the true provenance of the Painting, including Lea Bondi Jaray’s prior ownership of the Painting and its theft from her by a Nazi agent before she fled to London in 1939; and (e) before it is transported to the Leopold Museum in Vienna, the Painting will be publicly exhibited at the Museum of Jewish Heritage -- A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in New York, beginning with a ceremony commemorating the legacy of Lea Bondi Jaray and the successful resolution of the lawsuit.
The Painting was the personal property of Lea Bondi Jaray, a Jewish art dealer in Vienna, who fled in 1939 to London, where she died in 1969. The Painting became the subject of court proceedings in New York City, after it was loaned in late 1997 and early 1998 to the Museum of Modern Art in New York by the Leopold Museum as part of an exhibition of Schieles from the Leopold Museum’s collection. In 1998, Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan District Attorney, subpeonaed the Painting in connection with his investigation into whether the Painting was stolen property. After the State Court of Appeals ruled in 1999 that such “seizure” of an artwork loaned for exhibition was prohibited under New York State law, the United States Government immediately commenced a civil forfeiture action in New York, alleging that the Painting was stolen from Lea Bondi Jaray during the Nazi era by a Nazi named Friedrich Welz, and was imported into the United States in 1997 by the Leopold Museum in violation of U.S. law. The Customs Service seized the Painting in connection with that action. The Estate of Lea Bondi Jaray asserted a claim to the Painting in the action, and the U.S. agreed that upon forfeiture of the Painting, it would transfer to the Estate all right and title to the Painting.
Based on the evidence presented during the case, Judge Preska ruled last fall that the Painting was the personal property of Lea Bondi Jaray and that it was stolen from her in Vienna in the late 1930's by Friedrich Welz, who was a member and collaborator of the Nazi party. The Court found that the Painting had been seized from Welz by U.S. Forces in Austria after World War II and delivered in 1947 to the Austrian Federal Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments (the “Bundesdenkmalamt”), along with paintings Welz had acquired from Dr. Heinrich Rieger, a Jewish art collector who had perished during the Holocaust. In 1950, the Bundesdenkmalamt delivered artworks to an agent for the Rieger heirs and included the Painting in the delivery. Later that year, the Rieger heirs sold their works to the Austrian National Gallery (the “Belvedere”), and the Painting was included in the delivery of the artworks to the Belvedere. In 1954, the Belvedere traded the Painting to Dr. Rudolf Leopold. In 1994, Dr. Leopold transferred the Painting to the Leopold Museum.
In a statement, representatives of the Estate expressed their appreciation at reaching this historic settlement, which reflects the true value of the Painting, and acknowledges Lea Bondi Jaray’s ownership of the Painting and her and her family’s long quest for justice. In addition, they underscored that the public display of the Painting at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York will mean that visitors will be able to view the Painting in a setting that memorializes the sufferings of so many in the Holocaust and the resilience and resolve of those who escaped and/or survived. They added that the permanent signage reflecting the Painting’s true provenance will ensure that future generations are told the real story of the Painting’s theft from Lea Bondi Jaray during the Nazi era.
In conclusion, the Estate representatives said: “Justice has been served. Finally, after more than 70 years, the wrongs suffered by Lea Bondi Jaray are at last being acknowledged and, to some degree, corrected. We are grateful to the many people who helped Lea and her family during these many years. We especially thank our attorneys at Herrick, Feinstein, and all the members of the Asset Forfeiture Unit team of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Cohen Levin, for their unstinting dedication to the pursuit of justice during the long course of this litigation.”
Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here
Art News and the AP report on the grand-niece of an American Serviceman who inherited 11 artworks and realized that they were stolen from a German museum and then decided to restitute them.
But unfortunately, the Art News piece claims:
"it has emerged in recent years that Allied soldiers also stole work."
That is an absolute falsehood. As Milton Esterow reported in November 16, 1964 front page article for the New York Times "Europe Is Still Hunting Its Plundered Art" discussed here, the U.S. State Department had recovered almost 4,000 stolen artworks in the U.S. from 1945 to 1962, many that were looted by U.S. servicemen. The U.S. State Department, principally Ardelia Hall and the Roberts Commission warned U.S. museums and art dealers in the 1940's and 1950's not to acquire stolen art and gave a general amnesty to people returning stolen works.
Stolen art was a big deal in 1945 and 1946, getting lots of ink in the New Yorker (Janet Flanner's groundbreaking work), Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic and many other major publications.
It is unfortunate that for the last 60 years, the American museum community and art press feign perpetual surprise each time stolen works surface. This collective amnesia is a national disgrace. Tens of thousands of works stolen from murdered Jews or foreign museums are missing or were donated to an American museum in exchange for tax breaks and hidden in the basement. U.S. museums have shirked their ethical duties as set forth in the Washington Principles to research their collections and publish provenances of the works in their collections. Let's not act shocked and surprised every time an American is caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here
Egon Schiele's "I Love Antitheses" 1912 (Estee Lauder Trust)
Artkabinett has an article Schiele Prison Attracts Collectors on the prison that housed Egon Schiele in Austria when he was imprisoned for scandalizing public morals. Today the prison is a museum dedicated to Schiele's works. Above is an image of one of the works that Schiele created while in prison. According to Schiele expert Jane Kallir, "I Love Antitheses" was part of the collection of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who was murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Jane Kallir testified at trial that "I Love Antitheses" was one of the few works that Schiele himself titled, and that the work is documented as belonging to Fritz Grunbaum by a 1925 Wurthle Catalog and a 1928 Hagenbund - Neue Galerie catalog. Today it is held in an Estee Lauder trust.
Neue Galerie was the name of Otto Kallir's art gallery in Vienna that organized a 1928 exhibition to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Schiele's death. Otto Kallir borrowed 22 works from Fritz Grunbaum's collection to include in the 1928 exhibition. The 1928 correspondence shows that Otto Kallir had full access to Fritz Grunbaum's Schiele collection and selected the works that he wanted to borrow.
Grunbaum's collection was stolen by the Nazis and surfaced in Switzerland in 1956 where some of it was sold off by Eberhard Kornfeld of Galerie Kornfeld to Otto Kallir. Kallir bought 20 of Fritz Grunbaum's Schieles from Kornfeld, including Dead City III.
Kornfeld shipped the Grunbaum Schieles to New York and sold them through the Galerie St. Etienne, the gallery today owned by Jane Kallir and named after St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) in Vienna. Otto Kallir knew that the works had belonged to Fritz Grunbaum and was aware that Fritz and his wife had been murdered by the Nazis. In the period Kallir was selling the stolen artworks from his gallery on 57th Street in New York, the U.S. State Department had issued warnings to art dealers, museums and collectors not to acquire artworks from Europe that did not have a clear provenance. Schiele was unknown outside Austria prior to World War II and many of Schiele's top collectors were murdered Jews such as Heinrich Reiger, Oskar Reichel, Karl Maylander and Fritz Grunbaum.
Galerie St. Etienne's Inspiration - Stefansdom - Vienna - Image from Wikipedia
Dead City III was seized as stolen property by D.A. Robert Morgenthau in 1998. After Morgenthau's subpoena was quashed, MoMA gave Dead City III to Rudolph Leopold.
A lawsuit alleging that Fritz Grunbaum's art dealer, Otto Kallir (and for a time monarchist supporting the restoration of the Hapsburgs) laundered the Grunbaum collection through Switzerland is still pending. See New York Observer, Dealer with the Devil. The heirs of Fritz Grunbaum have been battling to regain the artworks stolen from him. More information at Art Stolen From Fritz Grunbaum. Museums and private collectors who purchased the stolen works have not returned them and the issue on appeal now to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is whether the 147 days that the stolen artworks passed through Switzerland was sufficient to apply Swiss law to "launder" the title to these stolen works. Massachusetts collector David Bakalar sued Fritz Grunbaum's heirs to obtain a declaration of title to one of the stolen artworks. My firm represents Fritz Grunbaum's heirs in the litigation and I was lead trial counsel in the action in the Southern District of New York, story here.
Along with Dead City III in the September 1956 of artworks from Eberhard Kornfeld was the work "I Love Antitheses" and "Girl With Black Hair" that is now at Oberlin College. Oberlin's Allen Museum has refused to share its research or to publish a full provenance of "Girl With Black Hair" with Fritz Grunbaum's heirs in violation of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The earliest provenance given of Girl with Black Hair by Oberlin College is Switzerland, 1956.
Artkabinett also has a story Infamous Collector Leopold Dies at 85 on Rudolph Leopold, the art collector who amassed a number of stolen artworks that Austria has never returned to the Jewish families from whom they were stolen.
Work stolen from Fritz Grunbaum at Oberlin College here. More on the battles over Fritz Grunbaum's collection and Oberlin's falsification of the provenance of Girl With Black Hair here.
.jpg)
