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Mosby

(18,241 posts) Sun Mar 9, 2025, 12:25 PM Mar 9

My country's fight to keep Nazi-looted art is shameful

MADRID — For a country that gave the world Picasso and boasts some of the finest art collections in its museums, the decision should have been simple. When Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré,” a painting stolen by the Nazis from Lilly Cassirer, was discovered by her grandson Claude in 2000 in Madrid’s state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, Spain should have sent it to its rightful Jewish owners in California.

Instead, my country has spent the past 25 years, a fortune in legal bills and its reputation to keep it.

In doing so, Spain has placed itself in a dishonorable group of nations that obstruct the return of art stolen from victims of war and genocide, alongside countries such as Russia, Turkey and Romania. It is time for Madrid to acknowledge that, beyond the legal dispute, this case raises a far more essential moral issue.

No piece of art, however valuable, is worth betraying the memory of Holocaust victims.

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My country's fight to keep Nazi-looted art is shameful (Original Post) Mosby Mar 9 OP

As an art historian I usually side with museums as I believe art is for all people but this was such an egregious insult CTyankee Mar 9 #1

Wikipedia has an interesting but inconclusive take on this. Wonder Why Mar 11 #2

CTyankee

(65,842 posts)

1. As an art historian I usually side with museums as I believe art is for all people but this was such an egregious insult

Reply to Mosby (Original post)

Sun Mar 9, 2025, 03:36 PM

Mar 9

that I feel the art should absolutely be returned to its rightful owner. Often the owners will the artwork to a museum for the same reason -- to bring art to the masses, but it should be their decision. It was stolen. It needs to be returned.

Wonder Why

(5,301 posts)

2. Wikipedia has an interesting but inconclusive take on this.

Reply to Mosby (Original post)

Tue Mar 11, 2025, 04:09 PM

Mar 11

The painting was bought from Pissarro by the German businessman Julius Cassirer in 1897, and it was inherited by his son Fritz Cassirer and then by Fritz's wife Lilly. She remarried, but in 1939, as a German Jew, she was forced to sell the painting to Jakob Scheidwimmer, an official of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste [de], for the low price of 900 ℛ︁ℳ︁ to secure an exit visa, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The painting was sold at an auction in Berlin in 1943 for 95,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ and disappeared from public view. In 1958, a German court awarded Lilly Cassirer Neubauer compensation of DM 120,000, the fair market value for the work.

Did she accept the "fair market value" as fair? Doesn't say.

Did she feel she got swindled by the offer? Doesn't say.

Was she offered, as an alternative, the rights to the painting if and when it eventually turned up? Doesn't say.

I would recommend anyone interested in this case to look into it further. I checked Wikipedia's discussion of its provenance to see if she had gotten a stolen painting in good faith from an unethical art dealer who might have acquired it illegally but in Wikipedia, it is clear that Cassirer's purchase was good all the way back.

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