Court lets family try to get back Nazi-looted art
SAN FRANCISCO: Almost 80 years ago, Lilly Cassirer surrendered her family’s priceless Camille Pissarro painting to the Nazis in exchange for safe passage out of Germany during the Holocaust.
For nearly 20 years, the Jewish woman’s heirs have been trying to get it back.
On Monday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the family is entitled to its day in court as it makes its case as to why Spain’s Thyssen- Bornemisza Museum should hand over a painting that has been a centrepiece of its US$2bil (RM8.6bil) collection since 1993.
“It was a very, very good result,” the family’s attorney, David Boies, said of the court’s reversing a 2015 ruling dismissing the family’s lawsuit.
“It sent a strong message that even public authorities cannot take possession in bad faith of stolen property and then somehow gain title to it simply over the passage of time.”
Themuseum’s attorney, Thaddeus J. Stauber, said Spain remains confident it will eventually prevail, adding the museum did indeed acquire the work in good faith.
In Monday’s ruling, however, the appeals court concluded the museum previously failed to establish that it did not know the painting was stolen when it acquired it from Baron Hans-Heinrich ThyssenBornemisza, scion of Germany’s Thyssen steel empire and one of the 20th century’s most prominent art collectors.
The painting, Rue St-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie, is a stunning Impressionist oil-on-canvas piece Pissarro created in 1897 while living in Paris.
Lilly Cassirer’s father-in-law acquired it directly from the artist’s dealer and passed it on to her and her husband when he died.
Both sides generally agree on what happened next:
Lilly Cassirer was forced to sell the painting to a Nazi-appointed Berlin art dealer for the equivalent of US$360 (RM1,548) and exit visas for herself, her husband and her grandson in 1939. She got the visas, but the Nazis kept the money.
By the end of World War II, the work had vanished. The German government, believing it was lost, paid Cassirer US$13,000 (RM55,900) in reparations in 1958.
In 1999, a friend of her grandson, Claude Cassirer, who had fled Germany with Lilly, saw a photo of the painting in a catalogue and contacted him. He quickly learnt it was hanging in the museum in Madrid.
“He was completely stunned because we thought the painting was gone,” his son, David, said last year.
He added that the family went through diplomatic channels to ask for the painting’s return but was rebuffed.
“What they basically said was, ‘Go ahead and sue us’,” he recalled angrily on Monday.
After Claude Cassirer died in 2010, his son took over the litigation. He said he’s hopeful Monday’s outcome will lead to the work’s return. — AP