Jewish heirs contend MFAH has their art
Court hearing to decide if museum must return items stolen by Nazis during war
Houston’s premier art museum faced off with a Chilean family in federal court Thursday over allegations the museum improperly obtained an 18th-century painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish collector before World War II.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has documented its contention that the sale of the landscape work by Bernardo Bellotto occurred through proper channels and at the behest of the litigants’ ancestors.
The collector’s family believe the sale was made through Adolf Hitler’s art dealer under duress — amid antisemitic economic pressure that left many Jews suddenly bereft — and they want the painting to be returned. The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art has taken a rare stand in the case, weighing in on the family’s behalf with the arguments that MFAH “has an urgent duty … to promptly return the Bellotto painting to its rightful heirs.”
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison heard argument in Houston on the question of whether the heirs’ case should proceed to trial. He indicated at the end of the hearing he would rule on the matter at a later date.
Art once owned by wealthy Jewish families was confiscated by Hitler’s troops and in some cases stashed away during the occupation. In other cases, Jews were cut off entirely from their money and stripped of their livelihood, according to Robert M. Edsel, author of “The Monuments Men” and founder and chair of the eponymous foundation. They sold whatever they could under extreme conditions, he said. In many cases, they were then shipped to concentration camps and death camps never to see their homes or belongings, let alone their loved ones, again, said Edsel, who also consulted on the George Clooney film based on his book.
“In desperate circumstances there are all sorts of deals made
because you’ve got to find a way to put food on the table, pay the rent,” said Edsel, who traveled to Houston for the hearing. “In horrific times people are moved to do business.
Some prominent U.S. museums, including the Met in New York, settled claims for art looted by the Nazis or sold under duress around the time the United States endorsed the international Washington Principles, which called for “just and fair” solutions in assessing claims about looted art, according to the New York Times.
The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth also agreed to hand over a Joseph Mallord William Turner painting that belonged to a French family before it was seized by Nazis, according to Edsel. The family put the 1841 painting for auction at Christie’s and the Kimbell Museum bought it back for nearly $6.5 million, he said.
Discoveries in salt mine
A group of European and American curators, historians and librarians who came to be known as the Monuments Men discovered thousands of these purloined paintings in a salt mine in Austria — as well as others Nazis had stashed in about 1,500 locations including caves, castles and monasteries.
The grandchildren of one collector sued the Houston museum, saying they are “rightful owners” of a painting that was among those works unearthed by the Monuments Men in the salt mine.
The painting in question, “The Marketplace at Pirna,” stems from a commission for King Augustus III of Poland, who also held the title Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire, according to a court document. The realistic urban landscape — of a city that now belongs to modern Germany — shows a bustling marketplace with the Sonnenstein Castle in the background. Bellotto painted several smaller autographed replicas of the original marketplace for other patrons, a common practice by artists in that time.
One of these replicas later belonged to Max James Emden, a German Jewish department store magnate and art collector whose heirs have pushed for restitution for the work they say was stolen from the collection Emden kept in Switzerland, where he lived on a private island on Lago Maggiore in the Alps.
The museum says in a backgrounder post on its website that before the war, Emden took steps to sell three Bellotto paintings through a Jewish gallery owner to Hitler’s art dealer Karl Haberstock for a museum the fuhrer was planning. Many works destined for Hitler’s museum were hidden during the war.
The Houston museum’s researcher found that after Berlin fell in May 1945 the three Emden Bellottos were brought to a central collecting point in Munich. Two of these works became property of the German government, because they were believed to have been acquired through a voluntary, uncoerced sale. In 2019, a German commission returned these paintings to the Emden heirs after determining Max Emden had sold all three paintings due to persecution. The commission believed at the time the third Bellotto was lost.
The third Bellotto Pirna
The third Bellotto of the Pirna marketplace, known as 1025 Pirna, is now believed to be the museum’s painting. That work was mistakenly returned by the Allies to the Dutch government in 1946, and then through official channels, the museum says, it made its way to Hugo Moser, an international art dealer with a gallery in New York, who sold it to Samuel Kress of New York. Kress gave the work as a gift to MFAH in 1961.
In another dispute with a family, MFAH contended in a foreign proceeding it was the rightful owner of the 20th-century pointillist painting “Regatta in Venice” by Henri Edmund Cross. The museum did not dispute that work had been confiscated by German forces, only what happened after the war.
The Chilean heirs who sued the Houston museum are the collector’s grandchildren Juan Carlos, Michel and Nicolás Emden. They say the Monuments Men asked Dutch officials to return the work but their message came after it was in the hands of a German art dealer in New York City who created false documents of provenance before he sold it. The Monuments Men Foundation has documented through photographs how it believes dealer covered up proof that the works were not his. Edsel said his foundation asked to share these findings with MFAH but the museum declined to meet with him because he was not the authorized representative of the family.
Laurie Stein, a world renowned provenance researcher hired by MFAH, determined that Max Emden’s 1938 sale of the three Bellottos to the German government was voluntary. Stein found Emden had sold the painting through his longtime dealer and he “openly pursued and received his asking price.”
“No new information has come to light that alters the voluntary character of the 1938 sale that Emden initiated,” a museum spokesperson said Thursday. The museum has asked the judge to dismiss the case.
The Emden grandchildren say Max Emden’s swift financial decline correlated directly with the Nazi persecution of Jews through laws meant to cut them off from the German economy and strip them of their assets.
By April 1933, they say in court documents, the Nuremberg laws and Nazi government’s financial restrictions on Jews like Emden intentionally caused them to lose assets. They said their grandfather’s portfolio of securities deposited with Hamburg banks became frozen. He was also prevented from collecting rental income on his properties.
In addition to shipping them off to concentration camps and exterminating them, Nazis stripped Jews of their citizenship and forced them to surrender their businesses and enterprises, the suit says, and Emden’s textile trading company was liquidated. He lived in Switzerland and could no longer transfer any of his income out of Germany.
The Houston museum notes in its backgrounder that the heirs’ dispute is late in coming. According to court documents, the museum says family members did not contest the ownership of the painting on multiple prior occasions when given the chance. The family says it only recently was able to document that the painting in the museum was their grandfather’s.
“For years, whether through choice or willful ignorance, the Museum obfuscated facts and dismissed evidence of the Emden 1025 Pirna’s true provenance, refusing even to take reasonable steps common to major museums with such immense resources to confirm the correct provenance (and ownership) of the Emden 1025 Pirna including denying the Emden Heirs an opportunity to personally inspect the painting and its original frame for identifying marks,” according to court records.