Dutch crime journalist John van den Heuvel, long known in the Netherlands for his reporting on organised crime and high-profile criminal investigations, has now become linked to the discreet return later today of a Nazi-looted artwork we wrote about this morning. The painting had been hidden for decades with a descendant of a World War II wartime collaborator, first disclosed by Private Investigator Arthur Brand.
The painting, Portrait of a Young Girl by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, looted by Nazis from the famous Goudstikker collection, has been handed over today to Telegraaf journalist John van den Heuvel by a descendant of the notorious Dutch SS lieutenant general and NSB figurehead Hendrik Alexander Seyffardt, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent wartime collaborators. The painting had originally belonged to prominent Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before being displaced during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
More than eighty years after the war, the rediscovery of this Kelder portrait demonstrates that the legacy of Nazi cultural theft still persists not only in archives and courtrooms, but inside ordinary homes where displaced objects continue to carry histories their current holders may only now be beginning to understand.
Identified Goudstikker portrait and a photo of a volunteer of the Dutch SS taking an oath in the presence of an officer. In the background, high-ranking German (Hanns Albin Rauter) and Dutch officers (Hendrik Seyffardt) stand in the stands.
For decades, a small portrait hung quietly inside a Dutch family home, largely unnoticed except by those privy to pass by it where it was hung in a hallway. Now, Portrait of a Young Girl by Dutch artist Toon Kelder (1894-1973) has emerged as the latest chapter in the long and still unfinished history of artworks looted by the Nazis which were part of the inventory of Jewish persecuted art dealer Jacques Goudstikker a Dutch dealer discussed frequently on this blog.
The painting’s rediscovery was made public this morning by Dutch private investigator Arthur Brand, whose investigations into missing and looted artworks have often drawn international press attention. During our phone call with him, last week Brand stated that a family member had approached him after learning two deeply unsettling pieces of family history: first, that he was descended from Hendrik Alexander Seyffardt, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent wartime collaborators, and second, that a Nazi-looted painting had apparently been hanging inside the home of one of Seyffardt's heirs for many years.
In the German-occupied Netherlands, SS Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Regiment General Seyffardt was the leader of the collaborationist Netherlands Volunteer Legion, later redesignated the SS Volunteer Legion Niederlande under General Seyffardt. Known for his strong anti-communist and pro-German sentiments, he was killed following the second of two assassination attempts, the last occurring at his home at Van Neckstraat 36 on 5 February 1943 by Gerrit Willem Kastein and Jan Verleunm resistance fighters with the group CS-6, named for a street number on Corellistraat in Amsterdam. Shortly before his death the following day, Seyffardt stated that the perpetrators were likely students and as a result, on 6 February 1943, the Germans conducted a raid in Delft, during which over two hundred students were arrested and 45 Dutch nationals were killed in direct connection with his targeting.
Such was Seyffardt's importance that his funeral was held at the Binnenhof in The Hague, complete with a wreath from Adolf Hitler. Attended by Anton Mussert, leader of the Dutch Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (NSB), and Nazi politician and later convicted war criminal Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, it was the latter who laid Hitler's wreath on their comrade's coffin. After General Christiansen, Commander of the Wehrmacht, laid a second wreath following a final salute with Hanns Albin Rauter, the Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer and General Commissioner for safety in the Netherlands who read a passage from a letter by Heinrich Himmler before his body was cremated at Velsen.
How Hendrik Seyffardt obtained the plundered Toon Kelder's portrait remains to be explored, as does why his heirs elected to keep the painting a family secret rathr than address its origins. What is known is that one family member had an attack of conscience and aware of the painting's dark history, chose not to ignore its tainted origins.
Cases such as this illustrate a recurring pattern within the restitution field. Individuals who discover that they or someone they know possesses a potentially stolen artwork sometimes turn to intermediaries like Brand, often because they are in an awkward or uncomfortable association with the holder and sometimes because they are uncertain how to proceed. Fearful of legal consequences, or simply frustrated by the moral implications of what they know, it becomes a question of what next steps should be taken, especially because in many situations, the statute of limitations has expired or the current holders are not themselves implicated in the original theft, but have inherited objects burdened with dark histories, particularly when the painting in question may be tied to Nazi-era looting or organized crime.
In these situations, private investigators specializing in art crime occupy a unique position. Well known from his appearances in press articles related to other recoveries, PIs like Brand are sometimes privy to the earliest of reportings, acting as facilitators between relatives, possessors, claimants, lawyers, museums, insurers, and law enforcement authorities.
Following up on his informant's lead, Brand identified an entry from the collection of the deceased Jacques Goudstikker which was auctioned at Frederik Muller's (1902–1943) auction house in Amsterdam in 1940.
Alois Miedl, who took over the Goudstikker's art gallery when its owner fled, consigned Goudstikker's works for auction to Muller's auction house on 8 and 9 October 1940, an event which contained dozens of lots, including a written entry on what seems to be this portrait painting by Toon Kelder, listed as LOT 92.
Correspondence from the art dealership "Frederik Muller en Co" covering the years from 1902 to 1943 is held by the "RKD Netherlands – Institute For Art History in Amsterdam
Likewise, a look at the verso of paintings sometimes can provide further clues as to ownership and circulation. The backs of paintings sometime include exhibition labels, stamps, seals, and brands such as the marking from dealers, shippers and auction houses. On a photo provided to Brand and shared with ARCA there is a chalk entry on this painting's verso, which depicts the number 92. This corresponds with the Lot number in the Frederik Muller catalogue.
As in other occupied countries with established art markets, such as France and Belgium, the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in May 1940 triggered a vertiginous boom in the Dutch art market. One sticker on the reverse side of this painting securely assigns it to the collection of Jacques Goudstikker’s gallery.
Depending on the time at which the work was included in Goudstikker’s collection, the labels are different, with a total of five different printed labels attributed to this dealer. On these, the inventory number was usually handwritten on the label and in some cases, the name of the artist might also be noted.
The earliest labels related to this Jewish dealer's collection can be found on works with low inventory numbers and identify the dealer's gallery located at Kalverstraat 73, like this label depicted below.
Second Gallery Label, Kalverstraat 73, rectangular version, ca. 5 x 12 cm with revision sticker "40"
After the Goudstikker gallery's relocation to Heerengracht 458, the labels on his artworks changed, although the design remained basically the same.
Goudstikker Gallery Label, Heerengracht 458 rectangular version, ca. 5 x 11,5 cm
On many paintings, there are further stickers on the back, which further allow us to attribute plundered paintings to the Goudstikker gallery, one of which is the smaller rectangular revision sticker, framed by two blue lines with rounded corners,
These frequently found stickers likely dates to the time of the revision of the gallery stock in 1940. It is a toothed standard label with a blue double frame with rounded corners, like the one seen beside the dealer's label on the Kelder painting.
Brand thinks that after Seyffardt’s assassination, this painting likely passed to his son, Hendrik Seyffardt Jr., who was sentenced after World War II to eight years in prison for his collaboration with the Germans. According to his reconstruction, the work may have subsequently remained with Seyffardt Jr.’s former wife following their divorce in 1944, before it eventually passed by inheritance to her daughter, in whose home the painting reportedly hangs.
The trajectory of this artwork illustrates how unresolved Nazi-looted art remains woven into ordinary domestic spaces. And while many wartime looting cases involve masterpieces hanging in major museums, countless more displaced works continue to reside secretly and quietly in private hands, their histories unspoken by subsequent generations and leaving it to descendants to confront histories they themselves played no role in creating.
This article is not intended as an effort to expose or target Seyffardt’s descendants, whose identities can be reconstructed through a little bit of analysis work. Rather, it serves to illustrate a broader and more uncomfortable reality within restitution law: national legal frameworks do not always ensure that looted artworks are returned to the heirs of their original owners.
In the Netherlands, as in several jurisdictions, statutes of limitation and doctrines surrounding good-faith possession can complicate or even prevent legal seizure, despite strong historical evidence of wartime dispossession. As a result, the return of this painting may ultimately depend less on legal compulsion than on the willingness of its present holder to confront the object’s troubling history and voluntarily relinquish it to the Goudstikker heirs.
Francis Henry Taylor, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, had this to say about looted art entering the United States in the Sunday edition of the New York Times on 19 September 1943:
"Private individuals might operate in a 'black market' of antiquities in which no questions are asked, but public institutions disposing of trust funds could not very well connive in the artistic liquidation of the artistic patrimony of Europe and act as public receivers of stolen goods."
In the summer of 1946, that directive was rescinded on advice from the Roberts Commission which exulted in the idea that there was no proof that looted art from Europe was streaming into the US. Since its members were gagging to resume business as usual, they persuaded the Treasury to remove America's barriers to all cultural goods and be done with it.
Question: Did the Roberts Commission members and Customs agents actually know what a looted object looked like? Did the culprit object bear unmistakable markings that betrayed the misdeeds that resulted in its misappropriation? Did the Treasury, Customs, State, US museums have lists of stolen objects?
The answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO.
Ardelia Hall, the State Department's cultural officer who oversaw US restitution policy for the greater part of 17 years, admitted that there had only been:
22 "lots" of works of art imported into the US in 1945 and 102 in the first half of 1946 (no idea how many objects are contained in a "lot"). Despite that major increase from 1945 to 1946, the feeling was that the art market needed to breathe again, unimpinged by government regulations.
Looking back, Taylor was on to something although his self-righteous outrage was just that. No one listened, not even his own museum, not even himself in later years.
Sources: New York Times, 19 September 1943, cited in Ardelia Hall memo dated 25 September 1946 to her staff at the State Department. RG 59 Lot 62D4, Box 11, NACP.
In 1675, Jesuit scholar Zacharias Traber published Nervus Opticus Sive Tractatus Theoricus in Tres Libros in Vienna, a richly illustrated treatise in three parts—optics, catoptrics, and dioptrics—engraved by copperplate engraver Tobias Sadeler. The work not only explored the science of light, reflection, and refraction, but also recorded unique historical descriptions of the Archbishop’s garden in Bratislava. Issued with two different dedications, only a very few copies of the edition dedicated to Archbishop György Szelepcsényi survive today in Hungarian public collections.
During World War II, one such copy, held in the library of the Eötvös József Collegium in Budapest, is believed to have been illegally removed. For decades, it seems, their loss went unnoticed.
On 21 March 2022, a researcher alerted the Collegium’s library to a possible sighting: a copy of Nervus Opticus matching their missing volume was listed for sale online by a New York antiquarian bookseller for USD 19,500. Reaching out to the bookshop revealed tghat the book had been purchased at a Munich auction in 2007 and that they too were involved in trying to determine the Jesuit manuscript's prior circulation.
Although the Civil Code (Act V of 2013) of Hungarian law, excludes the possession of protected cultural property illegally removed from libraries, it also states that ownership over them can be acquired if a museum document stolen from a library is purchased commercially and in good faith (for example at an auction).
To establish the manuscript’s identity, the ELTE University Library and Archives, the legal successor to the Jesuit college library in Nagyszombat needed to prove their ownership of the object in question.
To do so, when it comes to books and manuscripts, there are several ways in which a library might be able to establish its ownership of a volume. They could look at handwritten possessor entries, the ex libris, which is usually glued to the inside cover of the book. They could look for the manuscript's super ex libris (supralibros) with a coat of arms or monogram placed on the binding of the book, or compare the ownership stamp (stock stamp). In addition thay could look for entries in the Library's inventory book, which might also provide information that could be decisive in ownership issues.
To do so, they requested detailed images from the cooperating book dealer. These in turn revealed a possessor entry (“Colleg. S Jesu, Tyr: 1675”) and some traces of an ownership stamp.
Multispectral imaging then confirmed that a stamp of the Eötvös József Collegium had been deliberately removed, and that the flyleaf and endpaper bearing other ownership marks had been replaced. Archival research traced the manuscript’s history: from Nagyszombat, where the Jesuit college library held seven copies in 1690, to Buda in 1777, leaving one copy behind in a Catholic high school in Pozsony, which eventually entered the Collegium’s library. There it remained until its disappearance, most likely during the 1940s.
In 2025, following further confirmatory investigations conducted by New York authorities, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office formally seized the manuscript. This being its first step in its formalised return to the Library.
On 23 July 2025, the manuscript Nervus Opticus Sive Tractatus Theoricus in Tres Libros was ceremoniously handed over in New York by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos to Péter Szijjártó, Hungary's Foreign Minister. The minister noted that this is the first known case of a stolen Hungarian antiquity being recovered with the direct involvement of the New York District Attorney’s Office, "a gesture he called deeply appreciated and symbolically significant"
For their own part the DA’s office underscored that advanced imaging technology was key to uncovering the removed stamp and proving the manuscript’s origins and rightful ownership, closing an eight-decade chapter in the history of a rare and important scientific work, and restoring it at last to its rightful home.
Image Credit: Exhibition Arte Liberata 1937-1947: Masterpieces Saved from War.
This past week Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper stirred up a long-standing dispute between Italy's National Roman Museum and Germany's Antikensammlungen state antiquities collection regarding who is the rightful owner of the Discobolus Lancellotti, also known as the Discobolus Palombara. Frozen in a moment of dynamic tension, much like the ownership debate, the marble depiction of an athlete stands as a remarkable example of the classical aesthetics that characterised the ancient world.
Believed to be a 2nd Century CE marble copy modelled after the original bronze Greek masterpiece created by Myron of Eleutherae around 450 BCE, the Roman version has endured through the centuries and offers its viewers a fascinating glimpse into the Roman's appreciation for the athletes and artistry of the Greeks, as well as the contentious nature of provenance. The statue depicts the sportsman frozen in a moment of athletic intensity, poised like a coiled spring wound in high tension, to intricately render the disk thrower's musculature and balance.
The anatomy of the discobolus, as drawn by the talented @PaulCarneyArts
Rediscovered on the Esquiline Hill in Rome on March 14, 1781 during an excavation carried out by workmen working for the Marquise Barbara Savelli Palombara (1750–1826) and her husband Papal postmaster Camillo Francesco Massimo (1730–1801), the statue was unearthed on the grounds of the 17th century Villa Palombara sull'Esquilino. There, the accidental archaeology of the diggers unearthed what would turn out to be an extraordinary collection of ancient artistic masterpieces, only one of which was the life-size, 156 centimetre-tall Discobolus.
The ancient Villa Palombara in a map engraved by Giovanni Battista Falda (1676).
Initially cleaned in the 18th century by Giuseppe Angelini, it was Italian soon-to-be archaeologists Giovanni Battista Visconti and Filippo Waquier De La Barthe who first published on the the marble sculpture as a Roma copy of Muron's bronze originalin 1801, augmenting their research with an illustration by Carlo Fea.
Depicting an athlete who competed in Greek agones (athletic competitions), the sculpture's popularity became uniquely recognisable, even to non art historians. Its discovery also provided us with a fascinating glimpse into the artistic preferences and lavish lifestyles of ancient Rome's elites, and marked a seminal moment in what we now know and understand about artistic preferences in the classical period.
Having reattached his right arm and left foot, the Discobolus sculpture was taken by the Massimo (later Lancellotti) family to Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, the site of the family's ancestral properties, located on Via Papalis (now Corso Vittorio Emanuele II). There it was given its own private viewing room on the palazzo's piano nobile or main floor. Later, it would it be installed by Prince Filippo Massimo Lancellotti and Princess Elisabetta Borghese Aldobrandini at the Palazzo Massimo Lancellotti.
By January 1937 the Lancellotti family was actively shopping the sculpture for a new owner. Following the 25 January 1937 death of Princess Elisabetta Borghese Aldobrandini, we can document a 29 January 1937 letter written by Gisela Richter to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's director, Herbert E. Winlock, where the US museum director was alerted to the fact that the Discobolus had been shopped by “the very difficult old lady at the head of the house” to foreign museums.
Yet despite the Met's rather healthy and hastily-gathered purchase budget, capped at $300,000 including export fees, and with Joseph Brummer acting as the museum's purchasing agent through Roman antiquities’ dealers, Ettore and Augusto Jandolo, the Met moved too slowly and the marble sculpture was sold to the German state. As a consolation prize, the Met was still able to acquire a marquetry studiolo from Federico da Montefeltro’s palace in Gubbio which was sold by the Lancellotti family in 1937 to Adolph (Adolpho) Loewi, a German-Jewish art and antiquities dealer who flipped the piece to the Met before leaving Italy in 1939.
Germany's fascination with the Discobolus
Even before its purchase, the discobolus was firmly cemented in the hearts of Germans. More so when held up as the ideal in the rhetoric, propaganda, art, and architecture of National Socialism. This fascination can be seen in the evocative prologue of the 1936 film directed by Leni Riefenstahl Olympia – Festival of Nations which documented that summer's Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin during the Nazi period.
Released in Germany on Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1938, one month shy of the Nazis’ purchase of the statue, the film begins with a fanciful recreation of the ruins of the Acropolis of Athens, focusing in, with short clips, on a varying group of Greek statues before the montage concludes with a clearer image of the Discobolus as it gradually morphs into the ideal German athlete, Erwin Huber, who competed in the men's decathlon. His transformation was meant to illustrate the 'Vigour and beauty' of ancient Greece reborn in the athleticism and perfect physical form of modern Germany.
But back to the sale of the Discobolus
Bear in mind that in 1937 when Adolf Hitler first expressed interest in the Discobolus, Italy's cultural property was already protected by Law No. 364/1909, commonly referred to as the 'Rosadi-Rava Law. This law, approved by the Italian parliament, stated that when a good owned by an individual or a private entity is classified as cultural property, the owner remained under an obligation to preserve its integrity (Article 20(1)(a) of the CHC). Furthermore, an authorisation by the Ministry of Education was required before such objects could be moved from their current location, for example, for a showing at an exhibition (Article 20(1)(b) of the CHC)3 or for restoration (Article 20(4) of the CHC).
In the case of sale, a privately owned antiquity, classified as cultural property, might be sold, but the seller has an obligation to notify the contract to the Italian State within 30 days of the date of the sale. In case of sale, the State has a pre-emption right, to be exercised within 60 days of the date of receipt of the sale notice (Article 59 of the CHC), all this to say that cultural property of a historic interest to the stated should not have been exported from the national territory on a permanent basis.
Despite this, Benito Mussolini forced the hand of his then-Minister of Education, Giuseppe Bottai, by tacitly approving an export waiver to Adolf Hitler and not stepping in to deny the statue's export. On 18 May 1938 Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son in law and the Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 to 1943, completed the sales transaction for the Discobolus. The selling price was five million lire, ($252,000, as calculated later by the US Office of Military Government [OMGUS]), paid out over the protests of Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of Education, and the scholarly community. The German government then paid an additional 1,485,000 lire in export tax to complete the acquisition.
On 29 June 1938 the Discobolus was shipped by train to Germany and was put on display at the Munich Glyptothek, with Hitler in attendance for its opening premiere on by 10 July 1938. Some say Hitler opted for the Munich museum over the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as a technique of oneupmanship. One hundred years earlier, Ludwig I, the King of Bavaria, had sought to purchase the famous statue for his own collections.
Adolf Hitler in the Munich Glyptothek with the Lancellotti Discobolus, 10 July 1938 - Image Credit US Library of Congress
The Lancellotti Discobolus then spent a decade in Germany, enduring the tumultuous period of World War II and escaping the heavy damage to the Glyptothek in the summer of 1944, when the museum was badly hit by Allied bombing raids. Thankfully, the bulk of the Glyptothek collection of sculptures and works of art had previously been brought to safety in monasteries. What had to be left behind, and not immediately destroyed by the bombing, suffered severe damage in the waning years before its restoration, as the cultural heritage institution was left without a roof.
The remains of the Roman Hall of the Munich Glyptothek in 1945
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After the war, the Discobolus was ordered to be returned to Italy, as part of a broader repatriation effort termed the “Exceptional Return of Works of Art” by Allied authorities. Rodolfo Siviero, Italy's postwar representative dedicated to repatriating art taken from the country since 1937, was known to have played a pivotal role in advocating for the return of the marble statue and other contentious works of art. These pieces, all acquired by the National Socialist government, were contested on the grounds that the export permits were illegal, and in violation of the law of 1909.
But the return of the Discobolus was not without its controversies. On Germany's side, letters of protest were sent to the U.S. Secretary of State, as well as to President Truman. One of these was signed by thirty-six German staff members working at the Munich Central Collecting Point (CCP). Another letter of protest, organised by a professor at the University of Munich, was signed by eighty-eight German officials.
Calls for the decision's repeal were subsequently directed to the colonial authority known as the Office of Military Government, United States, (OMGUS) in Berlin and ultimately culminated in the resignation of Herbert S. Leonard, in November 1948, from his position as director of the Munich Central Collecting Point (CCP). Leonard having resigned in opposition to OMGUS's fixed decision to return seventeen paintings and the sculpture to the Italian government.
The Italian authorities have always maintained that the collection was seized by Fascist leaders and gifted to the Nazis. While Leonard and others working on the provenance of objects held at the collecting point pointed to the fact that sculpture had been purchased by Nazi Germany in 1938 after Mussolini declared an "axis" between Germany and Italy on 1 November 1936 and prior to the start of World War II on 31 August 1939 and was therefore not an under duress sale.
Once back in Italy, in 1948, the Discobolus became part of the collection of the National Roman Museum at Palazzo Massimo. More recently it has been part of an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale titled Arte Liberata 1937-1947: Capolavori Salvati dalla Guerra dedicated to the theme of cultural heritage at risk during World War II. Afterwards, following a major reorganisation which is anticipated to take three years, the statue is expected to be moved permanently to Palazzo Altemps, close to Piazza Navona. As for whose property the statue is, well I will leave that debate to the lawyers.
Fritz Grünbaum's prisoner registry card at Dachau Concentration Camp
On Wednesday, the New York District Attorney's Office in Manhattan executed search warrants at three US museums, seizing three artworks by Austrian Expressionist Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele.
The Schiele works are:
Russian War Prisoner, 1916, a watercolour and pencil on paper hand drawing seized at the Art Institute of Chicago;
Portrait of a Man, 1917, a pencil on paper drawing seized at the Carnegie Museum of Art;
Girl With Black Hair, 1911), a watercolor and graphite pencil on paper hand drawing seized at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.
According to the warrants and Manhattan prosecutors, “there is reasonable cause to believe” that the works constitute stolen property taken from Franz Friedrich 'Fritz' Grünbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, operetta and popular song writer, actor, killed during World War II. Grünbaum’s extraordinary 449-piece art collection was stolen by the Nazis only to have much of it sold through Eberhard Kornfeld, a Swiss auctioneer, and art dealer based in Bern, without the collector's heir's consent.
A World War II tragedy, like so many others.
After the Anschluss, (the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich forming a "Greater Germany"), Fritz Grünbaum and his wife Elisabeth "Lilly" (nee Herzl) Grünbaum try unsuccessfully to escape to Czechoslovakia.
Apprehended and arrested Fritz Grünbaum remained imprisoned in various concentration camps until his murder. On 16 July 1938 while Fritz Grünbaum was imprisoned at Dachau, the Nazis forced him to execute a power of attorney in favour of his wife Lilly.
Shortly thereafter, and acting pursuant to her husband's under duress power of attorney Elisabeth Grünbaum is compelled to permit Austrian art historian and art dealer Franz Kieslinger, who was a member of the Nazi party, to inventory Grünbaum's property, including his art collection of over 400 pieces to be valued at 5,791 Reichsmarks (RM). In this collection were 81 pieces by Schiele.
Grünbaum's collection also included French watercolours and pieces by French Impressionist Edgar Degas, the German artist Albrecht Dürer, Dutch Golden Age artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, known as Rembrandt, and French sculptor François Auguste René Rodin. All of the latter were identified by name in the Kieslinger inventory.
Sometime following Kieslinger's inventorying, the Grünbaum's entire art collection was deposited with Schenker & Co., A.G., a Nazi-controlled shipping company, with the firm the applying for an export license on behalf of collector "Lilly Grünbaum" in November 1938. Gruesomely, Lilly's address is listed as "formerly Vienna . . . now Buchenwalde," the Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany.
On January 14, 1941 Fritz Grünbaum was murdered at Dachau in southern Germany. His wife then signed a declaration before an Austrian notary in connection with obtaining her husband's death certificate, stating:
"[T]here is nothing left," in other words, there is no estate. Therefore, "[b]ecause of a lack of goods or property, there [was no] estate proceeding for inheritance" before the Dachau Probate Court.
She in turn, is murdered four months later, on October 5 1942 at Maly Trostenets death camp near Minsk in Belarus.
By the early 1950s some 25% of the Grünbaum's collection, including the three seized artworks, was in circulation on the art market through Bern, Switzerland dealer Eberhard Kornfeld.
Seized in place, prosecutors say 3 seized artworks belong to the three living heirs of Fritz Grünbaum and will be transported to New York at a later date.
Photo taken by Nazi authorities during World War II showing a room filled with stolen art at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris
Recognizing that reclaiming looted cultural assets can feel like a Sisyphean task, and that restitution cannot be accomplished without the practical knowledge of how to conduct critical research, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) and the US-based Holocaust Art Restitution Project, [Inc.] (HARP), have teamed up to offer its 4th annual stand-alone provenance course which tackles the complex issues of cultural plunder.
Open to applicants interested in exploring the ownership history of looted cultural objects, their trafficking and their restitution/repatriation, this 5-day course will provide participants with exposure to research methodologies used to clarify and unlock the past history of objects likely to have been displaced in periods of crisis. It will also examine the complex nuances of post war and post conflict restitution and repatriation, as well as its ethical underpinnings.
This course is taught by Marc Masurovsky, who cofounded HARP in September 1997 and currently serves as its Director of Research.
Since 1980 Marc has examined the general question of assets looted during the Nazi era and has worked as an expert historian on a class-action lawsuit filed by Jewish claimants against three leading Swiss banks, accusing them of having expropriated the property that their families had deposited in their safes and bank accounts.
As a consultant and historian for the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, Masurovsky, has investigated alleged Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. and post-war relations between former Nazi officials and Allied intelligence agencies. Mr. Masurovsky earned his M.A. in Modern European History from American University in Washington, D.C. For his Master's thesis, he researched "Operation Safehaven: the Allied response to Nazi post-defeat planning, 1944-1948". He is also the co-author with Fabrizio Calvi of Le Festin du Reich (Editions Fayard, 2006).
This course will provide participants with the opportunity to engage in an intensive, guided, dynamic exchange of ideas on research methods while highlighting the multiple diplomatic, political and financial challenges raised by restitution and repatriation claims. Special emphasis will also be placed on the contextual framework of provenance research in an era increasingly reliant on digital tools.
With an emphasis on an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, this provenance course will benefit anyone with an interest in art, art history, art collecting, the global art market writ large, museum and curatorial studies, art and international law, national and international cultural heritage policies.
As an added bonus participants accepted into this 5-day course will automatically registered be registered to attend ARCA’s Amelia Conference, the weekend of June 23-25, 2023. This weekend-long forum of intellectual and professional exchange which explores the indispensable role of research, detection, crime prevention and criminal justice responses in combating all forms of art crime and the illicit trafficking in cultural property.
For more information on the course, course fees and how to apply, please see this link.
The Jewish Museum’s current exhibition Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is dedicated to the art objects coveted by some of history’s greatest villains: the Nazi regime. Walking into the museum lobby on a cloudy Saturday afternoon (admission is free on the Jewish Sabbath), I found myself at the end of a long line awaiting entry into the exhibition space. Surrounded by groups of all ages and backgrounds, we waited in an orderly fashion, taunted by the glimpse of a large Franz Marc canvas hanging just beyond the glass doors.
Once granted entry into the exhibition space, the dramatically lit gallery introduces viewers to the idea of an artwork’s biography, not just its creator, but the journey the physical item takes throughout its existence from creation to owners, to looters, to restitution. Following the trajectory of curation, visitors are given a preliminary introduction to the destruction and sacrifice that arose from the Nazi’s systematic plunder of cultural objects. The wall texts and audio guide address topics ranging from the experiences of “degenerate” artist’s to Rose Valland’s valiant efforts working for the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume to the Jewish Museum’s own role in safeguarding the orphaned Judaica of the Danzig Collection.
In support of this narrative, many of the artworks on display are presented with wall texts that offer a paragraph of art historical analysis followed by a brief description of how the artwork was looted and restituted. Other items on display, such as August Sander’s photographic portraits of his Jewish neighbors seeking to escape persecution, and a concentration camp ledger recording the names of thousands who perished at the hands of the Nazis. This sobering reminder of the context of this exhibition adds an extra layer of gravitas to the exhibited art objects. Of the 3478 human beings recorded in this single ledger, only 11 survived. Viewers are not just reading fantastical stories or art historical analyses. They are witnessing the afterlife of the attempted annihilation of Jewish culture and faith.
For some paintings, such as Henri Matisse’s Girl in Yellow and Blue with Guitar (1939) and Daisies (1939), the journey was short and bitter. Both paintings were stolen by Nazis from famed French-Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s Bordeaux bank vault and were earmarked for Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s personal collection. The wall text indicates that the saga concluded “following the war, both were returned to Rosenberg and were later sold.” Other paintings, such as Max Pechstein’s Landscape (Nudes in a Landscape) (1912), were lost for decades, forgotten amidst dusty basements before resurfacing in institutional collections. Pechstein’s Landscape was restituted to the heirs of Hugo Simon, a German-Jewish banker, this year (2021!), evidencing the ongoing battle against Nazi plunder.
Max Pechstein’s Landscape (Nudes in a Landscape), 1912
The exhibition culminates with a display of contemporary works by artists Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guex, and Lisa Oppenheim. Each of the aforementioned artists seeks to shed light on the enduring legacy and ramifications of Nazi plundering while simultaneously shedding light on restitution efforts. Maria Eichhorn even put together a dossier of philosopher Hannah Arendt’s field reports, memoranda, and other primary documents from her time as an emissary for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. (JCR). This dossier offers a documented view into the restitution efforts that took place in the wake of the Second World War. Visitors are encouraged to take a copy of the dossier with them. The unassuming booklet serves as a tangible record of plunder to take with them back into the real world.
Image Credit: Aubrey Catrone
Overall, the Jewish Museum exhibition offers a broad overview of an issue that is often sensationalized by the mainstream media. Afterlives draws viewers into a world of beautiful and sacred objects that were pulled from their owners and subsequently destroyed or traded by those in power. I had hoped that the exhibition would shed more light on the arduousness of restitution cases or even provenance research itself. An untold number of art objects remain missing. The laws governing clean title vary from country to country (i.e., rightful ownership). And, there is no universal standard in place for conducting provenance research or due diligence. It can be a long and tedious process to follow the path of an artwork that someone has disrupted or tried to erase. However, I hope that each individual who visits this exhibition is left with a greater understanding of the work that has been done in this field and the work that is left to be completed.
*Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is on view at the Jewish Museum in New York until 9 January 2022
Additional Image Credits:
Image 1: Installation view of Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art, August 20, 2021-January 9, 2022, the Jewish Museum, NY. Photo by Steven Paneccasio
Image 2: Max Pechstein, Landscape (Nudes in a Landscape), 1912, oil on canvas, 71 x 80 cm, Photo by Philippe Migeat.
Image 3: A dossier in the city. Photo of Maria Eichhorn’s Hannah Arendt: Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Field Reports, Memoranda, Etc., 2021.
Arrested in a complex multinational police action code-named Operación Nongreta one of three gun runners arrested in Spain at the end of December has been found to have maintained a "museum" of Nazi-themed objects, alongside a substantial arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
Within the framework of the year-long Nongreta operation, involving the Information Office (UCE3) of Spain's Civil Guard, with the support of the Bundeskriminalamt, (the German Federal Criminal Police Office, BKA), the Andalusian Area Information Section, the USECIC and the GEDEX of the Málaga Command, and members of the GAR and the Servicio Cinológico, law enforcement successfully dismantled an arms trafficking group known to be dealing with drug trafficking cells working the Costa del Sol and Campo de Gibraltar regions in the south of Spain.
The operation, born out of a noticeable uptick in murders carried out during drug-related crimes committed on the Costa del Sol in the final stretch of 2019 using modified assault rifles, resulted in the arrested of three key actors - two German citizens and one British, who have each been charged with participation in an organized crime group, storing and trafficking of arms and ammunition, drug trafficking, and use of forged documents. The arms traffickers are believed to have been in operation for at least three years, operating a sophisticated scheme which funnelled weaponry obtained from Eastern Europian countries, with access to the old Soviet arsenals, to drug traffickers in need of weaponry active in southern Spain.
In breaking up the ring, investigators focused their attention on a seventy-year-old German citizen, a former gunsmith living in Coín on the pretext of being a simple foreign retiree. Through exchanges of information with Germany's Bundeskriminalamt, Spanish authorities were informed that the suspect had spent four years in prison for the illegal modification of weapons and also had a current outstanding European Arrest Warrant (EAW), after an arsenal was tied to him in a Hannover case in 2019. In that case, a family member has already been sentenced to prison for their involvement.
In a subsequent search of this suspect's home in Coín, the Civil Guard, with the assistance of a firearm-sniffing K-9, found a sophisticated hidden workshop, complete with complex machinery, which tapped into the city's electrical grid in order to operate a milling lathe, column drills, a hydraulic press and a blueing oven, the latter used after erasing the serial numbers to restore the barrels of the weapons to almost mint condition. This would make the weapons almost untraceable, and therefore a perfect weapon of choice in the clandestine arms market.
It was here that the suspect would modify weapons such as the Zastava M70, (Застава М70), a standard-issue domestic folding-stock Kalashnikov variant once used by the Yugoslav People's Army in 1970. Short and easily concealable under a coat or loose jacket, the weapons are perfect for drug factions engaged in quick hits when fighting over competing turf. The weapons had been purchased from collectors in Eastern Europe disassembled and were modified in the Spain workshop for resale. The second suspect, also a German citizen, is believed to have been responsible for the storage and concealment of the weapons in a rented warehouse.
Image Credit: Guardia Civil
The Third Reich memorabilia was identified in a second suspect's home in Alhaurín el Grandes, a town located in the province of Málaga on the north side of the Sierra de Mijas. There, the police found tables, shelves and display cases jammed with Nazi memorabilia including a portrait bust of Adolf Hitler, SS Uniforms, helmets, stick pins, insignias, medals, flags, and armbands of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, many of which were emblazoned in some way with a swastika or the Nazi eagle.
After a search of the suspect's home, officers moved on to a safe house he rented on the outskirts of the municipality. It is in that rented warehouse where authorities uncovered an arsenal ready for sale. There, law enforcement seized 160 firearms made up of 121 short weapons, 22 assault rifles and 8 submachine guns. Along with the arms, officers recovered 9,967 rounds of ammunition of different calibres, eight silencers, 273 magazines, a grenade, and a kilo and a half of military explosives.
Spanish newspapers have identified the holder of the Nazi memorabilia and the warehouse as a 54-year-old German named Tilo Kränzler, who publically claimed to be "the grandson of the real driver of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler" during an interview which can be found on the Radio Platja d'Aro program "Enigma Report." He is also known to have saught connections with a Spanish far-right group.
In addition to his involvement with arms selling, the Kränzler sold olive oil on eBay, and operated a stall which sold military and Nazi paraphernalia as well as T-shirts with the face of the Swedish activist and environmentalist Greta Thunberg with the label “persona Non Greta.” It was this play on words that became the code name for the UCE 3 of the Civil Guard's Operación Nongreta.
The third lead suspect is a British national who also resided in Coín, who acted as the group's intermediary in the sale between the arms dealers, taking a cut of the profits for the arms sold to drug traffickers working the Costa del Sol and Campo de Gibraltar. Previously arrested for drug trafficking, this UK individual also using fake passports to hide his identity, several of which were recovered by law enforcement during the operation.
At the search of the British suspect's home, the Civil Guard recovered a pistol with its serial number erased and more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition.
For now, the Court of Instruction of Coín has ordered that the three remain in custody pending trial while the hashish drug traffickers who operate in the Campo de Gibraltar area and to a large part of the mafias that have faced each other for years in Málaga's Costa del Sol will have a bit of difficulty stocking up on their firearms.
In Washington, DC: Marc Masurovsky, (00) 1 202 255 1602 , plunderedart@gmail.com
In New York, NY: Pierre Ciric (00) 1 212 260 6090, pciric@ciriclawfirm.com
New York, NY USA – October 29, 2020
On October 28, 2020, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi, filed, through its counsel, Pierre Ciric, Esq., an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in the so-called “Guelph Treasure” case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
This case involves the Welfenschatz, or Guelph trove, currently in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (“the Foundation”) and has been claimed by successors of art dealers who were fleeing the Holocaust. These objects were originally housed in the cathedral in Braunschweig, owned by the House of Guelph. In the 1920s, the pieces were sold to a consortium of Frankfurt art dealers. Later in 1935, the Prussian state, led by Hermann Goering, “bought” the treasure from those art dealers. Following a 2014 rejection of the dealers’ heirs claims by the German so-called “Limbach Commission,” suit was brought against the Foundation and Germany in the U.S.
In siding with the German defendants, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) argued that Germany was immune from suit because “domestic takings” by foreign governments do not fall under the expropriation exception to the immunity rules.
HARP’s amicus brief argues that the DOJ’s defense is baseless because of legal precedents, is contrary to multiple U.S. statutes promulgated by the U.S. Congress and to the long-standing U.S. policy regarding restitution of Nazi-looted artworks claimed by Holocaust survivors. Finally, the brief argues that the DOJ’s position would raise significant due process concerns by distinguishing heirs of German Jews from heirs of Jews stripped of their citizenship during the Holocaust.
According to Ori Z. Soltes, HARP’s chairman, “it is simply disheartening to see our own government arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Holocaust does not qualify as a genocidal enterprise worthy of being recognized as a ‘violation of international law.’ If the Holocaust does not fall squarely in this definition, then nothing else does! The Court should reject this baseless argument and ensure that the U.S. remains a proper forum for claimants to seek redress from the genocidal enterprise of looting cultural assets from Jews during World War II.”
The Ciric Law Firm, PLLC is a New York law firm specialized in cultural heritage law and in commercial litigation services for businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals.
HARP is a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of looted artworks requiring detailed research and analysis of public and private archives in North America. HARP has worked for 22 years on the restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi regime.
The case is Philipp v. Fed. Republic of Germany, 894 F.3d 406 (D.C. Cir. 2018), cert. granted, No. 19-351 (U.S. July 2, 2020).
In a decision Washington's National Gallery claims was done “to avoid the heavy toll of litigation” the gallery has agreed to return Picasso's pastel drawing "Head of a Woman" to the heirs of German-Jewish banker, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
The descendants of the banking Mendelssohns (a branch of the family of composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) have long claimed that the artwork created by Picasso in 1903, belongs to them, believing that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was pressured to sell the artwork as a result of the spread of Fascism and the Nazis coming into power in Germany in 1933.
Ousted from the Central Association of German Banks and Bankers in 1933, and then subsequently from the board of the Reich Insurance Office in 1934, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy sold the artwork “Head of a Woman” to dealer Justin K. Thannhauser in 1934. He later died of heart failure on 10 May 1935.
Thannhauser, one of the most important dealers of modern European art, managed both the Munich gallery of his father, and a second gallery, Moderne Galerie in Berlin (1927–37) before relocating first to Paris in 1937, then after the outbreak of World War II, to Switzerland, and then to New York.
The National Gallery listed the provenance of the artwork as follows:
PROVENANCE
Paul von Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Berlin, until 1937; Justin K. Thannhauser, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 21 May 1981, no. 533); (sale, Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1988, no. 26); The Ian Woodner Family Collection, New York; (sale, Christie's, New York, 5 November 1991, no. 44, unsold); gift to NGA, 2001.
While there is no (direct) evidence that the American collector who donated the artwork to the Washington's National Gallery knew they were acquiring a forced sale Picasso, the combination of seemingly legitimate middlemen, and the zeal by which wealthy art collectors purchased renowned artists' artworks after World War II, alongside an unwillingness to ask probing questions of dealers and donors, had a predictable outcome.
One has to ask though, with a 2001 donation date, why the one of Washington's most important museum institutions didn't look further into the pedigree of this creation, asking the tough questions they needed to ask, when accessioning this artwork into its collection.
In commemoration of the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the state-sponsored pogrom known as the “Night of Broken Glass” which took place November 9-10, 1938, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) is hosting an speaking engagement Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 7:00 pm featuring Dr. Michael Hayden, MC, OBC followed by the opening of a special exhibition which is then scheduled to remain at the centre for a little more than one year.
Wosk Auditorium, Jewish Community Centre Greater Vancouver
950 West 41 Avenue
VANCOUVER, BC October 23, 2019
The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) is an acclaimed teaching museum devoted to Holocaust based anti-racism education.
Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy brings together items from the Hahn archive alongside rich artefacts to detail the story of the family, their collection, and their descendants’ restitution efforts and exhibition speaks to timely themes of cultural loss, reconciliation and intergenerational legacy.
During Kristallnacht hundreds of synagogues in Germany and Austria were burned, Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed, nearly 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 were sent to concentration camps.
Kristallnacht was a turning point in the Nazi persecution of European Jews and a defining moment for Max and Gertrud Hahn of Göttingen, Germany.
Born in Göttingen, Germany in 1880, Max Hahn was a successful businessman, civic leader and passionate collector. The Hahn’s Judaica collection was one of the most significant private collections in pre-war Europe, rivalling those of the Rothschild and Sassoon families. During the Kristallnacht pogrom, Max was arrested, and the Nazis proceeded to confiscate his silver Judaica and strip the family of their property and possessions.
With the support of his wife, Gertrud, Max engaged in a lengthy battle to retrieve his stolen collection. While their children, Rudolf (later Roger Hayden) and Hanni, were sent to England for safety in 1939, Max and Gertrud were deported to Riga in December 1941, where they ultimately perished. Most of their collection was never recovered.
Roger’s son, Dr. Michael Hayden, MC, OBC, became immersed in his remarkable family history when he encountered photographs and documents left to him by his father. This original exhibition, developed by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, brings together items from the Hahn archive alongside rich artefacts and interviews to detail the story of the Hahn family, their collection, and their descendants’ restitution efforts. Involving extensive research and intensive negotiations with German museums and archives, the family’s ongoing search for their stolen collection speaks to timely themes of cultural loss, reconciliation and intergenerational legacy.
The Exhibition is supported by Michael and Sandy Hayden and children, the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver, the Isaac and Sophie Waldman Endowment Fund of the Vancouver Foundation, Isaac and Judy Thau, Yosef Wosk,Audre Jackson, and the Goldie and Avrum Miller Memorial Endowment Fund of the VHEC.
The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC)is Western Canada’s leading Holocaust teaching museum, reaching more than 25,000 students annually and producing acclaimed exhibitions, innovative school programs and teaching materials. The VHEC is a leader in Holocaust education in British Columbia, dedicated to promoting human rights, social justice and genocide awareness, and to teaching about the causes and consequences of discrimination, racism and antisemitism through education and remembrance of the Holocaust.
Arthur Brand,Frederik Muller,Hendrik Alexander Seyffardt,Jacques Goudstikker,John van den Heuvel,Netherlands,provenance,Toon Kelder,World War II
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