A Moral Persuasion: the Nazi-Looted Art Recoveries of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, 2002-2013

A MORAL PERSUASION: THE NAZI-LOOTED ART RECOVERIES OF THE MAX STERN ART RESTITUTION PROJECT, 2002-2013 by Sara J. Angel A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of PhD Graduate Department Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Sara J. Angel 2017 PhD Abstract A Moral Persuasion: The Nazi-Looted Art Recoveries of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, 2002-2013 Sara J. Angel Department of Art University of Toronto Year of convocation: 2017 In 1937, under Gestapo orders, the Nazis forced the Düsseldorf-born Jewish art dealer Max Stern to sell over 200 of his family’s paintings at Lempertz, a Cologne-based auction house. Stern kept this fact a secret for the rest of his life despite escaping from Europe to Montreal, Canada, where he settled and became one of the country’s leading art dealers by the mid-twentieth century. A decade after Stern’s death in 1987, his heirs (McGill University, Concordia University, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) discovered the details of what he had lost, and how in the post-war years Stern travelled to Germany in an attempt to reclaim his art. To honour the memory of Max Stern, they founded the Montreal- based Max Stern Art Restitution Project in 2002, dedicated to regaining ownership of his art and to the study of Holocaust-era plunder and recovery. This dissertation presents the histories and circumstances of the first twelve paintings claimed by the organization in the context of the broader history of Nazi-looted art between 1933-2012. Organized into thematic chapters, the dissertation documents how, by following a carefully devised approach of moral persuasion that combines practices like publicity, provenance studies, law enforcement, and legal precedents, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project set international precedents in the return of cultural property. The ii dissertation reveals how the Max Stern Restitution Project used a self-generated methodology to recover works of Nazi-looted art from both private and public collections in countries including Spain, the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. It addresses how in just over a decade, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project became one of the world’s leading advocates in the reclamation of Nazi-era spoliated art and an authority on the subject of a judicious approach toward cultural property. iii Acknowledgements The writing of this dissertation would not be possible without the support, direction, and patience of my PhD supervisor Dr. Elizabeth Legge. As well, my heartfelt thanks go to my committee members: Dr. Jordan Bear and Dr. Louis Kaplan. For its belief in my research and the financial backing of it, I gratefully acknowledge The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. I also extend my thanks to SSHRC for its generous support of this thesis. The records of the Max Stern Restitution Project and the Holocaust Calims Processing Office have been critical to this study. To both organizations, I offer much gratitude. In particular I would like to thank Dr. Clarence Epstein who introduced me to the subject of the restitution of Nazi-looted art, which changed my outlook, and approach, to the subject of art history. This dissertation could not have been written without the encouragement of my husband Dr. Michael Angel who never waivered in his love and support. Finally, I offer thanks to my children Charles, Jackson, and Isabella. This dissertation is dedicated to them: may they know and remember the reasons for what Max Stern lost and understand the importance of correcting past injustices. Sara J. Angel, April 2017 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions p. 1 CHAPTER ONE The Discovery of Lempertz Auction 392: Die Bestände der Galerie-Stern-Düsseldorf p. 18 CHAPTER TWO Making the Private Public: The Restitution of Aimée, A Young Egyptian p. 52 CHAPTER THREE A Moral Persuasion: The Restitution of Portrait of Jan van Eversdijck p. 77 CHAPTER FOUR Filling the Information Vacuum: The Restitutions of The Masters of the Goldsmiths Guild, An Extensive Landscape, and Flight into Egypt p. 102 CHAPTER FIVE Anything But Voluntary: Law Enforcement and the Restitutions of Girl from the Sabine Mountains, Portrait of a Musician Playing a Bagpipe, and St. Jerome p. 135 CHAPTER SIX “A Bloodletting for Some Museums”: Dutch Restitution Policy and the Restitution of An Allegory of Water and Earth p. 165 CHAPTER SEVEN One Recovery; Two Losses: The Restitution of Scandinavian Landscape p. 193 CHAPTER EIGHT Restitution in German Public Museums: The Recoveries of Virgin and Child and Wilhelm von Schadow, Self Portrait of the Artist p. 217 v CONCLUSION Lessons from the Max Stern Recoveries p. 247 APPENDIX I List of Recoveries of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project p. 271 APPENDIX II List of Images in Order of Appearance p. 273 APPENDIX III Literature Review p. 274 BIBLIOGRAPHY p. 328 vi Introduction The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions INTRODUCTION The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions 1 Introduction The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions “One doesn’t need to be a lawyer to make a Nazi-era art claim. Rather, to be successful, one needs to understand art history.” —Monica Dugot1 “There is an enormous amount of work yet to be done. It’s 80 years after Hitler came to power and this still has not been dealt with. I think that’s a sign of the problem. I think it shows how much it means to people.… It’s an indication of how much resistance there still is to providing justice after all these years.” —Anne Webber2 “It never occurred to him that the art he kept in his 100-square-meter (1,076- square-foot) apartment, art that perhaps wasn't entirely his, and could be used to help make amends for what the Nazis had done.” —Özlem Gezer on interviewing Cornelius Gurlitt3 In 2009, former Royal Academy chief Sir Norman Rosenthal wrote in a piece for The Art Newspaper that museums should not be forced to restitute Nazi looted artwork.4 The child of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany and who lost family members in the 1 Dugot, Monica, “Restitution and the Art Market: Combining Business and Morals – The Perspective from 2009,” (paper presented at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference, Prague, June 28, 2009). 2 As cited in William D. Cohan, “The Restitution Struggle: Malaise, Indifference, and Frustration.” ARTnews, September 11, 2013. http://www.artnews.com/2013/09/11/the-restitution-struggle/. 3 Özlem Gezer, “Cornelius Gurlitt Shares His Secrets,” Spiegel Online International, November 17, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-cornelius-gurlitt-about-munich-art- find-a-933953.html. 4 Norman Rosenthal, “The Time Has Come for a Statute of Limitations,” The Art Newspaper, December 2008. Also see Liz Thomas, “Museums Should Be Able to Keep Artwork Raided by the Nazis, Says Son of Jewish Refugees,” Mail Online, January 9, 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 1110785/Museums-able-artwork-raided-Nazis-says-son-Jewish-refugees.html#ixzz4X5C2MHsm. 2 Introduction The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions Holocaust, Rosenthal argued that institutions should be allowed to keep pieces plundered by the Third Reich. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, he claimed, relatives of people who had works of art or property stolen by the Nazis do not have an inalienable right to ownership.5 As he stated: You can’t turn the clock back or make things good again through art. Ever since the beginning of recorded history, because of its value, art has been looted and as a result, arbitrarily distributed and disseminated throughout the world. Their claims can’t justify weakening public collections.6 Rosenthal based his case against restituting Nazi-looted art on the following points: the practice makes the rich richer; the art market’s encouragement of restitution is motivated by its desire to facilitate its own business interests; and there is a long history of cultural objects migrating over time into the public sphere, an art-world fact that “that’s the way it is.”7 Rosenthal’s comments gained traction quickly. “A work of art should never, ever be taken away from a public museum without the strongest of reasons,” wrote Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. “Making good the crimes of the Nazis may seem just that—but it is meaningless. No horrors are reversed. Instead, historical threads are broken, paintings are taken away from the cities where they have the deepest meaning, and money is made by the art market.”8 Klaus Albrecht Schröder, the director of the Albertina museum in Vienna, called for a deadline on all Nazi-loot restitution claims on art in public 5 Rosenthal, “The Time Has Come.” 6 Ibid. Also see Thomas, “Museums Should Be Able.” 7 Ibid. 8 Jonathan Jones, “Should All Looted Art Be Returned?” The Guardian, January 9, 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/jan/09/looted-art-norman- rosenthal. 3 Introduction The Case for Studying Max Stern’s Art Restitutions collections of somewhere between twenty and thirty years.9 “If we don’t set a time limit of around 100 years after the end of the Second World War,” he stated, “Then we should ask ourselves why claims regarding crimes committed during the First World War should not still be valid; why we don’t argue anymore about the consequences of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war, and why we don’t claim restitution of works of art that have been stolen during previous wars?”10 In Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s (2009) historian Michael Marrus questioned the validity of restitution in the context of whether there can there ever be justice for the Holocaust.11 Citing the philosopher Jeremy Waldron, he noted that rights are “capable of ‘fading’ in their moral importance … that after many years, historic injustices may be superseded as a result of the practical difficulties with repairing the past or unacceptable consequences.”12 Such opinions and others suggested that by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there was a notion that the topic of Nazi-looted art restitution might be nearing an end.

Load more