I was proud to advise the Allentown Art Museum, which announced today that it has reached an agreement with the heirs of Henry and Hertha Bromberg concerning Portrait of George, Duke of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop. Pursuant to the agreement, the painting will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York next year following educational programming focusing on the painting’s history. The Museum’s press release can be read here. The story was also addressed in an excellent article in The New York Times by Graham Bowley.
(Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop)
The Museum’s research could not establish the timing of the Cranach sale by Bromberg precisely, but the larger context of the Brombergs’ flight from the Nazis and the sale of his collection along the way was morally compelling. That placed the sale among those transactions in the Nazi era that defy categorical description, and thus often elude easy solutions. In this case, the Museum and the Bromberg heirs pursued a fair and just solution within the spirit of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and related museum ethical guidance. It is a reminder that winner-takes-all does not have to be the outcome. The developing legal framework for cases similar to this is the subject of a law review article I have written to be published soon in the Kanas Journal of Law and Public Policy.
As the museum’s President and CEO Max Weintraub said in a statement, “It was extremely important to the Museum to engage in the ethical dimensions of the painting’s history in the Bromberg family. This work of art entered the market and eventually found its way to the Museum only because Henry Bromberg had to flee persecution from Nazi Germany. That moral imperative compelled us to act. We hope that this voluntary act by the Museum will inform and encourage similar institutions to reach fair and just solutions.”
A timeline of the material facts is as follows:
- Martin Bromberg acquired the Cranach in October 1917.
- Martin passed the Cranach to his son, Henry, who retained it in his house at Nonnenstieg 9 in Hamburg as late as 1935.
- Henry and Hertha Bromberg’s son, Harald, emigrated to the United States in 1935, followed by their son Edgar in 1936, and finally their youngest sons Gerhard and Oswald in 1938.
- Also in 1938, Henry and Hertha were required to submit their property inventory pursuant to the infamous decree of April 27, 1938. Thereafter in August 1938, the Hamburg authorities issued the Brombergs the amount of Reichsfluchtsteuer(flight tax) that they would be required to pay to leave Germany.
- The Brombergs left Germany on September 5-6, 1938, arriving in Switzerland on September 7, 1938. Eventually, they were able to obtain a visa for entry to the United States, and departed Europe from Le Havre, France on January 17, 1939.
- On December 29, 1938, Allen Loebl of the F. Kleinberger Gallery in Paris confirmed in writing that he had purchased “the Bromberg collection,” with specific reference to the Cranach. Loebl sold the Cranach in 1939, and the Museum purchased the Cranach in 1961 from Wildenstein in New York.
