The Appellate Division First Department in New York has affirmed the trial court’s ruling in Reif v. Nagy that the heirs of Viennese actor and Holocaust victim Franz Friedrich (Fritz) Grünbaum are entitled to the return of two Egon Schiele drawings, Woman Hiding her Face (1912) and Woman in a Black Pinafore (1911). The ruling is a momentous victory for the Grünbaum heirs, and features several recurring characters in many Nazi-looted restitution disputes. We were doubly gratified to see the First Department’s citation to our own case, Philipp v. F.R.G., 894 F.3d 406 (D.C. Cir. 2018) for the proposition that sales under duress are void and violate international law consistent with the policies of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016. It is a landmark ruling and a testament to the perseverance of the Grünbaum heirs and their legal team.
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Topics:
Cornelius Gurlitt,
Galerie St. Etienne,
Nazi-looted art,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,
Galerie Gutekunst,
Holocaust,
Fritz Grünbaum,
NS Raubkunst,
Egon Schiele,
Mathilde Lukacs,
Franz Kieslinger,
Anschluss,
Welfenschatz,
HEAR Act,
Ankerwycke,
A Tragic Fate,
Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art,
Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016,
Woman in a Black Pinafore,
Woman Hiding her Face,
Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (Torso),
Reif v. Nagy,
D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,
Eberhard Kornfeld,
Philipp v. F.R.G.,
New York Law Journal,
Gutekunst & Klipstein,
Jonathan Petropoulos
The New York Times reported yesterday that the German Lost Art Foundation had removed several paintings once owned by the Viennese cabaret actor Fritz Grünbaum from the Lost Art database. While the history of these objects is hotly contested, it was a particularly strange choice given that Grünbaum’s heirs just won a judgment earlier this year that the works by Schiele must be returned to them—by reason of Nazi duress. For a database that has never been suggested as an adjudication of rights but rather as a repository of notice to the world of possible title issues, it was a perplexing choice. Against the backdrop of the party that the German government and the foundation are throwing themselves in November for which few outsiders have been able to register, the explanation appears much less benign particularly against the backdrop of the government’s historical revisionism in U.S. federal court litigation.
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Topics:
laches,
Cornelius Gurlitt,
Germany,
Nazi-looted art,
res judicata,
Die Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste,
Holocaust,
Magdeburg,
Fritz Grünbaum,
NS Raubkunst,
Bavaria,
Egon Schiele,
Mathilde Lukacs,
Task Force,
New York Times,
National Gallery,
A Tragic Fate,
German Lost Art Foundation,
Kieslinger,
Woman in a Black Pinafore,
Woman Hiding her Face,
Charles E. Ramos,
Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (Torso)
Two pending cases have invoked the new law
A recent article in the New York Times highlights the change that the recent passage of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016 has had on disputes about the timeliness of claims for allegedly Nazi-looted art. The odd part, however, is that the case cited by the Times is not one in which the HEAR Act has been invoked or argued, though it could be some day. As far as we are aware, there has been briefing on the effect of the HEAR Act in two cases, my clients’ claim against the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) and Germany in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, and Laurel Zuckerman’s claim as representative of the Leffmann estate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Only two months after its passage, the law is already changing the terms of debate.
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Topics:
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Germany,
Seated Woman wiht Bent Left Leg (Torso),
Bakalar v. Vavra,
Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Fritz Grünbaum,
Egon Schiele,
David Bakalar,
HEAR Act,
Richard Nagy,
Laurel Zuckerman,
Alice Leffmann
I’ve been talking quite a bit to friends, colleagues and clients about the impact of last week’s decision in the Cassirer v. Thyssen Bornemisza case. The New York Times had a follow up article yesterday which was an interesting treatment of the various themes at work in the case and in restitution cases in the United States generally these days. In fact, I think the effect is mostly limited, except to the extent that the decision assumes and treats as uncontroversial important principles about sales under duress and is a case that resolved title under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). As we predicted, the Times article makes clear that the museum has absolutely no intention of giving the painting back, but did float the idea of some recognition of the historical circumstances, which is progress (certainly compared to other instances in which obvious circumstances of duress are denied).
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Topics:
Lilly Cassirer Neubauer,
Terezin Declaration,
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,
Rue St. Honoré après-midi êffet de pluie,
Jacques Goudstikker,
California Code of Civil Procedure § 354.3,
Nazi-looted art,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,
Washington Conference Principles,
Bakalar v. Vavra,
Fritz Grünbaum,
FSIA,
adverse possession,
expropriation exception”,
Restitution,
Marei Von Saher,
sovereign immunity,
Egon Schiele,
Jakob Schweidwimmer,
World War II,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities,
Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 222,
Altmann v. Republic of Austria,
Camille Pissarro,
foreign affairs doctrine,
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
Museums,
Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen- Bornemisza,
28 U.S.C. § 1605
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the judgment against David Bakalar concerning ownership of the drawing Seated Woman with Bent Left Leg (Torso). It is a notable decision first and foremost because it affirms the District Court ruling on the merits of whether the drawing was stolen by the Nazis from the Austrian-Jewish collector Fritz Grünbaum—finding that it was not stolen. Such a ruling is a rarity among wartime restitution cases, the overwhelming majority of which continue to founder on statutes of limitations and jurisdictional defenses. Ironically, even though the court ruled that the work was not stolen and that the current owner could not prove good title, the current owner still prevailed. The details are the key to understanding this case, best described in the District Court decision that the Appeals Court affirmed.
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Topics:
cultural property,
laches,
Second Circuit,
Galerie St. Etienne,
Seated Woman wiht Bent Left Leg (Torso),
Galerie Gutekunst,
Nazis,
Fritz Grünbaum,
Restitution,
Egon Schiele,
World War II,
Mathilde Lukacs,
David Bakalar,
Franz Kieslinger
