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.
Read More
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)
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated the entire set of claims brought by the Herzog heirs against the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Applied Arts, and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The appellate decision focuses on the claim that an agreement was reached after WWII to hold the paintings for their owners, not the claims relating to their wartime fate. In so doing, the court pushed to the side a whole range of defenses for sovereign defendants that have been increasingly successful. The court also reinstated claims to ownership of 11 works whose title was previously litigated, in an opinion that sets a low bar for collateral attacks on foreign judgments.
Read More
Topics:
David de Csepel,
Nazi Germany,
Angela Maria Herzog,
Hungary,
WWII,
Viktor Orban,
res judicata,
Julia Alice Herzog,
Budapest University of Technology and Economics,
Baron Mor Lipot Herzog,
Hungarian National Gallery,
Jori Finkel,
Budapest Museum of Fine Arts,
Adolf Eichmann,
FSIA,
expropriation exception”,
Restitution,
28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2),
28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(3),
World War II,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities,
Alison Frankel,
András Herzog,
Janos Lazar,
Museum of Applied Arts
