Kafka meets Gurlitt

by Marc Masurovsky

It’s fair to say that, ever since the revelation of the existence of the Cornelius Gurlitt collection in November 2013, the German federal authorities, the Bavarian authorities, the police, local prosecutors, cultural institutions in Munich and Berlin, and eventually, members of the “concerned” international community on matters of restitution of art objects looted between 1933 and 1945---let's not forget the role of the press, both German and “foreign” and the newest kid on the block, the Kunstmuseum in Bern—all of these elements thrown into a gigantic bucket have produced nothing short of a Kafkaesque exercise which has not exactly yielded as much as one would have hoped for, namely "transparency" or less opacity, honesty, justice, and, more importantly, tangible research findings.

What was supposed to have been a straightforward process involving research into the histories of the Gurlitt objects, has turned into a severe entanglement of conflicting interests, inept handling of the public and the research process itself, bureaucratic indifference and—some have said—hostility toward those the families seeking restitution of their property currently in the Gurlitt collection.

As of today, there are at least three active claims that are awaiting the inevitable outcome—the physical return of the paintings: the “Seated Woman” by Henri Matisse, “Two Riders on a Beach” by Max Liebermann, and the 'View of the Pont-Neuf," by Camille Pissarro.

Although all parties involved in these delicate negotiations have apparently sensed that the end of the process is near, a new layer of incomprehensible procedural complication has delayed the return of these paintings to their rightful owners.

Indeed, in a pattern that closely resembles past tactics used by the French government to hamper the claims process and make it horribly difficult for claimants to gain access to their own documents sitting in government archives, it appears that every living Gurlitt relative must sign off on the release of the three paintings to their rightful owners.

If you didn’t tear your hair out by now, please feel free to do so.

It would be wise and humane on the part of the German government to intercede, fast-track this already laborious process and return the paintings without further ado. Otherwise more scorn and contempt will be heaped onto their heads.

Unfortunately, the world is a complex place in which to live and co-exist. We do have long memories, which continue to be stirred up in great part by the shadow of the Third Reich, the Holocaust, the Second World War and their legacies on the postwar world. Even though Germany has paid tens of billions of dollars to individuals and nations for the calamities that the Reich wrought on the people of Europe, nothing justifies the present state of circumstances.

We have to ask:

What does it take to return three paintings to their rightful owners for which the historical evidence is overwhelming in favor of the claimants?

A Gurlitt painting waiting to be restituted: View of the Seine from the Pont-Neuf, by Camille Pissarro

by Marc Masurovsky

One of the paintings found in the infamous Salzburg Depot in Western Austria which were part of the art collection of the late Cornelius Gurlitt is a view of the Seine from the Pont-Neuf by Camille Pissarro. It turns out that this painting had been stolen from a safe deposit box owned by the late Max Heilbronn and his family after they had fled Paris. The painting turned out to be a perfect match with the one listed in documents illustrating the plundering ways of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in France between the fall of 1940 and the summer of 1944.

The painting can also be found on page 257 of the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France as still missing.

Please find some of the relevant documents concerning this painting so that you can appreciate how the historical evidence comes together to demonstrate that a theft took place and restitution becomes the order of the day.

The ERR inventory list tells us that the late Max Heilbronn had an apartment at 1, Place de l'Alma and a safe deposit box at the Crédit commercial de France in Mont-de-Marsan, in southwestern France. The Devisenschutzkommando (DSK) sent agents down to the CCF to remove the Heilbronn collection from its safe and transferred it to the ERR in Paris. The removal took place before February 13, 1941.

The  ERR assigned to the painting the title of "Ansicht auf Paris, 1902" under the moniker of "Heilbronn 7."  A card was then created for this painting confirming that it had been officially processed and indexed at the Jeu de Paume, in Paris, a central sorting, cataloguing, displaying, and shipping point for cultural and artistic objects plundered in Paris, the neighboring regions and selected parts of France (Bordeaux region in particular and Nice). You can find more details on the ERR database.

The painting was placed on an easel and photographed.  The use of the easel is most closely identified with the Louvre annex where most objects were stored and which served as a glorified warehouse for the ERR art historians from which they would retrieve objects, bring them to the Jeu de Paume for processing and then return them to the Louvre where they awaited their fate.

Mrs. Tomforde completed the Heilbronn inventory in July 1942.  On October 31, 1942, the Pissaro view of Paris from the Pont-Neuf was subject to the 23rd exchange (Tausch) engineered by Bruno Lohse, deputy commander of the ERR plundering unit in Paris and Gustav Rochlitz, a German dealer based in the rue de Rivoli in Paris who came up with the concept of the exchanges and proposed them to Lohse as an efficient way of unloading "modernist" works in exchange for Old Masters more coveted by the Nazi hierarchy in Berlin.

At this point, the painting vanishes.  Since we know that Hildebrand Gurlitt, father of Cornelius Gurlitt, obtained the painting and that he traveled frequently to Paris, one should presume that Gurlitt acquired the Pissarro work in Paris either directly from Rochlitz or through a mutual acquaintance.

After the war ended, the Heilbronn heirs filed a claim with the French government and reported their cultural losses to the Commission de recuperation artistique (CRA) set up to investigate cultural losses and facilitate restitutions to rightful owners.

The painting only resurfaced in the spring of 2014 upon the discovery of the Salzburg Depot.

To view the work go to the website of the Kunstmuseum Bern and download the list for Salzburg.

Sources: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B323; Ministere des affaires étrangères, La Courneuve, France, Fonds RA

ERR database—Raoul Meyer, Pissarro, Modigliani, Soutine

You can never be too careful. Thanks to the watchful eye of a museum curator in Indiana, the information in the Jeu de Paume database concerning the thefts in 1941 of Raoul Meyer’s collection from a safe in Mont-de-Marsan required a serious overhaul. The painting entered the Jeu de Paume on February 2, 1941.  The most egregious mistake was to have indicated as restituted a painting by Claude Pissarro, “La Bergère,” a small work which, as it turns out, hangs currently in the Fred Jones Museum of Norman, Oklahoma. There is no evidence that the painting was ever returned to Raoul Meyer as of 1947. The subject of one of numerous exchanges engineered by the likes of Gustav Rochlitz, the painting most likely ended up on the private art market in Switzerland from which it wended its way to the United States.  In fact, thanks to Swiss Federal documents, additional light can be shed on the fate of Meyer 13, or "La bergère rentrant ses moutons," by Claude Pissarro.

La bergère rentrant ses moutons, by Claude Pissarro 

Source: Fred Jones, Jr., Museum

Bauerin und Schafe am Hof eines Bauernhauses, Meyer 13/

Bundesarchiv, B323/278
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Indeed, in a confidential report filed on March 6, 1998, by Pablo Crivelli of the Independent Committee of Experts on Switzerland during the Second World War (Commission indépendante d’experts: Suisse-Deuxième Guerre Mondiale), Crivelli details the difficulties in reconciling the evidence of plunder aimed at the Pissarro painting stolen from Raoul Meyer and the sparse documentation in the  possession of the Swiss Compensation Office (Office Suisse de Compensation) at the time that the loss was declared to the Swiss government.

Unbeknownst to Raoul Meyer and his lawyers, the Swiss Compensation Office (SCO) receives a tip that a man named Léon de Sépibus, who already enjoyed an unsavory reputation among Swiss commercial circles, had imported two paintings into Switzerland in late 1945, one of which was the Pissarro.  The SCO wrote several letters to de Sépibus asking him for information about the paintings and official documentation regarding their origin.  According to SCO officials, de Sépibus panicked, replied that he had re-exported the paintings to the United States shortly after their arrival in Switzerland.  Nevertheless, SCO staffers had recorded the two paintings imported by de Sépibus as worthy of additional inquiry.

It was not until spring of 1947 that the French Embassy in Bern began circulating to dozens of Swiss entities the French government's official listing of works and objects of art looted during the period of German occupation of France, also known as the "Répertoire des Biens Spoliés." Hence, in theory, the SCO could not have known prior to spring of 1947 that the Pissarro in the hands of de Sépibus might have been the Meyer painting stolen in France in early 1941.

The entire case burst forth into the open when Raoul Meyer files two lawsuits in 1952, one against de Sépibus and the other against a Swiss art dealer, Cristoph Bernoulli, who is identified as the current owner of the Pissarro painting.   The case dragged on well into 1953, where the SCO denied knowing anything of the looted nature of the painting, while Bernoulli argued his good faith regarding the Meyer painting.  It transpires that no one had questioned de Sépibus about discrepancies in his story as well as contacting the French Embassy in Bern in 1946 about the possible looted origin of the Pissarro in the hands of de Sépibus.

One way or another, the Swiss experts were not given access to the court records pertaining to the separate Raoul Meyer proceedings against Bernoulli and de Sépibus.  Hence, the shroud of uncertainty continues to hover over this small painting currently on display at the Fred Jones Museum in Norman, OK.

The correction to the Pissarro Meyer have required a complete review of this small but important collection of modernist works held by a man who co-owned with Max Heilbronn, another victim of the ERR’s plundering units, the famed ‘Galeries Lafayette’ department store on the right bank of Paris.

The Meyer case becomes more complicated due to a single work—a painting by Amédéo Modigliani entitled ‘La Porteuse de pain’. It shows up on several lists referred to as the ‘collection of Raoul Meyer’ dated April 1945 which serve as reference for the French restitution authorities at the Commission de recuperation artistique (CRA). There is no correspondence, there are no signatures, hence it is unclear who compiled the list.

The Jeu de Paume database identifies a painting as ‘Frau mit Brot’ with the designator Meyer 9. The ERR inventory does not assign an artist to that painting. However, a handwritten note most likely placed by postwar German authorities ascribes the painting to Modigliani. Thus, one can surmise that this addition to the ERR inventory can be explained by the fact that the Raoul Meyer list was sent to the German restitution authorities.

Meyer 9 Bild
Source: NARA via ERR Project

Meyer 9 Bild
Source: Bundesarchiv via ERR Project

Here’s the problem. The image linked in the Jeu de Paume database to the alleged Modigliani is not a painting by Modigliani, but it is by Chaim Soutine. It is a sister painting to his famous “Servante en bleu” which he painted in 1934. A quick check of the Soutine catalogue raisonné does not disclose the existence of the painting mis-attributed to Modigliani. The photo comes from the Koblenz archives in Germany and is tagged as Meyer 9. It would be easy to blame an archivist for not knowing the difference between a Soutine and a Modigliani, like apples and oranges. But to see the error reproduced on a quasi-official inventory of the Raoul Meyer collection is perplexing at best.

Thus, we are left wondering whether the alleged Modigliani which is in reality a Soutine is truly a painting that belongs to Raoul Meyer. If it is, let’s suppose for one nanosecond that he did own a Modigliani, did Modigliani paint a woman holding a loaf of bread? If anyone out there is a Modigliani expert, please express yourself. This is the time to do it!