-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr No, Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Stolen & Looted Art Collection
Jan.
5 – Somewhere between 1970-1985, a piece of art valued at $218,000 was
stolen from BYU campus. After being stolen the “Silver Chalice” was
sold between a number of different art dealers before finally landing in
Switzerland with Count Thyssen-Bornemisz’s collection. BYU negotiated
with Thyssen-Bornemisz’s estate and the piece of art was returned to
BYU.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Camille Pissarro painting hanging in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Museum.
The Camille Pissarro painting hanging in the Berlin apartment of Lilly Cassirer, circa 1930.
Miami lawyer leads legal charge against Spain to return Pissarro painting looted by Nazis
Cassirer’s great grandson is fighting a legal battle with the Spanish
museum to return the painting. - The Cassirer Family Trust, public domain
“This is important in different
ways to many communities,” Zack said of the case. “Jewish and Cuban
families suffered, from the Nazis and the Casto regime. When we took on
this case, it had a significant meaning far beyond just one case.”
Tracking down Nazi-looted art has been a priority for world leaders, who this month celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Washington Principles, a treaty aimed at returning the pieces to their rightful owners.
Miami lawyer Stephen Zack
- Boies Schiller Flexner law firm
The Nazi regime stole an
estimated 600,000 paintings before and during World War II, Stuart E.
Eizenstat, a U.S. State Department adviser who helped establish the
treaty, said at the conference earlier this month. He told the
conference that at least 100,000 paintings remain unrecovered, according to the New York Times, and singled out five countries, including Spain, for resisting efforts to return art stolen by Hitler’s henchmen.
As U.S. deputy secretary of the
Treasury under the Clinton administration, Eizenstat urged Spain to
return the Cassirer family’s painting to no avail.
The odyssey of the Pissarro
painting began in 1900, when his exclusive agent sold the work to the
Cassirers, who owned a prominent gallery in Berlin. Lilly Cassirer
inherited the piece in 1926, and displayed it her parlor. By 1939, as
the Nazis were systematically destroying Jewish society and preparing to
unleash their war machine on Europe, Cassirer was forced to sell them
the painting for a paltry sum in exchange for safe passage out of
Germany.
During the war, the Nazis sold
the painting to an anonymous buyer. For decades, the Cassirers believed
the painting was lost, until a family friend in 2000 spotted it at the
Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
So what happened? The painting —
today valued at at least $40 million — wound up in the hands of (Dr No) Baron
Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a member of the famous German
industrialist family. Records show he had purchased the painting in 1976
from St. Louis collector Sydney Schoenberg through the Stephen Hahn
Gallery in New York.
Spain later bought
Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection for display at the government-run
museum that bears his name. The baron died in 2002. For years after the
painting was spotted, the Cassirer family repeatedly asked the museum to
return the painting.
It was not until 2005 that Claude
Cassirer, Lilly’s grandson, filed a federal lawsuit in Southern
California. A trial judge dismissed the case five years later, a
decision overturned in 2013 by a federal appeals court. Claude has since
died, but his son, David Cassirer, is now the plaintiff, along with the
United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
“There is a widespread
recognition by civilized nations that is important to restore looted art
to the rightful owners. The Spanish government and the Spanish museum,
in this respect, is contrary to international norms. And frankly, it’s
reprehensible,” said lawyer David Boies , who also represents the
family..
Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Musuem
cortesÃa
Leonardo Boix
In an unusual court room
scenario, the Los Angeles federal judge must rule under Spanish legal
standards. Spain and the museum will argue that Thyssen-Bornemisza
bought the masterpiece in good faith — that the baron never knew the
painting was ripped off from the family by the Nazis.
“No evidence of bad faith can be
found in the Baron’s ownership of the painting – during which time the
painting was publicized and publicly exhibited in international tours
between 1979 and 1986, and in the 1988 magazine Architectural Digest,”
the museum’s legal team, headed by Thaddeus Stauber, wrote in court
documents.
Stauber declined to comment before the trial.
The Cassirer family’s legal team must prove that museum was an encubrador — in Spanish law, an accessory to the theft of the art decades earlier.
They point out that
Thyssen-Bornemisza was a sophisticated art buyer who employed a cadre of
experts to examine works. When he bought the painting in New York, it
still had a label identifying it as part of the Cassirer Gallery in
Berlin. Within the art world, it was widely knownthat the Cassirer painting had been targeted by the Nazis.
“It was easy to find out this was looted,” Boies said.
In the years after the purchase,
Thyssen-Bornemisza also fudged details of the purchase to try and hide
that he knew the Pissarro was a stolen work of art, according to the
lawyers.
The trial is before U.S. District Judge John Walter, and is expected to last at least three days.
David
Cassirer is suing Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to recover a
valuable Pisarro painting that was stolen by the Nazis in 1939, and
later wound up hanging in the gallery.- Cassirer family.
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