The heirs of Max Stern, a Jewish art dealer who fled Nazi Germany after he was forced to close his gallery, on October 31 announced the recovery of a painting he lost 76 years ago.
That is only half the story. They may have lost track of two more pictures that Stern was forced to sell for good.
Andreas Achenbach’s 1837 landscape was offered at Van Ham Fine Art Auctions in Cologne in May. Encouraged by Van Ham, the consignor agreed to negotiate with Stern’s estate. The painting was presented in a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin.
Two other pictures in the Van Ham catalog of the May event also belonged to Stern, yet the consignor of these refused to negotiate with the dealer’s heirs.
He said his grandfather bought the works legally at the 1937 Nazi-forced auction of Stern’s gallery, according to a person familiar with his letter to Van Ham.
“This kind of situation happens frequently,” said Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. “Heirs are often dependent on the goodwill of private owners. Some consignors may not want to deal with what their grandparents did.”
Van Ham returned the two paintings to the consignor and declined to reveal his name to Stern’s heirs, leaving them with little hope of recovering the artworks.
‘Reluctant’
Trade The Stern estate’s experience spotlights the difficulties heirs face in tracing and reclaiming the countless Nazi-looted artworks that have vanished into German private collections, even when they are offered for sale by auction houses.
“Members of the art trade have been reluctant to work with claimants on the return of Holocaust-era works,” Clarence Epstein, director of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project at Concordia University in Montreal, wrote in an e-mail.
While museums are morally accountable under international principles endorsed by the German government on returning Nazi-looted art, German art dealers and auction houses often pursue strictly legal arguments. Under German law, the statute of limitations for theft expires after 30 years, and claimants have little hope of winning title in court.
Max Stern took over his father’s Dusseldorf art gallery in 1934, a year after the Nazis seized power. Stern was informed in 1935 that as a Jew, he could no longer practice his profession.
After the forced sale of his gallery’s contents at the Lempertz auction house in Cologne – for which Stern never got the revenue – he fled to London in 1938, later making his way to Canada. He settled in Montreal and became one of the most important art dealers in Canada.
Tracing Works
He died in 1987 without children, leaving the bulk of his estate to three universities: Concordia and McGill in Montreal and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2002, the colleges began a campaign to recover the lost art, creating the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, administered by Concordia.
The two pictures returned to Van Ham’s consignor – ‘Canal in Dordrecht’ by Hans Herrmann and Jakob Becker’s ‘Children’s Festival in the Country’ – are among about 400 Stern’s heirs are trying to trace.
They have recovered 11 so far. Epstein says most of the rest are probably in German private collections.
“There are still thousands and thousands of works of looted art that have not been returned and the art trade continues to sell disputed works,” Webber said.
‘Powerless Claimants’
“The claimants are powerless in the process. The balance of power is in favour of the possessor of the art.”
While Sotheby’s and Christie’s International have teams of researchers checking provenance, the smaller German houses often rely uniquely on the services of the Art Loss Register, a London-based company with a database of stolen art.
Yet all three Stern paintings in the Van Ham catalog for the May sale have been listed since July 2005 with photographs on lostart.de, the German government’s database of art missing after World War II, according to Michael Franz, who administrates the website.
Van Ham submits all catalogs to the Art Loss Register, Anne Srikiow, a spokeswoman for Van Ham, said by telephone from Cologne. If there is any reason to be skeptical about a work’s provenance, the company conducts some basic checks, she said.
“We can’t do it with every piece,” Srikiow said. It is not company policy to routinely check lostart.de, she said.
In contrast, Sotheby’s has four provenance researchers, said Richard Aronowitz, who heads the London research team. They check the painting itself, the company’s own database built up over 15 years, the artist’s catalogue raisonne and the main lists of lost works published by national governments.
The findings are sent to the Art Loss Register, which runs a second check. “Of say 5,000 lots that we examine a year, 50 to 60 may raise concerns serious enough that we have to send someone to investigate in archives abroad,” Aronowitz said. “Out of those maybe 10 to 15 will be unrestituted Nazi-looted artworks.” — Bloomberg