Status date: October 30, 2024.
Image: dpa | Bildagentur-online/Schoening
Grosz’s heirs demanded two pictures back because they were said to have been confiscated from the artist during the Nazi era. A report now comes to a different assessment.
The city of Bremen is allowed to keep two paintings by the painter, graphic artist and caricaturist George Grosz. His descendants had demanded it back with the argument that it was Grosz’s cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. To decide on this, the ‘Advisory Commission’ of the German Center for Losses of Cultural Property was called in. After a hearing at the beginning of September, they announced the results of their report on Wednesday.
Commission: Images were not “withheld due to persecution”
The commission made its decision unanimously. In the case of the painting “Pompe Funèbre”, she assumes that Grosz lost his ownership of the work as a result of high debts to his former gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim or his company. This emerges from a letter from Flechtheim to Grosz dated April 15, 1934.
Even before the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, the artist was heavily in debt to the Jewish gallery owner, as the statement said. The commission also does not consider the “Still Life with Ocarina, Fish and Shell” to be “cultural property confiscated due to Nazi persecution”. There was no evidence that it belonged to Grosz during the persecution period.
The decision was received with satisfaction in Bremen. Carmen Emigholz, State Councilor for Culture, said she was pleased that the commission had followed the arguments presented.
With today’s recommendation, the Commission has now finally clarified this restitution issue for everyone involved, which we are very pleased about.
State Councilor for Culture Carmen Emigholz
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