A painting by Pablo Picasso has become synonymous with the difficult German effort to recover art looted by the Nazis. This is “Madame Soler”, from 1903, from the artist’s blue period, which can be seen in the Pinacoteca de Arte Moderna de Munich.
According to the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the “painting is not part of stolen art.” Historian Julius H. Schoeps rejects the official version of the Bavarian institution. The painting clearly belonged to his great-uncle, the German-Jewish banker and art collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, says Schoeps, professor emeritus of modern history at the University of Potsdam. He himself has spent years researching the case in archives around the world, and even wrote a book about the case: “A “Who owns Picasso’s ‘Madame Soler’?”
For him it is clear: the fact that the painting was put up for sale in 1935 was the result of the disenfranchisement and persecution of the Jews since Hitler came to power in 1933. “The fact that Bavaria claims “That there was no persecution until 1935 is completely ahistorical,” he says, indignantly, in an interview with DW.
The Free State of Bavaria refuses
This is a case for the Advisory Commission on Nazi Looted Property, which was created twenty years ago to make recommendations in complicated cases involving restitution disputes. The problem: the commission only begins to manage when both parties have agreed. “In the case of ‘Madame Soler’, the families have been fighting for almost ten years for the Commission to take charge of the case,” says the president of said Commission, Hans-Jürgen Papier, adding that “as the Free State of Bavaria categorically refuses, we can’t do anything.
That is why Papier is now calling for, on the occasion of the commission’s twentieth anniversary, a fundamental reform: works stolen by the Nazis must also be able to be claimed unilaterally, that is, by the victims of Nazi persecution directly, without the museums have to give their consent.
Germany signed the so-called “Washington Principles” in 1998. In them, 43 states committed to identifying “works of art seized as a result of Nazi persecution” and to find “fair and equitable solutions” with the owners or their heirs. A commitment that Germany does not fulfill, warns Julius H. Schoeps.
“Germany is the country of perpetrators. And it is precisely in this country that heirs often despair at their treatment.” The historian points out that the heirs of Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy have reached several agreements with museums outside Germany, among them, with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Guggenheim, both in New York.
Petition for a restitution law
Claudia Roth, German Secretary of State for Culture and Media, who attended the Jewish Museum in Berlin for the Commission ceremony, promises that there will be comprehensive reforms on the issue. She says that there will be consultations with the federal states – whose consent is necessary in this case in the German federal system – before the end of October. A unilateral appeal to the commission will also be made possible.
However, the president of the commission, Hans-Jürgen Papier, does not believe much in reforms, so he calls for a restitution law. There is no other way, says Papier, former president of the Federal Constitutional Court, to resolve the dilemma of the Advisory Commission on Property Looted by the Nazis. In its 20 years of existence, the commission has made 23 recommendations. “Too little,” laments Papier, although the cases in which he intervened set a precedent.
(job/cp)
2023-09-18 17:44:40
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