Latest news with #Cassirer
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who owns this valuable Nazi-looted painting? A Holocaust survivor's family or the museum that bought it years later?
An impressionist painting worth tens of millions of dollars is at the heart of an ongoing legal battle between the family of a Holocaust survivor and a Spanish museum that bought it 25 years ago. The family of Lilly Cassirer has sought the return of Camille Pissarro's 'Rue St. Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie' for two decades. Their quest has played out in federal courts in California and before the U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the high court overturned a lower court ruling awarding the work to a Madrid museum that has long argued it can lay claim under Spanish law to the 1897 oil painting, according to The Washington Post. The painting once hung in the parlor of Cassirer's home in Germany. Her descendants call it a 'family treasure' and argue the museum has both a moral imperative to return it and a duty under international treaties. The Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court in California to reexamine the case after a California law passed last year in response to the case that makes it easier for victims of persecution to recover stolen property, per the Post. 'We hope Spain and its museum will now do the right thing and return the Nazi-looted art they are holding without further delay,' said David Boies, an attorney for the family. He said the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid would be subject to the jurisdiction of the court despite being overseas. Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, told the Post in a statement that the museum would continue to fight to keep the painting in Spain, while also making its pre-World War II ownership clear. 'The foundation, as it has for the past 20 years, looks forward to working with all concerned to once again ensure that its ownership is confirmed with the painting remaining on public display in Madrid,' he said. Known in English as 'St. Honoré Street in the afternoon. Effect of rain,' Pissarro, one of the major artists of the impressionist movement, painted the work from the window of a hotel where he stayed late in his career. Cassirer's family bought the painting from Pissarro's art dealer in 1900. Cassirer was forced by the Nazis to sell the work in 1939 to obtain exit visas to flee Germany, a fact the museum does not dispute. The painting was sold and resold until eventually ending up in the United States. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a wealthy Swiss art collector, bought the painting from a New York gallery. He later loaned the painting to Spain, and it was displayed at the museum named after him starting in 1992. The museum purchased the painting the next year, the Post reported. Claude Cassirer, grandson of Lilly Cassirer, learned that the painting was at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in 2000 and petitioned Spain and the museum to return it. After the request was denied, he filed suit in 2005 in federal court in California, citing a law that strips foreign countries of immunity in U.S. courts in cases when property is taken in violation of international law. The museum has said it didn't know the painting was stolen when it was purchased. The Nazi Party leadership's interest in art arose early on, and art confiscations began by 1938, according to the National Archives. Soon after its rise to power in 1933, the party purged so-called 'degenerate art' from German public institutions. Artworks deemed degenerate by the Nazis included modern French and German artists in the areas of cubism, expressionism and impressionism. About 16,000 pieces were removed, and by 1938 the Nazi Party declared that all German art museums were 'purified.'
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Editorial: Finally, the Supreme Court can help a California family get back art stolen by Nazis
The magnificent Impressionist painting of a rainy Paris streetscape that hung on a wall in Lilly Cassirer's home in Germany in 1939 was the price she paid to a Nazi art dealer in exchange for exit papers from the country. It was nothing close to a fair transaction. She was a Jewish woman relinquishing valuable artwork in exchange for safe passage. Eventually her descendants discovered that the Camille Pissarro painting that Cassirer had owned, 'Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie,' was hanging on the wall of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Cassirer's family has spent two decades in and out of courts unsuccessfully trying to get the painting that all agree was stolen from her by the Nazis. It's a travesty that this family is still fighting for the return of this painting. Now they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the legal saga. What makes this time different? A new California law, Assembly Bill 2867, which passed in August and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. The new statute requires courts to use California law when hearing cases filed by California residents or their families to recover stolen art or other significant artifacts held by museums. The Supreme Court is finally in a position to course-correct the lower courts on this matter, and it should do so. Until that bill passed, when a California plaintiff sued a foreign entity such as the Spanish museum to recover stolen artwork, the court would decide whether to use the law of the state or the law of the defendant's country. California law holds that a thief never has a legal right to stolen property, and whoever gets the property later never has a legal right to it either. But under Spanish law, after a certain amount of time passes, the holder of stolen property is legally allowed to keep it. A federal district court hearing the Cassirer case used Spanish law and ruled that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — twice — ruled that the lower court was correct in deciding that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The Cassirer family is arguing that based on the new California statute, the 9th Circuit's decision is now 'irreconcilable with current California law.' The family is asking the Supreme Court to throw out that decision and return the case to the 9th Circuit, which in turn should follow the new statute, overturn the lower court's decision and finally order the painting returned to the family. We hope that's exactly what happens. That outcome would be not only fair but also in keeping with broader norms: The Legislature specifically wrote the new law "to align California law with federal laws, policies, and international agreements, which prohibit pillage and seizure of works of art and cultural property, and call for restitution of seized property." In the past even some jurists were anguished over their decisions. Judge Consuelo Callahan on the 9th Circuit concurred with the decision upholding the museum's right to the painting even as she said that appellate judges sometimes must 'concur in a result at odds with our moral compass. For me, this is such a situation.' U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, in his lower court ruling for the Spanish museum, lamented that he couldn't force the museum to 'comply with its moral commitments' as laid out in powerful but nonbinding international agreements (signed by dozens of countries, including Spain) that state there is a moral duty to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners or their heirs. Now the California law opens the door for judges to make legal decisions that align with moral ones. But the Spanish government, which owns the museum, doesn't have to wait for those decisions. It should do the right thing and return this painting to its rightful owners. That would be the swiftest way for long-awaited justice to be done. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
