Eric Weinmann, 94; Lawyer, Benefactor to D.C. Arts Groups

He held banking jobs in London, New York and Buenos Aires before joining the Office of Strategic Services. In 1947, Mr. Weinmann received a master's degree in political science from Columbia University. In addition to his Columbia law degree, he received a master's degree in law from Georgetown University in 1961.

Mr. Weinmann's first marriage, to Camilla Marvin Weinmann, ended in divorce. Mary de Limur Weinmann, whom he married in 1974, survives him. Other survivors include two children from his first marriage, Dr. Gail Greenwood Weinmann of Chevy Chase and Edward Weinmann of Bolinas, Calif.; and a granddaughter.

In 2000, a Washington friend of Mr. Weinmann's, Cameron LaClair, was at the Yale University Art Gallery when he stopped in front of Courbet's "Le Grand Pont" (The Big Bridge) -- the very painting that had once hung in the Weinmann family home.

When the Weinmanns fled Berlin, the Courbet came into the possession of a onetime Nazi storm trooper named Herbert Schaefer. After becoming a lawyer, Schaefer represented German armament firms during World War II.

The painting hung in a Hamburg museum for 20 years before Schaefer regained ownership in 1968. In 1981, he sent it and other artworks to Yale as a long-term loan.

Two decades later, the tainted provenance of art looted by Nazis had become a touchy issue for museums, and Mr. Weinmann hired lawyers to investigate how his mother's Courbet got to Yale.

Reached in Spain by the Boston Globe in 2001, the 90-year-old Schaefer remained unrepentant. Questions about how he acquired the painting, he said, were aimed at showing him "as a bad German, and a Nazi up against a poor Jew who has lost his painting."

In October 2001, Yale reached a compromise. Both Schaefer and Mr. Weinmann withdrew claims of ownership, and in return Mr. Weinmann could have possession of the Courbet painting for 10 years.

"I agreed to that because I am 88 years old," Mr. Weinmann said at the time.

Mr. Weinmann hung the painting in his living room, where it remains.