Heirs of Jewish Art Collectors Pursue Works Sold in Nazi Era

The painting was once owned by a Jewish art collector and shoe manufacturer, Alfred Hess. He sold it in 1936; heirs later argued successfully that he was pressured to do so by the Gestapo.

In July 2006, after two years of secret negotiations, Berlin museum officials agreed to return the painting to Anita Halpin, Hess's granddaughter and head of Britain's Communist Party. Halpin in turn auctioned it to the New York museum for $38 million, prompting an outcry from German art devotees, who feared it would lead to a flood of other claims and blank spots on gallery walls across the country.

The fallout prompted Germany's minister for cultural affairs, Bernd Neumann, to call a summit of museum directors in November 2006. The group reaffirmed that Germany had a moral obligation to return stolen art. Two months ago, Neumann announced the creation of an office for provenance research.

Some museum officials, however, criticized the German government, saying it has given the issue low priority and failed to take overall responsibility. "In Germany, we say, 'Yes it's necessary, yes, we need to do it,' and then we forget it," said Martin Roth, managing director of the Dresden State Art Collections, the second-biggest museum system in the country, in an interview last fall.

Museums in Berlin have returned 19 artworks in the past eight years and in four other cases negotiated settlements to keep items in exchange for compensation, said Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, director of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees many of the capital's art collections.

Germany continues efforts to recover artwork taken by occupying forces after the war, particularly to Russia, Lehmann noted. "If we expect to get things back from Russia, we cannot hide things we have that belong to Jewish communities," he said. "We wouldn't be credible otherwise."

One Family's Quest

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Fritz Glaser's son, Volkmar, tried to find out what had happened to his late father's art collection. Volkmar, who had been forced into slave labor by the Nazis, had migrated to West Germany after the war and had only limited contact with his father, who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

He won back a few pieces, including a famous portrait of his father by Otto Dix, but met mostly with failure. His main obstacle was a lack of hard evidence. Jews in Nazi Germany weren't allowed to own art or other property after 1938, so any records were usually destroyed.

Volkmar Glaser died in 1997. A year later, when the German government signed the Washington Declaration, his widow, Ute Glaser, decided to resume the family quest.

With the help of a lawyer, she found a valuable clue: a 1929 exhibition catalogue from a Dresden museum that listed several works from Fritz Glaser's collection. The catalogue proved that Glaser owned the art shortly before the Nazis came to power. But what had happened to it?

One piece was in plain view. "Max John," another Dix portrait, was on exhibit at the Freiburg Museum of Modern Art in southwest Germany. The museum had bought the painting at auction in 1959 from a private collector.

A lawyer wrote the museum on behalf of Ute Glaser in December 2004 to ask if it had any other records about the painting. The museum replied that it did not, and has been eager to let the matter drop, according to Sabine Rudolph, Glaser's attorney. "In every case, you hit the point where you can't go any further," she said.