Sale Over Nazi Looted Artwork Wreaks Havoc

A dozen relatives of Ludwig and Margret Kainer, German Jews whose vast art collection was seized by the Nazis, are stepping forward to object the $11 million sale of Edgar Degas’s “Danseuses.”  The masterpiece was sold as part of a restitution agreement with the Kainers, yet relatives say not only did they fail to benefit from that sale, but they were also never even told about it or any other auctions of works once owned by the couple. 

In lawsuits filed in New York and Switzerland, the Kainer relatives allege that officers of the bank never made a diligent effort to find them, and used a family name to create a “sham” foundation disguised to support the health and education of Jewish youth, but instead cheated them out of their inheritance. 

The foundation and the bank maintain they have done nothing wrong.  The lawsuits come as high-profile disputes over looted art focus attention on how courts and governments have handled assets stolen from Jews by the Nazis. 

This case illustrates how difficult adjudicating such claims remains.  Like many Holocaust survivors, the Kainer descendants were unaware that their relatives had lost or left behind valuables to which they might have a claim.  This case only came to light when Mondex Corporation, which helps recover looted property, noticed in 2009 that hundreds of works once owned by the Kainers had been listed in an international database of art lost in the war years, and subsequently tracked down their relatives. 

See Patricia Cohen, Heirs Sue Bank Over Sale of Nazi-Looted Art, The New York Times, Oct. 17, 2014.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.