Restitutions

WORK RETURNED AFTER RE-EXAMINATION ON THE BASIS OF NEW ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

RESTITUTION OF A PAINTING BY AN ARTIST FROM THE CIRCLE OF LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER 
The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen are returning the painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1522–1525, attributed to an artist from the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder to the legal heirs of Ernst Magnus, formerly of Hannover.

The small-format painting was consigned to the Fischer Galerie auction house in Lucerne by Ernst Magnus in 1940 and sold to Hermann Göring in 1941 through the art dealer Walter Andreas Hofer. After the Second World War, the work was recovered by the American Allies, processed at the Central Collecting Point and initially entrusted to the Minister-President of the Free State of Bavaria. In 1961, it was transferred to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen as state property relocated from former Nazi holdings.

The descendants of Ernst Magnus submitted a restitution claim in 2009, which  - following review in 2010 - was rejected on the basis of the guidelines in force at the time.
After a renewed examination under the new assessment framework of the Arbitration Board  for Nazi-Looted Property, which guides the review and  decision-making process  for cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution, the decision was revised and restitution has now been approved.

The Bavarian minister of the Arts Markus Blume:
‘I am pleased that the clearly defined and expanded criteria of the new assessment framework for Nazi-looted art establish the legal prerequisites for the restitution of the painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne to the heirs of Ernst Magnus. With the launch of the arbitration court, a new era in the restitution of Nazi-looted art has begun – one that extends far beyond formal legal proceedings. The assessment framework concretizes the Washington Principles and provides reliable guidelines. This is an important step forward towards a contemporary restitution practice. For the first time, previously unresolved areas such as dealer stock, sales abroad, and assets sold by refugees (‘flight assets’) are being addressed. The guiding principle is: there is no rule without exception – only in this way can each case be considered individually on its own merits. For museums in Bavaria and across Germany, this creates the opportunity to re-examine complex issues and base decisions on a broader, more sustainable foundation.’  

 Anton Biebl, Director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen:
‘The decision to return the work to the lawful heirs of Ernst Magnus sends a clear signal of our commitment to continually advancing the museum’s restitution policy. We owe a moral responsibility to the victims of Nazi injustice and their descendants to bring their stories to light and seek fair and just solutions.’

Hannah Cavendish-Palmer, great granddaughter of Ernst Magnus:
‘Thank you to the people of Germany for being willing to listen, remember, and recognize the tragic persecution of my family members and so many others, whose lives were destroyed by the Nazis. Thank you to the Bavarian State Museums for hearing that call and returning the painting. I implore German institutions to continue returning stolen works.’

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF THE MAGNUS FAMILY
Ernst Magnus (1871–1942) and his wife Ida were originally from Hesse and lived in Hannover for many years. Magnus was director of the Commerz- und Disconto-Bank Hannover, a member of the board of the stock exchange and, from 1914 to 1933, served on the supervisory board of Continental Gummi-Werke AG. Advised by an assistant of the eminent art historian Wilhelm von Bode, Magnus and his wife amassed a substantial art collection.

With the rise of the Nazi regime, members of the Magnus family were increasingly stripped of their rights as citizens. Bank accounts were frozen, divested property was sold below market value, and they were forced to pay the Jewish Property Levy and the Reich Flight Tax. In 1935, Ernst Magnus escaped Nazi persecution by emigrating to Lausanne, taking parts of his collection and valuable furnishings with him. However, to fund the family’s escape and pay for the visa application for Cuba, Magnus was forced to sell further works of art, among them The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. In 1941, as Swiss asylum regulations tightened, the family managed to leave Switzerland via Seville for Havana, where Ernst Magnus died on 12 February 1942, just a few months after his arrival. His wife and daughter were subsequently able to make their way to the United States.

THE CHALLENGES OF PROVENANCE RESEARCH
The investigation into the paintings’ provenance highlights the challenges involved in assessing what is known as Fluchtgut (flight assets). Art sales in Switzerland during the Nazi era are often difficult to classify: although, they formally took place under free-market conditions, many were nevertheless prompted by the existential pressures of a racial persecution just across the German border. The new assessment criteria adopted in 2024 allow for a more nuanced evaluation. They play greater emphasis on the economic hardships faced by emigrants as a result of persecution and acknowledge that forced sales could also occur outside the territory of the German Reich.

For the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and the researchers at the newly established Department of Provenance Research at the Bavarian Museum Agency, this means re-evaluating cases such as that of Ernst Magnus after more than a decade later, and critically reassessing decisions taken many years ago. At the same time, it obliges us to expand our provenance research efforts, allocate the necessary resources, and communicate our findings with complete transparency. The restitution of the painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is thus also a sign that the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen are taking responsibility, and that we are committed to the ongoing effort to address historical injustices and the restitution of cultural property confiscated by the Nazis or sold under duress.

The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen returned the work ‘The Vision of St. Bernard’ by Johannes Koerbecke to the heirs of Ellen Funke. The work was first listed on the Lost Art Database in 2020 (ID 592322).

Historical background to the collection an the persecution of Ellen Funke 

Helene Sophie Victoria Hermine Heintzmann, known as Ellen Funke (1869–1947) of Hamm, was the beneficiary to artworks from the ‘Loeb’sche Fideikommiss’, a major private collection that dated back to the 19^th century. Due to her maternal ancestors’ Jewish origins, she was classified as a ‘Mischling of the first degree’ under Nazi rule and was, therefore, subject to systematic persecution. The collection was originally assembled by Alexander Haindorf, a Jewish physician and co-founder of the Westfälischer Kunstverein, on the Caldenhof estate near Hamm, together with his daughter Sophie and her husband Jakob Loeb.

The fideicommissum had been dissolved by 1936, by which time the collection was divided among those descendants entitled to inherit who, as Jews or so-called ‘half-Jews’, subsequently faced persecution. Ellen Funke was one of these entitled persons. Her collection comprised 101 works of art, including ‘The Vision of St. Bernard’ by Johannes Koerbecke. In 1936, she sold the work to the ‘Galerie Stern’ in Düsseldorf, evidently in order to obtain the financial means needed for permanent residency in a safe foreign country and to support other members of her family. As such, irrefutable evidence exists to support the supposition that the painting would not have been sold had the Nazis not been in power and that the loss of the painting was as a result of persecution. Ellen Funke is the primary victim; as a consequence, and in accordance with the internationally recognised interpretation of the Washington Principles, restitution is to be made in the first instance to her legal successors.

Division of the painting and aquisition by two museums 

The work was conceived as a panel painting with images on both sides. The Annunciation was on the front and the Vision of St. Bernard on the back. The art dealer Max Stern divided the panel to create two separate paintings so that they could be sold as independent works. The depiction of St. Bernard on the back was listed in a 1937 catalogue of the P. de Boer art dealership in Amsterdam and acquired by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in July/August 1938.

 The work was acquired as part of an exchange transaction: in 1938, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen handed over a work from their collection – Jan van Goyen’s ‘Wasserlandschaft’ (River Landscape; formerly inv. no. 2015) – to the Amsterdam art dealer P. de Boer and received, in addition to Koerbecke’s work, an oil sketch by Carlo Calone (inv. no. 10645).

The Wels family, as descendants, on the restitution

“We found the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and all the staff involved to be open, positive and fully committed. We owe a special thanks to them. The painting is now back in the ‘Alexander Haindorf Collection’ that we, as descendants, are endeavouring to reassemble, as far as possible. The restitution of the painting in person was a special and moving moment. We clearly felt that all those working at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen were very happy about returning the painting and were just as moved as we were.
Such a process is often very long and requires the support of experts. We would, therefore, like to express our gratitude here to the specialist lawyer for Nazi-looted art, Dr. Sabine Rudolph.”

Anton Biebl on the restitution

“The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and our team of researchers in the newly established Provenance Research Department at the Staatliche Museumsagentur Bayern (State Museum Agency of Bavaria) are committed to the clarification of historical injustices and the restitution of artworks disappropriated during the Nazi era. Through painstaking and scholarly provenance research, lost cultural assets come to light and fair, historically just solutions are made possible,” emphasises Anton Biebl, Director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.

The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen have restituted the work ‘The Porte Saint Martin in Paris’ to the heirs of Rudolf Hofmann and subsequently reacquired it. This outcome is the result of proactive provenance research and represents an important contribution to the restitution of cultural property to rightful owners whose identities had long remained unknown.

Historical background and provenance

The painting that was created around 1867 was sold at ‘Rudolph Lepke’s Kunst-Auctions-Haus’ in Berlin in 1902, the year of the artist’s death. No information about who originally consigned the work to Lepke has survived. The first clearly identifiable owner is a man called Rudolf Hofmann. He consigned the painting to the Hugo Helbing art dealership where it was offered for auction twice: once in spring 1934 and again in the summer of that same year. Hofmann handed Hugo Helbing a total of 45 objects to be sold at auction – including paintings, vases and metal objects. The work restituted, however, was not sold and remained in the Galerie Helbing on a sale or return basis.

The name Hofmann has been found in various sources including annotations in various hand copies of the Galerie Helbing catalogue, as well as a handwritten list of consignors in which the name is recorded as ‘R. Hofmann’, and the catalogue in the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Central Institute for Art History) that lists the name as ‘Rud. Hofmann’. Research was greatly facilitated by the project ‘Unique source material on the German art trade: Digitalisation and indexing of annotated hand copies of catalogues of the Munich auctioneer Hugo Helbing at the Central Institute for Art History in Munich’.

The painting and its time in the Galerie Hugo Helbing before and after  ‘aryanisation’

In summer 1934, despite the prevalent antisemitic mood of the time, Hugo Helbing was one of the leading art dealers and auctioneers in southern Germany. However, with the enforcement of the ‘Gesetz über das Versteigerungsgewerbe’ (Auction Trade Act) on 16 October 1934, the situation deteriorated, as a compulsory membership in the ‘Reichskulturkammer’ (Reich Chamber of Culture) amounted to a de facto ban on Jewish art dealers holding auctions. During the November pogroms of 1938, Hugo Helbing was violently attacked. This led to serious injuries and ultimately to his death on 30 November 1938.

Max Heiss (1891–1952), an art trade advisor to the regional director of the ‘Reichskammer der bildenden Künste’ (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts), took over the ‘processing’ of the gallery that was being ‘held in trust’. In March 1941, the Galerie Helbing was ‘Aryanised’ through its sale to Jakob Scheidwimmer (b. 1895). Under its new name ‘Galerie an der Wagmüllerstrasse; proprietor Jakob Scheidwimmer, formerly Hugo Helbing’, the remaining items held on a sale or return basis, including works of art of Jewish ownership, were initially retained. On 29 October 1941, these were then expropriated by the Gestapo – in turn, this led to the compilation of a list dated 6 January 1942 that includes, among other things, the painting restituted here.

Unknown jewish property 

In 1942, Ernst Buchner, the Director General of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen selected, several works from the gallery’s holdings on Wagmüllerstrasse that had been classified as ‘non-Aryan property’ – among them this painting by Albert Schwendy. The acquisition was duly documented in the museum’s inventories and purchase ledgers of 1943. At the time however the identities of the original Jewish owners remained unknown, which made restitution impossible for both the Allied Forces or the Museum. To support ongoing efforts to clarify its history, the work was registered on the Lost Art Database in 2019.

The identification of the owner Rudolf Hofmann

Thanks to intensive provenance research Rudolf Hofmann (b. 13 September 1879 in Bauerbach/Meiningen – d. 23 January 1945 in Munich) could be finally identified, restoring recognition to a long-overlooked rightful owner. The retired bank director moved with his family from Thuringia to Munich in May 1933, settling at Pienzenauerstrasse 22/0. Although Hofmann was married to a non-Jewish woman and his children had been baptised as Protestants, he was nevertheless classified as Jewish by the Nazi regime – forced to pay Jewish Capital Levy in 1938 and to perform compulsory labour in Milbertshofen in 1941. Due to his Jewish heritage, he lost his house and his children were placed in the care of a guardian. In 1942, the family was moved to a ‘Judenhaus’ (Jewish house) on Elisabethstrasse – a building that was bombed during an air raid in January 1945. While Rudolf Hofmann and his daughter Mathilde died among the rubble, his wife Franziska and their son Werner survived.

Proactive commitment by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

The restitution and subsequent repurchase of the painting ‘The Porte Saint Martin in Paris’ from the heirs of Rudolf Hofmann marks another step in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen's ongoing commitment to identify unlawfully seized artworks and returning them to their rightful owners. Through continuous and meticulous provenance research, the museum makes a meaningful contribution to the historical reckoning of the Nazi era and its crimes, honoring both past injustices and the preservation of our shared cultural heritage.

The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum have restituted a painting by Hans Wertinger (Philip of the Palatinate, Bishop of Freising, inv. no. 12030) and two 16^th-century sculptures from Nuremberg (the wooden statuettes ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, inv. nos. 53/137 and 53/138) to the heirs of the Berlin banker and entrepreneur Jakob Goldschmidt (1882–1955). The painting had been transferred to the collection of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in 1953 having formerly been held by the Nazis; the sculptures had been acquired by the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in exchange for other works that same year.

The collector Jakob Goldschmidt

Jakob Goldschmidt was one of the most influential bankers in the Weimar Republic and was regarded as a ‘central figure in the world of finance’. His position as a leading member of the management board of the major Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danat-Bank) and as a member, at times, on more than 100 supervisory boards, testify to this. From the end of World War I onwards, Goldschmidt collected art on a large scale and was able to build up a significant collection. He was a patron of Berlin’s museums and supported the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. He furnished his country house in the Potsdam villa colony of Neubabelsberg, that he had had built in 1921, with numerous works of art. Goldschmidt also acquired a villa in Berlin’s Matthäikirchstrasse in 1929, in which there were also large numbers of artworks.

After the collapse of the Danat-Bank in summer 1931 in the course of the Great Depression, Goldschmidt was held (jointly) responsible by the Nazis for the subsequent bank crisis. In April 1933, he was initially forced to emigrate to Switzerland. From there he fled to New York in 1936. Goldschmidt suffered considerable financial losses as a result and, among other things, had to pay Reich Flight Tax totalling more than 1.8 million Reichsmarks. In 1940, he lost his German citizenship and one year later his remaining assets in Germany were confiscated by the Nazis. He initially managed to rescue part of his art collection and take it abroad, thanks to the support of Fritz Thyssen. The rest of the collection that, in the meantime, was also being used as collateral, remained in Germany where it was auctioned off, mainly in two sales, in 1936 and 1938.

ON THE FURTHER PROVENANCE OF THE WORKS

The painting by Hans Wertinger was acquired by Julius Streicher, the Gauleiter for Middle Franconia, through the Frankfurt auctioneer’s Hugo Helbing, run by Arthur Kaufmann, in June 1936.

At this auction, around 300 works from the Goldschmidt Collection were offered anonymously as ‘artworks in the ownership of a Berlin collector’. These included the two sculptures that were, however, not sold. After the end of the war, the American Forces seized the painting by Wertinger, found in the house of Julius Streicher’s brother Max Streicher in Deggendorf, Bavaria, and initially took it to nearby Schloss Egg.

On 2 October 1946, the work was removed to the Central Collecting Point in Munich. As no application for restitution had been filed, the Free State of Bavaria was able to transfer ownership of the painting in 1953 on the basis of the Allied Control Council Directive No. 57 of 15 January 1948, after which it entered the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen. The sculptures that had not sold in 1936 were again offered for sale in March 1938 by the auction house Lempertz in Cologne. The next known owner was the art dealer Johannes Hinrichsen of Bad Aussee (formerly of Berlin), who presumably bought them at Lempertz and sold them on to the Swiss art collector and armaments manufacturer Emil Bührle. In 1953, the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum acquired both sculptures from Bührle in exchange for a 14^th-century Pietà.

There is clear evidence that Goldschmidt’s financial situation deteriorated rapidly under Nazi rule. Jakob Goldschmidt was forced to accept the sale of part of his art collection. The auctions would not have taken place were it not for Nazi rule and are, therefore, to be considered a manifestation of the disappropriation of assets as a result of persecution. Seen in this light, the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts has agreed to the restitution of the artworks.

· Statement by Markus Blume, Bavarian State Minister for Science and the Arts:

“The results of the provenance research are clear: Jakob Goldschmidt was unjustly persecuted during the Nazi era and robbed of his assets by the Nazi state. The restitution of a painting by Hans Wertinger and two sculptures from the 16^th-century to the rightful heirs is, therefore, more than just a matter of course for us; it is an ethical obligation! With the restitution of unlawfully seized art treasures, we are restoring a measure of justice and making a decisive contribution towards the processing of Nazi crimes. Many thanks to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum who were able to clarify the provenance of the three artworks owned by Jakob Goldschmidt through their painstaking research.”

· Statement by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Maaz, Director General of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen:
“The painter Hans Wertinger is one of the most important German Renaissance artists and was a portraitist of great mastery. We are delighted to be able to hand over such an exquisite work to the descendants of the persecuted family after so many decades and as a result of lengthy research, as a reminder commemorating a magnificent former private collection.”

· Statement by Dr. Frank Matthias Kammel, Director General of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum:
“The return of the two statuettes from the circle of Veit Stoß to their rightful owners is also a source of great satisfaction for the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum.”

· Statement from the Goldschmidt heirs:
“Jakob Goldschmidt’s heirs are very pleased about the return of the artworks and the associated recognition that their loss was the result of the vicious agitation and persecution to which their grandfather was subjected, before and even more so after the seizure of power by the Nazis.”