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WASHINGTON (AP) – Jed Leiber was an adult before learning that his family once co-owned a collection of centuries-old religious artwork that is now estimated to be worth at least $ 250 million.
At a steak dinner at a New York City restaurant in the 1990s, he asked his mother about his grandfather, a prominent art dealer who fled Germany after coming to power. Adolf Hitler. “What was Grandpa most proud of in his business?” He asked.
“He was very, very proud to have acquired the Guelph Treasure, then was forced to sell it to the Nazis, ”she told him.
This conversation put Leiber, of West Hollywood, Calif., On a decades-long mission to retrieve some 40 pieces from the Guelph treasure on display in a museum in Berlin. It’s a lawsuit that has now taken him to the Supreme Court, in a case to be debated on Monday.
For centuries the collection, called the Welfenschatz in German, belonged to German royalty. It includes elaborate containers used to store Christian relics; small intricate altars and ornate crosses. Many are silver or gold and decorated with precious stones.
In 2015, Leiber’s quest for the collection led to a lawsuit against Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The state foundation owns the collection and operates the Museum of Decorative Arts Berlin, where the collection is located. Germany and the foundation asked the lower court to dismiss the complaint, but the court refused. An appeals court also kept the lawsuit alive.
Now the Supreme Court, which has heard arguments over the phone due to the coronavirus pandemic, will intervene. A separate case involving Hungarian Holocaust victims is heard the same day.
At this point, the Guelph Treasure case is not about whether Leiber’s grandfather and the two other Frankfurt art dealers who joined to buy the collection in 1929 were forced to sell it, a claim of Germany and the founding dispute. The question is roughly whether Leiber and two other heirs to these merchants, New Mexico resident Alan Philipp and London resident Gerald Stiebel, can continue to seek the return of the objects in US courts.
In a statement, Hermann Parzinger, chairman of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed. The foundation and Germany have the backing of the Trump administration.
“We are of the opinion that Germany is the appropriate jurisdiction for a case involving the sale of a collection of German medieval art by German art dealers to a German state,” Parzinger said.
The prosecution’s claim that the Guelph treasure was sold under Nazi pressure has also been the subject of a diligent investigation in Germany, he said. The foundation concluded that the sale was made voluntarily and at fair market value. A German commission dedicated to investigating claims of stolen property by the Nazis agreed.
Parzinger said the records “clearly show that there were long and difficult price negotiations and that the two sides met exactly in the middle of their initial starting prices.”
The heirs of the art dealers, however, say the purchase price, 4.25 million Reichsmark, was about a third of the collection’s value. According to the principles of international law, sales of property by Jews in Nazi Germany are also presumed to have been made under pressure and therefore invalid, heirs lawyer Nicholas O’Donnell said.
Leiber’s grandfather, Saemy Rosenberg, and the two other Frankfurt art dealers he partnered with to purchase the Guelph Treasure sold other pieces in the collection outside of Germany. But their timing was unfortunate. The Great Depression struck soon after purchasing the collection. Some of the pieces have been sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art or to private collectors. The Nazi-controlled state of Prussia purchased the remaining pieces in 1935. The two sides disagree that the collection was ultimately presented to Hitler as a gift.
Leiber says his grandfather never told him anything about the collection, although the two played chess together on Sundays from when he was 5 until he was 11.
“He never spoke of the war. He never spoke of what he had lost. He never spoke about the horrors he and his family went through. … I think it was very important for him to keep moving forward, to move forward, ”said Leiber.
Rosenberg re-established his art business in New York City. When he died in 1971, The New York Times referred to him as “the leading international art dealer,” noting that his clients included oil mogul Paul Getty, CBS President William S. Paley, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. .
In the nearly 50 years since his grandfather’s death, Leiber has had his own celebrity career. In 1992, he founded the NightBird recording studios at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, where his clients include Madonna, U2, Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. He is particularly proud of his work with guitarist Jeff Beck and the late Aretha Franklin. But his grandfather had a singular influence on him.
“He’s a superhuman figure in my life,” Leiber said. “And I decided that I had to do whatever it took to get back what was taken from him.”
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