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Adam and Eve 1526, by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Norton Museum / Public Domain
The battle of several generations for works of art stolen by the Nazis returned to the original owners or their heirs teaches many lessons about cruelty, the greed and failure to reckon with the past. foreign governments and art museums.
On July 30, a panel of three US Circuit Court of Appeals judges issued a decision authorizing the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, to retain a pair of oil on panel. paintings of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Adam and Eve who figured among the hundreds of paintings confiscated by the Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Göring after the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. This decision on the pair of oils, which was finally sold to Norton Simon himself in 1971, offers another lesson of this kind in the Act of State Doctrine.
The historical facts are not disputed: Goudstikker worried ab in the late 1930s, when he applied for an American visa, his wife and he were able to book a pbadage on one of the last ships to leave the country, leaving all the contents of his gallery in the hands of two of his employees. Unfortunately, the dealer himself died on board the ship, falling through an open hatch and breaking his neck. A forced sale sold the majority of 1,241 works in Göring. Shortly after the war, Goudstikker's widow, Desi, returned to the Netherlands to seek compensation for the lost property, engaging her in litigation with the Dutch government to whom the Allied forces had returned captured paintings to the Netherlands. Germans
. has reached an agreement with the Dutch government, not returning him the actual works of art, but the purchase price supposedly paid for them by Goring. In 1997, the Dutch admitted to acting unjustly, but when Desi's daughter-in-law, Marei Von Saher, appealed the 1952 settlement, he was told that the family had renounced his claims at the time . According to American doctrine, which states that every sovereign state must respect the independence of all other sovereign states, the California court has decided that it will follow the Dutch government's decision that the 1952 settlement conferred a good title in the Netherlands. This decision legitimately allowed the Dutch government to sell the two Cranach in 1966 to George Stroganoff-Sherbatoff, who sold it to Norton Simon five years later . California's decision stated that "the doctrine of the state act deems valid the transfer of the Dutch government to Stroganoff", which means that "the museum has a good title. that we annul three official acts of the Dutch government – a result that the doctrine was intended to avoid. "
" It was a complicated case, and I was not surprised by the result ", said Nicholas O. Donnell, a partner in the law firm Sullivan & Worcester and the author of A tragic fate: law and ethics in the battle over art looted by the Nazis . "The 9th Circuit accepted the case to say that the US courts would not return to an issue that had been resolved by the Dutch government.This would be considered an insult to international relations."
The sale of Cranach at Stroganoff-Sherbatoff was considered a "sovereign act", which only a nation can do, as opposed to a commercial act, which extent to which the decision of the California Court of Appeals could have a impact on other cases where American museums have in their possession works of art from the time of the Holocaust on which claims could be made is limited. However, "it will continue the debate over what types of transactions warrant judicial review," said O Donnell.
A slightly more optimistic view of the July 30th decision was expressed by New York art attorney William Pearlstein. "Specific to the facts and based on the law.The court acted in a neutral manner, what you want.It may have been a bit bloodless because of the context of the Holocaust, but legally it was entirely appropriate to rely on the legitimate authority of a foreign government. "
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