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The US Supreme Court rules in favor of the heirs of the Thyssen 'pissarro' looted by the Nazis

2022-04-21T23:50:25.711Z


The high court unanimously decides that in this case the Californian law prevails and not the Spanish, which opens the door to the return of the painting


Two visitors contemplate the painting 'Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon.

Effect of rain', in the Thyssen.luis from Seville

The Supreme Court of the United States has given the reason with a unanimous verdict to the Cassirer family, heirs to a painting by Camille Pissarro that was plundered by the Nazis in 1939 and that has belonged to the Spanish State since the 1990s as part of the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza, exhibited in Madrid.

The high court has not decided that Impressionist painting

Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon.

Effect of rain

, 1897, should be returned to the grandchildren of Lilly Cassirer, Jewish, that had to undersell to obtain a visa with which to leave Germany at the dawn of World War Mudial and avoid the fate of a concentration camp.

As the US Supreme gives them reason it is his hope that the law that applies to this claim than the Spanish, but California.

And this legislation strongly prefers that the painting be returned to their original owners.

More information

Whose painting is that looted by the Nazis?

In practice, the ruling implies that the case returns to the lower courts, where they always (also, last year, in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with jurisdiction over nine states in the Western United States) agreed with the museum for considering that the Spanish regulations prevailed.

When the issue lands again on the table of the Los Angeles judge and he reviews the case, he will have to apply the Californian this time, which is much more favorable to the wishes of the family.

Drafted by Judge Elena Kagan on behalf of the nine members of the court, the sentence is blunt:.

“The path of our decision has been as short as the search for [the work]

Rue Saint-Honoré has been long,”

writes Kagan, who attributes to “a state or foreign entity” the same responsibility as an individual after an interpretation of the principle of legal choice and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (1976), which was designed to order judicial traffic in international relations.

What regulations apply, then?

For the Supreme Court, “the answer is simple”: the one that would prevail if one of the parties was not a foreign state, but a citizen of the place, California, where the lawsuit was filed.

The sentence also takes the opportunity to summarize the troubled vicissitudes of the canvas.

Both Lilly and her grandson, photographer Claude Cassirer (1921-2010), ended up in the United States.

His search for the painting, which was lost after the war ended, was unsuccessful.

Although it was not as far as it seemed;

It passed through the hands of a Beverly Hills dealer in the 1950s, and Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza bought it in good faith in 1976 (a good faith that has not softened the Supreme Court) for $360,000 from a New York gallery.

Lilly was given the equivalent of $360 in 1939, though he never actually received the money;

The deposit was made into an account already blocked by the Nazi regime.

Of course, the Government of the German Federal Republic recognized her as the owner of it and gave her 120,000 marks as compensation.

Pissarro

is valued at about 30 million dollars (about 28 million euros).

The Spanish state bought it in 1993 as part of the collection of more than 775 pieces of the Baron, for 350 million dollars.

Claude learned from an acquaintance, visiting Madrid, that the

The canvas – which, according to the sentence, one of his ancestors had acquired from Pissarro himself in 1900 and hung in the family's Berlin apartment – ​​was actually in a Spanish national museum.

So he decided to sue the State in the place where he had retired, California (he lived in San Diego with his wife and with a copy of

Rue Saint-Honoré

in the living room).

Public ownership of the table for six years is enough, according to Spanish law to consider the museum as to its rightful owner.

Thyssen had exposed the

pissarro

for nearly eight years before the first Cassirer asked its return in 2001, a year after Claude locate him.

California law for an object obtained in this way can not generate a legitimate title property.

After learning of the ruling, a Thyssen spokesperson in Madrid has indicated, in a telephone conversation with this newspaper, that "there is still nothing to say" and that they are "at the expense of what the museum's lawyers in the United States explain, that They are working on the case."

The same sources have added that it will be this Friday when the foundation issues a statement to clarify its position, once all the details of the sentence have been analyzed.

In statements to

the Los Angeles Times,

David Cassirer, who took the witness of the claim to the death of his father and had the support of the Jewish Federation of San Diego, has defined this Thursday morning as "a happy morning."

"We always consider this case very important to send the message that museums and governments should not be allowed to accumulate art that was looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust."

In the case,

the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Jewish Community of Madrid, represented by the Spanish law firm B. Cremades & Asociados , had also appeared as

amicus curiae to provide assistance and support to the Cassirer family.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-04-21

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