A German Jewish couple, Karl and Rosi Adler, after fleeing the Nazi regime in 1938, sold a painting by the painter Pablo Picasso to finance the trip, but now, 85 years later, the heirs want the work.
The painting is currently owned by the Guggenheim Museum in New York and is valued between 100 and 200 million euros.
The descendants of the German couple filed a civil lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York against the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, in Manhattan, which since 1978 has exhibited the work, which shows a woman ironing, which the Spanish master painted in 1904.
The group of plaintiffs – heirs in the United States and Argentina – claim to be the legitimate owners of the work and allege in the complaint dated January 20 that there was a “forced” sale in October 1938 and that the Adlers were pressured to sell. In a statement, the Guggenheim Museum disputes the “baseless” claim.
The story of “The Ironer,” like that of many European paintings stolen by the Nazis or lost during World War II, begins in 1916 when Karl Adler bought it from a German-Jewish gallery owner in Munich, Heinrich Thannhauser.
Karl Adler, a leather factory owner, and his wife Rosi enjoyed a “prosperous life” in Baden-Baden, in southwestern Germany, just opposite Strasbourg.
The arrival of Hitler and the Nazis to power in Berlin marked the beginning of the terrible persecution of the Jews in Germany and the freezing or confiscation of their property and assets.
In June 1938, the Adlers decided to flee their country, settling in the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland before seeking a visa for Argentina.
But to obtain the visa, the Adlers, who had already left Germany a few weeks earlier, sold the painting in October 1938 to Thannhauser’s son, Justin, who, also a Jew, had just taken refuge in Paris.
The sale was completed for $1,552, which would be about $32,000 today, nine times less than the $14,000 the Adlers had hoped to earn on the painting in the early 1930s.
This is the central argument of the complaint, which ensures that the work, valued today in the art market between 100 and 200 million dollars, was sold under duress.
“Thannhauser was well aware of the anguish of the Adler family. If they had not been persecuted by the Nazis, the Adlers would never have sold the painting at that price,” according to the plaintiffs, American Jewish individuals and organizations relying on a 2016 law framing the restitution of works of art to victims. of the Holocaust.
In 1976, when Justin Thannhauser died, his collection was donated to the Guggenheim.
The institution now says it had been in contact with a son, Karl Adler, before taking ownership of “The Ironer” in the 1970s and never expressed reservations about the work and its sale to Justin Thannhauser.
Although the couple’s heirs have been trying to keep the painting for a decade, the museum says it is the “legal owner” of the woman doing the laundry.
Source: TSF
