87 years on, German gallery returns stolen portraits to heirs of Jewish art dealer

Two paintings stolen by the Nazis have been restituted by Germany’s largest cultural foundation and will be displayed in a national museum.

Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) said Monday it has restituted the two works to the heirs of the Berlin art dealer and publisher Bruno Cassirer. It then repurchased the paintings and will display them in the Alte Nationalgalerie, a museum on Berlin’s Museum Island.

“Portrait of Bruno Cassirer” by Max Liebermann will be presented in the museum’s permanent exhibition beginning Tuesday. “Bruno Cassirer’s Father on His Deathbed,” by Max Slevogt, will go on display next year.

Bruno Cassirer, born in Breslau in 1872, was the influential owner of a prestigious publishing house and art gallery in Berlin’s Tiergarten district, representing artists such as Liebermann and Slevogt. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Cassirer faced persecution due to his Jewish heritage, and his membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature was revoked. He was forced to emigrate to England in 1938, and his assets, including his art collection, were confiscated and auctioned by the Nazi regime. He died in Oxford in 1941.

The two paintings were acquired in the 1960s by the West Berlin State Museums from art dealer and publisher Wolfgang Gurlitt. While neither work contains any provenance markings indicating that it belonged to Cassirer’s collection, there is substantial evidence that Gurlitt purchased them at a forced auction of Cassirer’s works in 1944.

The SPK contacted Cassirer’s heirs about the two paintings at the end of 2023, and reached a fair agreement with them to repurchase the paintings, it said. The foundation, which oversees major museums, libraries, and archives in Berlin, had made previous art restitutions to the heirs in 2002 and 2016, it noted.

“The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is assuming responsibility for the crimes of National Socialist Germany,” said Martin Hoernes, secretary general of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation. “The portrait of Bruno Cassirer by Max Slevogt will thus remain an important work in the exhibition.”