Germany has restituted a painting by the German landscape painter Carl Blechen to the heirs of two Jewish brothers and art collectors, from whom the work was confiscated by the Nazis in 1942. Hitler had intended for the work to go on view in his unrealized Fürhermuseum in his hometown of Linz, Austria.
Blechen, a contemporary of Caspar David Friedrich, was one of the pre-eminent German landscape painters of the 19th century, celebrated for his Romantic idealizations of natural beauty. His The Valley of Mills near Amalfi (ca. 1830) was painted shortly after a trip he took to Italy. It was acquired by a Dr. D.H. Goldschmidt in Berlin in the early 20th century and inherited by his sons Arthur, a publisher, and Eugen, a chemist.
After the November pogroms of 1938, also known as Kristallnacht, the brothers committed suicide and their art collection was inherited by their nephew Edgar Moor, who that year had emigrated to Johannesburg, South Africa and later settled in the U.S. until his death in 1994. The artworks, meanwhile, remained at the Berlin apartment shared by his uncles until they were seized by the Gestapo in July 1942.
The work by Blechen has now been restituted to Moor’s heir by Germany’s Federal Art Administration, which proactively researches the provenance of the government’s cultural assets in view of restituting works that were unlawfully confiscated by the Nazis, in accordance with the Washington Principles, instituted in 1998.
“The return of the artwork is of great importance for the family and its history,” said a representative for Moor’s heir. “My client is very grateful for the accompanying recognition of the fact that this art theft was the result of incitement and persecution of the brothers Dr. Arthur Goldschmidt and Dr. Eugen Goldschmidt.”
After the Goldschmidts’ collection was seized by the Nazis, the Blechen painting was bought by Hitler’s “Special Commission Linz” in 1944 for display at the Fürhermuseum, a project that would have been part of the reconstruction of the city of Linz in Austria into the cultural capital of Nazi Germany.
The artwork was stored at the Führerbau, an administrative building used by Hitler that still exists in Munich, from where it was probably stolen in 1945, according to research by the Federal Art Administration and the OFP project at the Brandenburg State Archives. It was eventually found by the Munich Criminal Police in the late 1940s and, on June 10 1949, the American military government handed it and a trove of other objects that had not been restituted by that time over to the Bavarian prime minister Hans Ehard.
In 1952, it was placed in the care of Germany’s federal government and officially became federal property in 1960, as did other former property of the Third Reich. It was most recently loaned to the Prince Pückler Museum Foundation – Park and Castle Branitz in Cottbus.
A detailed account of how these transfers of ownership have been proven is provided by the Federal Art Administration, who confirmed that there is enough evidence that ” it can be safely assumed that the painting in question was confiscated from Edgar Moor as a result of Nazi persecution.” The Valley of Mills near Amalfi is the 69th artwork owned by the Federal Republic of Germany to be returned by the administration.
“The investigation into the Nazi theft of cultural property is an important part of remembering those persecuted by the Nazi regime,” Germany’s culture minister Claudia Roth said in a press statement. “With the return of the painting by Carl Blechen, which was confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution, the fates of Arthur and Eugen Goldschmidt as well as Edgar Moor are now becoming a little more visible.”