18 August 2006
Art lovers in Germany are fighting to keep a 1913 painting of a prostitute that was recently given back to its rightful Jewish owners. The row over the painting "Berlin Street Scene" by the expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner could lead to an overhaul of the way the government deals with art confiscated by the Nazis, "The Times" newspaper reports. The painting was returned in July to the heirs of Alfred Hess, a German Jewish shoe factory owner, after almost two years of secret negotiation with the state government of Berlin. Within days Christie’s had announced that it would be put up for sale in New York. “It is the most significant work of German Expressionism that has ever been put up for auction,” Andreas Rumbler, of Christie’s Germany, told "The Times". But Bernd Schultz, one of the most influential art dealers in Germany, said that there was never any real legal, or even moral basis for handing the painting over. “Like many other German businessmen, Alfred Hess was made bankrupt by the world economic crisis of 1929,” Schultz said, adding, “All he had left was a great art collection.”
The family started to sell paintings to survive. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the Hess family fled to Britain. "Berlin Street Scene" was sent to Switzerland for sale but was eventually sold in 1936 to Carl Hagemann, the Frankfurt collector. After the war it was acquired by the German state and has become a cornerstone of Berlin’s famous collection of expressionist art. The Berlin Government argues that the Hess family was forced to sell because of Nazi persecution and that the price was artificially low. “One cannot doubt the racial persecution of the former owners,” said Hans-Gerhard Husung, art specialist for the Berlin government. The city was therefore obliged to return the painting to the heirs." Christoph Stölzl, vice-president of Berlin's parliament and a former culture minister of Berlin, also criticized the return of the painting, saying that it could trigger the return of up to 100 additional works “that form the cornerstone of Germany’s modern art collections”, based on what he called less-than-convincing proof of ownership, according to JTA.
