Should a Jewish family fleeing the Nazis be able to recover its Picasso, 80 years later?

[Moonbeam]

If they sold the property under physical threat of dying if they didn't, then yes. But that situation doesn't occur very often. I don't think you can compare this to any ordinary situation like, we have to sell our house because I lost my job and we can't afford to live in the area any more. That is not the kind of duress necessary to invalidate a contract. Fleeing from death and internment is. I think it also matters that the buyer clearly took advantage of their situation. But I'm beginning to see that most people do not agree with me on that.

How about the kind of duress liberals seek today to force old people to sell their single family homes by raising taxes so high they can't afford to pay them? I bought a gun a long time ago for I have no idea how good a price and the seller later asked me to sell it back to him. I happened to want the gun more than the money but it still bothers me I was asked since once he was more financially secure he did too. The fact that I get attached to things is quite annoying.

Another way to look at this would be to return anything to anybody that was lost as a result of holocaust. It ought to be axiomatic that nonody anywhere should profit from that.

 

[Drach]

No considering the circumstances

 

[MrSquished]

How about the kind of duress liberals seek today to force old people to sell their single family homes by raising taxes so high they can't afford to pay them? I bought a gun a long time ago for I have no idea how good a price and the seller later asked me to sell it back to him. I happened to want the gun more than the money but it still bothers me I was asked since once he was more financially secure he did too. The fact that I get attached to things is quite annoying.

Another way to look at this would be tr return anything to anybody that was lost as a result of holocaust. It ought to be axiomatic that monody anywhere should profit from that.

When you buy a home nobody is pretending real estate prices never vary and forever stay the same- your home value can go up or down, it is also common knowledge that property taxes can and are re-assessed, therefore there is nobody being duped whatsoever in that process.

 

[MrSquished]

I agree they should not get money for this, but definitely I stand by my suggestion they be allowed to punch some current day Nazis so just offer them up some MAGA faces.

 

[crashtech]

I agree they should not get money for this, but definitely I stand by my suggestion they be allowed to punch some current day Nazis so just offer them up some MAGA faces.

The fact that you are so willing to offer up your countrymen for beatings probably puts you at the front of the line.

 

[kt]

Did the art dealer tell them that he would turn them in if they won't sell the painting to him for $1500?

The fact that you are so willing to offer up your countrymen for beatings probably puts you at the front of the line.

What if the said countrymen are insurrectionists?

 

[MrSquished]

The fact that you are so willing to offer up your countrymen for beatings probably puts you at the front of the line.

Sure I'll punch them too. I hate evil people and MAGA people have shown that they are pure evil. I'll punch a Nazi, in fact I think that's what everyone should do when they encounter Nazis.

Punching Nazis is good.

 

[crashtech]

Sure I'll punch them too. I hate evil people and MAGA people have shown that they are pure evil. I'll punch a Nazi, in fact I think that's what everyone should do when they encounter Nazis.

Punching Nazis is good.

It's nuts that you can't see that you are the problem. I feel sorry for you. Perhaps you are young, and have not seen death. If you won't abide your own countrymen, don't be surprised when, at last, they won't abide you.

 

[woolfe9998]

He gave them the money to survive. Should he have turned them away instead? You don't get fair market value selling any artwork to a dealer ever. I'm sure they fit less than they should have, but I'm sure the art dealer could've also stolen it and gotten away with it, too.

No, he should have paid them more for the painting.

I mean, are you imaging that they just went and asked for $1500 for their Picasso and out of the goodness of his heart, he took the painting for a tiny fraction of its value? Because he wanted to help. No one is trying to help someone by paying them a miniscule fraction of what something is worth. Let's try a more plausible scenario. They went and asked for 10 times that much, but he wouldn't budge beyond $1500 because he knew they were desperate to leave Germany.

I don't really see any other possibility here besides him being a knowing profiteer of their plight. Unless we assume this art dealer either did not know anything about the value of the painting, or else didn't know anything about what was happening to Jews in his own country. The fact that we know he was very likely aware of both of these things, coupled with the low price, leads to only one logical conclusion: he took advantage of their circumstance.

 

[woolfe9998]

People in disparate situations sell items below market value all the time, this is basically how pawn shops work. Morally, would it be better for all potential buyers to refuse purchasing said item because some time later the seller can say never mind? These people obviously thought getting getting the money to escape was worth more to them than this painting.

Nothing about the holocaust is moral, but this art dealer helped save this family's lives and considering the original owners never made a claim for the painting, they must've thought so too. It's not like you could walk into an art galley today a demand a quick sell and get any where near fair market value today either.

Most of those people you're talking about will sell a house fo 20% under market value because they have debts and are desperate for cash to ward off creditors. Or something like that. They aren't selling you a house for 2% of it value because if they do not, they'll be in a concentration camp by the end of the week. One is duress under the law, while the other is not.

I think you're being absurd painting this guy as some kind of hero LOL. Wow what a stretch. He gets a painting for $20K that was probably worth at least $1 million back then, and he was only trying to help.

Let me pose a hypothetical. If you own a grocery store, and a raggedy looking man comes and tells you he and his children are starving, and would you take his father's Rollex for 2 loaves of bread, what would you do? Would you take the watch, sell it for $10,000, then brag about what a hero you are? Or is there perhaps something else that an actual decent human being might do instead? Think about it.

 

[Leeea]

Yes

 

[mikeymikec]

How about the kind of duress liberals seek today to force old people to sell their single family homes by raising taxes so high they can't afford to pay them?

Moonbeams brain: Is this fantasy too ridiculous to pose as a hypothetical in a serious discussion? Nah... though maybe I should hold off on the "and then force them to gender change and identify as cat people" fantasy for at least another decade.

 

[ch33zw1z]

It's nuts that you can't see that you are the problem. I feel sorry for you. Perhaps you are young, and have not seen death. If you won't abide your own countrymen, don't be surprised when, at last, they won't abide you.

I think your last sentence is exactly what’s happened, except in the opposite order you think it has

 

[Moonbeam]

When you buy a home nobody is pretending real estate prices never vary and forever stay the same- your home value can go up or down, it is also common knowledge that property taxes can and are re-assessed, therefore there is nobody being duped whatsoever in that process.

As usual, you think you understand what you actually don't. I have found you prefer to stay that way so I won't bother to clarify.

 

[Moonbeam]

Moonbeams brain: Is this fantasy too ridiculous to pose as a hypothetical in a serious discussion? Nah... though maybe I should hold off on the "and then force them to gender change and identify as cat people" fantasy for at least another decade.

Yes it is far afield and not something most people would consider. But I have a habit of thinking about things from odd angles and rather more vigorously, I think, than most people. The really interesting part of woolfe's question to me lies in determining what distress means as a moral determinant. What is distress and when should it imply a need for moral redress. Perhaps you never gave that question any thought at all so your mind would perhaps not wonder off imagining all manner of scenarios. For example, in so wondering it struck me that a holocaust is the kind of event I would think is morally obligatory to consider as distress and that as such should command the highest level of redress morally imaginable. As I said, perhaps even a museum should not benefit from the fact that art needed to be sold to escape genocide and later fell into a museum's hands. Perhaps, at least, they should pay some sort of rental fee that gets passed on to the viewing public.

 

[Zorba]

It's nuts that you can't see that you are the problem. I feel sorry for you. Perhaps you are young, and have not seen death. If you won't abide your own countrymen, don't be surprised when, at last, they won't abide you.

"They are Nazis because you are intolerant of their intolerance!!"

 

[Zorba]

No, he should have paid them more for the painting.

I mean, are you imaging that they just went and asked for $1500 for their Picasso and out of the goodness of his heart, he took the painting for a tiny fraction of its value? Because he wanted to help. No one is trying to help someone by paying them a miniscule fraction of what something is worth. Let's try a more plausible scenario. They went and asked for 10 times that much, but he wouldn't budge beyond $1500 because he knew they were desperate to leave Germany.

I don't really see any other possibility here besides him being a knowing profiteer of their plight. Unless we assume this art dealer either did not know anything about the value of the painting, or else didn't know anything about what was happening to Jews in his own country. The fact that we know he was very likely aware of both of these things, coupled with the low price, leads to only one logical conclusion: he took advantage of their circumstance.

Try to take jewelry to a pawn shop and see how close to "market value" you get. He may have been the only person that would've done business with them at all. They may have said "We need $1500 and this is what we have." He may have said "This piece could probably get $20,000 at auction, but I can only pay $1500 for it today, since half my clients are fleeing the country." Or "I can only give you $1500 because it's a black market sell and the Nazis would beat/kill me if they knew I bought this painting from a Jew."

You are putting a modern day, peace time twist on a conversation you weren't party to and no one else living was party to. If I was in that situation I would much rather get the money I needed to get out of Germany than hold out for the best offer and not get out.

 

[Zorba]

Most of those people you're talking about will sell a house fo 20% under market value because they have debts and are desperate for cash to ward off creditors. Or something like that. They aren't selling you a house for 2% of it value because if they do not, they'll be in a concentration camp by the end of the week. One is duress under the law, while the other is not.

I think you're being absurd painting this guy as some kind of hero LOL. Wow what a stretch. He gets a painting for $20K that was probably worth at least $1 million back then, and he was only trying to help.

Let me pose a hypothetical. If you own a grocery store, and a raggedy looking man comes and tells you he and his children are starving, and would you take his father's Rollex for 2 loaves of bread, what would you do? Would you take the watch, sell it for $10,000, then brag about what a hero you are? Or is there perhaps something else that an actual decent human being might do instead? Think about it.

It wasn't two loaves of bread, it was for their freedom. Would they rather hold out for more money and have the painting stolen by the Nazis?

People today trade their entire life savings to be smuggled to the US. There are many people that get pawn loans for well well under fair market value and then never payback the loan and lose their stuff. I'm sure these people left behind a whole household full of other wares that were all stolen evidently.

Also do we actually have any evidence this painting was worth that much in 1938 Germany, much less one being sold by a Jew? It's not like they could've put it for auction at Christy's.

Basically everything that happened in WW2 Europe could be claimed to have happened under duress, should we undo all of it for fairness, undo millions or billions of transactions?

 

[MrSquished]

It's nuts that you can't see that you are the problem. I feel sorry for you. Perhaps you are young, and have not seen death. If you won't abide your own countrymen, don't be surprised when, at last, they won't abide you.

It's nuts that you think fascist racist bigoted Nazis that want to shoot demonstrators and asylum seekers and kill them, control women and discriminate against everybody not white and Christian are not the problem.

For you I prescribe punching a Nazi. You are so far lost that I think That may help you find your way.

Anybody who think Nazis are not the problem but the people that don't like Nazis is a fucking idiot.

 

[pmv]

You don't have to prove "fraud or crime" by the buyer. Let me restate it again: any contract signed under duress is not a valid contract and may be set aside by courts at any time later.

But even setting aside legalities for one moment, do you think it's OK to buy things at a fraction of their market value from refugees who are fleeing probable death or internment? The reason I ask this moral question of you is that you seem awfully punitive towards these plantiffs.



That is partly correct but the remedy would not be what you would suggest. It would be to give the plaintiff's current fair market value, but deduct the maintenance and insurances costs already incurred by the current owner. You say they would benefit from luck, but they would not have in this situation had they not been fleeing the Nazis to begin with. The painting would have simply remained in their family. And so far as it being luck, well I guess it was that or a smart investment in the work of a painter who was already famous and was getting more and more so with each passing year.

I don't know, I think the issue is more complicated than either you or Zorba are saying. Seems as if there are complicating factors, the main one being that this wasn't just generic wealth, it was a specific, identifiable valuable object. But there's another complication which is the question of to what extent it's right for valuable cultural heritage to be 'owned' by individuals in the first place.

But it's true that history is full of injustices that have effects that have come down through the generations, and I don't know how you put any of them right retrospectively. I think you can never work out a full accurate accounting for the whole of human history, all you can do is aim for a measure of equality and to reduce suffering here-and-now.r.

 

[brycejones]

It's a tough one.

Was the original sale exploitive? Absolutely,

Does the Guggenheim have responsibility for that previous deal? No.

Did the family of the art dealer receive financial benefit from the exploitive sale? Doesn't appear so since the painting was donated to the Guggenheim upon the death of the art dealer.

I'm just not sure there is an appropriate party for compensation.

 

[Pens1566]

From a legal standpoint? Likely no. There would have to be some really specific conditions (that don't seem to exist) in order for that case to be made.

Does it suck and was it a really shitty thing for the original buyer to gain from? Absolutely. But I doubt there's any way to really make it right.

 

[mikeymikec]

Interesting argument.

As it is, some random person buys something for a bargain because the selling party is desperate. That shit happens all the time. It's not ideally right, but where would you draw the line? The seller's life is in immediate (man-made) danger? Their short-term health? Their long-term health? Their home? Their job? The utilities coming into their home?

As it is, the family escaped with their lives presumably thanks to that sale. They definitely got something or it, and I'd be very fucking surprised those family members who survived the Holocaust would then have said, "you know what? I don't think escaping was quite worth that much!".

If it could be proven that the buyer was fronting for the Nazis, I'd accept the duress argument (because it's nigh-on the same thing as the Nazis demanding "your money or your life").

However, some interesting pro-duress arguments have been put forward and I do think they have some merit. I think for me to completely agree with the pro-duress argument, I'd have to ignore the many elephants in the room that represent late-stage capitalism, such as the US healthcare system which basically cries, "your money or your life!", any corporation that exploits cheap (and life threatening) overseas labour, any corporation that endangers the environment, and every other morally repugnant practice that is mostly tolerated in capitalism. Also, I'd ask those who are pro the duress argument: should pawn shops be illegal?

 

[Perknose]

Legalities and technicalities aside, of course the rightful heirs should be made whole, or some reasonable approximation thereof.

I am deeply disappointed at those here who don't see the forest (the Holocaust) for the trees (legalities.) It was the effing Holocaust, after all! They sold the painting under lethal duress, whether or not their situation meets the cold conditions of any pertaining statute.

It is the moral and ethical thing to do, hands down.

 

[brycejones]

Legalities and technicalities aside, of course the rightful heirs should be made whole, or some reasonable approximation thereof.

I am deeply disappointed at those here who don't see the forest (the Holocaust) for the trees (legalities.) It was the effing Holocaust, after all! They sold the painting under lethal duress, whether or not their situation meets the cold conditions of any pertaining statute.

It is the moral and ethical thing to do, hands down.

I think ultimately if any responsibility lands anywhere it should be the German government.