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

[Pohemi]

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

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.

BuT LiBrUhLs aRe ThE vIoLeNt oNeS HuRrRrR DuRrRrR

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

I'd have agreed with that sentiment if it were 5 or 10 years after the transaction. Look at it this way:

A Ukrainian family has a home and property that has been in their family for several generations, along with all of the property therein. They are in danger of being killed in the current fighting, and decide to abandon their home in order to flee to Poland and escape the war.
Now I give you two scenarios to follow those events.
The first scenario, A) The family returns to Ukraine within several years to reclaim their property and home. There's a decent chance that they won't have to fight hard to get it back, and won't have a hard time proving it was theirs to begin with.
The second scenario, B) an ancestor two or three generations down the family line decides to follow their history and discovers details of the former generational property in Ukraine. It's been 80 years since the family had to flee. Now they want to lay ancestral claim to the home and property.

Is that 2nd scenario fair to you? Mind you...they didn't SELL the home, they simply abandoned it to flee the fighting. Are they still entitled to get it back almost a century later? Not IMO. A sad story and quite unfortunate no doubt, but it doesn't entitle them to the property that someone else obtained and now holds.

 

[Moonbeam]

Just imagine trying to have a conversation on the subject of ethical compensation in a culture built on completion, where the whole strategy of winning depends on one’s facility for aggression.

———————————-

“I won, mofo, I robbed you fair and square. I even made the laws to give me that permission, so don’t say I’m being unfair.

But if I can make a buck assisting you to steal back what was stolen, count me in.

The important point is that possession is nine tenths of the law and the law is determined, when it comes to land, as to who stuck what flag in it. The native Americans, for example, socialist fools that they were, didn’t know this. Well, it’s too late baby, it’s too late.”

When it comes to genocide he who does the best job wins. It’s the law of the jungle until the jungle becomes neat little surveyed blocks with titles of ownership.”

 

[Vic]

I see a case against the German govt here but not the museum.

 

[Sunburn74]

I don't think they should get a dime and think the case is ludicrous.

 

[Sunburn74]

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.

Maybe so. First of all it's art. Art has no intrinsic value. What's worth millions to one person is utter trash to another. That's why these things go to auction and no one knows exactly what will happen. If they were willing to sell for 1500, they may have sold for 3000, or 20000. Regardless the lawsuit today would probably still be happening because the family wants the millions the item is now valued at without having incurred the risk the dealer incurred of holding the piece for years. Maybe Picasso would certainly have gotten more valuable over time or maybe he'd be arrested for a horrible crime or so something revolting and his art becomes worthless. The fact is the actual purchase price doesn't matter because if they knew it would be worth 200 million eventually they never would have sold for less than that. The family today is really trying to get the value of the painting without incurring the risk of holding a painting with periods of appreciation and depreciation which is why I don't think they should get a dime. The world is flooded with art. Most of it is worthless and no one can really tell what will be worth something and what is utter junk. In fact many today think art success is largely a matter of marketing at this point.

I could agree to give them the fair market value of the Picasso as it would have gotten in an auction in the 1930s perhaps but even then that doesn't seem right. You cannot force someone to pay more for something they don't want to. There's no law that says an art dealer must do market research and can only purchase items at their exact peak market value. There are price gouging laws in some places in the US but this isn't even anything close to that.

 

[Zorba]

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.

Not to be too punctilious, but the Holocaust had not yet started. The article doesn't have a sell date in it, but it more than likely occured prior to Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938). The first ghetto was established in October of 1939.

Obviously Jews were still treated terribly prior to these events, but better than what they'd face a year or two later. At this point the Nazis would still allow Jews to leave, for example.

 

[Moonbeam]

I see a case against the German govt here but not the museum.

Who better than a museum to know the history of an art piece? Aren’t they Carpetbagger-central for stolen world treasures and under constant assault to return the goods?

 

[pmv]

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 don't know, it seems extremely complicated to me. I have no idea, really. Glad I'm not the one having to make the judgement.

I know someone whose forebears had to flee their home country, losing a huge amount of wealth because the country collapsed into near-perpetual violent chaos (as I understand it, much of the property has ended up being owned by the descendants of the lawyers involved in the resultant never-ending court cases, that went on interminably like Jarndyce vs Jarndyce).

Though on the other hand, the means by which those ancestors gained all that wealth in the first place could be questioned (being a mixture of traditional domestic elites in a society that was never remotely democratic, intermarried with incoming colonisers who violently took over - I doubt any of them got rich through 100% correctly remunerated hard work...but then I'm not sure how anyone makes that judgement when you consider earlier eras of history).

There must be countless cases like that, where refugees are involved (particularly with regard to all the countries that fell into civil war or despotism at the end of colonialism). Which ones should be renumerated, and at whose expense?

On the other hand, I suppose one could argue that anything to do with the Holocaust is somehow a 'special case' - plus there's the fact that this involves a specific identifiable unique object - maybe that makes it different somehow?

 

[Moonbeam]

Not to be too punctilious, but the Holocaust had not yet started. The article doesn't have a sell date in it, but it more than likely occured prior to Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938). The first ghetto was established in October of 1939.

Obviously Jews were still treated terribly prior to these events, but better than what they'd face a year or two later. At this point the Nazis would still allow Jews to leave, for example.

To be scrupulous, it can be argued that a function of high intelligence can be argued to chronologically separate when those so gifted see what’s coming from those with their heads in the sand.

It has more than once crossed my mind to attribute the higher IQ level purportedly measured within certain Jewish population groups to an unnatural selective pressure known as pogroms. Some who know history keep from repeating it.

 

[pmv]

A Ukrainian family has a home and property that has been in their family for several generations, along with all of the property therein. They are in danger of being killed in the current fighting, and decide to abandon their home in order to flee to Poland and escape the war.
Now I give you two scenarios to follow those events.
The first scenario, A) The family returns to Ukraine within several years to reclaim their property and home. There's a decent chance that they won't have to fight hard to get it back, and won't have a hard time proving it was theirs to begin with.
The second scenario, B) an ancestor two or three generations down the family line decides to follow their history and discovers details of the former generational property in Ukraine. It's been 80 years since the family had to flee. Now they want to lay ancestral claim to the home and property.

Yeah, I think that's a valid comparison. Not least because I personally have known _many_ people in exactly that situation, people who had to flee their home countries due to civil disorder (or, in one case, knowing government death squads had their names on a list) and lost all their wealth in the process, including land and property.

Do their descendants all get to claim that land and property back, dispossessing whoever now has it? Not saying it's an easy question, as I mentioned already, that's a real ongoing dilemma in Poland and Cyprus in particular.

Not sure why this case is any different.

 

[Moonbeam]

I don't know, it seems extremely complicated to me. I have no idea, really. Glad I'm not the one having to make the judgement.

I know someone whose forebears had to flee their home countries, losing a huge amount of wealth because those countries collapsed into near-perpetual violent chaos (as I understand it, much of the property has ended up being owned by the descendants of the lawyers involved in the resultant never-ending court cases, that went on interminably like Jarndyce vs Jarndyce).

Though on the other hand, the means by which those ancestors gained all that wealth in the first place could be questioned (being a mixture of traditional domestic elites in a society that was never remotely democratic, intermarried with incoming colonisers who violently took over - I doubt any of them got rich through 100% correctly remunerated hard work...but then I'm not sure how anyone makes that judgement when you consider earlier eras of history).

There must be countless cases like that, where refugees are involved. Which ones should be renumerated, and at whose expense?

On the other hand, I suppose one could argue that anything to do with the Holocaust is somehow a 'special case' - plus there's the fact that this involves a specific identifiable unique object - maybe that makes it different somehow?

Who knows anything? The thread holds my interest isn’t because I need to pronounce a judgment but because of what I experience inwardly feeling my way through the question.

 

[hal2kilo]

Who better than a museum to know the history of an art piece? Aren’t they Carpetbagger-central for stolen world treasures and under constant assault to return the goods?

Pretty much these days when it comes to antiquities. First, thing I thought about when I went to the British Museum. Holy hell, they stole MOST of the good stuff first. Assyrian, Greek, Egyptian relics. They've got the freaking Rosetta Stone. Every other time I go to my Archeology News site, there is a story about relics being returned from museums all over the world.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Obviously the rignt answer here is that the family should have kept the painting and then taken their chances at Dachau or Bergen-Belsen or something.

You know, or they could have sold the painting to purchase transport out of Nazi Germany. But not to a morally upstanding art dealer who would never have bought a painting from people under duress. Better to ford the death camps than do that.

I mean family of four, only one of them needs to make it out alive and then they get to keep that sweet Picasso painting for the rest of their lives.

 

[Sunburn74]

Honestly the first thing I would ask is what court even has jurisdiction for this sort of case? Secondarily I would ask if it wasn't illegal or a violation of civil law in the country that this occured at the time this occurred how can they even have a case today? Countries are allowed some degree of autonomy to set rules and policies even if other countries don't like them. Thirdly how broadly does it apply? Can anyone fleeing a country retroactively sue residents of that country for lost wages, the value of items, etc etc

The whole case to me seems to be built on pins and needles

 

[Leymenaide]

Almost everybody I grew up around was alive because they had a gold ring or coin at the right moment. Do I have a claim on Swiss gold goldings?