Pablo Picasso. And the name alone is enough to attract the attention of the art world. And so it is no surprise that a Picasso became a symbol of how Germany handled the subject of of stolen art by the Nazi regime. It’s about the table “Madame Soler” of 1903, of the Spanish artist’s Blue Period, which is exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art in Munich. According to the museum, this is not a stolen work.

The Historian Julius Sepps he sees it completely differently. The painting clearly belonged to his uncle, the German-Jewish banker and art collector Paul von Mendelssohn Bartholdi. The emeritus professor of modern history at the University of Potsdam researched the issue for years and wrote a book entitled: “Who owns Picasso’s ‘Madame Soler’?”. He says the painting was sold in 1935 because of the persecution of Jews after Hitler came to power in 1933.The fact that Bavaria claims that there were no persecutions until 1935 is completely ahistorical“, he says angrily in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

The difficult role of the Advisory Committee

Twenty years ago, the Advisory Committee on Nazi Stolen Art with the aim of making recommendations in complex cases. But the problem is that the Commission can only intervene if both parties agree. In this particular case, however, the state of Bavaria refuses to proceed with negotiations, according to Commission President Hans Jürgen Papier. .

The chairman of the committee requests that it be possible to convene it unilaterally, without the museums needing to give their consent and indeed that the recommendations of the Committee be binding.

Germany signed the so-called “Washington Principles” in 1998according to which 43 states committed to identifying “works of art confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution and to find just solutions» with their owners or heirs. Germany is not complying, says Julius Sepps. “Germany is the country of criminals and in this country heirs despair of the way they are treated“, he emphasizes and adds that if something is not finally done, Germany’s reputation will be damaged internationally.

The Deputy Minister of Culture Claudia Rothon the occasion of the completion of twenty years since the establishment of the Commission, stated that there will be consultations with the federated states, in order to enable unilateral appeal to the Commission.

Commission President Hans-Jürgen Papier, however, is calling for more to be done. He calls for a law to restore damages. In its 20 years of operation, it issued 23 recommendations and “this is very littlePapier points out.

An example of a return

A typical case of a return was in 2017, when the Reynolds family received one back watercolor by Carl Schmitt-Rotluff. Vernon Reynolds, 87 today, is the grandson of Jewish businessman and art collector Max Rydenberg, who owned the painting.

“What are paintings?he asks in an interview with DW. He would rather talk as he does about the people who perished than about the performance of the works of art. “You can return works of art but not people,” he says. “I lost my father and my grandparents on both sides. Uncles, aunts, all gone forever».

Vernon Reynolds, who was born in Berlin in 1935, survived with his mother thanks to the art collection of his grandfather Max Rydenberg. They sold everything they could to get out of the country. Vernon’s brother and sister managed to reach England with a caravan of children. His mother managed to escape with Vernon, who was three years old at the time. But his father died in Auschwitz as did his grandfather and grandmother in the Theresienstadt extermination camp.