Pinakothek in Munich Returns Nazi-Looted Painting by Lesser Ury to Jewish Heirs
The Pinakotheken in Munich announced it will return Lesser Ury’s painting Interior with Children (The Siblings) to the Jewish heirs of its original owner, Berlin banker Curt Goldschmidt, after determining it was sold at auction under duress during the Nazi era. Goldschmidt’s bank collapsed under National Socialist economic policies, forcing the family to liquidate assets; the painting is believed to have sold for about 800 Reichsmarks (roughly $4,000 today), far below later market levels for Ury works, which have fetched $40,000–$100,000. Provenance records indicate the work resurfaced at a Cologne auction house in 1940 with a note stating it came from “non-Aryan ownership,” and the Bavarian State Painting Collections acquired it in 1972. Bavaria’s minister of art Markus Blume and museum director Anton Biebl framed the restitution as recognition of both the artist’s and collectors’ Jewish provenance and the loss caused by Nazi persecution; Goldschmidt fled to Paris in 1937 and died in 1947.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Restitution Reckonings and Biennale Boycott Fever