Illustration
Jewish art dealer's heirs want return of Nazi loot
Heirs of Jewish art dealer forced to sell collection to Nazis during WWII seeking help from museums worldwide to track down hundreds of works
The heirs of a Jewish art dealer forced to sell his collection to the Nazis during World War II are seeking help from museums around the world to track down 500 works, a report said Thursday.
A catalogue to be issued next month contains mostly art sold at low prices and against the wishes of dealer Jacques Goudstikker's widow to German field marshall Herman Goering, the NRC Next paper reported in The Hague.
The catalogue would be sent to museums around to see if they have any of the works of art, it said.
Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's American daughter-in-law, wants museums to check if they have bought or received any of the works looted from the Goudstikker collection so that she can reclaim them.
Rudi Ekkart, the director of the Dutch art documentation center who helped put together the catalogue, told the paper that Dutch museums could still have "several dozen but not hundreds" of works from the collection.
On May 14, 1940, several days after Germany invaded the Netherlands, Goudstikker left for Britain with his wife and son, leaving behind a collection of around 1,100 artworks catalogued in a notebook that he carried with him.
On board the ship to Britain, the art dealer fell through a hatch and died. His wife and son traveled on to the United States.
After the war the Netherlands retrieved some 300 works from the Goudstikker collection that became property of the Dutch state.
In 1952 the Dutch government, against the wishes of Goudstikker's widow, sold part of the collection and distributed the rest to several Dutch museums.
After years of legal wrangling the Dutch government finally agreed in February last year to give back 202 works, including pieces from Italian and Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masters, to Goudstikker's heirs.
