Holocaust survivor's son fights for poster collection

Collecting poster art was Hans Sachs' passion. The well-to-do German dentist compiled 12,500 pieces he painstakingly cataloged and displayed throughout his home in Berlin. He even published a magazine dedicated to the art form.

Like many German Jews, Sachs lost almost everything to rampaging mobs of Nazis during what became known as Kristallnacht - "the night of broken glass" - on Nov. 9, 1938. The Gestapo arrested him and hauled away his poster collection, which he never saw again.

Today, several thousand of the posters - likely worth millions - are stored in a German history museum, and Sachs' son wants them back.

But the museum is refusing to hand them over. Officials there say Hans Sachs was compensated by the German government for the loss of his collection more than 40 years ago. His son, they say, is entitled to nothing.

A legal battle seems to be on the horizon.

"His passion was to make this available to the world, to expose the world to the art form," Sarasota resident Peter Sachs said of his father, who died in 1974. "I don't think they should be languishing in a basement, nor do I think the Germans have a right of ownership, considering the circumstances under which they were stolen."

Peter Sachs, 67, hired New Jersey lawyer Gary Osen, a Holocaust restitution specialist. Osen last year won a landmark case, getting back land in downtown Berlin for a descendant of the Wertheim department store family, whose fortune was lost under the Nazis.

Osen said talks with the German Historical Museum, which has the posters, haven't produced results. The government's culture ministry recently offered arbitration before a committee that hears stolen art cases, but Osen said he is prepared to sue the museum to force the issue.

"Obviously, it's ironic that the German museum of history doesn't have much regard for history," he said.

Hans Josef Sachs was a teenager in the early part of the 20th century when he began collecting the bright-hued placards, which in those days were a primary medium to promote cultural events, advertise products and disseminate political thought.

Sachs - widely credited with elevating commercial graphics to an internationally recognized art form during the first decades of the last century - lost it all to the Nazis. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels intended for the seized collection to be the basis of a museum exhibit on the art of commerce, according to Hans Sachs' written account of the seizure.

After 17 days in a concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Sachs was freed and fled to America with his wife and son. He was certified to practice dentistry, and the family thrived in Boston and then New York City.

Represented by the United Restitution Organization, a Jewish aid group, Hans Sachs filed a claim and was compensated the equivalent of about $50,000 for the collection in March 1961, according to Rudolf Trabold, a spokesman for the German Historical Museum.

And when some of the posters resurfaced in an East German museum a few years later, Sachs did not demand their return, Trabold said. So his heirs have no claim.

Osen is arguing that whatever Hans Sachs was paid doesn't matter. He notes that the German government has committed to returning property seized by the Nazis to the heirs of the rightful owners, regardless of whether restitution has been paid.

Peter Sachs said his parents never told him part of the collection still existed. It was only last year, as the retired commercial airline pilot was trying to find original copies of his father's poster art magazine, Das Plakat, that he learned 3,700 pieces were in the German museum. What happened to the rest is unclear, although the museum said some were removed and auctioned in 1981.

Robert Brown, whose Reinhold-Brown Gallery in New York City specializes in poster art, said Hans Sachs' original collection included lithographs from many of the leading artists of the era. The remaining specimens in the museum are likely worth millions, he said, considering that most poster prints didn't survive because they were pasted onto walls.

Beyond hanging some in his Sarasota home, Peter Sachs said he's not sure what he would do with the art if he gets it. He can see lending some of the pieces to a museum for display.

He and his lawyer say they are hoping the German Historical Museum will give them up without involvement of the courts.

"For us, it's inconceivable that they would allow Goebbels to have the last laugh," Osen said.