Nazi-Era Provenance Research

This page presents the results of research undertaken by the MFA on the provenance of its collection of European art during the years of the National Socialist regime and World War II, 1933 to 1945. Because of the widespread loss of artwork through wartime looting, Nazi confiscation, and forced sales due to racial persecution, particular attention is paid to changes in ownership during this period of time. Here, we provide in-depth information on ongoing research in addition to resolved restitution claims.

The goal of the MFA’s research on Nazi-era provenance is to identify objects in the collection that were lost or stolen and never returned to their rightful owners. Anyone with additional information or inquiries about the provenance of objects in the MFA’s collection is encouraged to contact us at provenance@mfa.org.

Lists of Works

The objects featured on the first list of works have been identified by the MFA as priorities for further research. They changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945, and are associated with individuals who may have lost property as the result of Nazi persecution or institutions that may have lost property as the result of World War II. Each object has undergone careful examination by our curators and still has unresolved questions regarding its history.

Like the objects above, the works of art featured on the following list are also associated with individuals who lost property as the result of Nazi persecution; however, there is no evidence that they have been looted, coercively transferred, or lost without subsequent restitution. They are listed here in order to uphold the MFA's commitment to transparency in its research.

The inclusion of a work of art on these lists does not in any way demonstrate that it was looted or illegally transferred. The lists will be updated as further information becomes available.

Resolved Claims

Since the provenance research project was begun in 1998, the MFA has resolved several World War II and Nazi-era restitution claims.

In April 2023, Susan and Matthew Weatherbie and the MFA reached an agreement with the heirs of art dealers Paul Graupe and Arthur Goldschmidt, resolving the ownership of Adriaen van Ostade’s painting Customers Conversing in an Interior (1671), which had been sold to Adolf Hitler in the early 1940s. The agreement allows the painting to be retained and exhibited at the MFA, and donated to the Museum at a future date by the Weatherbies.

By 1937, the Ostade panel was part of the stock of Paul Graupe et Cie., a Paris-based gallery run by the Jewish art dealer Paul Graupe. Graupe and his business partner, Arthur Goldschmidt, who was likewise Jewish, had been compelled to leave Nazi Germany for France due to racial persecution. In 1939, Graupe again fled, first to Switzerland, then to Portugal in 1940, and ultimately to the U.S. in 1941. His gallery stock was left behind in occupied Paris. In 1940, after he was sent to an internment camp and conscripted into service, Goldschmidt fled to the south of France, which was then not occupied. Before leaving Europe, Graupe asked for Goldschmidt’s help in saving his gallery stock, including Customers Conversing in an Interior, which he hoped could be sent to Switzerland or the U.S. In February 1941, however, Goldschmidt sold the Ostade to Karl Haberstock, an agent for Hitler. Goldschmidt was able to immigrate to Cuba later that year, making his way to the U.S. in 1946.

Haberstock sold the painting to the Reich Chancellery in April 1941. It was selected for inclusion in the art museum Hitler planned to build in Linz, Austria, the so-called Führermuseum. Customers Conversing in an Interior was recovered by Allied forces after the end of World War II and shipped to France for restitution. It is not known if Graupe ever learned what had happened to it. The painting was not claimed by the end of the 1940s, and as a result the French state auctioned it in 1951. It changed hands several times on the European art market before Susan and Matthew Weatherbie bought it, unaware of its Nazi-era history, in 1992. It is one of 28 Dutch and Flemish paintings the Weatherbies pledged to the MFA in 2017.

In 2022, the MFA transferred a Late Imperial marble Portrait of a Man to the Republic of Italy, from where it is believed to have been stolen during World War II.

The marble head dates to the 3rd or 4th century C.E. Its features were re-cut in antiquity from an earlier portrait, and it may represent the emperor Maximianus Herculius. It was found in December 1931 at Minturno, Italy, during a series of excavations undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania and the Superintendency of Campania in Naples. The head was published, inventoried and illustrated in a catalogue of sculptures from the excavations in 1938. During World War II, a number of archaeological finds and other works of art stored at Minturno were stolen, probably by German troops, or were otherwise dispersed in the upheaval of war. The Portrait of a Man was almost certainly taken at this time. After it was photographed in the 1930s, the head suffered damage and lost its nose.

The Museum purchased the sculpture from the Swiss gallery Münzen und Medaillen in 1961, with no documentation of its collecting history. In July 2019, Professor Irene Bald Romano of the University of Arizona alerted MFA staff that the head had gone missing from Italy during World War II. This information prompted an investigation of the sculpture’s provenance. After verifying its excavation at Minturno and the loss of artwork there during the war, the Museum wrote in September 2019 to the Italian Ministry of Culture to inform them of the sculpture’s whereabouts. In September 2020, the Ministry affirmed the MFA’s findings and requested that the head be returned.

In October 2021, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) reached an agreement with the heirs of Ferenc Chorin to return the painting View of Beverwijk by Salomon van Ruysdael, which was looted during World War II.

The painting belonged to the Jewish collector Ferenc Chorin (1879 – 1964) of Budapest, who deposited it along with other works of art at the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest in 1943. Chorin and his family were persecuted by National Socialist forces, fled Hungary in 1944, and settled in New York in 1947. At the end of World War II, the bank reported that the contents of Chorin’s deposit had gone missing in January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest. Despite the family’s efforts to locate the contents of the bank vault in the postwar years, they never recovered the Ruysdael. The painting was included in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses, but because it was published with an incorrect image and description, the MFA was not aware that the View of Beverwijk had belonged to Chorin or was considered missing.

The Museum acquired the painting in 1982 from a London dealer with no information about its history other than that it had come from a Swiss collection. The work’s provenance between 1945 and 1982 remains untraced.

In 2019, scholar Sándor Juhász notified the MFA that the View of Beverwijk once belonged to Frigyes Glück of Budapest, in whose collection it had been published in 1924. This new information, posted on the MFA’s website, allowed the Chorin heirs to locate their family’s painting—known to have come from the Glück collection—in 2021.

In March 2017, the Museum of Fine Arts reached an agreement with the Estate of Emma Budge, allowing the Museum to retain seven pieces of 18th century German porcelain that were sold in Berlin in 1937.

The commedia dell’arte figures, made by the porcelain manufactories Höchst, Fürstenburg, and Fulda, all belonged to Emma Lazarus Budge (1852 – 1937), who built a large collection of decorative arts in her home in Hamburg. Upon her death in 1937, she left the disposition of her art collection to her estate executors, specifying that she did not wish the collection to be sold within National Socialist Germany. Mrs. Budge and all of her estate executors were Jewish.

Nevertheless, on October 4-6, 1937, a large portion of Emma Budge’s art collection was auctioned in Berlin. The proceeds from the sale were very probably credited to the account of the Budge estate at M. M. Warburg Bank in Hamburg. The settlement of the estate, however, was delayed until 1939. In the meantime, Warburg Bank was Aryanized, or sold to non-Jewish owners. Several of Mrs. Budge’s estate executors were dismissed from their roles. Many of her heirs, who were Jewish, fled Germany. Those who remained were subject to persecution. The estate funds that were ultimately disbursed were placed into tightly-controlled, blocked accounts to which the heirs did not have full access. Thus, as the direct result of Nazi persecution, the proceeds from the sale were never realized.

The seven pieces of porcelain at the MFA were purchased at the 1937 auction by Otto and Magdalena Blohm, likewise porcelain collectors from Hamburg, and probably acquaintances of Emma Budge. Mrs. Blohm moved to New York after World War II, bringing the porcelain collection with her. Edward and Kiyi Pflueger acquired the figures from the Blohm collection and bequeathed them to the MFA in 2006.

In June 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts reached a financial settlement with the heirs and the estate of Walter Westfeld for Eglon van der Neer’s Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior, allowing the painting to remain at the museum.

Walter Westfeld (b. 1889 – d. after 1942) operated an art gallery in Wuppertal, Germany, during the Nazi period. A 1935 decree from the Reichs Chamber of Fine Arts forbade him from working as a dealer because he was Jewish, and he was ordered to close the gallery in May of 1936. That very month, an exhibition of works of art owned by Westfeld was held at the Galerie Kleucker in the nearby city of Düsseldorf, including a “Company Scene” by Eglon van der Neer. This was almost certainly the MFA painting.

The paper trail ends there, and begins again five years later. The MFA purchased the painting from E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, in December, 1941. Silberman probably acquired the painting in the spring of that year, but it has not been ascertained from whom.

It is not known for certain how the MFA’s Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior left Westfeld’s possession and made its way to the United States. Without further documentation, its exact provenance may never be known. However, it is difficult to imagine a scenario by which he sold the painting voluntarily in Nazi Germany, receiving proceeds over which he had free disposal.

In November, 1938, Walter Westfeld was arrested for violating Germany’s foreign exchange laws. He spent the remaining years of his life in captivity and on January 23, 1943, was sent to his death at Auschwitz.

In March, 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston finalized a settlement with the heirs of Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, allowing the museum to retain four seventeenth-century tapestries, which were included in a forced sale in Berlin in 1935.

The four tapestries were part of a larger series that depicted the life and achievements of Pope Urban VIII. By 1928, eight tapestries from the series, including the four at the MFA, were owned by the art dealer Margraf in Berlin. Margraf was run by Jakob Oppenheimer and his wife Rosa, who were Jewish. In 1933, the Oppenheimers fled Germany to avoid Nazi persecution and relocated to France. During their absence they were forced out of their management roles at Margraf and were forbidden from performing any legal transactions for the company.

As a well-known Jewish business, Margraf was extinguished as quickly as possible by the Nazi regime. The gallery stock was sold off rapidly in a series of auctions held in Berlin in 1935. The Oppenheimers were unable to realize the proceeds from these sales. Recent research confirmed that the four MFA tapestries were sold to an unknown buyer at one of the 1935 auctions. The MFA contacted the Oppenheimer heirs in 2010 to inform them of their location at the MFA, and to begin settlement discussions.

The tapestries have been at the MFA since the 1950s, and were gifts from Eugene Garbáty, a German Jewish art collector. Garbáty purchased six of the eight tapestries from an unknown dealer shortly after they sold at auction in 1935. He was told that they had come out of a castle in Austria, and was unaware that they had belonged to Margraf or been in a forced sale. Garbáty, himself a victim of Nazi persecution, brought four of the tapestries with him when he fled Germany for the United States in 1939; he gave them to the MFA between 1950 and 1952.

In the fall of 2010, the MFA returned to the Museo Diocesano Tridentino (Diocesan Museum of Trent, Italy) an embroidered panel, the Entombment of Saint Vigilius, dating from around 1390–1391. The embroidery depicts the burial of Saint Vigilius (b. about 353–d. 405), the third bishop and patron saint of Trent, and the delivery of the news of his martyrdom to the pope and Emperor Theodosius.

The narrative cycle of the life of the saint was depicted on a number of embroidered panels, which were originally sewn onto the consecration vestments of George of Liechtenstein, appointed bishop prince of Trent in 1390. In the early 20th century, the five embroideries that remained from the original cycle were housed in the Museo Diocesano Tridentino. The museum’s original location in the Theological Seminary was subsequently closed, and the embroideries were placed in the cathedral sacristy. There, presumably between 1939 and 1944, all trace was lost of the panel showing the burial of Vigilius and the announcement of his death. The MFA purchased the embroidery in 1946 from an Italian art dealer in New York without knowledge of its subject matter or provenance. Prior to the acquisition, curatorial staff inquired about its history and were told only that its previous owner had inherited it along with a large collection of other antique objects. The Museum had no additional information about its provenance until 2008, when Dr. Evelin Wetter of the Abegg-Stiftung (Riggisberg, Switzerland) contacted the MFA, indicating that the panel was once part of the Saint Vigilius series from the Museo Diocesano Tridentino. Curatorial research by the MFA confirmed that the embroidery belonged to that series. In June 2008, the MFA contacted the Museo Diocesano to initiate discussions about its return, which concluded in April 2010 with the signing of an agreement by the MFA, the Archdiocese of Trent, and the Museo Diocesano.

In March 2007, the Museum of Fine Arts received a restitution claim for Oskar Kokoschka’s Two Nudes (Lovers) (accession no. 1973.196). Claudia Seger-Thomschitz, represented as the sole and unrelated heir of the last surviving son of Oskar Reichel, the painting’s former owner, asserted that Reichel was forced to sell Two Nudes (Lovers) under duress in Nazi-occupied Austria in 1939; later, her counsel asserted that the painting had been confiscated from Reichel by the Nazis. Upon receipt of the claim, the MFA conducted a comprehensive investigation of the painting’s provenance and concluded that it has legal title to the work. The MFA shared with the claimant’s counsel the results of its research. When the claim was not withdrawn, the Museum filed suit in January 2008 to confirm its ownership of the painting. In May 2009, U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel ruled that the MFA is entitled to retain ownership of Two Nudes (Lovers); the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this decision in October 2010. A brief summary of the research is presented here.

Oskar Reichel (b. 1869–d. 1943) of Vienna, who was Jewish, was a prominent collector of Austrian Expressionist art. He patronized contemporary artists, including Egon Schiele, Max Oppenheimer, and Oskar Kokoschka. Reichel actively bought and sold their work, playing an important role on the Viennese art market. He probably bought Two Nudes (Lovers) directly from Kokoschka around 1914 or 1915, shortly after it was painted.

By 1924, Reichel had developed a business relationship with Otto Kallir (b. 1894 - d. 1978), a Jewish art dealer who opened the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1923. Reichel consigned Two Nudes (Lovers), along with other paintings by Kokoschka, for sale through Kallir in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1938, Kallir fled Vienna and turned the Neue Galerie over to his non-Jewish secretary. He opened a new gallery, the Galerie St. Etienne, in Paris. In February 1939, Reichel transferred ownership of five Kokoschka paintings—including Two Nudes (Lovers)—to Kallir, who exhibited them in his Paris gallery that spring. Later that year, Kallir emigrated to New York and opened a branch of the Galerie St. Etienne there. He exhibited Two Nudes (Lovers) frequently between 1940 and 1945, both in his New York gallery and in traveling exhibitions throughout the United States. From New York, Kallir sent money for the five Kokoschka paintings to Oskar Reichel’s two sons, Raimund and Hans, with whom he was in communication; they were living in South America and the United States, respectively.

Although Raimund and Hans had been able to leave Austria, Oskar Reichel and his wife Malvine remained in Vienna. Their home furnishings company was forcibly closed after the anti-Jewish riots of Kristallnacht in 1938, and in 1941 they were forced to sell their shares in a family-owned building, with the proceeds going into blocked accounts. Their oldest son, Max, who was mentally ill, was deported and killed. In 1943, Oskar passed away from natural causes and Malvine Reichel was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She survived and joined her son Hans in the United States after the war. Malvine Reichel made successful restitution claims for certain assets lost in Austria, including the property sold in 1941. She relinquished her claim to other assets, including the family home, which she had sold to acquaintances in 1938. Raimund Reichel applied for and received compensation from the Austrian authorities for damages due to Nazi persecution. In his application, he referred specifically to paintings by Anton Romako that his father had sold under duress. However, no claim was ever made for any of the five Kokoschka paintings, nor was any indication made that members of the Reichel family considered the 1939 transaction to be invalid.

In 1945, Kallir sold Two Nudes (Lovers) on the New York art market. Around 1948 it was acquired by Sarah Reed Blodgett (later Platt), who bequeathed it to the MFA in 1973. Since that time, the painting has been exhibited and published extensively. It is currently on view in the Rabb Gallery at the MFA.

In 2006, the MFA received as part of a bequest an eighteenth-century Meissen figure of Augustus III, which it did not formally accession, or make part of the museum collection. MFA curators had already recognized the object as coming from the famous Porzellansammlung (Porcelain Collection) of Dresden. Works of art from the Dresden museums had been put in storage during World War II, and the figure of Augustus III went missing during this time. The statue was returned to the Porzellansammlung in 2006.

On November 18, 2004, the MFA deaccessioned the panel painting Virgin and Child for restitution to its rightful owner, Mrs. Anna Konopka Unrug of Poland. This was in response to the restitution claim for the painting received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland on behalf of Mrs. Unrug.

The painting once formed the central panel of a triptych that belonged to Mrs. Unrug’s grandfather, Tadeusz Konopka (b. 1844 – d. 1903), and was passed by descent to his son, Józef (b. 1884 –d . 1940) of Jaroslaw and Warsaw. Józef was killed in 1940 after being taken hostage by the Red Army. The painting remained in his Warsaw apartment, where his wife Helena (b. 1899) and daughter Anna (b. 1921) lived, and was plundered during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. It is not known when the triptych was separated; neither of the side panels has been located.

The MFA purchased the painting in 1970 from a dealer in Frankfurt, Germany, without knowledge of its wartime or immediate postwar provenance. At that time it was attributed to the Master of the Saint Barbara Altar, a Silesian painter active in the fifteenth century. Research by curatorial staff revealed that it had been in Tadeusz Konopka’s possession and remained in Poland during World War II. This information was made available on the MFA Web site, which enabled the claimant, through the Polish Ambassador, to locate the painting.

On October 19, 2000 the MFA reached an agreement with the heirs of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe for a partial purchase and partial donation of the painting Adoration of the Magi, by Corrado Giaquinto (accession number 1992.163). Recognizing that the heirs of Mr. Gentili di Giuseppe were the rightful owners of the painting, this agreement enabled the MFA to acquire the Adoration from them and keep it on display in the galleries.

Its previous owner, Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, was a Jewish Italian businessman living in Paris. He died of natural causes in April of 1940, leaving his estate to his children. With the fall of France to Hitler in June of that year, his family fled the country. German law forbade the return of those who had left occupied territory, so his family was unable to assert its claim to the works of art. A surrogate administrator was appointed to manage the family's affairs and the art collection was auctioned in Paris in 1941. While the estate received the revenue from the sale, the family lost its ownership of the paintings.

In 1997, Mr. Gentili di Giuseppe's heirs brought legal action against the Musée du Louvre and the State of France to have the April 1941 sale declared null and void. On June 2, 1999, the Court of Appeals of Paris nullified the sale, determining that Mr. Gentili di Giuseppe's family had been prevented from attending to the administration of the estate. Five paintings held by the Louvre were subsequently returned to the family. By February 1999 the heirs had begun pursuing individual claims regarding the other paintings in the 1941 auction and contacted the MFA about the Adoration of the Magi at that time.

The MFA had purchased the painting in April 1992 from Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., a distinguished firm of art dealers established in London in the early nineteenth century. The firm, in turn, had purchased the painting at Christie’s, Monaco, in June 1990. Because the MFA had purchased the painting before any claims were registered with the French government, the heirs affirmed that the Museum acquired the work in good faith, without knowledge that the 1941 sale was problematic.

Links

We have provided links to other Web sites maintained by organizations and institutions worldwide that are committed to assisting in the search and recovery of works of art lost during the Nazi era.