Restitutions, ongoing and settled restitution claims

The Restitutions Committee

The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War (in brief referred to as the Restitutions Committee) in The Hague advises the Minister of Education, Culture and Science about individual requests for the return of cultural goods that disappeared during the Second World War in accordance with the liberalized restitution policy. Individual citizens and non-governmental organisations can jointly present cases to this committee for a (binding) recommendation, based upon article 2.2 of the Decree establishing the Restitutions Committee. You can find more information in the Restitution policy and the Annual reports and opinions of the Restitutions Committee.

Ongoing restitution claims

Restitutions and settled restitution claims

• Koenigs Collection
• Eleven maiolica dishes from the collection of Eugen Gutmann (divided  2022)
• Two objects from the collection of Emanuel Vita Israël (restitutie 2020)
• Gosschalk: the painting 'Mountainous Landscape' by Jacob van Geel (2019)
• Schloss: the painting ‘Still Life with Tulip’ by Dirk van Delen (restitution 1999)
• Ornstein: the drawings ‘Tomb of a King’ and ‘Entrance to a Mosque’ by Marius Bauer (restitutions 2000)
• Leefsma: the painting ‘Woman Seated on the Grass at the Edge of a Meadow and Reading’ by Nicolaas van der Waay (restitution 2000)
• De Vries: the drawing ‘Standing Young Country Woman’ by George Hendrik Breitner (restitution 2001)
• Flersheim-Eberstadt: the drawing ‘Faith in God’ by Jan Toorop (restitution 2001)
• Flersheim-Eberstadt: the painting ‘The Thames’ by Jan Toorop (restitution 2009)
• Hodegetria or Virgin Mary with Child from the trading stock of Kunsthandlung Drey (restitution 2024) 

Restitution of two objects from the estate of Emanuel Vita Israël

While researching the provenance of the holy water pail and bronze candlestick, the name Vita Israël was discovered on their inventory cards, noted as previous owner. Further research brought forth that this Jewish pharmacist and art collector Emanuel Vita Israël (1873-1940) committed suicide shortly after the German invasion on 15 May 1940. The estate he left behind, of which the holy water pail and candlestick were part, was put up for auction on 7 November 1940 at the Amsterdam auction house Mensing & Zoon, Frederik Muller & Co. It is very likely that Mr. J.W. Frederiks (1889-1962) acquired the objects at this auction. Mr. Frederiks gave the holy water pail and candlestick on loan to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 1958. They were donated to the museum as part of the collection of Mr. Frederiks in 1994.

In the spring of 2019  the museum submitted the two objects to the Restitutions Committee for a binding opinion in consultation with the heirs of Vita Israël. At the end of July 2020, the Restitutions Committee advised the municipality of Rotterdam and the museum to restitute the two objects to the heirs of Vita Israel. In October 2020 the two objects have been transferred to a representative of the heirs.

Gosschalk was a Jewish art collector and artist from The Hague who was taken away in 1943 and held prisoner in Barneveld, then Westerbork and then Theresienstadt. Before he was rounded up, he had to surrender paintings to the German looting agency Liro. He survived the war and returned to The Hague, where he died in 1952. After the war Gosschalk corresponded with the Netherlands Art Property Foundation (SNK). It emerged from this correspondence that he lost several works during the war. The painting by Jacob van Geel is not mentioned in this correspondence.

Since the investigation failed to establish how and when Vitale Bloch acquired 'Mountainous Landscape', the museum approached Gosschalk’s heirs and, in consultation with them, submitted the case to the Restitutions Committee in the summer of 2017 for a binding opinion. In the autumn of 2019, the Restitutions Committee issued their opinion, concluding that the museum (Rotterdam City Council) was not obliged to restitute the work. It emerged from the supplementary investigation conducted by the Restitution of Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War Expertise Centre that Vitale Bloch acquired the painting in or before 1940. See the Restitutions Committee’s full binding opinion here. 

The museum is considering with Gosschalk’s heirs how the provenance of ‘Mountainous Landscape’ can best be presented.

After restitution to the heirs of Schloss the painting was auctioned in Paris on 20 December 2000, where it was sold to a private French collector for 1.4 million guilders.

Literature
-Frits Scholten, ‘Rotterdamse grootmoedigheid’, Openbaar Kunstbezit 42/6 (1998), p. 2;
-Edward Grasman, ‘Vitale Bloch: de jonge jaren’, RKD Bulletin 2 (2010), pp. 2-13.

Restitution of the drawings ‘Tomb of a King’ and ‘Entrance to a Mosque’ by Marius Bauer

In 2000, the City of Rotterdam voluntarily returned the two drawings ‘Tomb of a King’ and ‘Entrance to a Mosque’ by the Dutch Orientalist artist Marius Bauer (1867-1932) to the rightful heirs of their former owner. Research carried out by historian Dr A.J. Bonke as part of the project Museum Acquisitions 1940-48 showed that the drawings were purchased in 1943 by Dirk Hannema, the then director of Museum Boymans, together with a drawing by George Hendrik Breitner and a painting by Nicolaas van der Waay from Eduard Plietzsch of Dienststelle Mühlmann, which illegally expropriated artworks on behalf of the Nazis. 

The back of one of the Bauer drawings was inscribed ‘Verz. Mevr. D. Ornstein Rafaelplein 21, Amsterdam (Z)’ (Collection of Mrs D. Ornstein, Rafaelplein 21, Amsterdam [South]. The search for the heirs continued in the Central Bureau for Genealogy in The Hague and in the Amsterdam register of births, deaths and marriages. This led to the identification of the four heirs. On 20 June 2000 the Burgomaster and Aldermen of Rotterdam decided to restitute the works of art to them. On 8 August of that year they were handed over to the executor of the heirs of Mrs F.S.B. Ornstein.

The City of Rotterdam asked Bonke to carry out additional research, which led to a report in April 2000 in which the work of art was identified and its exact provenance established.

The provenance research shows that painting belonged to Mr I.H. Leefsma (1879-1943) of Amsterdam, and that it and 64 other objects were handed in without his permission to the city’s ‘robber bank’, Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. (Liro), in 1942 by a member of the Dutch Nazi movement who had been appointed the administrator of Leefsma’s company on 8 December 1941. The Liro then sold the picture to the Dienststelle Mühlmann, which illegally expropriated artworks on behalf of the Nazis. The art historian Eduard Plietzsch, assistant at the Dienststelle Mühlmann, offered to sell the painting and three drawings (two by Bauer and one by Breitner, all three with different provenances) in a letter of 7 July 1943 to Dirk Hannema, director of Museum Boymans. He accepted the offer and bought all four works.

Leefsma and his wife died in March 1943 in Sobibor concentration camp. In 1937 they had named the Vereniging De Joodse Invalide as their sole heir. That society had attempted to ascertain the whereabouts of several artworks from the Leefsma collection in 1951, including this painting by Van der Waay, but without success.

Restitution of the drawing ‘Faith in God’ and the painting 'The Thames' by Jan Toorop

Faith in God
‘Faith in God’ (1907) is a coloured drawing by the major Dutch artist Jan Toorop (1858-1928), acquired by the museum in 1943 as a gift from two trustees of the museum foundation. It was bought from the art dealer Herman d’Audretsch in The Hague, who had acquired it from a German dealer. The drawing came onto the market after the German occupying forces had confiscated the belongings of Ernst Flersheim (1862- 1944) in Amsterdam in 1942. Flersheim was a German Jew who had fled to the Netherlands in March 1937. He had been a friend of Toorop’s since 1905 and owned several of his works. In 1943 he and his wife were arrested during a raid in Amsterdam and sent to the Westerbork transit camp.

In 1954 the board of the museum foundation dismissed an initial claim to the drawing by the heirs of Ernst Flersheim; a renewed claim in 1999 was also denied. It was only after a long tussle that the foundation finally returned the drawing to the heir, Walter Eberstadt, upon receipt of 2000 guilders, which was probably the sum that the two donors had paid for it in 1943. That sum bears no relation to the present market value of the work, which is many times greater.

De Thames
‘The Thames’ (1885), an early work by the important Dutch artist Jan Toorop (1858-1928), was sold to the art dealer G.J. Nieuwenhuizen Segaar in The Hague by the owner, Ernst Flersheim (1862-1944), who was a friend of the artist and owned several of his works. Flersheim was a German Jew who had fled to the Netherlands in March 1937, and the transaction took place shortly afterwards. The painting was in London at the time and was sent to the Netherlands after the sale. It was then bought from the dealer by Museum Boijmans together with a painting by Bart van der Leck and one of the museum’s first modern art acquisitions. The dealer paid Flersheim 3500 guilders for the picture, and the museum paid 6000 guilders for the two works.

In 2005, the heirs of Ernst Flersheim, the City of Rotterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen decided jointly to apply for a binding opinion by the Restitutions Committee regarding the dispute between the city and the heirs of Ernst Flersheim over Toorop’s ‘The Thames’. The Restitutions Committee gave its advice on 12 March 2008. The committee noted that the owner sold the work as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime. It also judged that neither Museum Boijmans nor the City of Rotterdam had acted carelessly over the sale.

The committee’s binding opinion reads as follows. ‘The City of Rotterdam is obliged to restore the painting ‘The Thames’ to the heirs of Ernst Flersheim on receipt of a sum of €30,397.50 from those heirs.’

The price of more than €30,000 arrived at by the committee is the indexed price for which Flersheim sold the work in 1937. It bears no relation to the present market value of the work, which is many times greater.

The Restitutions Committee arrived at its recommendation after considering all the facts of the case. All the parties involved were pleased that the long-running affair had been settled. After deliberating on the matter the City of Rotterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen returned the painting at the beginning of 2009 to Mr Flersheim’s heirs: Mr Walter A. Eberstadt of New York and his sister, Mrs A.J. Collier-Eberstadt of London. The drawing 'Faith in God' was returned to the heirs in 2001.

Research published
The museum has documented the history of these two works of art in detail. It commissioned research by Anita Hopmans, Chief Curator of Modern Art at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD), whose findings were published in the report Disputed Ownership. On the Provenance of Two Works by Jan Toorop in the Boymans Museum: the Painting Titled The Thames (1885) and the Drawing Known as Faith in God (Godsvertrouwen) (1907), December 2006.

See also:
A. Hopmans, Acquisition and Restitution: the Toorop Case, Rotterdam (Boijmans Studies) 2008.