{"id":1449407,"date":"2022-04-21T17:53:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T21:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1449407"},"modified":"2022-04-21T17:53:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T21:53:04","slug":"supreme-court-backs-jewish-family-in-nazi-looting-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-backs-jewish-family-in-nazi-looting-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Backs Jewish Family in Nazi Looting Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsupreme-court-backs-jewish-family-in-nazi-looting-dispute%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1449407&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a Jewish family&#8217;s bid to recover a prized painting the Nazis stole from their German ancestors.<\/p>\n<p>The fate of the painting\u2014worth tens of millions but sold to the Nazis for about $300\u2014turns on whether Spanish or California law governs the family&#8217;s claim. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the Court&#8217;s unanimous opinion, which holds that California law controls.<\/p>\n<p>That answer means everything to the plaintiffs. Under Spanish law, a defendant can keep stolen property, provided they possess it openly and didn&#8217;t know it was stolen when they purchased it. But under California law, the rightful pre-theft owner always prevails.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although the legal issue before us is prosaic, the case&#8217;s subject matter and background are anything but,&#8221; the decision reads.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday&#8217;s case is the third Nazi looting dispute the justices have resolved in the last year. In 2021, the Court delivered a <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/courts\/germany-prevails-at-supreme-court-in-dispute-over-jewish-art-extorted-by-nazis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">setback<\/a> to the descendants of Jewish art dealers seeking compensation for the coerced sale of a medieval art collection called the Guelph Treasure. A companion case involved 14 Holocaust survivors who sued a Hungarian railroad that transported them to concentration camps.<\/p>\n<p>Camille Pissarro&#8217;s depiction of a 19th century Paris streetscape on a rainy afternoon, <em>Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9 in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain<\/em>, is at the center of Thursday&#8217;s case. A German art collector, Paul Cassirer, acquired the painting from Pissarro&#8217;s agent in 1900. The Cassirers admired Impressionist artists, and promoted movement figures like Vincent van Gogh and Paul C\u00e9zanne at their art gallery in Berlin, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/570989027\/Cassirer-v-TBCF-opening-brief\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">court papers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Lilly Cassirer inherited Pissarro&#8217;s painting in 1926 and hung it in her parlor in Germany until 1939. She was made to sell <em>Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9<\/em> to Nazi authorities for pennies\u2014the equivalent of $360\u2014to obtain an exit visa for her family. The painting is worth tens of millions today. Lilly escaped to England and eventually settled in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p><em>Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9<\/em> changed hands a number of times in the early 1950s\u2014Nazi plunder is contraband, making deals a high-risk proposition\u2014before a St. Louis connoisseur acquired it for his private collection in 1952. It returned to German hands once again in 1976, when Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired it via a New York gallery.<\/p>\n<p>The baron, a distant relative of John Kerry, established a foundation in partnership with the Spanish government in 1993 to display his collection to the public. He sold <em>Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9<\/em> and other European masterpieces to the new foundation for $350 million. Spanish authorities financed the deal and provided a refurbished palace in Madrid for the baron&#8217;s collection, called the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The Cassirer&#8217;s search for their stolen painting lasted 60 years. Their best evidence was a black and white photo of the painting hanging in Lilly&#8217;s home in Germany. Lilly pursued claims against the German government related to the extortionate sale after settling in the United States, never knowing the heirloom was in nearby St. Louis. A Cassirer family friend ultimately spotted <em>Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9<\/em> in 1999 in the foundation&#8217;s catalog.<\/p>\n<p>Following failed negotiations with the Spanish government, Lilly&#8217;s grandson and sole heir Claude Cassirer sued the Madrid museum in a California federal court in 2005. Entities controlled by foreign governments are immune from lawsuits in most circumstances. There&#8217;s an exception, however, for claims involving Nazi-looted property.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear what the Spanish government will do if the Cassirers prevail, as is expected, when the lawsuit returns to a lower federal court. The case is No. 20-1566 <em>Cassirer<\/em> v. <em>Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"View Cassirer v. TBCF opinion on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/570989276\/Cassirer-v-TBCF-opinion#from_embed\">Cassirer v. TBCF opinion<\/a> by <a title=\"View Washington Free Beacon&#039;s profile on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/publisher\/247263517\/Washington-Free-Beacon#from_embed\">Washington Free Beacon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a Jewish family&#8217;s bid to recover a prized painting the Nazis stole from their German ancestors. The fate of the painting\u2014worth tens of millions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}