California opens new chapter in battle over Thyssen Museum's Pissarro | culture

The work hung above the room that Claude Cassirer used as an office. It was a reproduction of Rue Saint Honoré, afternoon, rain effect (1897), the work of impressionist painter Camille Pissarro that was at the center of a bitter, two-decade-long legal battle between the Cassirer family, the Spanish government and the Thyssen Museum in Madrid. “I had it made for my father. They framed it beautifully. Sometimes it causes confusion because when people see it, they think they have returned the piece to us,” says David Cassirer, Claude’s son and great-grandson of Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, the original owner of the artwork. Claude died in 2010 and Lilly in 1962.

The copy of the Pissarro original, looted by the Nazis at the start of World War II, now hangs in 70-year-old David's living room. “I look at it every day and talk to her in my head. I tell her, 'It will come back to me, it will come back to us,'” Cassirer says from Denver, where he lives. His hope that that would happen appeared to have been dashed in January when a California appeals court ruled against the Cassirers, finding that Spain had the right to keep the piece, citing previous decisions by U.S. federal courts the years 2015 and 2022. Three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded that Spanish law prevailed over California law on the matter, supporting Madrid's claim to the Pissarro – although Judge Consuelo Callahan, in a dissenting vote, said that Spain had acquired the painting voluntarily should have given up.

But recently the California government has breathed new life into the Cassirers' claim. On September 16, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that will “assist residents in recovering works of art and other personal property stolen during the Holocaust or as a result of other acts of political persecution.” The signing took place at the Holocaust Museum Los Angeles, with the governor flanked by members of the Cassirer family. “It is both a moral and legal obligation that these valuable and sentimental pieces be returned to their rightful owners,” Newsom said. The politician is currently considering around 900 new state laws, but usually only signs a handful of them personally. Newsom himself called for this special signing to be turned into a symbolic call for justice.

The piece was acquired by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1993 after passing through the hands of various owners. Its complex history began half a century earlier. Lilly Neubauer, a Jew, had to sell the painting for 900 Reichsmarks ($360) in early 1939 to pay for a visa to leave Nazi Germany and go to England with her husband, a doctor from Munich. Lilly's sister stayed in Germany to care for her mother and eventually died in Auschwitz. Years later, Claude Cassirer discovered the whereabouts of the painting, valued at tens of millions of dollars, and attempted to recover it through diplomatic channels. When that didn't work, he started a legal battle to get it back in 2005, explains David Cassirer.

Parliament's newly enacted Bill 2867 took shape following the recent court decision. It was written by local lawmaker Jesse Gabriel, who worked as a lawyer before his political career and called for compensation on behalf of the families of Holocaust survivors for their work in Nazi concentration camps. This summer, the member of the State Assembly visited Spain as part of an energy and trade delegation. In his free time he went to Thyssen to take a look Rue Saint-Honoré, afternoon, rain effect.

“I thought that the work would become one of the star works, but that is not the case. It is in a wing with various other paintings. The return would involve minimal costs for the museum. The collection would continue to be impressive,” says Gabriel. “The kindness and excellent attitude shown by the government officials we met with did not seem to match resistance to the return of a stolen painting,” he adds. The law, which has received bipartisan support, cites the Cassirer case in its text, but Gabriel says it goes beyond that specific situation and that of others linked to the Holocaust: “It sends the message that it is time “To do the right thing.” ”

The family's crusade has taken on new importance in the United States amid growing anti-Semitism. “Of the millions of works of art and cultural assets stolen by the Nazis, countless objects have still not been returned to their owners. Today, too many governments, museums, dealers, galleries and individuals still resist refund efforts,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in March at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles, a pledge signed by 44 nations, including Spain. was signed to ensure justice in cases of art theft by the Germans.

According to Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers' attorney alongside noted attorney David Boies, the law opens a new path for families litigating in the United States. “It makes it very clear that only California law can apply in a dispute over stolen art, and not foreign laws like Spanish law.” It applies not just to Holocaust victims, but to anyone who has been deprived of the art they own ” he says on the phone. The text of the law only allows the reclaiming of art that was stolen up to 100 years before it came into force.

Other legal experts are skeptical about the scope of the new law. “It’s unconstitutional, it doesn’t stay within his jurisdiction,” said a lawyer familiar with the case who asked to remain anonymous. This source believes that the California Congress is trying to change the rules of the game because one side has not benefited from the federal court's rulings. “It is not up to California to take a position on issues that fall under US federal law,” said the lawyer, who lives and litigates in the state.

Thaddeus Stauber, who has represented the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in this case for nearly two decades, says that Spanish property law is considered by international courts to be equivalent to that of Germany, the United Kingdom and other European nations and that this is the case neither anti-Semitic nor morally questionable. The lawyer says that in 1958 the German state compensated the family the amount of 120,000 German marks demanded by Lilly Neubauer to settle her claim. David Cassirer has stated that he would be willing to return the money in exchange for the painting's recovery.

Stauber says that after the court confirmed that Thyssen was the rightful owner of the painting, the appeals court declared the case closed. The Supreme Court of California has refused to reopen the case and challenge Spanish law. After the ruling, the Cassirer family can only ask the Supreme Court to reconsider the case, something they have already done once in 2022 under new California law. But the attorney says legal precedent suggests the state cannot pass laws giving its citizens special treatment in modern World War II restitution claims, especially since the property in question is not located in California.

David Cassirer considers this legal dispute to be “unnecessary and somewhat excessive”. “My father never believed that this law was necessary because a thief cannot transfer ownership of something that has been stolen. “Never in a million years did we think that Spain would maintain such a stubborn position and wait for all of us Cassirians to die,” he says. His family, with the help of the Jewish Federation, is now preparing to open a new chapter in a legal battle that will have lasted 20 years by 2025.

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