Case closed: Thyssen wins the lawsuit to keep the 'pisarro' looted by the Nazis

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, a Jew, was forced in 1939 to undersell a painting to obtain a visa and leave Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II, fleeing a fate that could have ended in a concentration camp. It was impressionist painting Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon. rain effectfrom 1897, by Camille Pisarro. After a series of transactions, the painting ended up in the hands of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which has been exhibiting it publicly since 1993. When Claude Cassirer, a resident of California, grandson and sole heir of Lilly, learned in 2000 that the Thyssen had the painting, he demanded its return, but his request was denied. He then opened a legal war in 2005 that her children continued and that has ended with his defeat, in practice now definitive. A ruling published this Wednesday by the Court of Appeals for the Central District of California concludes that Thyssen is the legitimate owner of the painting.

“The unanimous affirmation (…) that confirms the ownership of the Foundation over the Pissarro painting that it legally acquired to exhibit it to the public in Madrid in 1993, is a satisfactory conclusion to this case,” the Thyssen Collection Foundation told EL PAÍS. -Bornemisza.

A million-dollar lawsuit of almost two decades had been reduced to a seemingly simple question to resolve: should Spanish or Californian law be applied? If the judges opted for California, the painting belonged to Cassirer. On the other hand, if they believed that the Spanish law had to be applied, it belonged to Thyssen, who would have become the owner, through acquisitive prescription or usucapion, by virtue of having exercised peaceful and public possession of it. That last was the position that the judges had maintained until now and that they have reaffirmed.

Things were complicated because there were two conflicting rules for choosing the law: the federal one and the Californian one. The judges initially applied the federal ruling rule, but the Supreme Court told them that they had to be governed by the Californian rule. Although this procedural issue led the lawsuit to reach the United States Supreme Court, where Cassirer scored a partial victory, in practice he has done the same. With any of the conflict procedural rules, the Californian judges consider that what must be applied is Spanish law and that, therefore, the stepstone, valued at around 28 million euros, is from Thyssen.

The court has concluded that, under the facts of this case, “the application of California law to this litigation would substantially harm the interests of Spain, while the application of Spanish law would relatively little harm the interests of California.” Therefore, Spanish law must be applied, says the ruling, to which EL PAÍS has had access.

“Applying Spanish law, the court held that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection had acquired prescriptive title to the painting in accordance with article 1955 of the Spanish Civil Code. Therefore, the panel confirmed the district court's decision granting the ruling in favor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,” the text explains.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Consuelo Callahan wrote that she agreed with the ruling but was uncomfortable with it. “Spain, after reaffirming its commitment to the Washington Principles on art confiscated by the Nazis by signing the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust-era Property and Related Issues, should have voluntarily renounced the painting,” it says in its dissenting opinion. . “Our ruling is constrained by the district court's factual findings and applicable law, but I wish it were otherwise,” she adds.

The plaintiffs have a somewhat desperate possibility of appealing again to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the chances of that body admitting the case to processing for the second time when it already made its criteria clear in the first time are remote. .

A long journey

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer forcefully sold the painting below its market value to Jakob Scheidwimmer, a dealer and member of the Nazi party. The painting was later acquired by D. Julius Sulzbacher, from whom it was later confiscated by the Gestapo. In 1958, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer reached an agreement with the German Government, the dealer Jakob Scheidwimmer and D. Julius Sulzbacher, whereby she accepted compensation of 120,000 Deutschmarks from the German Federal Government to end the claims between the parties.

After several more transactions, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired Pisarro's painting for $360,000 at the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York in 1976. In 1993 the Spanish State purchased the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, including the painting. The museum exhibited the pissarro on several occasions, in different countries and for almost eight years before Cassirer claimed it, in 2002, and filed a lawsuit from California, in 2005. He died five years later, at the age of 89, and since then the litigation has been continued by his children David and Ana.

The plaintiff has always believed that the Spanish State was aware that the painting, a view of the city of Paris created in 1897 by Pissarro that ended up in the gallery of other of his ancestors in Berlin in 1900, was “the fruit of Nazi looting.” as David Cassirer explained to EL PAÍS. “By refusing to return it, Spain is basically denying the Holocaust,” he added.

The question of whether he was aware that it was the result of Nazi looting is relevant because the period to acquire the property if he was an “accessory” to the theft would have been longer. The judges, however, consider that the Thyssen was the possessor in good faith.

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