The battle for the 'pissarro' looted by the Nazis continues: the family that claims it will appeal the ruling favorable to Thyssen

The Cassirer family, the first owners of impressionist painting Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon. rain effectfrom 1897, by Camille Pissarro, who was forced in 1939 to undersell this painting to obtain a visa and leave Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II, will appeal the ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Central District of California that this Tuesday concluded that the Museo Thyssen is the legitimate owner of the work, as EL PAÍS has been able to confirm through the law firm B. Cremades & Asociados. This law firm has been part of a long judicial journey (it began in 2005) against the Spanish museum on behalf of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Jewish Community of Madrid.

“The family has already said publicly that they are going to continue appealing, so there is a lot of cloth to cut and years of battle ahead,” explained Bernardo Cremades Jr., from the law firm, in statements to Europa Press. Already in 2022, in an interview with this newspaper, David Cassirer did not seem concerned about the possibility of this legal war being delayed. “We have been doing this for 23 years; Waiting a little longer will not be so serious,” he explained then. Now, the first owners will have to present an appeal for reconsideration before the full California court and from there they would have the option of raising their complaint again to the Supreme Court of Washington, which could agree to review the issue again or let it be. The chances of this body admitting the case to processing for a second time, when it already made its criteria clear the first time, are remote.

The case went through the United States Supreme Court in April 2022, where Cassirer scored a partial victory since this court opened the door to a possible return that this Tuesday seemed definitively closed. The Californian judges consider that what must be applied is Spanish law and that, therefore, the stepstone, Valued at around 28 million euros, it is from Thyssen, where he ended up in 1993 after the acquisition of Baron Thyssen. Therefore, it is a painting that belongs to the Spanish State.

“To appeal again to the Supreme Court of the United States would seem a bit absurd,” says Evelio Acevedo, managing director of Thyssen. “Or at least with little chance of success,” he adds. The same opinion deserves that the Cassirer family appeals the case in the Court that has just ruled in favor of the museum when considering that Spanish law should apply in this case. “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 judgment in favor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,” explains the text of the ruling.

Bernardo Cremades considers that “the sentence omits the fact that it is protecting someone – or a State, which is much worse – from keeping art stolen or looted by the Nazis, against all international conventions.” This law firm highlights the concurring opinion of Judge Consuelo Callahan, who wrote that she agreed with the ruling, but that she 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,” he said in his dissenting opinion. . “Our ruling is constrained by the district court's factual findings and applicable law, but I wish it were otherwise,” she added.

“We are not going to get into personal opinions and this lady, more than a vote, what it seems to me is that she expresses a personal opinion,” evaluates the words of Callahan, the Thyssen manager. Acevedo defends that the museum respects Washington's declaration of principles on art confiscated by the Nazis because, in 1958, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer reached an agreement with the German Government, the dealer Jakob Scheidwimmer and D. Julius Sulzbacher, by which he accepted a compensation of 120,000 DM from the German Federal Government to put an end to the claims between the parties. “According to these principles, the ideal is to reach equitable solutions considering the injured party, but also the rights of the party that acquired these assets in an absolutely legal manner and of course in good faith,” he says about the purchase that the baron made in the fifties.