The city of Hagen in northern Germany gave a landscape painting by Auguste Renoir back to the family of a Jewish banker who was tortured by the Nazis. The painting will now stay in the Osthaus Museum, where it has been shown since 1989. View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes, a picture from 1910, was bought back with money from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the German ministry of culture, and the Cultural Foundation of the States. In a press release, the city of Hagen said that the painting will be shown in the future with information about its previous owner, Jakob Goldschmidt, who had to leave Nazi Germany. "After more than 15 years of intense talks, the heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt are glad to have come to an agreement that works for both sides," their lawyer, Sabine Rudolph, said in a statement. "The return of the painting is a way to show that their grandfather was wronged by the Nazis in many ways, including losing a lot of money."
Goldschmidt was one of the businessmen in Weimar Germany who had the most power. In the 1920s, he started collecting Impressionist art and Old Masters. He was also a big supporter of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In 1933, he ran away to Switzerland. After that, he moved to the United States, where he died in 1955. As collateral for a loan, he left some of his art collection in Berlin. In 1941, the Nazis took it over, along with the Renoir picture of the Cote d'Azur. In that year, the work was sold at the sale house Hans W. Lange in Berlin. It was put up for sale again at Galerie Nathan in Zurich in 1960, and Fritz Berg, the first head of the German Industry Association (BDI), bought it. Berg's things went to the Osthaus Museum in Hagen after his wife died. In a separate, similar deal, the German Akademie der Künste said it had given back to the artist's heirs a sketchbook with drawings of Berlin garden cafes by Max Liebermann and bought it back from the heirs so it could keep it in its collection.
Jean Dubreil