TELLURIDE, Colorado — “I’m the last of the Mohicans,” ruminates David Cassirer from the eating room of his modest frontier-style home within the mountains. David is the final surviving inheritor of the Nazi-looted Camille Pissarro portray “Rue Saint-Honoré, après midi, effet de Pluie” (1897), the topic of a serpentine authorized case that has wound up and down the American courtroom system for the final 25 years. Within the many years since his household found the portray within the possession of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Nationwide Museum in Madrid, Spain, David’s father, mom, and sister have all handed away. David has no youngsters.
In late March, I drove 4 hours by the uncooked, untouched New Mexico and Colorado panorama to satisfy David at his dwelling close to Telluride.
“It’s my style to get away from it all,” he mentioned, gesturing to the lakes and mountains seen from a window. Whereas a lot of the home has the texture of any commonplace American abode, heirloom objects from his household’s previous dot each room. “Having these things around connects me spiritually, a little bit, to Lily,” David says, referring to his grandmother, Lily Cassirer.
Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l’après-midi. Effet de pluie” (1897) (picture through Wikimedia Commons)
Lily’s leather-based steamship trunk, a reminder of her escape from Nazi-occupied Europe to the US, sits beneath a bed room window. An imposing hand-carved wooden China cupboard is in the lounge, a bit of furnishings during which David and his sister used to get into hassle for hiding inside. There’s additionally a Sixteenth-century chest, a turned picket lamp, and a Phillip Harth bronze sculpture of a strolling leopard.
David is a former jazz pianist, arranger, and conductor. He was one thing of a musical prodigy whereas rising up in Cleveland and left dwelling as an adolescent to check music in Boston. He was a member of a preferred jazz trio, carried out often on tv, and entertained America’s elite. Nevertheless, his father Claude Cassirer, a Holocaust survivor and the inheritor of the illustrious publishing home and artwork gallery Kunst and Künstler in Berlin, by no means accepted.
“My father went to his grave at almost 90 years old, believing that the whole idea of pursuing [piano] was to avoid work. I was a big disappointment,” he mentioned.
In direction of the top of his father’s life, nevertheless, the 2 males bonded of their mutual battle for the Pissarro portray.
Lily Cassirer and Claude Cassirer (photograph courtesy David Cassirer)
David is aware of precisely what he’ll do with the proceeds from the sale of the portray, estimated at $60 million, if it ever involves fruition. Though a large portion of the funds would go to repaying the authorized charges for the case, he needs to determine a nonprofit to help others in recovering their Holocaust looted paintings — a basis David describes as “my father’s mission.” Claude wished the funds “available to other people that are similarly situated, so they won’t have to go through 25 years of what we did,” David defined.
On a number of events within the final quarter century, the case appeared lifeless within the water. However like Lazarus, it has risen but once more. Advocacy efforts have led to new legal guidelines on the state and federal ranges.
“One of the ways we’ve helped,” mentioned David, “is to do things like persuade people … My father would be proud of the various precedents that this case has set, that others are able to cite it in their own cases.”
Now, in a big win for David and his staff, the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals remanded the case again to US District Decide John Walter on April 30 for a brand new ruling.
Though David and his household as soon as believed they’d two smoking weapons — an insurance coverage {photograph} exhibiting “Rue Saint-Honoré” hanging proudly over the velvet couch within the parlor of their Berlin condo and the remnants of a label on the again of the portray that exhibits the partial title and tackle of their household’s gallery, they weren’t sufficient to restitute the portray.
Remnants of the label on the again of the portray and a photograph exhibiting “Rue Saint-Honoré” hanging proudly over the velvet couch within the parlor (images courtesy David Cassirer)
Restitution circumstances are sometimes much less concerning the portray and the deserves of the case, than about authorized statutes, the dearth thereof, or on this case, one thing often called “choice of law,” whether or not a overseas sovereign nation could be sued in US Courts. Throughout a 2022 Supreme Court docket listening to, which led to the unanimous 9-0 resolution to remand the case again to the ninth Circuit for the primary time, Justice Stephen Breyer mustered a joke about one hour in: “Can everyone agree that this is a beautiful painting?”
“It is also an outrageous display of arrogance and tone deafness – using not only stolen art, but a masterpiece of French Impressionism looted by the Nazis from a Jewish family,” Dubbin advised me. “Highlighting the painting in the exhibit shows just how important it is, and further demonstrates why Spain should return the painting to the Cassirer family instead of flaunting its possession which is derived from Nazi atrocities.”
It’s laborious to underestimate the prominence of the Cassirer household in Berlin earlier than World Warfare II. “My father was raised like the Kennedys or the Rockefellers,” David mentioned, “beyond wealthy.” The unique fortune was made in coal mining and metal manufacturing, enabling the next technology to turn out to be cultural patrons. Kunst and Künstler shepherded the avant-garde and fashionable artwork motion in Germany.
Though the Cassirers have been nicely assimilated into German society, they sensed the Nazi risk early on and made plans to go away the nation. “They were trying to get ahead of Hitler,” David explains, “when no one knew this would get that big.”
The Cassirers fled in 1939, solely after being pressured to pay the “escape tax” levied on Jewish refugees. For the household, it amounted to the equal of $4 million right now, and required handing over a few of their prized possessions, together with Lily Cassirer’s favourite murals: “Rue Saint-Honoré.”
They have been the fortunate ones. David’s nice aunt, who stayed behind to deal with her aged mom, would perish alongside together with her household in Auschwitz. The Nazis traded “Rue Saint-Honoré” to a different Jewish household for Previous Grasp work of Hitler’s liking. That household fled to Holland with the portray, not figuring out that Hitler was proper behind them. “Then the Nazis took it again,” David says.
“Having these things around connects me spiritually, a little bit, to Lily,” mentioned David, referring to his grandmother, Lily Cassirer. (photograph Michelle Younger/Hyperallergic)
In boarding faculty in England, David’s father Claude was distanced from what was unfolding in Germany. Whereas on vacation within the south of France with a British classmate, the Vichy authorities started fastidiously inspecting passports on exit and prevented Claude from returning to England. “He had a Nazi passport and they wouldn’t let him out, so they sent him to a terrible detention camp in Morocco near Casablanca with no running water and no toilets,” David recounts. He contracted typhoid fever and almost died, dropping to solely 100 kilos.
In 1941, the camp was liberated by the Allies and Claude was despatched on a ship to America, the place he was quarantined on arrival in New York Metropolis. He was launched right into a courageous new world, a brand new continent with no household and no connections.
“He walks out broke, without a job, and had to start all over,” David recounted. “But he was just the right guy — immigrant and young enough to still be tough.” He snagged a job as a photographer’s assistant and ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, the place there was a strong Jewish group.
Claude turned a profitable photographer, documenting the likes of Paul Newman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. His mantra was “it’s more important to click with the people than the pictures.” In the course of the battle, he met his future spouse, Beverly, a descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants, on the prepare between Cleveland and New York Metropolis. “She was just swept off her feet,” David describes.
In December 1999, the phone rang on the Cassirer residence in San Diego, the place the couple had retired. A good friend had simply noticed “Rue Saint-Honoré” inside a guide accompanying an exhibition of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza’s intensive artwork assortment, triggering the household’s multi-decade authorized battle.
Once I requested about what his father would consider how far they’ve include this portray, David responded, “Like most Holocaust survivors, they were very modest. They were humbled by what happened, where Hitler had such a terrible impact on the world.”
“So they were far more modest than they were in their heyday, and they would be stunned at the interest in this case, at the amazing amount of public support, not just from Jewish people, but from everybody,” David continued. “But my father would be more pleased when we finally make a recovery, and we can get this art returned.”
For David, this case is extra necessary than the portray itself, its potential sale, or the muse he hopes to create. It’s in the end concerning the tales of those that lived by fascism and genocide, and about giving a voice to the unvoiced who have been unable to share what occurred to them.
“This is a different angle on the Holocaust, rather than the harsher angle of the people, Jews and others, in concentration camps or death camps,” David mentioned with conviction, standing subsequent to a replica of “Rue Saint-Honoré” that hangs in his lounge. “That is a little easier to take, because we’re staring at this beautiful art and telling the story of how it was taken from these people, from its real owners.”
