Note: Three of my father’s first cousin’s surviving paintings, among a lot of 25 seized by the Nazis in December 1940 at the Port of Bordeaux, are currently on display in Paris at the musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (MAHJ). I participated in a round table discussion on the opening night on February 18, 2026. A comment by a high-level official during the event that the French Minister of Culture correctly followed French civil law in adjudicating the case prompts me to more fully explain my frustration with how my claim was handled, even though I now own the paintings.
Related Posts:
POST 105: FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S NAZI-CONFISCATED ART: RESTITUTION DENIED
POST 197: THE HISTORY OF FÉDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S SURVIVING CONFISCATED PAINTINGS
As I related in Post 189, I am now the owner of three surviving paintings rendered by Fédor Löwenstein, my father’s first cousin. These works were among 25 seized from him by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux on December 5, 1940, and the only ones thought to have survived the Nazi onslaught to destroy his so-called “degenerate art.” They were restituted to me at a ceremony that took place at The Centre Pompidou in Paris on September 16, 2025. Since taking possession of the paintings, I’ve agreed to loan them to two or three French museums over the next few years for displays on spoliated art from the Nazi era.
The first of these exhibits opened at the musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (mahJ) in Paris on February 18, 2026, and I was asked to participate in a round table discussion that evening. The paintings will be exhibited there until March 31, 2028, although one of the paintings, Composition, Landscape, will be transferred to l’Orangerie as part of a larger exhibit there on spoliated works before the end of the exhibit at mahJ. An exhibit at Le centre national Jean-Moulin in Bordeaux, the city where Fédor Löwenstein’s paintings were confiscated in 1940, is then possible later in 2028.
Mme Pascale Samuel, the curator for modern and contemporary art at mahJ, opened the evening’s event and explained the purpose of the exhibit. (Figure 1) M. Didier Schulmann, former Director of The Centre Pompidou’s Kandinsky Library, moderated the evening’s discussion and explained the circumstances that led to the three surviving Löwenstein paintings being recognized as Nazi-looted art. (Figures 2-3)
M. Schulmann explained how the status of Löwenstein’s paintings was “legalized” in 1973 through administrative machinations. That year they were officially added to the modern art collections of the National Museum of Modern Art (Musée National d’Art Moderne (MNAM)) as an “anonymous donation.” Recognition of the three paintings as looted art, however, did not take place until December 2010. This was thanks to the work of archivists and curators, namely, Alain Prévet, head of the Archives of the National Museums, and Thierry Bajou, chief curator of artifacts of the French Museums. Didier reviewed how these two men were able to recognize Löwenstein’s paintings as looted art. I had the honor of meeting M. Prévet at the opening of the mahJ exhibit. (Figure 4)
Preserved in the Archives of the National Museum are thirteen negatives showing views of the rooms at the Jeu de Paume (Figure 5) taken during the Nazi occupation exhibiting numerous pieces of art seized by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). The ERR was the “Special Task Force” headed by Adolf Hitler’s leading ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and the main Nazi agency engaged in the plunder of cultural valuables in Nazi-occupied countries during the Second World War. The plunder was brought to the Jeu de Paume building in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris for processing by the ERR’s “Special Staff for Pictorial Art,” the so-called the Sonderstab Bildende Kunst.
Using the thirteen negatives, Prévet & Bajou undertook a detailed digitization of the visible paintings work by work. Each operation was accompanied by specific brightness adjustments to optimize the legibility of each artwork. Next, they performed a so-called anamorphosis to correct the distortions related to perspective. From this stage, it was then possible to identify several works and confirm attributions suggested elsewhere.
M. Schulmann explained that Prévet & Bajou referred to a list that the noted art historian Rose Valland then working at the Jeu de Paume recorded in her notebook on March 10, 1942, of modern art displayed on this date. It was the translation of a list drawn up by the German authorities that provided a brief description of the pieces of art with dimensions and the name of the owners from whom the artworks had been confiscated. Ironically, while this list was known to historians, astonishingly no one had ever cross referenced it with the photographs of the Jeu de Paume before Alain Prévet and Thierry Bajou did so.
As Prévet & Bajou describe elsewhere:
“We also used a website recently launched by a team of American researchers led by Marc Masurovski, which reproduces all the records compiled by the ERR during the looting. This website provides a directory of the looted individuals and the works that passed through the Jeu de Paume, enriched with photographs of the seized works, when available, taken by ERR agents. We found most of the works visible on the negatives there, but some of them, now identified, remain known only through these negatives when they were not specifically photographed by the Germans.”
Didier Schulmann clarified how Prévet & Bajou’s discovery appropriately led to the removal of the three surviving Loewenstein paintings from the database of the MNAM and their incorporation into the database of the Musées nationaux récupération (MNR).
A digression to explain MNR artworks. Between 1940 and 1945, approximately 100,000 cultural assets were looted in France, primarily from Jewish families, by the Nazi regime and the Vichy Government, or were sold under duress. Many of these items were transferred to Germany. At the end of the Second World War, approximately 60,000 works recovered in Germany or in territories controlled by the Third Reich were returned to France, as various clues (archives, inscriptions, etc.) suggested that they originated there.
Of the roughly 60,000 objects returned from Germany, 45,000 looted assets were restituted to their owners by the commission de récupération artistique (CRA) (Artistic Recovery Commission) between 1945 and 1950. Of the approximately 15,000 works that were neither claimed nor restituted, the administration, acting through “selection committees,” selected more than 2,200 based on various criteria (notably artistic merit), entrusting them to the care of the national museums and often deposited in regional institutions. These constitute the works known as “Musées Nationaux Récupération.”
Not all MNR works are necessarily looted works. In fact, all objects originating in France were brought back from Germany to France after the Second World War, regardless of how they’d left France and reached Germany. The reality is that some of these objects had not been looted but were items sold on the art market during the Occupation by owners who were neither threatened nor persecuted or pieces commissioned by Germans. The proportion of looted works within the entire body of MNR items remains unknown. The provenance of most of these works remains unclear. By the Minister of Culture’s own estimates, 85% of the MNR works and objects still have incomplete provenance with their owners on the eve of the war unknown.
The 13,000 works remaining in the early 1950s after restitution and selections as MNR works were sold by the State (via the Administration of State Property).
As just discussed, the acronym MNR refers to the group of approximately 2,200 artworks. On museum wall labels, the MNR designation signals the complex history of the works. At the Musée National d’Art Moderne, where the three surviving Löwenstein paintings were stored prior to their restitution, these works were not labeled MNR, but “RxP,” specifically, R26P (Les Peupliers), R27P (Les Arbres), and R28P (Composition).
As I explained in Post 189, Postscript, there are two separate entities involved in the reparation of works looted by the Nazis in France during the Second World War. One is part of the French Ministry of Culture and is known as the “Mission for the Research and Restitution of Cultural Property Looted between 1933 and 1945,” Mission de recherche et des restitution des biens culturels spolies entre 1933 et 1945 (MR2S) and is headed by M. David Zivie. The second is the independent “Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indeminisation des victimes de spoliations antisemites (CIVS)” attached to the office of the French Prime Minister. It is worth noting that MR2S was created in April 2019, five years after I initially submitted my claim for reparations to the Ministry of Culture.
MR2S is dedicated to researching and promoting the “policy of reparation” for looting. They undertake proactive research but also do investigations at the request of CIVS. The results of MR2S research are sent to the CIVS, who deliberate and issue opinions and recommend repatriation measures. The Ministry of Culture implements the CIVS’s recommendations and the Prime Minister’s decision by organizing the restitution of looted assets.
The Minister of Culture’s “Press kit—Restitution of three paintings by Fedor Loewenstein looted during the Second World War,” issued on the occasion of the Restitution Ceremony on September 16, 2025, notes the following regarding the number of looted works returned: “The number of works looted during the Nazi period that have returned since 1950, or that have been the subject of an agreement with the rights holders, now stands at 221, including 200 MNR or equivalent items, 20 works from national or territorial public connections and 1 book from national collections. Of this total, 57 items have been returned as part of proactive research by the administration, museums and libraries over the past ten years.”
The Press kit further asserts: “This restitution is the result of the proactive research work of the Ministry of Culture, which identified the owner of the three works and wished to find its beneficiaries in order to return them to them. At the same time, the restitution had been requested by a member of the painter’s family, who wanted to make the artist known and to disseminate his work. The Minister of Culture thanks Fyodor Löwenstein’s second cousin for the upcoming loan of these three works, which will be exhibited at the Museum of Jewish Art and History from February 19, 2026.” Obviously, the last part refers to me and my efforts over the last twelve years.
Let me briefly summarize what was discussed by the second panelist, Mme Florence Saragoza, current Director at the Musée national du château de Pau, famous as the birthplace of King Henry IV of France that showcases collections from his time.
Regular followers will recognize Florence’s name. She helped me file my compensation claim in 2014. She is someone I hold in great esteem and now consider a friend. I refer readers to earlier posts, specifically, Posts 189, 189 Postscript, and 197, for detailed background on Florence’s connection and involvement with Fédor Löwenstein’s paintings. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, after learning in 2014 that the three surviving Löwenstein paintings were first displayed at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux that year and that Florence had been the curator, I reached out to her. Coincidentally, at the time, Florence was the Director of the Musée Crozatier, an archaeological museum in le Puy-en-Velay; regular readers know I’m a retired archaeologist. Following her stint at the Musée Crozatier, Florence was the Director of the Toulouse Lautrec Museum in Albi.
During the evening presentation at mahJ, Florence told audience members some of Fédor Löwenstein’s personal history and his evolution as an artist, how she collected information about him and visited the house in Mirmande where Fedor took refuge during the Second World War that was once owned by his girlfriend, Marcelle Rivier, but is now owned by a couple who cared for Marcelle in her later years. I had the pleasure of meeting this couple, M. and Mme Sapet (Figure 6), during the opening of the exhibit, who own some of Löwenstein’s artworks including his iconic painting, “La Chute,” The Fall. Florence discussed the 2014 Bordeaux exhibit she arranged and her involvement two years before that as then-curator at the Minister of Culture in an exhibit on art looted from the Aquitaine region of southwestern France, an area of many Nazi confiscations.
In my presentation I focused on how I’d learned about Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) through photos and a letter I discovered in the archives of the Stadtmuseum in Spandau outside Berlin written by his sister on October 30, 1946, to their aunt discussing the posthumous sale of one of Fédor’s paintings for a large sum of money. Upon further investigation I learned that Fédor had been an accomplished artist whose works were deemed by the Nazis to be degenerate art, meaning many had been confiscated by them and consigned for destruction.
I went on to explain how I learned that three of the 25 paintings seized by the Nazis had survived their destructive onslaught, and that the French Minister of Culture was looking for heirs to whom to restore them. I briefly summarized my twelve-year ordeal to recover them, and how I ultimately prevailed. I expressed my frustration that while I eventually obtained the surviving paintings, I was forced to relinquish the substantial compensation the France’s Minister of Culture was offering for the 22 paintings that are lost and presumed to have been destroyed and spend a considerable sum in legal fees.
I explained that my claim was trumped by those of two so-called universal legatees because inheritance laws in France are governed by civil law rather than common law. Simply put, this means that the inheritance rights of non-blood heirs can prevail over those of blood relatives, such as myself, if blood relatives, some not yet even born, are not specifically named in wills. I was deemed by the Minister of Culture to be a third level heir and was forced to argue I should be eligible for what amounts to a finder’s fee.
The French Minister of Culture issued their initial rejection of my compensation claim in early 2020 just as Covid was taking hold. Perhaps on account of the timing and my frustration with the decision, I was very slow to react and almost missed the deadline to appeal. Eventually as a cathartic release, I used my blog as a platform to write a post very pointedly expressing my unhappiness (see Post 105). One of my distant cousins read this post and suggested I contact her lawyer in New York. It turns out that she and her extended family are involved in their own longstanding compensation claim involving her great-uncle’s enormous collection of art looted by the Nazis from his art salon in Berlin and/or sold under duress at greatly depreciated prices. My cousin’s lawyer has had great success over the years obtaining compensation for her and her family.
Realizing I had nothing to lose, I followed her suggestion. My cousin’s lawyer was extremely gracious though unable to help knowing I would need a French lawyer to pursue my claim. Instead, he referred me to one of his colleagues, an American-trained French-born lawyer, also specializing in compensation claims involving Nazi seizures. This colleague in turn put me in touch with one of his colleagues in France, a lawyer with whom he collaborates closely on claims cases in that country and someone I wound up hiring. This is an example of successfully using my blog to promote my own endeavors.
As noted above, the French Minister of Culture’s rejection of my claim happened because France is governed by civil law vs. common law; a commenter aptly noted the French Ministry was constrained in the decision they could render by this fact. Had I anticipated this comment by a high-level French official, I would have emphasized the following point. As I understand things, the French Ministry of Culture, specifically MR2S, not only implements the CIVS’s recommendations and the Prime Minister’s decision for restitutions but they also try to find original solutions for resolving claims such as mine. Without belaboring the point, the creative resolution to my compensation claim was advanced by me and my lawyer, not by the CIVS or MR2S.
I initiated the compensation claim without an awareness of the existence of the two universal legatees. When the Minister of Culture eventually learned of their existence, they offered them the opportunity to subrogate my case, that’s to say, claim it as their own. This was clearly an offer that was too good for the legatees to turn down.
Let me return to an issue I alluded to above, namely, the Minister of Culture’s proactive efforts to find Fédor Löwenstein’s rightful heirs. The 2014 exhibit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux along with the exhibition catalog represented an effort to ferret out potential legal heirs. However, at the time I contacted Florence Saragoza, the Minister of Culture had not progressed in identifying any. Had I not accidentally discovered the letter written by Fédor’s sister on October 30, 1946, at the Stadtmuseum and filed my claim, it’s unclear how long it would have taken for the Minister of Culture to initiate their proactive search. Given the high-profile nature of the Löwenstein paintings and the unique circumstances that led to their discovery as looted art, it is possible that such a proactive search would have been initiated sooner rather than later but my claim clearly accelerated the forensic search for heirs.
And in fact, in 2015 I was contacted by the Minister’s forensic genealogist who’d only been contracted by the Minister of Culture following the submission of my claim the prior year. The genealogist asked me to furnish any genealogical information I had. Thinking I was boosting my own case, I naively provided a large file of documents and photographs proving my close ancestral relationship to Fédor Löwenstein; this included multiple primary source documents I obtained at great financial cost by personally visiting the archives where these documents are kept, documents that are not otherwise available online.
Readers may wonder why I feel so much frustration with how my claim was handled given that I ultimately prevailed in retrieving Fédor Löwenstein’s surviving paintings after only 12 years. This is a legitimate question particularly since some Jewish descendants whose ancestors’ artworks were seized never attain any such closure or their claims are litigated for multiple generations without any resolution. I read about such cases all the time. One hurdle I cleared that many other claimants never get past is that the French Minister of Culture acknowledged the Löwenstein paintings were looted art that should be returned to rightful heirs.
Beyond the large financial burden imposed on me and the compensation monies I forewent, I ultimately undertook an enormous amount of work and effort on behalf of two universal legatees who never spent a dime, never acknowledged nor thanked me for my work, and were unaware of Lowenstein’s existence and significance. Furthermore, my displeasure is also rooted in France’s treatment of my family during the Second World War. This resulted in my aunt being murdered by the Nazis with the complicity of the Vichy French, and my father being denied the opportunity to work as a dentist in France after the Second World War even though he’d admirably served in the French Foreign Legion for five years during this time. As a retired archaeologist whose interest has always been rooted in the past, I am here to resoundingly state that the past matters and cannot be forgotten, notwithstanding what some deniers of history would bloviate about. I was heartened by the fact that a former unnamed member of the Prime Minister’s CIVS commission came up to me after the panel discussion to tell me that several members of the commission argued in favor of my position. This is affirmation that my frustration is warranted.
REFERENCES
Ministère de la Culture. (2025, September 16). Tracking the ghost paintings of Fédor Löwenstein, lost to Nazi looting. [Press release].
Prévet, A, Bajou, T. La récente identification de tableaux spoliés à l’artiste Fédor Löwenstein, in Florence Saragoza (ed.), L’Art victime de la guerre. Destin des œuvres d’art en Aquitaine pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Bordeaux, 2012, p. 33-35
