Return of Nazi-looted art opens way to more claims

LONDON -- When German authorities hand over a $5 million sketch by Van Gogh to Gerta Silberberg in the next few weeks, a small fragment of a destroyed world will be returned.

Earlier this month, the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Heritage, the umbrella body representing most of Germany's museums, approved the return of Van Gogh's "L'Olivette," which has been hanging in Berlin's National Gallery since 1935.

Silberberg, an 85-year-old widow living in the British city of Leicester, greeted the news with mixed emotions.

"The whole issue brings back many disturbing issues for me," she said. "I wish to continue to live modestly and quietly for my remaining years."

The return of this work and another owned by Silberberg's father-in-law before the Nazi era is expected to open the way to claims by other owners and their heirs to thousands of artworks worth billions of dollars in museums, galleries and private collections throughout the world.

The German foundation also gave its president the power to negotiate directly with prewar owners or their heirs to avoid lengthy litigation.

"No one knows how big this problem is, but we suspect it is huge," said Constance Lowenthal, the director of the Commission for Art Recovery, a subsidiary of the World Jewish Congress.

Since the death of Silberberg's husband, in 1984, Gerta has been the sole surviving relative of Max Silberberg, her father-in-law, who died at Auschwitz Gerta and her husband fled to Britain in 1937.

Max Silberberg was a wealthy industrialist in Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland, and co-owned M. Weissenberg, a company that produced magnesite, a key ingredient in making steel.

He used his wealth to amass a fabulous, 143-piece collection of impressionist art. Considered one of the finest private collections in Europe, it included paintings and sketches by Cezanne, Renoir, Delacroix, Degas, Matisse and Pissarro. At today's values, it is estimated that the collection would be worth $35 million.

Soon after Hitler came to power in 1933, however, Silberberg's world imploded: the Nazis "Aryanized" the magnesite industry and Silberberg was suddenly forced out of his job and stripped of his assets.

By 1934, it was clear that he would have to sell his fabulous collection of art at one of the many "Jew Auctions" organized throughout Germany between 1933 and 1938. These sales were designed to force cash-strapped Jews to sell their collections at a fraction of their real values.

Many of these works were later plundered by the invading Soviet Red Army, surfacing decades later in the former Soviet bloc.

German law acknowledged in 1989 that the auctioned artworks were looted property.