[MSN] Berliners Spar Over Return of Kirchner Painting as Vote Nears

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Berliners Spar Over Return of Kirchner Painting as Vote Nears

By Catherine Hickley and Linda Sandler

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a German expressionist painter, has entered the campaign for a regional election taking place in Berlin -- 68 years after his death.

The restitution last month of his 1913 painting ``Berlin Street Scene'' to a descendant of the Jewish family who owned it before World War II has sparked an indignant response from art experts and the regional parliamentary opposition.

London-based Christie's International estimates the oil painting may fetch as much as $25 million at its Nov. 8 auction in New York. Berlin's opposition Christian Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats accuse Culture Senator Thomas Flierl of handing the work back too readily and failing to inform either parliament or the public. They are questioning advocates and critics of the restitution at a parliamentary hearing today, just three weeks before the Berlin state election on Sept. 17.

``This painting is central to Berlin,'' Alice Stroever, the Green Party's spokeswoman on cultural issues, said in an interview. ``It captures the mood in the city at that time, just before World War I. Why didn't the Senate try to raise public money to buy it back? It seems incredible that they're attempting to sell this restitution as a pre-election success.''

The painting is one of several famous and valuable works recently restored to the heirs of Nazi victims. In a private sale organized by Christie's, cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder paid $135 million in June for Gustav Klimt's ``Golden Adele'' after the Austrian government returned it to heirs.

Woman in Red

``Berlin Street Scene,'' which had been housed in the city's Bruecke Museum since 1980 and has now been moved to New York in preparation for the Christie's sale, is one of Kirchner's most famous paintings. It shows two elegantly dressed women, one dressed in red, and men in dark hats and suits. The figures and faces are angular and elongated, typical of Kirchner's work.

The artist, a victim of Nazi persecution whose works were included in the 1937 ``Degenerate Art'' show in Munich, might have been surprised to discover that his painting would be the focus of a political wrangle in 2006. A month before the Berlin election, opinion polls showed Mayor Klaus Wowereit's coalition of Social Democrats and the Left Party holding on to power, though with a reduced majority.

The conflict over the restitution centers on differing views over what happened more than 70 years ago. Alfred Hess, who owned the painting, ran a shoe-manufacturing business in the eastern city of Erfurt. The family had one of the most comprehensive collections of German expressionist art at that time, with about 4,000 works.

Gestapo Threats

Hess died in 1931. His son, Hans Hess, lost his job at a publishing company following the rise of Hitler in 1933, and the family was eventually forced to leave Germany. Tekla Hess, Alfred's wife, said the Gestapo used threats to compel her to return the now scattered art collection to Germany. She sold ``Berlin Street Scene'' to a Cologne-based collector.

Under the headline ``Amateurs at the Berlin Culture Senate,'' a statement released last week by three art historians accused the authorities of inflicting ``dramatic damage'' on Berlin's public collections by ``acting like dilettantes.''

Bernd Schultz, an expert in 19th- and 20th-century art at Berlin auction house Villa Grisebach Auktionen GmbH and one of the three signatories, says there is no evidence that Hess was forced by the Gestapo to return the paintings and no suggestion that she didn't get the purchase price for the painting.

``Why didn't the Senate do its homework?'' Schultz asked in an interview. ``They did too little to keep the picture in Germany. Why wasn't the public informed about the loss of a big German painting? This policy of secrecy prevented us from exploring ways of keeping the painting.''

Secret Negotiations

Torsten Woehlert, Culture Senator Flierl's spokesman, disagrees. ``That's rubbish,'' he said. ``Secret negotiations were our only chance of buying the painting back at a reasonable price. If we'd acted in public, then we would be in the same position as now, competing with international art buyers.''

``You can tell we are in an election campaign,'' Woehlert said. ``Can you imagine the outcry if we hadn't returned it?''

Woehlert said that to avoid the restitution, the burden would have been on the Senate to prove that the paintings weren't sold under pressure and that Hess got the purchase price for them. That was impossible, he said.

``It is very clear that the Hess family was persecuted by the Nazis,'' said David Rowland, a partner at the New York law firm Rowland & Petroff, which is representing the Hess heir and specializes in East German restitution. The heir is a London- based descendant of the Hesses, who wishes to remain anonymous.

``It's a very clear-cut, normal restitution case,'' Rowland said. ``It is not even a case where there is any gray zone. It's only controversial because this is a valuable painting.''

Debt-Ridden Berlin

Berlin's debts of more than 60 billion euros ($76 billion) make it the most indebted German state on a per capita basis. Secret talks between the heir's lawyers and the cash-strapped city government on a sale that would keep the painting in Berlin failed because they couldn't agree on a price.

``We disagreed with the Senate about what was the fair market value,'' said Rowland. ``They didn't come with the right price at the right time.''

By the time the Senate found a sponsor willing to pay 10 million euros or more, the heir was ``contractually bound'' to Christie's, Woehlert said. The Senate will get back the price it paid for the painting in 1980 -- about 900,000 euros.

Awaken Interest

Christie's expects the painting will awaken interest from collectors worldwide. The auction house, owned by the French billionaire Francois Pinault, set Kirchner's current record of $8.8 million in London in February, when it sold his 1908 portrait of a woman in a white dress, according to sale tracker Artnet AG. ``Berlin Street Scene'' is a more important painting.

``It really is such an iconic work that pointing out countries is irrelevant,'' said Bendetta Roux, a spokeswoman for Christie's in New York. ``A work of this caliber is also something that could attract buyers from the emerging markets, such as China or Russia.''

Given such international interest, will Berlin get together a group of private and/or public sponsors, and could they offer the highest price for the painting on Nov. 8?

``I don't know,'' says Woehlert. ``It is the only chance.''

To contact the writers on this story: Linda Sandler in London at lsandler at bloomberg.net ; Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley at bloomberg.net . 

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