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 (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/)  
Artwork lost to Nazis at center of legal battle
By Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff  |  September 10, 2006 
They were called ``Jew auctions": the forced sale of Jewish art  collections 
at bargain prices, run by the Nazi Party for the benefit of  the Third Reich. 
Such was the fate of a 19th century oil painting bought by a Nazi storm  
trooper when Dusseldorf gallery owner Max Stern was ordered in 1935 to  liquidate 
his inventory because he was a Jew. 
Decades later, that painting -- ``Girl from the Sabine Mountains" --  made 
its way across the ocean to Rhode Island, where today it is at the  center of an 
unusual federal lawsuit over its rightful ownership. 
The case pits an ailing, elderly German baroness in Providence against  a 
wealthy Canadian foundation created to benefit three universities in  Canada and 
Israel. And it involves a Jewish lawyer in Boston who has  helped Jewish 
families recover art lost during the Holocaust, but who now  represents the 
baroness in a dispute over whether she possesses art stolen  by her Nazi stepfather 
-- and whether she broke the law by taking the  painting to Germany in search 
of an overseas court sympathetic to her  position. 
For Maria-Louise Bissonnette, 82, who inherited the piece from her late  
stepfather, Dr. Karl Wilharm, a high-ranking Nazi official, the issue is  clear: 
She insists that she is the painting's legitimate owner, that Stern  was fully 
paid for the artwork, and that if she must relinquish it to the  Max Stern 
Foundation she should receive its estimated value of  $150,000. 
``There's no question it was a forced sale, and it has never been her  
intention to keep that work of art from the Max Stern estate," said  Bissonnette's 
Boston lawyer, John Weltman, a Jewish art litigator whose  lost-art cases up to 
now have been for Jewish families. ``She simply wants  a court to determine 
to whom the work belongs, and if she has to return it  the issue is how much 
she's entitled to be paid." 
But lawyers and executors for Stern's Montreal estate maintain that  
Bissonnette has a moral and legal obligation to return the painting. Stern  sold it 
under duress, they said, and ultimately received none of the  sale's proceeds 
when he was forced out of Germany in 1937. 
``Dr. Stern was deprived of that painting under circumstances of Nazi  
oppression of the worst kind," said Montreal attorney Robert Vineberg, an  executor 
of Stern's estate. ``The estate's position is that this painting  was 
wrongfully appropriated from Dr. Stern, and on that basis the estate  is entitled to 
its return." 
The controversy began in January 2005, when the Stern estate learned  that 
the painting, by Franz X. Winterhalter, was on consignment at Estates  
Unlimited, a Cranston, R.I., auction house. The estate immediately  contacted the 
Holocaust Claims Processing Office, a New York state agency  that recovers lost or 
looted art. Agency officials then began negotiating  with Bissonnette and 
Weltman, at one point offering $15,000 for the return  of the artwork, which had 
been missing for nearly 70 years. 
For more than a year, settlement negotiations dragged on  unsuccessfully. 
They all but collapsed last April, when officials at the  Holocaust Claims 
Processing Office were notified by Weltman's law firm,  Lawson & Weitzen, that 
Bissonnette had taken the painting to Germany  and asked a Cologne court to declare 
her its rightful owner. 
That move spurred the agency to send a blistering letter to Weltman  
expressing ``immense disappointment, not to say shock," at the turn of  events, which 
agency officials said broke an agreement that the painting  would remain at 
the auction house until the dispute was resolved. 
``Your client's actions . . . reflect bad faith and are unprecedented  in our 
experience," Sherri North Cohen, a lawyer for the Holocaust Claims  
Processing Office, wrote in her April 25, 2006, letter. ``Perhaps your  client, 
presumably in spite of your advice, did not understand the  seriousness of her 
actions in moving the painting over state and  international borders after receiving 
a factually supported Nazi-looted  art restitution claim." 
The Stern estate, also outraged, filed a lawsuit in US District Court  in 
Rhode Island against Bissonnette and Estates Unlimited. 
``In 20 years of doing this, I have never seen somebody with the nerve  or 
chutzpah or audacity, after over a year of good-faith negotiations, to  respond 
to the situation by taking the painting physically out of the  country," said 
Willi Korte, a specialist in locating Nazi-looted art who  is helping the 
estate recover Stern's more than 400 lost artworks. 
``I was speechless, and at the same time kind of impressed, that this  little 
old lady had the nerve to say, `To hell with all you guys, to hell  with the 
state of New York, to hell with any legal arguments. I know  what's right for 
myself so I'm going to take this thing to Germany where  it came from.' " 
Bissonnette did not return a call left with a concierge at her  Providence 
home, and her Cranston, R.I., lawyer, Edward John Mulligan,  refused to discuss 
her case. 
But Weltman said in an interview he had not known Bissonnette planned  to 
take the painting out of the country and was not aware of her plan  until she had 
carried it out, although he believes there was no agreement  preventing her 
from doing so. He described her as a woman of modest  financial means, despite 
her regal title, who suffers from breast cancer  and had intended to auction 
off the painting to help pay for her  medications. 
Stern, who fled Germany in 1937 after the forced sale of his gallery's  
inventory, became a prominent art collector and dealer in Montreal. When  he died 
in 1987, he bequeathed his estate to a foundation that benefits  Concordia and 
McGill universities in Montreal and Hebrew University of  Jerusalem in Israel. 
Bissonnette's view, Weltman said, is that Stern was compensated twice  for 
the painting: first when it was auctioned in the 1930s, and again in  the 1960s 
when a German restitution court recognized that it had been  forcibly sold and 
awarded Stern damages for his lost profit. As a result,  Weltman said, 
Bissonnette believes that even if she is eventually ordered  by a German judge to 
return the painting to the estate, she should be paid  for it. 
``What's upsetting to the Max Stern estate is that they feel they can  get a 
better shake in this country," Weltman added, ``and Mrs.  Bissonnette, using 
her own wits, decided they were probably right. So it  came into her own head 
to take the painting to Germany," where it remains  today. 
Patty Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University who  specializes in 
cultural property issues, said legal precedent in the  United States, Canada, 
and England dictates that if a painting is  determined to have been stolen or 
illegally expropriated, its original  owners may take it back without paying 
compensation. But Germany may take  another view. 
``People who've sued in the United States who are Nazis or connected to  
Nazis usually don't do very well," Gerstenblith said. ``However, it's  possible 
that a German court would be more sympathetic and say there was  no theft here 
in the first place or, if there was, you've already been  compensated for it." 
Steven M. Fusco, an art dealer at Estates Unlimited, did not return  calls 
for comment. Nor did the auction house's Providence attorney, Kevin  F. Bowen. 
The estate's lawyers and executors said they remain ``bewildered" by  
Bissonnette's actions. 
``Why would you even move the painting out of the country if you were  trying 
to act in good faith to work out this situation?" asked Dr.  Clarence 
Epstein, the estate's manager and director of special projects at  Concordia 
University. ``This issue, for Mrs. Bissonnette, is clearly a  financial exercise. But 
for us this is more than financial. It's a moral  issue for which the estate 
will put all its resources behind  fighting." 
Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at _pfeiffer at globe.com_ 
(mailto:pfeiffer at globe.com) .  

 

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