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Johanna Margarethe Stern

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Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann (6 January 1874 in Berlin – 22 May 1944 in Auschwitz) was a German Jewish art collector and victim of the Holocaust.[1]

Life

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From 1918 Margarethe Stern (née Lippmann) lived with her husband the businessman and art collector Siegbert Samuel Stern, founder of Grauman & Stern, in Neubabelsberg, Potsdam. The couple had four children between 1899 and 1909. The couple lived on the Griebnitzsee in the prestigious Villa Stern, in Kaiserstraße 3 (today Karl-Marx-Straße).

Nazi persecution and murder

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When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the couple was persecuted because of their Jewish origins. Siegbert Stern died in Berlin on 7 August 1935. In the spring of 1937, Margarethe Stern fled, first to Badenweiler, then in the summer of 1938 via Switzerland to Amsterdam, where her brother-in-law Albert Stern was already based.[2]

Hitler's race laws targeted Jews, throwing them out of work, banning them from owning businesses and imposing special confiscatory fees and taxes that obliged them to sell assets to survive.[citation needed] Margarethe Stern was forced to sell the Villa Stern in November 1940, although its unclear whether she received any of the proceeds.[citation needed]

In May 1940, the National Socialists occupied the Netherlands. Margarethe Stern tried to obtain an exit visa for herself and some family members by handing over a painting by the artist Henri Fantin-Latour to the Nazi looting organisation, called the Dienststelle Mühlmann. The exit visas were still not issued.[3]

Stern-Lippmann went into hiding, but was arrested in April 1943 and deported to Auschwitz where she was murdered on 22 May 1944.[4] Her daughter Louise Henriette and her husband died with her. Margarethe Stern-Lippmann's other children survived the war.[5]

Restitution claims for artworks

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The painting by Henri Fantin-Latour was returned to the heirs of Margarethe Stern in 1949.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Villa Stern was restored with the aid of the Jewish Claims Conference.

In 2006 negotiations were held about the return of one of the 144 paintings owned by the Stern family, which had ended up in a museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, after being looted in 1942. The Circumcision by Jan Baegert, also called the Master of Cappenberg, was returned following a decision by the Dutch Restitutions Committee.[6][5]

In 2014 a search report was published by the German Lost Art Foundation regarding a painting by Max Liebermann, Reiter am Strande, owned by the Stern family.[7]

In 2018, the Dutch Restitutions Committee reviewed a claim involving Wassily Kandinsky's painting Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche, which was part of the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.[8] The family complained to the Dutch culture minister about the 'careless' mistakes and a lack of empathy.[9][10][11][12] In 2022, responding to international criticism, the Dutch Restitutons Committee reversed its earlier decision and recommended that the Kandinsky be restituted to Stern's heirs.[13][14][15]

Searches for more than one hundred artworks continue today.[16][17]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann". Joods Monument. 6 January 1874. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  2. ^ "Van Engelshoven should be ashamed' - interview with Hester Bergen". lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 15 December 2020. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  3. ^ A secret room that saved this girl's life, BBC
  4. ^ "Yad Vashem, Holocaust victims". yvng.yadvashem.org. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Summary RC 1.44 | Restitutiecommissie". www.restitutiecommissie.nl. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  6. ^ "The circumcision, anonymous, previously attributed to Meester van Kappenburg | Restitutiecommissie". www.restitutiecommissie.nl. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  7. ^ "Lost Art Internet Database - Einzelobjekt / Suchmeldung: Reiter am Strande". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  8. ^ "Binding Opinion About the Painting 'Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche' by Wassily Kandinsky | Restitutiecommissie". www.restitutiecommissie.nl. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  9. ^ "Jewish family complains about committee that rules on Nazi looted art". DutchNews.nl. 19 March 2020. Archived from the original on 25 May 2021. Retrieved 25 May 2021. View of Murnau with church', which belonged to the Stern-Lippmann family in Germany before World War II, has ended up in the collection of Eindhoven city council, in the Van Abbemuseum. But 12 descendants of the former owner Johanna Margarete Stern-Lippmann claim it disappeared under dubious circumstances, when their Jewish ancestor fled to the Netherlands and the painting vanished from the family collection. She herself was eventually arrested, deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Hester Bergen, who has been leading the family effort to reclaim the painting, told DutchNews.nl that the family was frustrated with long delays, intrusive questions, and 'factual mistakes' in expert reports commissioned by the Dutch restitutions committee. Their criticisms are the latest in a series of complaints about the committee, which is tasked with issuing 'binding opinions' on whether art was looted during World War II, and whether public museums should return it.
  10. ^ "Jewish family denied return of £18m painting allege bias". The Week UK. 2 November 2020. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  11. ^ Boztas, Senay (18 March 2020). "Dutch committee charged with returning Nazi-looted art 'not empathetic to Jewish people'". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  12. ^ "Van Engelshoven should be ashamed' - interview with Hester Bergen". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 15 December 2020. Retrieved 25 May 2021. Is that when the bureaucratic nightmare began? "In addition to the great substantive research that I did and the various conversations I had with the director, Charles Esche, I also had to write dozens of letters after registering with the Restitution Committee. I did this to refute one illogical approach after another. I have also filed several complaints with the Minister, had to correct erroneous reports from the Expertise Centre and conduct continuous research to refute incorrect assumptions of the Expertise Centre by providing evidence over and over again. The burden of proof that descendants had to provide was insane in recent years. "
  13. ^ Liphshiz, Cnaan. "Reversing earlier stance, Netherlands to return looted Kandinsky to Jewish family". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
  14. ^ Senay (16 September 2022). "Nazi 'looted' Kandinsky masterpiece to be returned to rightful heirs". DutchNews.nl. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
  15. ^ "Art Industry News: After a Protracted Battle, a Dutch Museum Returns a Kandinsky to a Jewish Collector's Heirs + Other Stories". Artnet News. 20 September 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
  16. ^ "Lost Art Internet Database - Objektgruppe: Malerei". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  17. ^ "Lost Art Internet Database - Objektgruppe: Plastik / Skulptur". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
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