German Art Collectors Vow To Return Plundered Work Family To Seek Victim Of Nazis Or Donate Painting To Israel

A German family who asked Sotheby’s to withdraw a valuable painting from auction amid concerns it might have been plundered by Nazis has pledged to look for the victim and return the painting if it was stolen.

Peter Henle, son of German collector Guenther Henle, wrote a letter to Sotheby’s London branch, where the painting was to go on the auction block next week. The letter said that if the victim or the victim’s descendants could not be located, the painting would be donated to a museum or gallery.

Should the victim turn out to be Jewish with no descendants, the letter said, the 17th century painting, “A Dune Landscape with Two Figures by a Fence,” by Jacob van Ruisdael would be donated to “an appropriate museum or gallery in Israel.”

The letter was released to The Boston Globe, which first reported about the painting’s dubious ownership background a week ago.

Guenther Henle was an industrialist and political architect of the postwar Christian government in Germany. According to Peter Henle’s letter, if no evidence of Nazi looting exists and no victim can be found, the family would meet again “to settle the disposition of the picture.”

The director of Washington’s National Jewish Museum, Ori Z. Soltes, said if no victim is found and no clear history of the painting emerges, he doesn’t see how the family could sell it with a clear conscience.

But Soltes, whose museum has made a project out of searching for lost art that was stolen by Nazis, said the Henles’ effort “is as correct as one could hope for, and reflects a sensitivity for rapprochement.”

Soltes said the museum would try to help determine who had owned the painting when the Nazis acquired it in 1941.

The Globe reported last week that Sotheby’s had listed the painting with a catalog notation that showed it had been acquired for the Linz Gallery, a museum that Hitler had planned to build in Linz, Austria.

Guenther Henle bought the painting in 1961 from Amsterdam dealer Pietre de Boer, who helped the Nazis obtain more than 300 paintings during the war.

Sotheby’s said it had no record of the painting being stolen, and was unaware that of the 5,300 artworks acquired for the Linz Gallery, which was never built, about 25 percent were taken from Jews.