61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

ook with the title «Vénus de Cyrène». It shows the interior view of a room
with an open door. The book had been written by Josse Bernheim-Jeune and
published privately.
The Embassy rightly referred to the inclusion of this painting in the «Répertoire»
of looted assets 145 and requested that the case be re-examined. However,
the Federal Political Department held that it would not change its view even if
new information became available. After all, even the Galerie Bernheim’s
account books showed no trace of a sale of this painting and so the Department
considered the case closed and forwarded it to the Kunstmuseum Basel. On the
other hand, Georg Schmidt was of the opinion that this matter did not concern
the Museum either, but only the Galerie Beyeler. But the Galerie Beyeler
persisted with the information it had received in Paris, according to which the
painting in question had been wrongly reported to the «Répertoire». The
painting had been sold legally.
When Beyeler acquired the painting in 1955, the «Répertoire» was already in
existence. Beyeler had even consulted it. Although the painting figured in the
«Répertoire», he doubted that the painting was a looted asset. He had obtained
information in France that allowed him not to categorise the «Aryanisation» of
the gallery and the collection as «looting». Despite this, neither Beyeler nor the
Kunstmuseum Basel can be considered to have acted in good faith.
Recent cases
Since the rekindling of the restitution issue, new cases have also been appearing
in Switzerland. In 1999, Max Liebermann’s «Nähschule im Waisenhais
Amsterdam» was returned in an out-of-court settlement by the Stiftung
Bündner Kunstsammlung to Gerta Silberberg, the daughter-in-law – now
resident in Great Britain – of Breslau-based collector Max Silberberg who was
murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942. The painting was sold to Adolf Jöhr by
Silberberg in Berlin in 1934 through the publisher and art dealer Bruno
Cassirer. From there it came to the Kunstmuseum Chur as a bequest in 1992.
The painting had been exhibited in 1997/98 in Hamburg, Frankfurt, and
Leipzig in a major exhibition of Liebermann’s works and was tracked down by
a Berlin investigation agency.
In 2001, the location of Camille Corot’s «L’Odalisque», whose whereabouts had
been unknown for a long time, was clarified amicably by its original owner and
the current owner. The painting had originally belonged to the Paris art dealer
Josse Bernheim-Jeune, was «Aryanised» in 1941, and arrived by a tortuous
route in Switzerland where it was finally bought in good faith by art dealer Peter
Nathan, the son of Fritz Nathan, in 1959 from the Ursula Veraguth collection.
Michel Dauberville, an heir of the Bernheim estate, whose family, like the
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