Heirs of Jewish banker who sold Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ lose restitution appeal

The heirs of a Jewish banker who sold artworks under pressure during the Nazi era have lost their bid to reclaim Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers from the Japanese insurance company that owns it, after a federal appeals court ruled that the case cannot be heard in Illinois.

In a decision issued November 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit filed by descendants of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The court said the heirs had no valid federal claim and that Sompo Holdings, the company that owns it, did not have enough ties to Illinois to be sued there.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was the co-owner and director of one of the five largest private banks in Germany, Mendelssohn & Co., and held a seat on the board of the Berlin Stock Exchange. After the Nazis came to power, he was removed from the stock exchange’s board, and his company was forcibly transferred to non-Jewish ownership.

“Throughout the 1930s, he suffered increasingly severe sanctions that ultimately eroded his livelihood,” the appeals court wrote in its decision. “Finding himself in an untenable financial situation, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had to liquidate his art collection.”