Summary binding opinion

The Restitutions Committee has assessed an application for restitution of the painting Odalisque by Henri Matisse, which since 1941 has been in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and is currently in possession of Amsterdam City Council. The Committee has come to the conclusion on the grounds of the investigation conducted by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe and assessed by the Expert Centre Restitution that it is highly likely that the painting came from the collection of the Jewish couple Albert and Marie Stern. It has also become sufficiently plausible that the couple lost possession of the painting as a result of circumstances directly connected with the Nazi regime.

Research has revealed that Albert Stern was the owner of the painting during the occupation. On 19 July 1941 the ownership of the Painting was transferred from Albert Stern and sold and delivered to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam with the cooperation of Lieuwe Bangma, with whom the Stern family had business and personal ties. As a non-Jewish Dutch national, during the occupation Lieuwe Bangma had free access to his bank balances and was not threatened with financial and material expropriation. The sale by Albert Stern was connected to measures taken by the occupying forces against Jewish members of the population and arose out of necessity.

The Committee has advised Amsterdam City Council to restitute the painting Odalisque by Henri Matisse, which is in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, to the legal successors of Albert and Marie Stern.

1. The Application

The request for a binding opinion concerns the oil-on-canvas artwork Odalisque (1921/1922) by Henri Matisse (hereinafter also referred to as the Painting), which since 1941 has been in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (hereinafter referred to as the Museum) under inventory number A795 and is currently in the possession of the City Council.

The Applicants contend that the Painting belonged to the collection of the Jewish husband and wife Albert Abraham Stern (1861-1945) and Marie Stern née-Ebstein (1878-1952). Albert Stern, a textiles manufacturer, was co-owner of the garment business Graumann & Stern in Berlin. The couple fled to the Netherlands in 1937 as a result of persecution under the Nazi regime. According to the rightful claimants, the Painting was supposedly sold on 19 July 1941 under duress to the Museum as a result of circumstances during the occupation.

The Applicants and the City Council (hereinafter referred to as the parties) asked the Committee by letter on 5 April 2023 for an investigation and a binding opinion concerning the Painting. By signing the letter, the parties declared that they accepted the Committee’s regulations (approved on 12 July 2021; most recently amended on 6 October 2023; hereinafter referred to as the Regulations) applicable for dealing with the request and considered the opinion to be issued by the Committee as binding.

Identities of the parties

The Applicants have stated that they are heirs of Albert Stern. To that end, the CLAE submitted the document ‘Legal Successors and Powers of Attorney March 2023’. In addition, the Committee received, at its request, a legal opinion from GG from the law firm Stephenson Harwood LLP in London of 13 June 2023 in which it is stated that AA, BB, CC, DD, EE and FF are the entitled parties to Albert Stern’s estate. In the Committee’s opinion it has thus been shown sufficiently that the Applicants represent all those entitled to the assets of Albert Stern.

The Applicants had themselves represented during the procedure by the CLAE of London. The Committee furthermore took note of a decision by the Mayor of Amsterdam of 21 March 2023 to the effect that the Director of Art and Culture, Mr A. Ahmadali, is authorized to represent the City Council during the Committee’s procedure. Then, in a decision of 22 March 2023, the Director of Art and Culture authorized the Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Mr R. Wolfs, to act as focal point for, and to provide information concerning the Painting to, the Restitutions Committee on behalf of the City Council.

3. Establishing the Facts

The Committee establishes the following facts on the grounds of the report prepared by the CLAE, the documentation and information provided by the parties, and the findings of the ECR.

Albert and Marie Stern and their family

Albert Abraham Stern (hereinafter also referred to as Albert) was born on 6 January 1861 in Grätz, Posen (currently Grodzisk Wielkopolski in Poland). In June 1895 he married Rosa Landeker, born on 10 February 1873 in Thorn, West Prussia, with whom he had three children – Erich Heinrich Stern (1896-1944), Wilhelm Werner Stern (1897-1983) and Käthe Stern (1898-1898).

Albert and Rosa Stern divorced and in 1907 Albert Stern married Marie Ebstein, born on 27 September 1878 in Breslau, the German name for Wroclaw. They had two children, both born in Berlin, Eva Luise (1908-1992) and Rudolf Bernhard (1911-1945). In 1913 Albert Stern and his family started living in the Berlin suburb of Nikolassee in ‘Haus Stern’ at Kirchweg 27.

The Sterns’ art collection

Marie Stern was the driving force behind the couple’s activities as collectors of modern and contemporary art. In 1976 her daughter Eva stated the following: ‘My mother studied Art in Munich before her marriage, and, after her marriage, started to collect paintings which hung on the walls of our home in Berlin-Nikolassee.’

The Sterns’ art collection included paintings by Munch, Corinth and Van Gogh. The family acquired the Painting in 1930.

Persecution of the family and flight from Germany to the Netherlands in the 1937-1941 period

After the Nazis had come to power in January 1933, the Sterns were subjected to unrelenting persecution because of their Jewish descent and were gradually stripped of their means of livelihood and extensive possessions. Albert Stern therefore made plans to emigrate. In 1935 he considered various emigration options for himself and Marie, including to Palestine. In 1936 the Sterns were forced to move from Kirchweg 27 to a rented dwelling at Beskidenstraße 30, also in Berlin-Nikolassee. A few months later Marie Stern emigrated to the Netherlands. She was followed shortly afterwards by Rudolf, Albert and Marie’s son, his wife Elfriede, and Erich, Albert’s son from his first marriage. Albert Stern arrived in the Netherlands in 1937 and joined Marie in the Pension Oliva boarding house at Prins Hendriklaan 36 in Amsterdam. This is the address at which they were registered with the Amsterdam Aliens Police. In August 1937 they moved to a rented flat at Apollolaan 193 II. They lived there until August 1941, when their financial situation forced them to move to a boarding house at Oranje Nassaulaan 32 in Amsterdam.

The expropriation of the Sterns’ German possessions by the German authorities continued after their emigration to the Netherlands. Their Berlin house at Kirchweg 27, Berlin-Nikolassee was sold for well below its value and all proceeds were seized. The firm of Graumann & Stern was also subjected to Nazi persecution. It was liquidated in 1938. The proceeds of selling the Graumann & Stern business premises and a number of pieces of land in Berlin were expropriated in the same way. Albert’s German bank accounts were frozen, and the balances were seized. The Nazis also targeted Albert’s possessions in the Netherlands. He was forced, for example, to transfer his shares in Royal Dutch Shell.

The Sterns also owned shares in Admintrust. This management company, which was founded in the nineteen-twenties, was charged with the financial management of the shares in foreign subsidiaries and other Graumann & Stern assets, including a weaving mill. The shares in Admintrust were held by the Graumann & Stern shareholders and the Stern family. In the spring of 1939 José Vigeveno, director of Admintrust, travelled to London, where Admintrust had a safe deposit box. The safe deposit box contained a sum of $2,830 in gold American Eagle coins that belonged to the Sterns. Vigeveno took these coins with him back to Amsterdam.

On 3 May 1940 Albert and Marie Stern acquired Haitian citizenship. In so doing they were hoping to leave the Netherlands for a safe destination. The costs associated with citizenship were more or less equal to the value of the gold American Eagle coins referred to above.

Between 4 May 1940 and December 1941, when the United States became involved with the war, Albert and Marie Stern corresponded regularly with Albert’s older brother Isidor and his son Fritz Stern, both of whom were living in the USA. This correspondence reveals how much worse the Sterns’ domestic circumstances had become. Isidor and Fritz Stern tried to help Albert and his family. They tried to get entry visas for the family for a number of countries, including the USA, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, through third countries such as Spain and Portugal.

Fritz did succeed, however, in obtaining tickets for Albert and Marie to get to Port-au-Prince (Haiti), but Albert Stern was unable to get all the necessary transit visas. On 22 November 1940 Fritz cancelled the tickets to Port-au-Prince.

Albert and Marie Stern’s last attempts to flee followed by their deportation

In 1942 the Haitian government announced that it would revoke the citizenship of all Jews who had not yet reached Haiti that summer. In July 1942, in a last attempt to get the Sterns to Haiti, Isidor transferred 1,200 US dollars to Bern, Switzerland. This was to enable the Sterns to reach Haiti via Lisbon on the SS Drottningholm, a neutral ship of the Swedish America line. However, Germany refused to guarantee safe passage for that vessel any longer, and so the attempt to flee failed. In November 1942 Fritz wrote to Wilhelm Stern in Palestine that his parents had not been able to leave the Netherlands.

In March1943 the Sterns moved from the boarding house at Oranje Nassaulaan 32 in Amsterdam to a small two-bedroom flat on the third floor of Johannes Verhulststraat 20 in Amsterdam. They shared this flat with a number of others, including Albert’s twin sister Jenny Fränkel. Their furniture and belongings had meanwhile been valued at 400 guilders. In October 1943 Fritz Stern wrote to a Haitian lawyer to ask whether he could get Albert’s and Marie’s Haitian nationality restored.

In January 1944 Fritz Stern obtained entry permits to Sweden for the Sterns, under his personal guarantee and promise to cover the costs of their living expenses. The US Department of the Treasury issued the foreign exchange permit required for this, which was extended in September 1944 and again in January 1945.

Fates of Albert and Marie’s children and grandchildren during the occupation

Albert Stern’s oldest son, Erich Stern, was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in April 1943 and then to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered in October 1944.

Wilhelm Stern remained in Berlin until March 1935, after which he emigrated to Palestine, where his wife and two children had fled to in 1933.

Eva Stern married Rudolf Friedländer, a Jewish doctor from Berlin, in 1936. The Friedländer-Stern family succeeded in fleeing to England, where Rudolf got a job at the Jewish Hospital in Manchester.

Rudolf Stern, Albert and Marie Stern’s youngest son, married Elfriede Letz in 1938. Their first child, EE, was born that same year. Rudolf Stern went into hiding in first half of 1942, and Elfriede gave birth to a daughter, Erika Manuela, in November 1942, Elfriede died two weeks after the birth. Erika Manuela was taken in and kept hidden by Lieuwe and Maria Bangma in Santpoort. A safe house was found for Erika’s older brother EE with Johannes and Cathrien Rademaker, friends of Rudolf and Elfriede in Amsterdam. Rudolf Stern’s hiding place was betrayed in January 1944. He was transported via Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz concentration camp, and subsequently murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp in March 1945.

EE and Erika were arrested by the Gestapo in April 1944. In July 1944 they were transported from Westerbork transit camp to Theresienstadt concentration camp. After their release they lived with the Bangma family among others. In 1951 they went to live in Manchester with the family of their aunt Eva Friedländer, where their grandmother Marie Stern also lived.

The Painting during the Occupation

After he fled to the Netherlands in 1936, Rudolf Stern got to know Willem Sandberg, who was appointed curator of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1938. A Museum document entitled Supplementary Master List of Works of Art in the Basement, dated 15 May 1940, reveals that Albert Stern gave the Museum a total of three works, including the Painting, for safekeeping on the day that the Netherlands capitulated to Germany or possibly earlier. The document lists:

1012 Matisse ‘Bajadère’ (alternative name for ‘Odalisque’) owner Stern
 1013 Edv.Munch, ‘Norwegian Landscape’ owner Stern
[unnumbered] Vincent van Gogh ‘Orchard in Blossom’ owner Stern.

Willem Sandberg stated in a document dated 18 October 1940 that the Museum had received the same three paintings in good order from L. Bangma for safekeeping. At the end of this document there is a note stating ‘returned to owner 10 March 1941’ signed by Sandberg. On the back of this document is the signature of Albert Stern, with that of Lieuwe Bangma below it.

The return of these three paintings was also recorded in a separate document dated 10 March1941 in which Willem Sandberg wrote the following:

Returned from the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam:

E. Munch, Landscape
van Gogh, Landscape
Matisse, Odaliske
in good order.

This note was signed by Albert Stern, with the signature of Lieuwe Bangma below it.

A handwritten invoice dated 19 July 1941 shows that the Museum then purchased the Painting for 5,000 guilders from Mr L. Bangma. Bangma attached a note to the invoice in which he asked the Museum to pay the money into his bank account. Bangma was not Jewish, so he could maintain Dutch bank accounts without needing to fear seizure.

Two weeks later, on 5 August 1941, the Sterns had to leave their Amsterdam flat in Apollolaan, where the Painting can be seen on family photographs. It is therefore plausible that Albert and Marie Stern had the Painting in their possession until the moment it was sold to the Museum.

On 21 June 1945 Lieuwe Bangma wrote to Eva Friedländer, the Sterns’ daughter living in England, that he wanted to return the belongings of Albert and Marie Stern that he was still holding:

I have still some goods of your parents, and we are longing to settle this with them.

Albert and Marie Stern’s unsold Van Gogh was among those goods. He had been keeping it safe in a bank strong room.

Statement by Eva Friedländer

In December 1976 Eva Friedländer wrote in an affidavit that her parents had been forced to sell the Painting in order to try to save their family:

When the War came my parents and brother remained in Holland and after the invasion of that country my parents were forced to sell pictures in order to raise money necessary to save my brother from being sent to a Concentration Camp. The paintings were sold to Stedeldk [sic] Museum and included a Matisse, a Corinth and a Munch. Chinese Art objects were also sold to raise money to save my brother from imprisonment.

Statement by EE

In 2013 EE visited Jo Spruit, the Bangma family’s post-war housekeeper. As described earlier, after his return from Theresienstadt concentration camp after the war, he lived for a few years with Lieuwe Bangma and his family. Afterwards he always kept in touch Jo Spruit, with whom he had spent a lot of time during his childhood.

In a conversation with EE about his grandfather Albert, Jo Spruit said that after May 1940 Albert Stern had transferred all his possessions to Lieuwe Bangma in order to avoid seizure. On 15 September 2022, EE stated the following about this conversation in an affidavit:

In 2013, two years before she [Jo Spruit] died, I went to visit her in Zwolle as she had told me she had broken her hip and the operation to repair it had caused further damage. In the course of that visit, she told me that after the Nazi invasion of May 1940, at the beginning of 1941, my grandfather Albert Stern had transferred his assets to Mr Bangma so that they would be protected from seizure by the Nazis. By having my grandfather’s possessions and money in Mr Bangma’s name, they would not be identified as owned by a Jew and would be safe.

It must have put Mr Bangma in danger to look after my grandfather’s assets. But this was entirely in character and reflected the deep affection and trust between him and my grandparents. He put himself and his family in further danger when, in 1942, he unhesitatingly took Erica to live with him and his wife. This was after Arthur Seyss-Inquart had said in a speech in 1941 that anyone who helped Jews would suffer the same fate as them.

4. Substantive Assessment of the Application

The Committee has established that the requirements in section 1 a to e of the assessment framework have been met. It can consequently proceed with the substantive handling of the application.

The Museum, on behalf of the City Council, let it be known that it waived the right to invoke good faith, and therefore the substantive assessment of the restitution application remains limited to sections 2 and 3 of the assessment framework.

Pursuant to section 2 of the assessment framework, the Committee must assess whether it is highly plausible that the Painting was in possession of Albert Stern, and on the grounds of section 3 whether it is sufficiently plausible that he lost possession of the Painting involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime. To this end the Committee finds as follows:

Ownership requirements (section 2 of the assessment framework)

The documentation found during the investigation indicates that Albert Stern was the owner of the Painting before the Nazis came to power in 1933. It has been established that the Painting was included in an exhibition at Galerie Alfred Flechtheim in 1930, and Albert Stern is referred to as one of the lenders to whom Alfred Flechtheim extended his gratitude.

The Committee finds that no indications were discovered to suggest that the Painting ceased being in possession of the Sterns’ after the German invasion until the moment that it was sold. The Committee also takes into consideration that the Painting is on family photographs of Albert and Marie Stern during the period they lived in the flat in Apollolaan in Amsterdam (1937-1941). It has been established that the Painting and two other works belonging to the Sterns, by Van Gogh and Munch, were given to the Museum in 1940 for safekeeping. Internal Museum documentation consistently names ‘Stern’ as owner of these three paintings. Albert Stern and Lieuwe Bangma refer to the documents about the transfer to and the return from safekeeping by the Museum. In the Committee’s opinion, the fact that documents concerning the actual sale of the Painting no longer mention Albert Stern and only Lieuwe Bangma is connected with the fact that Bangma, as a non-Jewish Dutch national, had free access to his bank balances and was not threatened with financial and material expropriation. It is clear for the Committee that there were close business and personal ties between Bangma and the Stern family. His role as a friend, helper and confidant of the Stern family has been comprehensively described and documented by the Applicants. For example, Lieuwe Bangma wrote to Stern’s daughter Eva Friedländer in England that he wanted to return the belongings of Albert and Marie Stern that he was still holding, included the unsold Van Gogh. It can be deduced from this that during the occupation there were transfers of possessions by Albert Stern to Bangma in order to conceal the real ownership situation and to prevent these belongings from being seized. The sale of the Painting is also referred to in various other letters and statements.

On the grounds of this information, looked at as a whole, in the Committee’s opinion it is highly likely that the Painting belonged to Albert Stern at the time of the sale and transfer to the Museum in 1941. This means that the ownership requirement of section 2 of the assessment framework has been met.

The consequence of this is that the Committee now has to evaluate whether, with regard to the Painting, there was involuntary loss of possession as a result of circumstances directly associated with the Nazi regime.

Conclusion with regard to the restitution application

The Committee concludes that it is highly plausible that the painting Odalisque (1920-1921) by Henri Matisse, which is currently in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam with object number A795, came from the private collection of Albert Stern, and that it has become sufficiently plausible that he lost possession of this painting was lost in 1941 involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime.

Since Amsterdam City Council has stated that it waives the right to invoke good faith in regard to the provenance of the Painting when purchasing it, the Committee does not need to conduct research in this regard and has not done so.

In view of sections 2 and 3 of the assessment framework (criterion 3.2 and part 3 at the end of section 3), the upshot of all this is that the Committee will recommend that the Painting should be restituted to the Applicants.