The Torens’ Case to Recover Nazi-looted Family Art Collection & the Current Restitution Landscape

By Nikki Vafai

David Friedmann (1857-1942) was a wealthy Jewish sugar industrialist and art collector in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), whose extensive art collection included works by renowned artists such as Pissarro, Rousseau, and Liebermann. In 1939, the Friedmann collection also caught the eye of Nazi bureaucrats, who were gathering information about private property of Jewish families and took inventory of all of the paintings in Friedmann’s collection, forbidding him from selling any of the works.^[1] One Nazi official wrote that the sale of Friedmann’s collection would generate revenue for the Reich.^[2] Due to his Jewish background, the Nazis then confined Friedmann and confiscated his vast art collection. Friedmann passed away in 1942 and his only daughter died in a death camp.

71 years later, Friedmann’s great-nephew, attorney David Toren, rediscovered one of the paintings his great-uncle had owned, “Two Riders on the Beach,” after seeing the painting on television following the discovery of German art dealer and collector, Cornelius Gurlitt’s art trove.^[3] Toren filed a successful claim for this one work, starting a long legal battle to recover all the works lost by his family to the Nazi regime.

In 2016, Toren filed a suit against Germany, seeking compensation for the regime’s taking of his family’s unrecovered art pieces and securities. The case was stayed while the United States Supreme Court decided Fed. Republic of Germany v. Philipp, 141 S. Ct. 703 (2021).