Nazi-era Looted Art Restitution Cases Project 2025
December 15, 2025
Painting “Girl from Sabin Mountains” by Franz Xaver Winterhalter aptly illustrates our first report about the Nazi-era looted art restitution cases Project that the Center has been administering and running since 2024. The painting was in possession of the Galerie Stern in Düsseldorf, Germany, owned by Max Stern, a prominent Jewish art dealer who inherited the gallery from his father Julius in 1934. Three years later, Stern was forced to liquidate the gallery, pursuant to the Nazi laws that proceeded to disown hundreds of thousands of families of their belongings, art and cultural heritage, as well as their livelihoods, homelands, freedoms, safety and in too many instances – life.
This report describes the work performed by volunteers and interns at the Center under supervision of Amanda Buonaiuto, a Brazilian attorney, serving as a lead researcher for the Project. The Project is intended to collect and organize all instances of restitution claims and efforts either disputed in courts or in ADR settings around the world.
In 2007, by a court order the painting was restituted to Stern’s heirs. Vineberg v. Bissonnette, 529 F. Supp. 2d 300 (D.R.I. 2007)
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