Nazi-Looted Painting Returned to US Heirs

The Jewish owner, born in 1875, was the widow of the wealthy Munich banker Hugo Heilbronner. She fled to the USA in 1938. The shipping container, however, was confiscated, and its contents were auctioned off in Berlin in 1943.

After the war, the painting "Die Musik (Arkadische Szene)" ["Music (Arcadian Scene)"] went to the Bavarian State Office for Property Management and Reparation. Despite its name, the now-defunct agency was notorious in the post-war years for making it difficult for survivors and relatives to reclaim extorted, embezzled, or stolen property.

Verification of surviving documents from two art galleries confirmed that the Heilbronners were the rightful owners of the painting. "It is one of the few remaining testaments to our family's life in Germany before persecution and expulsion," great-grandson Paul Laporte said. The Heilbronner family was art-minded: their son Paul, born in 1904, was himself a painter and art historian who also emigrated—first to Italy, then later to the USA, where he adopted the surname Laporte.

Karlsruhe-born painter Albert Lang (1847–1933) lived in Munich for a long time and was friends with the more famous Arnold Böcklin, among others. In recent years, opposition parties in the state parliament have repeatedly criticized the state government over lengthy review processes before handing over Nazi-looted art to heirs. Director Anton Biebl stated that the Bavarian State Painting Collections would remain committed to the comprehensive research of the provenance history of their collections and the restitution of wrongfully confiscated works.