Germany – A Bonn museum settled a claim for a painting by Paul Adolf Seehaus with the heir of Alfred Flechtheim, one of Germany’s most prominent modern-art dealers until he fled Berlin and the Nazis in 1933.
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The Kunstmuseum in Bonn said in a statement today it will pay half the estimated market value to keep the painting, “Lighthouse With Rotating Beam,” which it described as “an important work of Rhineland expressionism.” The museum didn’t cite a figure for the value of the work.
Flechtheim’s great-nephew Mike Hulton, a doctor based in California, has lodged claims with several museums for paintings from the dealer’s private collection, including works by Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann and Paul Klee. Bonn’s Kunstmuseum is the first in Germany to reach an agreement with Hulton.
“Despite intensive research, it is no longer possible to establish with certainty when and under what circumstances the painting was taken from Flechtheim,” the museum said in a statement sent by e-mail. “Even so, regardless of the open questions, the Kunstmuseum recognizes the persecution Flechtheim suffered. Flechtheim was a victim of the Nazi terror regime.”
As a Jew who sold art that the Nazis condemned as “degenerate,” Flechtheim was among the first targets of persecution, suffering harassment in the Nazi press even before Hitler took power in 1933. When Flechtheim fled, Alex Voemel, the business manager of his Dusseldorf branch and a member of the Nazi party, took over the gallery and its contents.