Still Missing Eight Decades Later

The Nachmann Family's Search: Four Paintings Vanished Including a Renoir and a Pissarro

Manfred Nachmann, the director of the Former Ingnatz Meumann AG, was a successful Jewish businessman in Berlin before he, his wife Franczika, their young son, Gerald, and their young daughter, Ilse, were persecuted and forced into exile by the Nazis in 1938. They immigrated to the United States in October 1938 with Manfred and Franczika becoming naturalized citizens in April 1944.

Village Street (with Garden Door on the Right) (1871) by Camille Pissarro. This painting has been missing from the Nachmann Collection since 1938. Courtesy of the Nachmann Family.

On July 2, 1938, shortly after the United States issued visas to the family, the possessions of their home at Brückenallee 2 were packed by forwarding firm Edmund Franzkowiak & Co. under the presence of German authorities. The shipment was later transferred to Allgemeine Transport-Gesellschaft (formally Gondrand & Mangili) intended for the Holland America Line in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. When the Nachmann family collected their personal belongings months later in New York, a crate was missing. Its contents: Head of a Young Girl (Gabrielle) (1895) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Village Street (with Garden Door on the Right) (1871) by Camille Pissarro; and two paintings by Lesser Ury, A Walk at the Thames and Grunewalk Lake at Schildhorn. These four paintings by three modern masters had mysteriously disappeared during their flight.

The attorney for Manfred Nachmann, John H. Maass, wrote the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) in June 1946, filing a claim on the behalf of his client for both the Renoir and Pissarro paintings. The Monuments Men were subsequently notified of the two Lesser Ury paintings, adding them to the Nachmann claim. For the next two years, the claim passed through several branches of the MFAA in Germany and Austria. The Munich Central Collecting Point and the Wiesbaden Collecting Point were searched, and an investigation was launched into the circumstances of the disappearance of the paintings. Every effort resulted in dead ends. The paintings were not and had never been at the two collecting points. The two German firms MFAA investigators approached– Kühne & Nagel, Hamburg, and Allgemeine Transport-Gessellschaft, Berlin– could not supply records, claiming they had been lost in bombings and fire. With all viable options exhausted, the MFAA transferred the case to the Central Filing Agency at the Bad Nauheim in the fall of 1948. The case was officially dropped in January 1949, but the Nachmann family continued the investigation.

"It is like a 'modern day Monuments Men' story," says Manfred Nachmann's grandson, David Nachman (his grandparents used the traditional German spelling of Nachmann with double 'n's). His family has continued what is now a worldwide search for the missing paintings, scouring war records cataloged in the United States National Archives, culling through warehouse inventories from Germany, and visiting individuals that may have information that could lead to a break in the case. The family has even sought professional assistance from lawyers, private investigators, and restitution professionals.

Head of a Young Girl (Gabrielle) (1895) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This painting has been missing from the Nachmann Collection since 1938. Courtesy of the Nachmann family.

Gerald Nachman, the son of Manfred Nachmann, was only eight years old when he came to the US from Germany. "I recognize that other families went through terrible ordeals in their attempts to flee Nazi Germany for their lives," as he acknowledges other restitution claims, including that of Maria Altmann who famously, and successfully, mounted a legal battle against the Austrian Government for the return of five Gustav Klimt paintings that were stolen from her family by the Nazis. Although Nachman believes his claim "pales in comparison" to others like Altmann, he comments that like her efforts, there is a deeply "emotional component" that is central to the family's search for its missing paintings. "The paintings belonged to my father and hung on the wall in our apartment in Berlin. I am emotional about our family's heirlooms and it continues to be my desire to reunite these heirlooms with our family. The Nazis destroyed the lives of millions of people. The return of these paintings to my family will provide closure to the devastation the Nazis visited upon me and my family."

Three generations of the Nachmann family have been searching for nearly eight decades for the missing paintings. The Renoir and Pissarro even appeared on Interpol's '12 Most Wanted List' in 1979. All four paintings remain missing today and a substantial reward has been offered by the family for credible information leading to the successful recovery of the works. Although they have been told during their search that the paintings were lost in the bombing of Germany, the Nachmann family remains cautiously optimistic that the works have not been destroyed and will eventually surface.

The Foundation wishes to thank Gerland and David Nachman and their relatives for their contributions to this piece. For those interested in submitting information concerning an existing restitution claim for cultural objects looted during the Nazi Era, please forward images and details to: wwiiart@mmwf.org. The Foundation also encourages those individuals in possession of artworks or other cultural objects with suspected Nazi-Era provenance to contact us at the email address above.

Nachmann Most Wanted: Pissarro	Nachmann Most Wanted: Renoir