Restoring a Legacy and Collection: The Tragic Fate of the Goudstikker Collection and the Heirs Still Seeking Justice

The life of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker (1897–1940) was one of prosperity turned tragedy in the grips of a world war. The third generation of influential Dutch art dealers, Jacques was first educated in Amsterdam and later studied art history in Leiden and Utrecht before joining his father, Eduard, in the art trade in 1919. Demonstrating his talents and ambition, Jacques soon propelled his family's gallery to acclaim by collecting and dealing in a more international style– notably adding German and Italian works to the Dutch and Flemish Old Masters that the family gallery was known for. His collecting range was enormous but sophisticated and spanned centuries and genres, although his favorites always remained Old Master paintings.

Désirée and Jacques Goudstikker. Photo courtesy of the Goudstikker Collection.

Eduard Goudstikker died in 1924, allowing his son to assume control of the business. That same year Jacques married, but the union ended childless in 1936 upon the death of his wife. By 1927 Jacques was in need of a larger, grander space and moved his gallery to 458 Herengracht, a lavish seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam's Golden Bend district. In the early 1930s he acquired two country residences and registered the newly-names Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker, NV as a public limited company with himself the sole director and principal shareholder. With the exception of a slight decline during the Great Depression, the Goudstikker business and prestige were flourishing. Jacques had become a distinctive member of Dutch high society and a respected and influential dealer who sold to renowned institutions and private collectors around the world.

An excellent host, Jacques entertained his clientele and held numerous charity and social events at his country estate, Nijenrode Castle, in Breukelen. It was at one of these events that he first met Viennese opera singer Désirée "Dési" von Halban-Kurz in the summer of 1937 when he invited her to perform at his charity gala, Vienna on the Vecht River. Their love was immediate and the two were married on Christmas Eve of that year. Shortly after their first wedding anniversary, they welcomed their only child, a son named Eduard, or "Edo" for short. In less than a year, their lives were completely changed.

Sensing an imminent threat posed by the Third Reich to the Netherlands, Jacques began planning his family's flight by obtaining visas and designating a gallery representative to act in his absence. On May 14, 1940 Rotterdam was devastated by a Luftwaffe bombing campaign and under the threat of further bombing, the Dutch surrendered. That very same day, the SS Bodegraven was one of the last ships to depart the Netherlands, bound for the United Kingdom with the Goudstikker family abroad. They had managed to secure passage without valid visas– they had expired a day before the invasion– because a solider had recognized Dési from a performance she had given to troops.

But Jacques Goudstikker would not reach safety with his family. On the second night of their voyage across the English Channel, while walking on the dark decks of the ship, he fell through an open hatch into the hold and tragically died from his injuries. He was 42. His widow and infant son ultimately settled in the United States, where Dési would remarry in the 1950s to August von Saher. Both she and Eduard, who was adopted by his stepfather, took his surname name.

When the family fled, Jacques was forced to leave behind his acclaimed gallery and its stock, which included 1,113 inventoried works and hundred of others, totaling more than one thousand three hundred works. In yet another ill-fated circumstance, the individual he left in charge also unexpectedly died in May 1940, leaving just two original employees to manage the business. These employees received assistance from Alois Miedl, a Nazi supporter and German banker who dealt art in the Netherlands. He quickly assumed control of the Goudstikker assets and operations with the intentions of benefiting himself and his Nazi acquaintances.

Hermann Göring leaving the Goudstikker gallery at 458 Herengracht, Amsterdam. Photo courtesy of the Nationaal Archief.

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had been well aware of what was transpiring at 458 Herengracht, and it was only weeks after the death of Jacques that he appeared on the doorsteps. He and Miedl would soon commit one of the largest individual thefts of artworks during World War II. In two transactions in July 1940, Miedl and Göring effectively dismantled the Goudstikker inventory and began dubious operations with Jacques's established trade and renowned reputation. In the first transaction, Miedl acquired Jacques's three properties, the company's name and rights, and Jacques's portion of paintings that he had co-owned with other for NLG 550,000 (Dutch Guilder). In a later transaction between Göring and Miedl, Göring acquired all artworks in the Goudstikker collection in the Netherlands and first right of refusal for the co-owned paintings that Miedl acquired for NLG 2,000,000, a fraction of the true value of the Goudstikker assets. Dési, who now owned the majority of shares in the company, opposed and refused to authorize the sale, yet it proceeded. Göring refused thirteen paintings that were co-owned by Goudstikker, which Miedl quickly took to Germany, but claimed close to eight hundred of the most precious works, siphoning portions of the loot to Hitler and keeping approximately three hundred for himself. Miedl changed the name of the company to Kunsthandel Voorheen J. Goudstikker NV (gallery formally known as) and ran a successful operation during the war, profiting from the Goudstikker name and remaining inventory of lesser paintings that Göring did not want.

Alois Miedl fled to Spain via Switzerland in the summer of 1944. He had sent his Jewish wife–who had been afforded protection from Nazi persecution by Göring– along with an estimated two hundred artworks, some belonging to Göring, ahead to Spain five months prior. Spanish authorities later confiscated three cases that had been stored at the Free Port of Bilbao in August 1944. Upon inspection, it was discovered that several paintings from Jacques's inventory when he left at the beginning of the war were in those cases. They were ultimately forced to release the works back to Meidl and he negotiated his freedom with Dutch authorities by allowing them to seize assets, including paintings he had left behind in the Netherlands. Meidl was never prosecuted by an Allied nation for his nefarious dealings.

Entries listing artworks in the Goudstikker inventory were kept in a small notebook in Jacques's pocket. Photo still from the television series Hunting Nazi Treasure, courtesy of Saloon Media.

Hermann Göring was arrested by American forces on May 6, 1945, and his massive art collection that has been evacuated near the end of the war was recovered by the Allies in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Two hundred sixty-seven paintings that had been delivered to Göring from the Goudstikker gallery were processed through the Munich Central Collecting Point and returned to the Dutch State by the Monuments Men. It was policy of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program to return cultural works to their country of origin, placing the onus of the final restitution to the rightful owner or heir on the recipient country.

Upon her return to the Netherlands immediately after the war, Dési brought forth a claim for the Goudstikker paintings that the Netherlands had recovered. She settled with the Dutch government in 1952 after a lengthy and complicated litigation, buying back three hundred works of the original Goudstikker inventory from the Dutch State–works that had been a part of the transaction between the Goudstikker associate and Miedl– and the three Goudstikker properties. Sadly, she had to sell the properties shortly after acquiring them back. She did not pursue restoring her rights as an heir to the portion of the collection that had been sold to Göring, nor did she relinquish the rights for future heirs. This, along with a small notebook that has a meticulous listing of all artworks in Jacques's possession that Dési had recovered from her husband's person after his death, were key to future Goudstikker restitutions. Dési and her son Eduard died within months of eachother in 1996, leaving her daughter-in-law and Eduard's widow, Marei von Saher, the living heir.

Marei von Saher and Robert M. Edsel discuss a recent Goudstikker restitution in her home in New York City. Photo still from the television series Hunting Nazi Treasure, courtesy of Saloon Media.

In 1998, Marei von Saher with the support of her daughter, Charlène von Saher, initiated a restitution claim with the State Secretary for Culture, Education, and Science of the Netherlands, which was rejected on the opinion that the restoration of rights had been settled in the 1952 agreement and need not be reconsidered. An appeal was brought before the Court of Appeals of The Hague and rejected citing that the claim had been submitted nearly fifty years too late and the court's examination of the reasoning for restoring rights. A second claim was filed in 2004, focused solely on the return of artworks held by the Dutch State that were delivered to Göring after his transaction with Miedl.

In the six years between the two filings, The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War had been established and tasked with reviewing claims and providing recommendations to the State Secretary. In December 2005, the Committee recommended that 202 of 267 paintings in the Dutch national collection that had once been in the original inventory of Goudstikker and later possession of Göring be returned to the Goudstikker heirs. The following year, two hundred of the paintings were returned, with one donated back to the Dutch State as a gesture of gratitude.

Marei and Charlène von Saher continue to pursue restitution of a collection with more than one thousand works still missing. Several voluntary returns from institutions and private collectors and dealers in Austria, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States have occurred and bring hope that more artworks will surface. In the meantime, a global search continues to painstakingly seek out and restore and restore Jacques Goudstikker's collection and legacy.

The Foundation wishes to thank Marei and Charlène von Saher for their contributions to this piece. The von Saher family is included on the Foundation's online listing of restitution claims. 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 above.