Gurlitt Fallout: New Yorker Fights to Regain Family Heirloom

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-york-holocaust-survivor-sues-germany-over-gurlitt-painting-a-958029.html



During the Nazi era, David Toren's great-uncle was robbed of his art collection. Now one of the paintings has been recovered in Cornelius Gurlitt's Munich apartment, and Toren is fighting to get it back. But the Germans aren't making it easy.

Gurlitt Fallout: New Yorker Fights to Regain Family Heirloom
By Ulrike Knöfel
March 11, 2014 – 06:31 PM

David Toren is in his late eighties, and nearly blind. He sits with his back to the window: With his eyesight fading, he can no longer make out Central Park. But there is a lot of strength in his voice. It becomes louder with every sentence. The elderly New Yorker is a fighter. He says it himself: "I'm strong."

Toren is currently suing Germany, the country in which he was born. The complaint he filed in Washington DC on Wednesday is titled, "David Toren, Plaintiff, v. Federal Republic of Germany and Free State of Bavaria."

Toren is tired of waiting. He feels the German government hasn't done anything to bring justice to him and the other victims. He was born in 1925 -- and he simply doesn't have any time left.

He's demanding the surrender of a painting confiscated from Cornelius Gurlitt who, like Toren, is an octognenarian and the son of an art dealer. The work in question, "Two Riders on the Beach," is an oil painting of two men riding horses on a beach by German impressionist Max Liebermann. In the painting, the horses prance in front of foaming waves. The scene has an intensity, it's like being transported into the misty morning air. It is a charismatic work that was confiscated by the Nazis and, to use the language of the time, "Aryanized."