Oberlin College in Ohio is returning a drawing believed to be stolen during the Holocaust from a Jewish art collector after 17 years of the family advocating for the return of the artwork.
Artwork believed to be stolen during the Holocaust from a Jewish art collector and entertainer have been rightly returned to the Nazi victim’s heirs after a 17-year battle with Oberlin College.
The Nazis first stole the drawing, « Girl With Black Hair, » by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, from Fritz Grünbaum, a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist, under the Nazi confiscation of Jewish property. Grünbaum died at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1941.
The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin — a private liberal arts college in Ohio — contains 15,000 items in its collection, including for several decades, « Girl With Black Hair. »
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation President William Jacobson told Fox News Digital that the art museum first bought the drawing in the late 1950s from an art dealer in France.
« They bought it, according to the court papers, in the late fifties from an art dealer in Paris, which of course should have raised flags, » Jacobson said. « Any art purchased in immediate postwar Europe you would know to check the provenance of it to make sure it wasn’t Nazi looted art. »
Jacobson said the Allen Memorial Art Museum was notified about the stolen piece from family members of Grünbaum « no later than 2006. »
Court documents show the college’s refusal to return the artwork in both 2006 and 2009, after Grünbaum family members requested the museum return it.
In 2016, Congress passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (HEAR Act). The act provides victims of Nazi-era persecution and their heirs a fair and just opportunity to recover art stolen from their ancestors.
