Heirs to auction Kandinsky painting taken from them during WWII; Could net €42 million

The owners of Wassily Kandinsky's painting Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche (View of Murnau with church), which belonged to the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven for more than 70 years, are putting the work up for auction in March. The Russian painter's 1910 canvas is expected to fetch around 42 million euros, auction house Sotheby's reported.

The Van Abbemuseum and the municipality of Eindhoven recently handed over the painting to the heirs of Jewish Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann (1874-1944) on the recommendation of the Restitution Committee. This committee deals with the restitution of works of art that “have changed hands” as a result of World War II, and decided in September that it was "sufficiently plausible that Margarethe Stern-Lippman involuntarily lost the painting during the Nazi regime."

The proceeds of the painting will be divided among the 13 heirs, according to Sotheby's. A portion will also be used to further research the whereabouts of the art collection of Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippman and her husband Siegbert Samuel Stern. The couple lived near Berlin in the 1920s and had a busy social life. They socialized with Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein, among others.

"While nothing can undo the injustices of the past, nor their impact on our family and those who had to go into hiding - one of whom is still alive - the return of this painting, which meant so much to our great-grandparents, is immensely important to us," explained the heirs. "Because it's a recognition and partly closes a wound that has remained open for generations."

Stern-Lippmann fled the Nazis in the 1930s and eventually ended up in the Netherlands. She went into hiding, but was nonetheless arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in 1944.