Rotterdam advised to return art sold during Nazi era to Jewish family's heirs

The Dutch Restitution Committee stated on Tuesday that an ivory relief of Mary with a child from the collection of the city of Rotterdam should be returned to the successors of the A.S. Drey art firm, a German-Jewish Drey family business, due to its forced sale under the Nazi regime.

Named “Hodegetria or Virgin and Child,” the relief is currently located in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Maasstad. D.G. van Beuningen acquired it from an art dealer in 1939. However, the museum's website mentions that the exact details regarding how and when the art dealer obtained the piece remain unknown.

Research suggested that the relief likely originated from the A.S. Drey art firm in Munich, which was owned by the German-Jewish Drey family until 1936. The firm had subsidiaries in Paris, New York, London, Brussels, and The Hague.

The Dutch Restitution Committee, responsible for handling cases of art looted during World War II, believes it is “sufficiently plausible that the sale of the artwork in 1936 was involuntary as a result of circumstances directly connected with the Nazi regime.”

The committee noted that the art firm faced “disproportionate tax measures that were aimed at Jewish people” and was subjected to “dubious accusations of tax fraud” during the Nazi era. To settle these tax debts and penalties, A.S. Drey auctioned off a significant portion of its trading stock, including the ivory relief, in June 1936 in Berlin. The buyer remains unidentified.

Given the Dutch government's criteria, the committee stated that there are ample indications pointing to an involuntary loss of artwork after 1933 in Germany considering the partners' Jewish descent. Therefore, the committee advised the Rotterdam City Council to return the ivory relief to the heirs of A.S. Drey's partners.

According to the committee, the city of Rotterdam has already agreed to the binding advice.