Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

German Museum Hangs Nazi-Looted Painting Backwards

A museum in Germany has come up with a novel plan to buy back a painting stolen from a Jewish collector during the Nazi era.

The Wiesbaden Museum has hung the 19th century painting by Hans von Marées backwards, in a bid to raise public awareness and also the $118,000 it needs by Nov. 5 to buy the painting from its rightful heirs, museum director Alexander Klar announced in late October.

The amount to be raised covers one third of the value of the painting plus the cost of the fundraising campaign, according to an online report from Hessische Rundfunk radio and TV.

The painting, titled “Die Labung” (Sustenance), was part of the collection of Jewish industrialist Max Silberberg of Breslau. He was forced to sell the collection to the Nazis in 1934. Silberberg and his wife, Johanna, were later killed in Auschwitz.

The rightful heir to the collection is the Israel-based Gerta Silberberg Discretionary Trust. In 1980, a local collector bequeathed the painting to the museum.

HR Online reported that Wiesbaden Museum was a repository for art robbed from Jewish owners during the Third Reich. The museum has been researching the provenance of works in its collection, with an aim to providing restitution. It already has returned two paintings to their proper heirs, or bought them back, HR reported.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version