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A legacy reclaimed BY DALE SINGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
W
hen Vera Emmons was growing up in suburban Chicago, the topic of family art treasures stolen by the Nazis was hardly at the forefront of her life. She knew her mother, Gerda Nothmann, had survived concentration camps and made it to the United States, rebuilding her life and letting people know what she had gone through in Germany. She knew her mother’s side of the family had been wealthy, with a big house that included art. That was about as far as it went. “She always spoke about her experiences,” recalled Emmons, who now lives in St. Louis. “But I don’t remember anything about the art. There were other things that were more important, I guess.” In the Nazi years, art didn’t remain in the homes of Jewish families. The family of Emmons’ great-grandfather, Max Ginsberg, had made a fortune in textiles and he had acquired an extensive art collection, including an array of Islamic art. After the collection was seized, dozens of pieces were sold, with documentation and ownership details often lost, disregarded or both. Now, Emmons is part of a growing effort by
descendants worldwide to recover such pieces. Emmons, a volunteer at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, and her son, Nathan, a lawyer in Chicago, are in a dogged but often frustrating battle to track down artwork and determine legal routes. The art collections of Max Ginsberg and others belonged to families that suffered dearly in the war years. Experts estimate that the Nazis stole more than 600,000 works of art from Jewish families during World War II. Although she knows the road is far from easy, Emmons says the families should recover what is rightfully theirs. “I don’t understand all of the rules about provenance,” she says. “I think the line is changing. But it was stolen from the family.” For Nathan, the enterprise is a crash course in both art and law. It’s often daunting work that has him spending hours in libraries and trying to locate relatives. “Sometimes I get really excited about thinking what we might find,” he said. “Another time I’m realistic and realize nothing is guaranteed that we’re going to ever really recover anything.”
Extensive array of art The case of the stolen art begins with Ginsberg, who was born in 1872 in Berlin. According to research by the State Museums in Berlin, he was a wealthy merchant who collected an extensive array of art. It included historic
St. Louis family fights to recover art stolen by the Nazis decades ago ABOVE LEFT: Vera Emmons, a volunteer at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, is photographed on June 20 in the propaganda room there. Emmons and her family have been on a quest to get restitution on an art collection first owned by a relative, Max Ginsberg. He had made a fortune in textiles and had all he owned seized by Nazis after they came to power in Europe. PHOTO: CHRISTIAN GOODEN/ ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Islamic plates, bowls, urns, water jugs and other decorative pieces. In 1923, he loaned an elaborately carved wooden board to the museum. (Nearly 100 years later, in 2021, it was rediscovered in a museum storeroom.) In 1933, the museum put together an exhibiSee ART on page 8
ABOVE RIGHT: Nathan Emmons holding up wooden piece loaned to the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin. Nathan is the son of Vera Emmons. LEFT: A studio portrait of Max Ginsberg in 1910.