Switzerland’s Bührle Foundation Reaches Settlement with Heirs of Jewish Collector Who Owned Prized Manet

The foundation that oversees the Emil G. Bührle collection said Wednesday that it had reached a settlement with the heirs of a Jewish collector over a prized Édouard Manet painting.

The work, Manet’s La Sultane (c.1871), is one of 205 works from the Bührle collection that have been loaned to the Kunsthaus Zurich since 2012. The new agreement, the foundation said, allows the painting to remain on view there.

Bührle was a German Swiss industrialist who sold weapons to both the Allies and Nazi Germany during World War II. As a result of his arms dealing, he became the richest man in Switzerland at the time. He also lined his pockets directly and indirectly from slave labor in concentration camps. On top of this, Bührle, who died in 1956, is also known to have bought Nazi-looted artworks.

The Kunsthaus opened a new wing to house the collection in 2021, sparking public protests. At the time, artist Miriam Cahn said in an open letter than she would remove her works from the institution as a result.

“I no longer want to be represented in ‘this’ art museum in Zurich,” Cahn, who is Jewish, wrote at the time. “I wish to remove all my works from the Zurich Art Museum. I will buy them back at the original sale price.”

Due to the backlash, Zurich and the trustees of the Kunsthaus commissioned a report from Raphael Gross, the president of the German Historical Museum. Gross found that over a quarter of the 205 loaned works appeared to have belonged to Jewish owners. This was not noted by the foundation, which classified the provenance, however incomplete, of 203 of the works as “unproblematic.” Gross said the collection was “tainted on a scale that is possibly unique in Switzerland.”

Gross’s report advised that provenance research be continued, that the Kunsthaus initiate a public debate on the future of the Bührle collection loan, and that the museum set up a committee to observe the Washington Principles, eleven nonbinding principles that representatives of 44 nations and 13 nongovernmental organizations agreed to in 1988. (The first principle: “Art that had been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted should be identified.”)

Last June, the E.G. Bührle Collection Foundation announced plans to reach a settlement with the heirs of the Jewish owners of five impressionist works from the collection. For a sixth painting, Manet’s La Sultane, the foundation said it would seek a “symbolic settlement” with the heirs of the late Jewish industrialist collector, Max Silberberg.

Bührle bought La Sultane from art dealer Paul Rosenberg in 1953, who had purchased it from Silberberg 16 years earlier. The latter built an impressive collection of more than 250 works, which he displayed in his villa in Poland. In 1935, the SS forced him to sell the property. He and his wife were deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where they are presumed to have been murdered.

In a statement, the foundation defended itself by saying that Silberberg sold La Sultane before Adolf Hitler rose to power because he consigned it to Rosenberg in 1932, and that the sale was therefore not due to Nazi persecution.

The London-based Gerta Silberberg Discretionary Trust, Silberberg’s legal successor, however, argues that the sale was the result of Nazi persecution, the foundation said in a press release. What’s more, it is also not known if Silberberg ever saw the money from the 1937 sale of the Monet.

Despite the difference in opinion, the Gerta Silberberg Discretionary Trust and E.G. Bührle Collection Foundation have reached a settlement, and La Sultane will remain in the Bührle collection. The details of the agreement are confidential.