The German federal and state governments and the Ernst von Siemens Foundation have paid the heir of Jewish art collector Hans Hess $1.28 million for the 1913 painting The Judgment of Paris by Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, stolen by the Nazis. The painting, based on the Greek myth about a contest between the three most beautiful goddesses of Olympos Aphrodite, Hera and Athena, who asked Prince Paris of Troy to decide who was the fairest among them. The whole things ends with the War of Troy, don’t ask.
The painting shows a smoking, bearded man in a modern suit, with three young ladies in their birthday suits. The Nazis classified it as “degenerate art,” because of the expressionistic tendencies (they had no problem with classically-painted nudes).
In 1979 the painting reappeared and was put on display at the Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, near Mannheim.
In accordance with the Washington Declaration of 1998 on restitution of Nazi-stolen art, and in return for the $1.28 million check, Hess’s heir consented to keeping the Kirchner painting where it is. Culture state secretary Monika Gruetters was involved in forging the deal.
Culture state secretary Monika Gruetters made headlines last year, when she said that appointing a “Jewish figure” to her commission on Nazi-stolen art would be ill-advised because “that person would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”
