2 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
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Jew who had collected the Dutch and
Flemish old masters that Hitler revered.
In the aftermath of the looting, the au-
thorities were able to recover almost
300 paintings, many in the weeks after
the plunder. Some were found buried in
a nearby potato patch. In 1948, 30 paint-
ings were found in a house a few min-
utes’ walk from the Führerbau.
The recovery work was aided by the
so-called Monuments Men, officers of
the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives
unit of the United States Army, but there
were not enough of them to trace so
many missing objects.
And in the decades that followed, Ger-
man officials did not do much to track
the more than 400 works still missing,
perhaps sheepishly avoiding making a
state claim to objects that had been stol-
en by their predecessors in the Third
Reich.
Now, though, the German govern-
ment, spurred by the new research, is
making a serious effort to find the
works.
It is belatedly reporting the 1945
thefts, painting by painting, to Interpol
and to the German Federal Criminal Po-
lice Office, and it is also listing them on
the Art Loss Register and lostart.de, two
databases of missing art.
The government is hoping that post-
ing details about the missing works will
alert dealers to art that may have been
looted from Jews and possibly result in
its return.
So far, the research has managed to
find traces of some three dozen of the
missing works. One is in the Fisher Mu-
seum of Art at the University of South-
ern California, which discovered 14
years ago that a painting in its collection
had been looted from the Führerbau.
The painting by Gerard Dou, “Still
Life With Book and Purse,” entered the
collection in 1964 as part of a donation by
Armand Hammer, who had purchased it
in New York in 1947. But its prewar own-
ership history, and the circumstances of
how it went to Hitler, remain unclear.
“We are always interested in receiv-
ing more information about the pieces in
our collection that might be in any way
problematic,” Selma Holo, the executive
director of USC Museums, wrote in an
email. The museum, she said, “will al-ways do the right thing with respect to
its holdings.”
One obstacle to the full restitution of
works, even when they are found, is a
principle of German law known as Er-
sitzung. It dictates that someone who
acquires an item in good faith and pos-
sesses it for 10 years becomes the right-
ful owner. So in Germany, even in cases
where the government seeks to restitute
a work it has found, it can be difficult to
dislodge it legally from a collector who
bought it without knowing it was stolen.
Stephan Klingen, an art historian in-
volved in the research project, said he
would like the government, in such situ-
ations, to consider buying the works.
“It would be good if the government
would take responsibility, acquire the
works, do the provenance research and
restitute where necessary,” he said.
“This would also help the current hold-
ers, who may have purchased the works
in good faith but will now find them diffi-
cult to sell.”The German government remains the
owner of record for the hundreds of
works that were, despite the United
States Army’s first impression, left be-
hind by the Munich looters in 1945. Since
2000, the government has restituted 54
of those works after concluding that
they were stolen from Jews.
Other efforts have been less success-
ful.
Mr. Klingen said that in 2009 he spot-
ted a painting by Frans Francken the
Younger, “The Sermon on the Mount,”
on the German TV equivalent of “An-
tiques Roadshow.” He recognized it as a
work that had been destined for the
planned museum in Linz and had been
stolen from the Führerbau. He alerted
the police.
There were some indications that the
work had been seized from a Jewish col-
lection, but they were far from conclu-
sive. So the court returned it to the last
holders of the painting, the descendants
of a man, the caretaker of a Germanarmy barracks, who had lived in Munich
in 1945.
The court ruled that the heirs did not
know it had been stolen, and thus were
entitled to possess it through a good-
faith inheritance under the Ersitzung
rule.
From the disappointment of that ef-
fort was born the decision by the Central
Institute for Art History to do extensive
research into the entire set of works still
missing from Munich. “These works
surface sporadically at auction, and it is
likely more will come up,” Mr. Klingen
said. “We think it is important to raise
awareness of their history and develop a
policy for dealing with them, instead of
starting from scratch each time one
emerges. The legal environment is not
favorable for restitution to the heirs of
the original owners.”
In a case from 2017, the government
tried to intervene when a portrait of two
girls by Franz von Stuck that was des-
tined for Linz appeared in a catalog for
an auction in Cologne.
The government persuaded the auc-
tion house to withdraw it from sale so re-
searchers would have time to examine
the painting’s provenance. But they
found no evidence that the painting had
been looted from a Jewish collection and
determined that the private collector
held good title to the work under the Er-
sitzung rule. So the sale to another pri-
vate collection went forward. If it
emerges later that the work was indeed
looted from a Jewish collector, experts
say, it may prove difficult to find again.
As the decades pass, it is certainly
true that multiple transfers and legal
complexities in varying jurisdictions
make it increasingly hard to trace looted
art and to resolve tangled questions of
ownership.
Mr. Breitenbach, the Army intelli-
gence officer, saw the steep road ahead
when, writing in 1949, he wondered
whether much of this belated detective
work could have been avoided with just
a few minor bribes in the desperate days
at the close of the war. “It’s a pity,” he of-
fered, “that Army regulations at that
time did not permit the use of rewards in
the form of food and cigarettes. This
would almost certainly have been in-
strumental in recovering considerable
parts of the stolen collection.”The Führerbau, where Hitler kept an office. “When the looting was finally stopped, all the pictures were gone,” wrote Edgar Breitenbach, an American art intelligence officer.FRANK LEONHARDT/DPA, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSQuest for art stolen by Hitler
LOOT, FROM PAGE 1Franz von Stuck’s “Portrait of Two Young Girls” was destined for Hitler’s planned art
museum in Linz, Austria. The painting has been sold to a private collector.VAN HAMP. Rajagopal, who founded Saravana
Bhavan, one of the largest South Indian
vegetarian restaurant chains in the
world, died on July 18 in Chennai, India,
as he was facing life in prison in the mur-
der of a man over a woman’s affections.
He was 71.
His death, at Vijaya Health Center,
was confirmed by the company. It said
he had suffered cardiac arrest.
Mr. Rajagopal had been expected to
begin his sentence this month before he
was admitted to a hospital in poor
health. But even after his initial convic-
tion, in 2004, his company had continued
to expand, and his employees, receiving
generous benefits, had remained loyal
to him. Saravana Bhavan now has 127
restaurants in 24 countries, employing
about 5,000 people.
Court documents in his murder case
said Mr. Rajagopal had wanted to marry
the daughter of one of his assistant man-
agers but had been spurned by her. She
eloped with another man, but Mr. Ra-
jagopal was said to have continued to
send her gifts.
In 2001, after several attempts to sep-
arate the couple, associates of Mr. Ra-
jagopal forced the man into a car and
drove off. His body was found in a resort
town in the Western Ghats mountain
range. He had been strangled.
Mr. Rajagopal was convicted of culpa-
ble homicide by a Chennai court in 2004
and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But
the term was suspended on medical
grounds. In 2009, an Indian high court
upgraded the conviction to murder, and
the sentence was changed to life in pris-
on. He spent the rest of his life trying to
avoid jail, until India’s Supreme Court
rejected his final appeal this month.
His restaurant empire had its roots in
Chennai (then known as Madras), on
South India’s eastern coast. Mr. Ra-
jagopal was running several grocery
stores there in the late 1970s when he
overheard a salesman saying that he
was planning to go to lunch in a town
three miles away because there were no
restaurants nearby. The comment gave
Mr. Rajagopal an idea.
Two years later, in 1981, he opened his
first restaurant, Saravana Bhavan, in
Madras, even though he was deep in
debt from his struggling grocery stores
and knew little about food service.
Going against advice, Mr. Rajagopal
used quality ingredients in his food and
paid his workers relatively high wages.
He was soon losing 10,000 rupees a
month (about $2,500 in today’s money)
but demonstrating a strong work ethic.
“He probably didn’t have enough time
for his family because he was so devoted
to the businesses,” said a family friend,
Balu, who does public relations work for
Saravana Bhavan. (Like many in SouthIndia, Balu has one name.)
The restaurant focused on South Indi-
an cuisine, serving freshly cooked
dosas, a type of crispy golden rice and
lentil crepe. As his chain expanded, the
dish would earn him the nickname the
“dosa king” in the media. He also sold
snacks like idlis, soft round steamed rice
cakes, and vadas, a kind of lentil dough-
nut, serving them with freshly cooked
chutneys.
As his tasty, inexpensive food gained
a following, his restaurant eventually
turned a profit, enabling him to open
branches. In 2000, with about 20 loca-
tions in India, Saravana Bhavan ven-
tured overseas, opening in neighbor-
hoods where the Indian diaspora had a
strong presence. The chain expanded
first into Dubai, then to cities like New
York, London and Sydney, Australia.
Though it operates under a franchise
model, its chefs continue to come from
Chennai.
With his growing success, Mr. Ra-
jagopal increased benefits for workers,
giving them housing assistance and
medical care and their relatives employ-
ment. He would bestow books on their
children and provide marriage allow-ances for their daughters. Employees
repaid him with their loyalty, referring
to him as “annachi,” a Tamil term for eld-
er brother.
Like an elder brother, though, Mr. Ra-
jagopal was known to be strict. Employ-
ees who broke rules, like drinking or us-
ing their phones while on the job, would
be summoned to his office and have to
wait in line to be disciplined.
Even after Mr. Rajagopal’s murder
conviction, his restaurants continued to
do well. One loyal customer told The
Times, “As long as he’s giving me good-
quality food, I go there.”
Pitchai Rajagopal was born on Aug. 5,
1947, in Punnaiyadi, a village in the
southern state of Tamil Nadu, India. His
father, Pitchai Nadar, was an onion
seller; his mother, Mani Ammal, was a
homemaker.
Pitchai left school after seventh grade
for a job wiping tables at a restaurant in
a resort town. He moved to Madras as a
teenager and worked his way up to
opening grocery stores there.
Ill health had kept Mr. Rajagopal
away from his business in recent years.
He had diabetes and hypertension and
also had a stroke.
Saravanan, his younger son, now runs
the business in India, while Mr. Ra-
jagopal’s older son, Shiva Kumaar, is
chief executive of the company’s inter-
national operations. In addition to his
sons, Mr. Rajagopal is survived by his
wife, Valli, and four grandchildren.Restaurant mogul
convicted of murder
P. RAJAGOPAL
1947-BY AMIE TSANGP. Rajagopal, founder of Saravana Bhavan, in India in 2014. His chain of South Indian
vegetarian restaurants continued to do well even as he faced life in prison.MAHESH SHANTARAMThe Indian entrepreneur’s
culinary empire serves tasty
vegetarian food at 127 locations
in 24 countries.Ben Johnston, a prolific and influential
composer who used microtonal tuning
systems to create a large and varied cat-
alog of chamber works, stage pieces and
music for orchestra, choir, voice and solo
piano, died on July 21 in Deerfield, Wis.,
near Madison. He was 93.
Michael Mitchell, his son-in-law and
personal assistant, said the cause was
complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Johnston was an unusual avant-
gardist: His music was so melodically
engaging, rhythmically vital and struc-
turally transparent that listeners who
were unaware of his tuning experiments
and their complex theoretical underpin-
nings heard his works as essentially
neo-Romantic.
In addition to using microtonality — a
system in which the octave is often di-
vided into dozens of pitches, rather than
the traditional 12 — Mr. Johnston some-
times used serial techniques, in which
pitches were presented in a predeter-
mined sequence. He invented his ownnotation systems to account for his tun-
ings, which could change from piece to
piece.
His 10 string quartets, for example,
are dramatic, sometimes incendiary
scores with hard-driving and often
tense fast movements, as well as rumi-
native slow movements — with occa-
sional quotations from folk melodies.
His String Quartet No.4 (1973) is a set of
variations on “Amazing Grace,” recast
in his tuning system, which gives the
melody an antique, rustic sound.
Mr. Johnston created several stage
works, including “Gambit” (1959), a bal-
let with a vivid, jazz-tinged chamber
score that Merce Cunningham choreo-
graphed, and incidental music for a pro-
duction of Shakespeare’s “The Taming
of the Shrew” (1961).
Unlike Harry Partch, with whom he
studied briefly and whose microtonal
tuning philosophy he expanded upon,
Mr. Johnston did not build specialized
instruments for his music. He preferred
either to retune conventional instru-
ments or to have players find his pitches
between those they were used to play-
ing.
Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. was
born in Macon, Ga., on March 15, 1926,the elder of two children (his sister, Jan-
et, died in 1999). His mother, Janet Ross
Johnston, was a Sunday school teacher;
his father was the managing editor of
The Macon Telegraph and, after the
family moved to Richmond, Va., in 1937,
The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Young
Ben briefly followed in his father’s foot-
steps in 1942, when he became editor in
chief of The Jeffersonian, his high school
newspaper.
Mr. Johnston had been drawn to mu-
sic as a child in Macon, where he heard
jazz recordings by Duke Ellington and
Jimmie Lunceford and began collecting
records of popular music. In Richmond,
he began studying both the piano and
the trombone, which he played in the
school orchestra.
Before the end of his first term at the
College of William & Mary in Williams-
burg, Va., where he enrolled in 1943, Mr.
Johnston presided over a concert of his
songs, piano works and chamber pieces.
He joined the Navy in 1944. After he was
discharged in 1946, he married Dorothy
Haines, a singer; they divorced six
months later, and Mr. Johnston returned
to William & Mary, where he completed
his B.A. in fine arts in 1949.
During a visit to Richmond in 1948,Mr. Johnston met Betty Hall, an art stu-
dent at Richmond Professional Insti-
tute, on a blind date; he later said that
they had talked nonstop for 48 hours.
They were married in 1950.
Betty Johnston died in 2007. Mr.
Johnston, who died in an assisted living
home, is survived by their daughter,
Sybil Johnston; their two sons, Ross and
Christopher; and three grandchildren.
Mr. Johnston began working on his
master’s degree at the Cincinnati Con-
servatory of Music, but he was disap-
pointed in his composition classes. He
decided instead to write to Partch —
whose book “Genesis of a Music” he
found inspiring — to ask if he could
study with him.
Partch, though disinclined to teach
formally, engaged Mr. Johnston as an
apprentice on his farm in Gualala, in
Northern California.
In 1951, Mr. Johnston enrolled at Mills
College in Oakland, Calif., to study with
Darius Milhaud.
By the time he completed his master’s
at Mills the next year, he had accepted a
teaching position at the University of Il-
linois at Urbana-Champaign. He re-
mained on the composition faculty there
until 1983.Musical theorist whose listeners could just enjoy the sound
BEN JOHNSTON
1926-BY ALLAN KOZINNThe composer Ben Johnston in the 1960s. He created a large and varied catalog of
chamber works, stage pieces and music for orchestra, choir, voice and solo piano.WILLIAM GEDNEY, VIA DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, DUKE UNIVERSITYРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
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