The New York Times - USA (2020-10-17)

Gauguin are still missing, and the Herzog
family believes that many are in Russia, Po-
land, France and many other countries
where works are thought to have traveled in
the chaos of World War II and its aftermath.
But the heirs have focused in recent years
on reclaiming dozens of artworks, including
three El Grecos, a Courbet and a Corot, that
are now in three Hungarian museums and a
university in Budapest. Those works, val-
ued at more than $100 million by the heirs,
are the subject of the most recent legal case,
which is still winding its way through fed-
eral courts in Washington.
“It’s the third generation and fourth gen-
eration who is actively pursuing the quest
to restitute the memory of the Herzog fam-
ily, to right the provenance of the looted art-
works,” said Agnes Peresztegi, a lawyer
who has represented members of the family
for 20 years.
Over the years, the dispute has drawn in
all kinds of participants. The United States
ambassador to Hungary tried to negotiate a
settlement in 1997. Seven United States sen-
ators — including Hillary Rodham Clinton
of New York and Edward M. Kennedy of
Massachusetts — expressed their views on
the case in behalf of the heirs.
But Hungary has argued that the Herzog
heirs no longer own the art, citing among
other rationales that compensation had
been paid in 1973 and resolved any claims
made by United States citizens against
Hungary, a position the heirs dispute.
Thaddeus J. Stauber, a lawyer who repre-
sents the government of Hungary in the
current suit, said, “Hungary owns the art-
works at issue through lawful purchase,
gift, and the uniform application of property
laws.”
Herzog’s collection, known as one of the
finest in Europe, became so impressive and
expansive because his “appetite for collect-
ing was insatiable,” said Konstantin Akin-
sha, an art historian and leading expert on
World War II looted art. “His home had no
space for the family, and they moved into
other homes. All the walls in Herzog’s study
were covered by El Greco paintings.”
When Herzog died in 1934, his collection
was inherited by his wife, Janka, and then,
after she died in 1940, his three children —
Erzsebet, Istvan and Andras. It was then
hidden by the family in various locations in
Hungary, including bank vaults in
Budapest.
Hungarian and Nazi officials found most
of the hiding places and took the artworks to
the Majestic Hotel in Budapest, the head-
quarters of Adolf Eichmann, who went to
Hungary in 1944 to help carry out Hitler’s
extermination of the Jews. When Soviet
troops approached the city, Eichmann and
Hungarian officials sent works to Germany.
Other works were left behind in Budapest’s
Museum of Fine Arts.
After the war, when the Allies repatriated
looted art that was recovered, some Herzog
works were returned to Hungary in antici-
pation that they would eventually be given
back to the rightful owners. But many
ended up in state museums, where, Herzog
family members say, they once bore labels
that said “From the Herzog Collection.”
The heirs began to make claims in Hun-
gary within a few months after the end of
World War II.
For nearly two decades, Erzsebet’s hus-
band, Alfonz Weiss de Csepel, wrote to offi-
cials in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and
the United States. The National Archives in
Washington has copies of 350 pages from
his letters.
Donald Blinken, who was United States
ambassador to Hungary between 1994 and
1997, said he worked with Erzsebet’s daugh-
ter, Martha Nierenberg, to negotiate an
agreement with the Hungarian minister of
culture under which works would be re-
turned to the family which, in acknowledg-
ment, would give several back to Hungary.
“We thought we had a deal, but a year lat-
er we found out that they had reneged,” Mr.
Blinken said in an interview.
In 1999, Mrs. Nierenberg filed suit in Bu-
dapest asking for 12 works and won in a
lower court, but Hungary’s Supreme Court
overturned the judgment in 2002. Three
years later, the lower court ruled she was
entitled to only one painting. She appealed
and lost in 2008.
In 2010, the legal battle shifted to the
United States when three Herzog heirs filed
a suit in the United States District Court for
the District of Columbia. The suit was partly
funded by the Commission for Art Recov-
ery, which was founded by Ronald Lauder
in 1997 to help governments and museums

restitute art stolen during the Nazi era.

For years the issue has been whether the

United States courts have jurisdiction in the

matter. American law does not permit law-

suits against state-owned museums

abroad, but there are exceptions, including

in cases where property has been taken in

violation of international law, an approach

that the Herzog heirs have been pursuing.

“We are asking for the return of works or

to be compensated for the heirs’ interest in

the works,” said Alycia Benenati, a lawyer

for the heirs who has been on the case for 10

years.

Hungary’s efforts to restitute looted art

have been the subject of some criticism,

most notably from Stuart E. Eizenstat, an

adviser to the State Department and an ex-

pert on Holocaust-era looted art. He negoti-

ated the Washington Principles in 1998 in

which 44 nations agreed to making best ef-

forts to return the art. But at a conference in

Berlin in 2018 he was especially critical of

Hungary, which he said possessed “major

works of art looted on its territory” during

World War II and had “not restituted them”

despite “being repeatedly asked” to ad-

dress the matter.

But in May, Judge Ellen Huvelle of the

United States District Court for the District

of Columbia dismissed the Hungarian gov-

ernment from the case on jurisdictional

grounds. She did allow the case to go for-

ward against the Museum of Fine Arts, the

National Gallery and the Museum of Ap-

plied Arts, as well as the University of Tech-

nology and Economics in Budapest.

In July, Judge Huvelle granted Hunga-

ry’s request to have the District Court of Ap-

peals review whether the case against the

museums and the university in Hungary

should also be dismissed. No date has been

set for the court hearing.

Though much of the case has revolved

around legal technicalities, one of the Her-

zog heirs’ lawyers said she hoped it could

ultimately become a litigation based on the

merits of the family’s claim.

Ms. Peresztegi said: “Last year, the

French Supreme Court held that as a matter

of principle, no lawful purchase and no ap-

plication of property law can override the

fact that a property was taken as a result of

Nazi persecution. I expect that the United

States courts will reach the same moral and

just conclusion.”

But at this point, the two sides cannot

even agree on how long this case will take to

get resolved. “The suit will be over in a

year,” said Mr. Stauber, who is representing

Hungary.

“It could drag on for a few more years,”

Ms. Peresztegi said.

Representatives of the Herzog heirs be-

lieve they have identified other looted

works in Poland and in France, and they

have been pursuing those as well. Several

years ago, Poland agreed after lengthy ne-

gotiations to return a Courbet landscape

that had been at the National Museum in

Warsaw to the heirs, who sold it at Christie’s

in 2014 for $545,000.

“I want to see a resolution,” said David L.

de Csepel, a grandson of Herzog’s daughter

who lives in Altadena, Calif., and filed the

suit with two other Herzog heirs. “I’m 54

years old, and I don’t want it passed on to

the next generation.”

Art Is Long. This Restitution Case Is Longer.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

Heirs began to make

claims within a few

months of the war’s end.

Top, Baron Mor Lipot Herzog

(seated, second from right)

and family. Heirs seek the

return of Courbet’s “The

Chateau of Blonay (snow),”

above, in the Budapest

Museum of Fine Arts.

VIA KASOWITZ BENSON TORRES LLP

HERZOG FAMILY ARCHIVE

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020 Y C5

NURSES ARE KNOWNto be caring, patient,

full of equanimity. You don’t go into the pro-

fession for cushy hours and padded sala-

ries, and nurses are selflessly devoted to

their jobs and their patients.

But the way Covid-19 has been handled in

this country had pushed many of them to

the brink. Nurses are now scared and angry

to an unprecedented degree, at least if we

go by the new virtual docu-play “That Kind-

ness: Nurses in Their Own Words.”

Based on interviews conducted by V, the

writer and performer formerly known as

Eve Ensler, the work-in-progress “That

Kindness” (which the Brooklyn Academy of

Music is streaming through Monday, in co-

operation with two dozen theaters around

the country) slowly builds up from feel-

good stories of nurses discovering their vo-

cation to seething evocations of frustration

and even fury.

“That,I did not sign up for!” reads one of

the intertitles dividing the narrative into

short sections. Billy Porter’s Tony gets that

line, and he is a former military nurse who is

used to tough situations. Andrea (Connie

Britton) is just as agitated talking about her

resentment of the selfish people who don’t

take basic precautions to prevent the

spread of the virus. She is enraged by those

who refuse to wear masks, who travel to at-

tend disease-spreading parties. “Am I going

to die for this person?” she asks.

V shaped the source material into a play

with help from her longtime collaborator

James Lecesne, whose work inspired the

Trevor Project. The collagelike format and

bare-bones, talking-head staging (V also di-

rected) are similar to Jessica Blank and

Erik Jensen’s play “The Line,” about

Covid-19 emergency medical workers. The

cast includes Marisa Tomei, LaChanze and

Rosie O’Donnell, among others, and every-

body is terrific. Even the disparities in

sound quality and occasional fluffed lines

add to the mounting sense of urgency and

exasperation.

As V explains in a prologue, her 2010 uter-

ine cancer diagnosis and subsequent treat-

ment — a grueling experience she re-

counted in her solo show “In the Body of the

World” — instilled in her a devoted admira-

tion for nurses. They are “a sacred kind, a

holy species,” she says, deemed to be “radi-

cal angels of the heart.” That last adjective

is key, because for V, who wrote the wildly

influential “The Vagina Monologues,” the

body is political, making nurses frontline

combatants in a struggle for fair treatment

and access to care.

Toward the end of the show, Sarah (Rosa-

rio Dawson) bitterly points out that many of

her peers give up on the profession, finding

it too hard to stomach a system in which

corporate values take precedence over pa-

tients. “That Kindness,” which was

produced with help from National Nurses

United and the California Nurses Associa-

tion, has a definite activist slant.

Considering the situation in which we

find ourselves, you have to wonder how it

could be any other way.

Those on the Front Lines Didn’t Sign Up for This

Marisa Tomei, Billy Porter and Rosie O’Donnell

dramatize the words of nurses pushed to the brink.

ELISABETH VINCENTELLI THEATER REVIEW

That Kindness

Available through Oct. 19 on YouTube;

bam.org

V, the writer and performer formerly known as Eve Ensler, seen here in a screen
grab, conducted the interviews that serve as source material for the play.