Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich Returns Painting to Great-Grandson of Jewish Collector Who Fled Germany in 1938

Paul Laporte, a great-grandson of the well-to-do Sofie Heilbronner, who fled Munich for the United States in 1938, spent the past eight years working to reclaim a painting that belonged to his great-grandmother and had been lost as a result of Nazi persecution. The artwork, Music (Arcadian Scene), 1892, by German painter Albert Lang was returned to Heilbronner’s heirs in a ceremony on September 22 at the German Embassy in Washington, DC. Before Tuesday, it had been held by the Bavarian State Painting Collections, a museum in Munich.

A notice from the New York State Department of Financial Services, which administers the Holocaust Claims Processing Office, explains that Heilbronner packed up her artworks before leaving Germany, intending to sell them in New York. Instead, they were seized by the German government and auctioned off; the Lang painting was later discovered in a former Army barracks-turned-warehouse in Munich and eventually ended up in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, which identified it as having been looted. There was no record of who its rightful owner was.

The gold-framed painting depicts a bacchanalian scene in a forest, with a nude reclining figure in the foreground surrounded by men and women playing instruments. According to an article in the Washington Post, Laporte’s first clue was found in digitized records from Heinemann Gallery, an international art gallery founded in Munich in 1972. Heilbronner had her artwork appraised there, though the gallery declined to purchase Music (Arcadian Scene). Laporte then discovered that the painting was part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Music (Arcadian Scene) now hangs in Laporte’s living room, according to the Post. It cost $3,000 to ship from Munich to Maryland. Aesthetically, it is not really his taste, he says, but he sees it as “more than a work of art.”

“The return of this painting corrects a longstanding historical wrong and restores to us an important piece of our heritage,” Laporte said at the ceremony at the German embassy. [Music (Arcadian Scene)] remains a tangible connection to a life and world irrevocably altered by the Holocaust. It is one of few surviving witnesses to our family’s life in Germany before persecution and displacement … We are deeply grateful to all those whose integrity and diligence helped make this moment possible. Their efforts ensure that this piece of our story can once again be reunited with the descendants of those to whom it originally belonged.”