Die Kinder Des Künstlers, a painting by Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow, in Düsseldorf gallery.Route504/Supplied
The Spoils
Written and directed by Jamie Kastner
Classification N/A; 104 minutes
Opens at the TIFF Lightbox April 3, Cineplex Empress Walk April 4, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema April 5 and Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée April 6.
When Montreal art dealer Max Stern died in 1987, he left his estate to three universities: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, McGill and Concordia. In 2002, these heirs established the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, based at Concordia and dedicated to reclaiming the hundreds of European paintings the Jewish dealer had left behind in Germany when he was forced to flee his home in Dusseldorf in 1937.
Run by researchers rather than family interests, the project is an unusual restitution effort. When the city museum in Dusseldorf returned an important self-portrait by the Romantic painter Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow to the estate in 2014, the Max Stern Project lent it right back, so the painting by a renowned local artist stayed in the museum.
In the past decade, however, relations with Dusseldorf have gone off the rails as an anti-restitution coterie took charge of the file. That’s the subject of a new documentary from filmmaker Jamie Kastner, who dives back into murky corners of the art world after exposing the Norval Morrisseau forgeries in There Are No Fakes in 2019.
In a twisting story with some evasive interviews, Kastner begins in what is initially confusing territory: In 2021, Susanne Anna, the director of the city museum, guides the film crew through the building but declines to show them its Max Stern exhibition or comment on restitution.
Kastner was not permitted to interview her then, but luckily he was able to acquire another producer’s on-camera interview dating to 2014, when she was an enthusiastic proponent of restitution, calling it “necessary, normal and legal.” The 2014 ceremony returning the Schadow self-portrait, also shown on camera, looked like a love-in, and Anna promised an exhibition devoted to Stern and the fate of his Dusseldorf art gallery. Most of its inventory was sold at auction in Cologne in 1937 before he left for Britain, where he was soon interned as an enemy alien and then transferred to Canada.
Two Canadian researchers – National Gallery of Canada archivist Philip Dombowsky, who oversees the Stern papers, and Concordia art historian Catherine MacKenzie – had almost completed preparations for that exhibition when Dusseldorf’s interventionist mayor, Thomas Geisel, cancelled it in 2017. The blowback from the art world and the restitution community was intense, so eventually the museum hired a Berlin curator, who had previously fought against restitution in a separate case, to put together a new show, free of Canadian influence.
It’s that show that Anna won’t – or can’t – speak about. (The documentary doesn’t ask why the muzzled director didn’t resign her post after city officials interfered so brazenly with her curatorial decisions.)
What Kastner does do, reapplying a technique he used to great effect in There Are No Fakes, is let the bad buys hang themselves with their own words. The documentarian has a knack for letting the camera run as subjects reveal their discomfort with his questions. The former head of the city’s culture department looks at his watch impatiently while former mayor Geisel tries to discuss anything but restitution.
German lawyer Ludwig von Pufendorf argues that returning property simply because Jews were persecuted does not produce fair outcomes.Route504/Supplied
Meanwhile, Max Stern project director Clarence Epstein is earnest and firm, but his main researcher, Willi Korte, is the bigger gift to a filmmaker: outraged over all the foot-dragging and phoney explanations yet never losing his sense of humour. When they find themselves toasting one victory – a Dusseldorf city council vote on restitution that coincidentally will take place on Hitler’s April birthday – Kastner indulges himself shamelessly with a clip playing Springtime for Hitler from Mel Brooks’ The Producers. Earlier he has flashed an image of Beatles manager Brian Epstein on the screen when one subject confuses that name with Clarence Epstein’s.
These cheeky moments aren’t necessary in a film that, once the threads are untangled, is highly convincing. The filmmaker doesn’t need any fancy footwork to expose the real villain of the piece, German lawyer Ludwig von Pufendorf, who advised the city and who argues that returning property simply because Jews were persecuted does not produce fair outcomes. His attempt to minimize the forced closure of Galerie Stern by the Gestapo verges on Holocaust denial.
Kastner also interviews Henrik Hanstein, still running the Lempertz auction house in Cologne where his grandfather organized sales of Jewish property, including the Galerie Stern inventory. He is a more sympathetic character, and the documentarian has caught him on camera as he struggles to reconcile what is convenient with what is just.
