The brand new documentary The Spoils (2024) tells the story of two exhibitions in Düsseldorf—one which by no means occurred and one which in all probability by no means ought to have occurred.
Because the movie by Montreal-based director Jamie Kastner opens it’s 2021, and the director of Düsseldorf’s municipal museum, the Stadtmuseum, Susanne Anna, leads a digicam crew via her establishment, describing what’s within the galleries. However the focus of The Spoils is what Anna doesn’t point out, a rapidly assembled exhibition that provided the museum’s sanitised model of what occurred to artwork owned by Max Stern (1904-87), the Jewish vendor who misplaced his gallery in Düsseldorf and fled Germany after promoting all his work in 1937. In a clip from years earlier than, the identical museum director seems like an ardent proponent of restitution. Does her silence in 2021 replicate concern of punishment?
From that 2021 present, you wouldn’t have discovered that Stern acquired a pittance after that 1937 sale at Lempertz public sale home in Cologne. Stern later reached England, however solely after paying extortionate taxes and forfeiting his property. The vendor ultimately settled in Montreal and established a profitable gallery. Whereas he was alive, he was solely in a position to get well a small variety of works.
In Düsseldorf, an earlier Stern exhibition on the Stadtmuseum, organised by the Canadian students working with the Max Stern Artwork Restitution Venture was cancelled in 2017 by town’s mayor, on the grounds that the present lacked “stability”. The 2021 present dedicated to Stern that the mayor did approve had a German curator chosen by metropolis officers. It opened with out the cooperation or experience of the Stern crew in Canada. The Jewish neighborhood of Düsseldorf refused to endorse the exhibition.
In Düsseldorf and past, the Stern legacy is a fragile topic. The Spoils, which examines why, is probing and surprisingly entertaining.
Archival {photograph} of Max Stern held by Philip Dombowsky in The Spoils Courtesy Cave 7 Productions
The story is one in every of persecution after 1933, as Stern inherits his father’s gallery and tries to conduct enterprise as a Jew in Germany. He was banned from skilled associations after 1933. He was later the topic of a Berufsverbot, which banned him from working his gallery. He offered the work that he owned in 1937, in an public sale ordered by the Nazi authorities.
We all know a lot about Stern’s life and struggles due to the Max Stern Artwork Restitution Venture, shaped with funds from the vendor’s property, which he left to Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal, and to the Hebrew College in Jerusalem. Some paperwork from his enterprise survive, however many data that Stern saved from the Nazis have been destroyed through the German bombing of London and Allied bombing destroyed data at Lempertz.
The movie concentrates on two work by the artist Wilhelm von Schadow (1789-1862) that have been as soon as owned by Stern: a self-portrait restituted to the Stern property in 2014 and now on mortgage to Düsseldorf, and The Artist’s Youngsters (1830), restituted to the Stern Property and offered to Düsseldorf. Initially opposing the return of The Artist’s Youngsters, the museum employed the lawyer Ludwig von Pufendorf, a veteran of authorized fights in Germany in opposition to restitution claims. Within the movie, Von Pufendorf’s blithe dismissal of details provided by the Stern venture evokes German attitudes from a long time earlier than. When he isn’t laughing at his personal witticisms, Von Pufendorf is defending collections constructed on Jewish losses.
Ludwig von Pufendorf in a scene from The Spoils Courtesy Cave 7 Productions
Citing a time period for looted artwork invoked by the advocates for restitution, Von Pufendorf says: “‘The final prisoners of conflict’, a vile phrase, loathsome.” He provides, breaking right into a smile: “However that’s unchristian of me. I take it again.”
One other memorable character is Thomas Geisel, then the mayor of Düsseldorf, who cancelled the Stern exhibition organised by the Canadian crew. Geisel grins as he speaks fluent English and rhapsodises concerning the story of Düsseldorf when requested to debate Nazi artwork crimes.
In Cologne, Henrik Hanstein of Lempertz public sale home, a favoured venue for the Nazis to promote artwork looted from Jews, evokes the reminiscence of what he calls his grandfather’s pleasant relationship with Max Stern, as if Stern have been a cherished consumer.
Again in Düsseldorf in 2023, town council votes to restitute Von Schadow’s The Artist’s Youngsters to Stern’s property, which town of Düsseldorf then buys again for an undisclosed sum. Questioned by Kastner, an official’s silence hints that that town is responding to political strain, however not accepting the declare’s legitimacy. The vote to restitute the work is almost unanimous, aside from delegates from the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) celebration, who abstain.
Undated portrait of Max Stern Courtesy Cave 7 Productions
All through The Spoils, frank speak about retaining property offered below duress offers a darkish, comical really feel to what’s mentioned. When the time comes for signing an settlement between representatives of town and the Stern property for the portray to be re-acquired so it may well stay in Düsseldorf, an official notes that the date is 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, and presents to postpone the signing. (There are extra absurd incidents for future audiences to find.)
These moments of candour will be stunning, even refreshing, since movies about Holocaust artwork crimes are likely to depend on consultants who pile on details however sound alike. As a substitute, Kastner’s German interlocutors usually discover idiosyncratic methods to say “I do know nothing”, a ability acquainted to People who watched the tv sequence Hogan’s Heroes.
Some will inevitably fault The Spoils as unbalanced for taking Stern’s aspect and for making Germans opposing restitution appear lower than severe. However the movie compellingly explores the diploma to which a German establishment (or metropolis) will defend what it sees as its pursuits, and the moments at which it’s going to compromise. The Stern property remains to be searching for a whole lot of work. There might be sequels to The Spoils, in Germany or elsewhere.
The Spoils screens on 21 January (with a post-screening dialogue with director Jamie Kastner and Clarence Epstein and Willi Korte of Max Stern Artwork Restitution Venture) and on 29 January on the New York Jewish Movie Pageant. Different upcoming screenings embody movie festivals in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, and Tel Aviv. It is going to be additionally launched in Canadian cinemas and air on CBC in Canada in Could
Watch the trailer for The Spoils:
