Monet's Poppy Field near Vétheuil and the Emden claim

On 5 October 1940, in the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, Hans Erich Emden met the art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt. His father, Max Emden, had died at Ascona, in Switzerland, on 26 June 1940, and Hans Erich was his only son and sole heir. The Bührle Foundation’s report, drawn from Feilchenfeldt’s diary, says the meeting led to a list of fourteen pictures for sale. One was Claude Monet’s Poppy Field near Vétheuil, marked at 30,000 Swiss francs.

Monet painted it about 1879, though some press give 1880. It passed through Paris dealers and the Berlin collector Julius Stern, whose estate sold it in 1916. The foundation says Max Emden acquired it in 1929 from the Galerie Caspari in Munich. No purchase document survives. The price rests on a dealer’s memory, which put it at 55,000 to 60,000 gold marks.

Max Emden came from a Hamburg merchant family of Jewish origin, and he had converted to Protestantism early in life. He owned department stores, retired in 1926 and became a Swiss citizen in 1934. The German Advisory Commission, a body that advises on Nazi-looted art, concluded in 2019 that his financial hardship was caused directly by Nazi persecution. That finding concerned two other pictures, sold in 1938. It did not concern the Monet.

Hans Erich Emden took Haitian citizenship in April 1940, and Germany revoked his German citizenship on 1 June 1940. He left Switzerland in early 1941 for Brazil and later became a Chilean citizen. The Swiss arms maker Emil Bührle, who died in 1956 and was never the subject of proceedings over this picture, bought the Monet in 1941 through the dealer Fritz Nathan. He paid 35,000 francs. It was a private sale: no auction, no buyer’s premium. The sources disagree on who bought from Emden. The foundation says Nathan sold it and Feilchenfeldt advised Emden. The NZZ reported in 2012 that Feilchenfeldt bought it first. The foundation says the sale probably fell at the turn of 1940 and 1941.

The two sides read these facts differently. The foundation says Hans Erich Emden could use his money freely, set his own prices and refused a bank offer for two pictures in January 1942. It concludes that the sale was not a result of Nazi persecution, and its spokesman Victor Schmid called it “a regular liquidation of an estate” in 2024. It says the 1929 crash and business losses did most of the harm to Max Emden’s fortune. The heirs’ side describes a forced sale at an unreasonably low price. Experts for the heirs said twelve comparable Monets sold at an average of under 48,000 francs. The Tages-Anzeiger reports that the heirs’ side also describes Max Emden’s stores and property as seized by the Nazis.

The heirs, led by Max Emden’s grandson Juan Carlos Emden, have asked for the picture since about 2008. The claim became public in October 2012, and the foundation declined an arbitration panel that November. The heirs renewed it in December 2021 through their lawyer, Olaf Ossmann. The foundation says Swiss law leaves no legal claim, and swissinfo reports the same. The 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art are not binding. The foundation removed five other works from display in June 2024. No court or commission has ruled on the picture.

The painting belongs to the Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection and is on long-term loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich, to 2034. Thieves took it from the Bührle museum on 10 February 2008, and police found it undamaged on 18 February. No decision, settlement or return has been reported as of 5 June 2026 (swissinfo).