Cranach's Adam and Eve: a claim still in court

In May 1940, as German forces invaded the Netherlands, Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer, left Amsterdam by boat with his wife, Desi, and their son, Edo. He died on the voyage, in an accident. His gallery stayed behind, with 1,113 inventoried works. Two were life-size oil panels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, painted about 1530. A court case over them is open.

Goudstikker bought the pair in 1931, at a Berlin auction titled “The Stroganoff Collection”. The Soviet government was the seller. On 13 July 1940 employees signed two contracts for the gallery, one with Alois Miedl, a German banker, and one with Hermann Göring, a senior Nazi leader. Göring paid 2,000,000 guilders for the art. Desi Goudstikker, who held most of the shares, refused to approve the sale, and the Dutch Restitutions Committee treats the loss as involuntary. The Cranachs were among the works Göring took. They went to the Dutch government in 1946.

After the war the firm chose, on legal advice, not to seek restitution for the Göring sale. It filed only for the Miedl sale and settled in 1952. In 1961 George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, a Russian aristocrat, claimed the pair, saying the Soviet government had stolen them from his family. Whether the family ever owned them is disputed. The district court found that it never did. The Ninth Circuit, a US appeals court, called the record muddied and left the point open. In 1966 the Dutch government transferred the panels to him. The court says he bought them back and dropped his claims. The heirs allege that Desi and Edo Goudstikker were not told. In 1971 he sold the pair for 800,000 US dollars to the Norton Simon Art Foundation, the museum’s owner.

Marei von Saher, Edo’s widow and the sole living heir, sought the firm’s art from the Dutch State. In 2006 a State Secretary decided to return over 200 paintings to her, but said the claim for the Cranachs was settled, as they were no longer Dutch property. In 2007 she sued the museum in federal court in Los Angeles. In 2014 the Ninth Circuit, by two judges to one, sent the case back. In 2016 the district court gave judgment to the museum under Dutch law.

On 30 July 2018 the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed. It used the act of state doctrine, under which courts treat a foreign government’s official acts in its own territory as valid. To rule for von Saher, it said, a court would have to declare invalid three Dutch acts, among them the 1966 transfer. The court denied rehearing on 11 September 2018, and the Supreme Court denied her petition on 20 May 2019.

On 13 April 2026 the HEAR Act of 2025, a federal law on claims for art lost to Nazi persecution, became Public Law 119-82. For timely claims it bars the act of state doctrine as a ground for dismissal, and its findings name this case. On 14 September 2026 the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles and its board chair, Daniel Gryczman, sued for the panels in Los Angeles Superior Court, as assignees of von Saher’s rights. They say they would use most of any sale proceeds to care for local Holocaust survivors. On 14 October the museum filed a federal complaint seeking an injunction, arguing that the 2016 judgment is final. LAist reports that the museum does not dispute the Nazi looting but says courts have confirmed its title. The sources consulted show no ruling in either 2026 case. The panels remain at the Norton Simon Museum.