Summary of Recommendation regarding Lierens II

The Restitutions Committee has assessed an application for restitution of the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey (1881) by Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff (hereinafter also referred to as the watercolour), which is currently in the Rijksmuseum Twenthe. The Committee has come to the conclusion on the grounds of the investigation conducted by the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) that it is highly likely that the artwork came from the private collection of the Jewish art collector Jacob Lierens (1877-1949) of Amsterdam. It has also become sufficiently plausible that Lierens lost possession of the watercolour involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly connected with the Nazi regime.

The investigation has shown that in 1924 the watercolour was part of Lierens’s art collection. No indications were found that suggest that the watercolour ceased being the property of Lierens prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands.

In July 1941 the watercolour was put into a sale at the Frederik Muller & Co auction house in Amsterdam. The watercolour was acquired by Jan Bernard Scholten of Enschede, who in 1925 had acquired a painting by the same artist with the same theme from Lierens. Scholten bequeathed his art collection to his younger sister Ida Scholten, who after his death donated the collection to the State of the Netherlands, for use by the Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

A further indication that Lierens lost possession of the watercolour involuntarily is a letter from Bernardus Mensing, a partner in Frederik Muller & Co., which was found in a file in the Central Archives for Special Criminal Jurisdiction (CABR). In it, Mensing stated he had sold a substantial part of Lierens’s art collection at the latter’s request so that Lierens and his wife could afford a bearable existence during the period they were in hiding. The same file contains a letter from Lierens in which he thanks Mensing for his efforts.

The Restitutions Committee has advised the State Secretary for Culture and Media to restitute the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey to the heirs of Jacob Lierens.

1.    The Application 

In a letter of 6 November 2020, the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency (hereinafter referred to as the RCE) asked the Committee on behalf of the Minister to issue advice about restitution of the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey by the artist Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff. This was prompted by the request from Mondex Corporation on behalf of the Applicants to the Ministry as described in a letter of 24 July 2020. The watercolour was allegedly owned originally by the paper merchant Jacob Lierens.

3.    Establishing the Facts

The Committee establishes the following facts on the grounds of the investigation into the facts.

Jacob Lierens’s Family and Collection

The paper merchant and art collector Jacob Lierens (hereinafter referred to as Lierens) was born in Amsterdam on 5 February 1877. On 22 December 1898 he married Henriëtte Johanna Benavente in community of property. The couple had four daughters: Elisabeth, Rebecca, Branca and Esther. The oldest daughter, Elisabeth, died in 1930 after a long illness. It is stated in a file in the Central Archives for Special Criminal Jurisdiction (hereinafter referred to as the CABR) that, in addition to his family with Henriëtte Johanna Benavente, Lierens had a further four children with another woman; they are mentioned in his will. In the same file Sophia Emma Dribbel is recorded as a foster daughter. One of her sisters, Louise Dribbel, was married to Lierens’s brother. During the nineteen-thirties another sister, Marie Dribbel, lived at Den Texstraat 32 in Amsterdam. Also living at that address was Jonas Alexander van Bever, a Dutch broker of Jewish descent who supported Jacob Lierens in his art collecting activities. Starting in 1921, the Lierens family lived in ‘Villa Johanna’ at Amsteldijk 196 in Amsterdam, where there was plenty of room for Jacob Lierens’s collection of paintings and other artworks that he was to accumulate over the years.

Jacob Lierens was a partner, together with his brother-in-law and brother, in the firm of L. Lierens & Co., a ‘Dealership in new and waste paper, rags, metals etc.’, located at Prinsengracht 353-355 in Amsterdam. After the withdrawal of his brother-in-law and the death of his brother, from 1930 Lierens continued the business on his own. On 1 May 1940 the business was made a general partnership, with Sophia Dribbel as a partner.

During the war the Lierens family suffered as a result of anti-Jewish measures. On the grounds of the Removal of Jews from the Business Community Regulation of 12 March 1941 (VO 48/41), the German Michael Hüllen was appointed administrator of Lierens’s firm. He became owner of the business in 1942. Initially Lierens continued working in the firm as an employee, but in due course he was excluded from it. Sophia Dribbel remained with the firm as general agent.

Jacob and Henriëtte Lierens’s house at Amsteldijk 196 and the lion’s share of the household effects were confiscated. It is plausible that this was the reason why the Lierenses moved to Deltastraat 1a in Amsterdam, where Sophia Dribbel also lived. It emerged from documentation that during 1943 the couple were interned for a period in Westerbork transit camp. They were able to get out of the camp by surrendering jewellery worth 75,000 guilders.

The Lierenses survived the war after they were released by going into hiding. Their daughters Esther Jessurun Cardozo-Lierens and Rebecca Bosboom-Lierens also survived the war. Esther did it by going into hiding with her family and Rebecca by fleeing the Netherlands in 1939 with her family and settling in the United States. Their daughter Branca Roselaar-Lierens and her husband Emanuel Roselaar were murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942.

After the war, Lierens continued running his business together with Sophia Dribbel until his death in 1949. His wife, Henriëtte Johanna Benavente, died in 1956 in New York.

The artwork during the occupation

There is no known documentation that states who the owner of the watercolour in the Netherlands was at the beginning of the German occupation. What is known, however, is that on 8 July 1941 the watercolour was put up for auction at Frederik Muller & Co in Amsterdam as part of ‘various collections and estates / old masters’. It can be deduced from documentation that the watercolour was probably purchased by Paulus Brandt, a Dutch broker and art dealer, for Jan Bernard Scholten. A further five artworks from the Lierens Collection were put up for auction in a sale at the same auction house between 14 and 17 October 1941 (lot nos. 301, 311, 318, 348 and 349).

Files in the CABR about Bernardus Franciscus Maria Mensing, a partner in the Frederik Muller & Co auction house, contain information about the fate of Jacob Lierens’s substantial collection during the German occupation. In a letter from Mensing to the Procurator Fiscal in October 1947, he refers to his involvement with the Lierens Collection, which had a value of three million guilders. Mensing wrote the following:

‘In my charge I had a large number of goods from Mr Lierens, of Jewish descent, and their value in May 1940 represented a very substantial sum. Later Mr Lierens went into hiding and by selling at auction, but not of course in the name of Mr Lierens, I succeeded in providing Mr Lierens with a bearable existence. Afterwards, in a letter he sent me dated 21 May 1945, he expressed his great appreciation and thanks for the spontaneous way in which I helped him during the German occupation.’

In the letter referred to by Mensing dated 21 May 1945, Lierens thanked him for keeping his antiquities collection safe. Lierens wrote the following:

‘I feel a need to tell you in this way of my immense appreciation and gratitude for the spontaneous way in which you helped me during the German occupation by keeping my collection of antiquities safe. / Although I had gone into “hiding” I knew what a difficult and dangerous situation you were in repeatedly in connection with the measures taken by the Germans, and I can imagine that it is now a great relief for you that those anxious times are fortunately in the past. / Finally I would like to ask you, in cooperation with the broker Langedijk, and preferably as soon as possible, to draw up a complete list of all the goods belonging to me that are at your place.’

4.    Substantive Assessment of the Application

The Committee has established that the requirements in section 1 a to e of the assessment framework have been met and that the application is therefore eligible for substantive handling.

Pursuant to section 2 of the assessment framework, the Committee must assess whether it is highly plausible that the artwork was the property of Lierens, and on the grounds of section 3 whether it is sufficiently plausible that possession of the artwork was lost involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime. To this end the Committee finds as follows:

Ownership requirements (section 2 of the assessment framework)

Documentation dating from the nineteen-twenties found during the investigation indicates that Lierens was the rightful owner of the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey by Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff in 1924. It has been established that the work went under the hammer at Frederik Muller & Co in 1921. It is plausible that the work was purchased by the broker Van Bever for Lierens. In 1924 the work, the property of Lierens, was loaned, with the involvement of Van Bever, to Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden for an exhibition of works by Bakker Korff.

The Committee finds that no other indications were found that suggest that the watercolour ceased being the property of Lierens prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands. The Committee also takes into consideration that the painting The Aunts Go on a Journey, which also belonged to Lierens and was also loaned to De Lakenhal, was purchased in 1925 by Jan Bernard Scholten of Enschede. So therefore, Scholten had already acquired an artwork by this artist on the same theme from Lierens prior to the purchase in 1941. In addition, the Committee attaches importance to the fact that between 14 and 17 October 1941 a further five artworks from the Lierens Collection were put up for auction in a sale at Frederik Muller & Co (lot nos. 301, 311, 318, 348 and 349). Two of those five artworks were, like the watercolour, by Bakker Korff. Another two of these artworks were restituted to Lierens’s heirs in 2019 on the recommendation of the Committee (file number RC 1.169).

On the grounds of this information, looked at as a whole, in the Committee’s opinion it is highly likely that at the time of the sale at Frederik Muller & Co on 8 July 1941, the watercolour belonged to Jacob Lierens. This means that the ownership requirement of section 2 of the assessment framework has been met.

Conclusion with regard to the restitution application

The Committee concludes that it is highly plausible that the watercolour The Aunts Go on a Journey by Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff came from the collection of Jacob Lierens, and that it is sufficiently plausible that he lost possession of the work in 1941 involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime.

In view of sections 2 and 3 of the assessment framework (criterion 3.1 and part 2 at the end of section 3), the upshot of all this is that the Committee will recommend that the artwork should be restituted to the Applicants.