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Man Fights Nazi Plunder
Man Fights Nazi Plunder
Watch National Geographic's 2008 short film about Claude Cassirer's battle to recover his family's lost Pissarro from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid by clicking here. The case involves ownership of "Rue St.-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie," a Parisian street scene painted by the impressionist artist in 1897. The painting is estimated to be worth $20 million.
Claude Cassirer mounted a legal battle against the Spanish government which is the owner of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Cassirer's case is that his grandmother was forced to sell the painting in 1939 for what was then $360 as a precondition of her fleeing Germany.
The painting has been on display at Madrid's state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza museum since 1993, when the Spanish government paid $250 million to buy Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen's collection. Thyssen bought the painting in 1976.