Press, tv, radio and film :

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.