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Heirs of German-Jewish banker sue for restitution of one of van Gogh’s most famous paintings
(JTA) — Heirs of a German-Jewish banker are suing a Japanese insurance company for the return of one of Vincent van Gogh’s famed “Sunflowers” paintings or at least $750 million in punitive damages.
In December, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning and Florence Von Kesselstatt, heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a 98-page complaint with an Illinois federal court alleging that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the painting in 1934 as the result of “racially exclusionary Nazi policies and concomitant coercion calculated to evict Jews from the economy and society of Germany.” They argue that the painting should be returned to his heirs as stipulated in his will.
A Sompo Holdings representative Courthouse News Service that the company “categorically rejects any allegation of wrongdoing and intends to vigorously defend its ownership rights in ‘Sunflowers.’” It displays the painting in a museum housed in its Tokyo headquarters building.
“It is a matter of public record that Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company [Sompo’s predecessor] purchased the Vincent van Gogh ‘Sunflowers’ work at public auction from Christie’s in London in 1987. For over 35 years, the Sompo Museum of Fine Art in Tokyo, Japan has proudly displayed ‘Sunflowers,’” the statement reads.
Sompo International did not return a request for comment in time for publication.
The complaint alleges that Yasuo Goto, president of the Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Co. — which was incorporated into Sompo Holdings in 2002 — was aware of the painting’s previous owner when he purchased it at the Christie’s auction in 1987. It was sold for $39.9 million, at the time a record high price for a painting sold at an auction.
In 2001, a Yasuda representative wrote to the Art Institute of Chicago ahead of an exhibition including the painting that the company was “deeply concerned” and that its provenance had not been further investigated. The company displayed the “Sunflowers” work at the Art Institute anyway, and, according to the complaint, concealed the story behind its original sale from U.S. authorities, in violation of the National Stolen Property Act of 1934.
“By knowingly and fraudulently exploiting a Nazi-tainted painting in the U.S. for commercial gain, Sompo Holdings has violated multiple U.S. domestic and foreign policies,” the complaint states.
Representatives for the heirs declined to speak on the record.
Some art experts have argued the painting, the most famous in van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” series, is a forgery.
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a member of the prolific German-Jewish Mendelssohn family, whose members included composer Felix Mendelssohn and Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. In the late 1700s, family members founded the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house, which became the largest private bank in Berlin. Facing Nazi persecution, they were forced to close Mendelssohn & Co. in 1938.
According to the complaint, Nazi laws that targeted Jewish banks crippled Mendelssohn-Bartholdy financially, forcing him to sell some works in his art collection — which included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Georges Braque. He died in Germany in 1935 of a heart attack.
Other members of the family were forced into exile, committed suicide while under arrest by the Gestapo or went into hiding and abandoned their Jewish names.
The complaint is only the latest in an ongoing saga as Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs seek restitution of his collection. Thus far, they have filed lawsuits against the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the German state of Bavaria for the restitution of five paintings by Pablo Picasso.
Settlements were reached on three of the cases while one — against the National Gallery of Art — resulted in the return of Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” to the family. The case against Bavaria is ongoing, as the Bavarian State Painting Collections refuses to refer the case to the German commission established to address disputed ownership over Nazi-era looted art.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.