Rosa Oppenheimer (; 31 July 1887 − 2 November 1943) was a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

who was

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

ed in the Holocaust. The art she owned together with her husband

Jacob Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. J ...

is the subject of several high-profile

restitution The law of restitution is the law of gains-based recovery, in which a court orders the defendant to ''give up'' their gains to the claimant. It should be contrasted with the law of compensation, the law of loss-based recovery, in which a court o ...

claims.

Early life

Rosa Silberstein was born on 31 July 1887 in Berlin and died in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz on 2 November 1943. She married Jakob Oppenheimer and took his name. They worked together as art dealers.

Art Dealer

Rosa's husband Jakob was the managing director of Margraf and Co, which was owned by Albert Loeske who died in 1929. Rosa and Jakob Oppenheimer worked for the

Galerie Van Diemen Galerie van Diemen was a commercial art gallery founded in 1918 in Berlin (Germany), and which had branches in The Hague, Amsterdam and New York. Under the Nazis, the German branch was Aryanized and its Jewish owners forced into exile and murdered. ...

, which was part of the Margraf group. In his will Loeske left the Margraf group to the Openheimers but the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

would not allow Jewish directors.

Nazi persecution, deportation and death

Under Hitler's

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, a Nazi and close friend of

Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...

Bolko von Richthofen Bolko von Richthofen (September 13, 1899 – March 18, 1983) was a German archaeologist and a distant relative of the family of Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron". He is sometimes confused with his distant cousin and namesake, Karl Bolko von ...

, was named director of the Margraf group. In 1935 the art was

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

ed off in forced sales at the

Paul Graupe Paul Graupe (born May 29, 1881, in Neutrebbin; died February 9, 1953, in Baden-Baden) was a German antiquarian bookseller and art dealer. Early life Paul Graupe was born in 1881 into a Jewish family in Neutrebbin, Germany. He attended grammar ...

auction house. The Oppenheimers fled to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in 1933. Jakob Oppenheimer died there as an impoverished

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

in 1941. Rosa was

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

in at the

Drancy camp Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban com ...

in France, then deported and died in Auschwitz on 2 November 1943.

Restitution claims

The

heirs Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officially ...

of Jacob and Rosa Oppenheimer have filed several restitution claims for art seized by Nazis or relinquished in forced sales. In 2008 the Dutch Restitutions Committee recommended that artworks be returned to the Oppenheimer family, stating, "In the Committee’s opinion, the applicants have sufficiently shown that the work of art was auctioned at a forced auction set up by the Nazi authorities to implement anti-Jewish measures and the Committee therefore adjudges that it can be considered involuntary loss of possession as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime." In 2009, following years of investigation two

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

paintings that had been in a forced sale in 1935 were restituted by the

Hearst Castle Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada (Spanish for "The Enchanted Hill"), is a historic estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his archit ...

which said that Hearst was not aware of their origins when he acquired them from I.S. Goldschmidt Gallery in Berlin. In 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston reached an agreement with the Oppenheimer family concerning a settlement for

tapestries Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

that had been the object of a

forced sale A partition is a term used in the law of real property to describe an act, by a court order or otherwise, to divide up a concurrent estate into separate portions representing the proportionate interests of the owners of property. It is sometimes ...

. Also in 2011 the

Landesmuseum Württemberg The Landesmuseum Württemberg (Württemberg State Museum) is the main historical museum of the Württemberg part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It emerged from the 16th-century “Kunstkammer” ( Cabinet of art and curiosities) of t ...

in Stuttgart, Germany restituted to the Oppenheimer heirs a 16th-century wooden sculpture of St. John the Baptist that had been looted by Nazis in 1933, then auctioned off to Heinemann and Dr. Benno Griesbert. In 2017 the heirs demanded the restitution of two paintings which were at the

National Gallery of Ireland The National Gallery of Ireland ( ga, Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann) houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on ...

which refused the claim based on the research of a

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

expert

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oppenheimer, Rosa German art dealers German Jews who died in the Holocaust Nazi-looted art Women art dealers German people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp 1887 births 1943 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to France Jews and Judaism in Germany Subjects of Nazi art appropriations