Anita Halpin

Anita E. Halpin (born April 1944) is an English communist and trade union activist of German-Jewish descent who has been successful in having paintings returned to her that were looted by the Nazis from her grandfather, Alfred Hess, in the 1930s. Several works, such as Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Nude by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, have been returned to her and subsequently sold; the former sold at auction for £20.5 million to the Neue Galerie New York, which also paid over £1 million to Halpin for Nude.

Early life and family Anita E. Hess was born in April 1944, in New End Hospital, Hampstead, London. Her father was Hans Hess, an assistant curator at the former Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, who emigrated to England in 1933 via a Canadian internment camp. Her mother was Lillie Ester Hess (née Williams), an engineer's clerk with a German grandfather (on her father's side). They met through Jewish friends and were both described as being on the political left. Anita was an only child.

Her grandfather was the German-Jewish Alfred Hess, a shoe manufacturer in Erfurt, whose factory was Aryanised after 1933, who with his wife Tekla (1884–1968), née Pauson, had an art collection of around 4,000 works that contained important German Expressionist works and was looted by the Nazis in the 1930s. After her husband's death in 1931, Tekla Hess toured Europe, selling paintings from the collection to pay her way and sending others to her son Hans, before emigrating permanently to England in 1938. Hans tried to sell some of the paintings after the end of the Second World War but there were no buyers. There was an auction of family paintings at the Marlborough Gallery in 1977 following the death of Hans in 1975 and Lillie in 1976. In 2006 she was the chair of the Communist Party of Britain.

In 2016, she was successful in her claim to have Nude by German expressionist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff returned to her legal ownership by the Neue Galerie New York who had bought it for $800,000 in 1999. It was said to have disappeared from Halpin's grandmother's storage at the Cologne Art Association in 1939, after she fled Germany. The Neue Galerie immediately bought it back from Halpin for a price believed to be above $1 million.

Halpin has made claims for restitution on a number of other paintings by German expressionists, including The Little Blue Horse (1911) and Cat Behind A Tree (Katze hinter einem Baum (Kinderbild)) by Franz Marc, held by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Sprengel Museum respectively; Barefoot Church I (1924) by Lyonel Feininger, also held by the Staatsgalerie; and Judgment Of Paris (1913) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, held by the Wilhelm Hack Museum.