Emanuel Lewenstein

Emanuel Albert Lewenstein (5 December 1870 – 10 June 1930) was a Dutch-Jewish businessman and art collector from Amsterdam. As a director of his family's sewing-machine firm, he assembled a notable collection of modern art. The dispersal of the collection at auction in October 1940, months after the German occupation of the Netherlands, became the subject of prolonged restitution disputes in the Netherlands and Germany, which contributed to a major reform of Dutch restitution policy.

Biography Emanuel Albert Lewenstein was born in Amsterdam on 5 December 1870, the son of Adolph Lewenstein (1841–1907), a German-Jewish businessman, and Lea Joachimsthal (1840–1931), who came from a Dutch-Jewish family in Amsterdam. His father founded the sewing machine company A. Lewenstein in Amsterdam in 1868, which later grew into one of the largest suppliers to the Dutch clothing industry.

Emanuel Lewenstein acquired the painting from Paul Citroen in November 1927 for 900 guilders. Following Emanuel’s death in 1930, his widow became its sole owner and placed it on loan at the Stedelijk Museum in 1933. On 5 September 1940, after the German occupation of the Netherlands, the painting was collected from the museum by a messenger sent on behalf of an unidentified party. It was then entered as lot 204 in an auction of works from the Lewenstein estate at Frederik Muller & Co. on 9 October 1940, where it was purchased by the collector Salomon B. Slijper. The Lenbachhaus in Munich, where Wassily Kandinsky’s Das Bunte Leben was displayed from 1972.

Slijper’s widow sold the painting to Bayerische Landesbank in 1972, after which it was displayed on long-term loan at Munich’s Lenbachhaus. In March 2017, three heirs brought proceedings in New York seeking either restitution or damages of $80 million.

The dispute was subsequently submitted to Germany’s Advisory Commission on Nazi-looted cultural property. In June 2023, the commission concluded that the available evidence did not support Bayerische Landesbank’s contention that the painting had been voluntarily consigned for sale in 1940. Applying the presumption that losses suffered by persecuted Jewish owners after the German invasion of the Netherlands were involuntary, it recommended that the painting be restituted to the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein Weyermann and Irma Lewenstein Klein.

Emanuel Lewenstein acquired the painting from Paul Citroen in May 1923 for 500 guilders. Following Emanuel’s death in 1930, Hedwig became its owner. On 9 October 1940, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, the painting appeared as lot 205 in an auction at Frederik Muller & Co. The director of the Stedelijk Museum, David Röell, purchased it on behalf of the City of Amsterdam for 160 guilders, or 176 guilders including the buyer’s premium.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam which acquired Wassily Kandinsky’s Bild mit Häusern at the 1940 auction.

Lewenstein’s heirs requested the painting’s return in 2012, and the dispute was submitted to the Dutch Restitutions Committee. In 2018, the committee concluded that the sale could not be considered separately from the Nazi regime, but found that it was also partly connected to financial difficulties predating the occupation. After weighing the heirs’ interests against the museum’s good-faith acquisition and the painting’s importance to its collection, it ruled against restitution.

The Dutch government accepted this central recommendation and adopted a revised assessment framework in 2021. The new process removed the general balancing of interests and focused instead on original ownership and involuntary loss resulting from Nazi persecution. Against this background, Amsterdam City Council decided in August 2021 to return the painting without awaiting a new ruling by the Restitutions Committee. It was formally transferred to the Lewenstein heirs in February 2022.