Stolen Nazi Paintings

Issue at hand: Does a douchey German guy have rights to stolen paintings that were put in a tontine for 50 years?

Credit: Screenshot from The Simpsons, Season 7, Episode 22, “Raging Abe Simpson and his Grumbling Grandson in ‘The Curse of the Flying Hellfish’’' (28 April 1996). 20th Century Fox/Disney.

In Season 7, Episode 22, Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson, a number of US soldiers with connection to Springfield take paintings from a German castle in the last few days before World War 2. They create an agreement where the last person who is alive will acquire the paintings.

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Abe Simpsons (Narrating): It was the closing days of the war. We had just flushed some Germans out of an abandoned castle.

Barney (ancestor); Hey! Burnsie found some pictures.

Wiggum (ancestor): Wait a minute. We ain’t-a supposed to steal from civilians.

Abe Simpson: You want me to report you to Commander Flanders? Just leave them, Burnsie.

Burns: Leave them for whom? The Germans? The folks who shoot at us all day? Let’s just take them. We’ll all be rich- rich as Nazis.

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Burns: Then it’s agreed. Of course, we can’t sell the paintings now. We’d be caught. How many of you are familiar with the concept of a tontine?

(Ox raises hand)

Burns: All right, Ox. Why don’t you take us through it.

Ox: Uhh, essentially, we all enter into a contract... whereby the last surviving participant... becomes the sole possessor of all them “perty” pictures.

Burns: Well put, Oxford.

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After Abe Simpson recovers the painting in the present day from the bottom of the sea)

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US Agent (to Abe Simpson and Bart): Freeze! U.S. State Department. We’ll take those. We’ve been helping the German government search for this stolen art for 50 years. To avoid an international incident, we’ll be returning it... to the descendant of its rightful owner.

US Agent (now addressing a German man): Baron Von Bertzenberger, on behalf of the American people, I apologize for-

Baron: Ja, ja, ja. Mach schnell mit the art things, huh?

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Legal Question: In the end, Abe Simpson is forced to give back the paintings. However, after Abe Simpson recovered the paintings, does he have any legal claim that supersedes the claim of Baron Von Bertzenberger?

Result: No, Baron Von Bertzenberger wins.

Analysis: In the area of law concerned with property, there is a principle called having title, which means that there is a legal link between the property and the person. It is something that a person acquires when they purchase land, a car, a watch, or anything else. However, if someone does not acquire property in a legitimate way—for instance, from a purchase from the true owner or a gift from someone—then they do not have good title to the property.

An instructive case is the case of Kuntsammlungen Zu Weimar v. Elicofon (1981), where the East German government sued a man called Edward Elicofon, who purchased a set of stolen paintings by German artists Albrecht Duerer from an American servicemember in 1946. The paintings had disappeared from Schwarzburg Castle during the time when American troops were leaving the castle. Even though more than 35 years had passed since the theft, the New York district court ruled that Elicofon did not have good title and ordered the return of the paintings—even though he thought that the paintings were legitimate.

Credit: Hans Tucher by Albrecht Durer

In this case, Grandpa Simpson does not in any way have good title. He knew that the paintings were stolen. The fact that many years had passed did not change the fact that he did not have any legitimate ownership of the paintings.