The daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official has been charged in Argentina with attempting to conceal an 18th-century painting, following revelations it was stolen from a Jewish art dealer during the Second World War. Patricia Kadgien, whose father was Friedrich Kadgien, a prominent Nazi officer, faces charges of cover-up.
This development comes a day after she surrendered Giuseppe Ghislandi’s Portrait of a Lady to the Argentine judiciary, eight decades after its confiscation. The federal prosecutor overseeing the case announced the charges.
The future of the artwork remains uncertain, pending a court decision. Lawyers for the heir of Jacques Goudstikker, the Dutch-Jewish art collector whose world-famous inventory was confiscated by the Nazis, have lodged a legal claim to reclaim the piece.
Goudstikker died in a shipwreck in 1940 while fleeing the Netherlands as German troops advanced. He sold his collection, which included Rembrandts and Vermeers, under duress and far below the market price. At least 1,100 stolen works from his gallery remain missing.
The Argentine court has requested that the painting be displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires ahead of any further transfer abroad. The museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Patricia Kadgien, 59, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, 62, have been under house arrest on suspicion of concealing the painting since police raided their home on Monday for the second time in as many weeks without finding Portrait of a Lady.
Kadgien, with disheveled, dirty-blond hair and sunglasses on her head, wore a look that mixed concern and puzzlement as she listened to prosecutor Carlos Martínez in a jam-packed courtroom. Martínez said that Kadgien’s and her husband’s efforts to hide the painting over several days following its sudden appearance in a real estate listing amounted to obstruction of justice.
Cortegoso gazed straight ahead, his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face.
After the hearing, the couple was released from house arrest but barred from travelling abroad and required to notify the court whenever they leave their registered address.
Photos of the painting hanging in Kadgien’s living room in Mar del Plata surfaced last month for the first time in eight decades in an online real estate advertisement.
Dutch journalists investigating Kadgien’s past in Argentina – where he took refuge after the collapse of the Third Reich – spotted Portrait of a Lady hanging above a green velvet couch in the living room during a 3D tour of the house for sale.
After recognising it as the same portrait listed as missing in international archives of Nazi-looted art, the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad published an exposé on 25 August, which grabbed headlines around the world.
Alerted by the international police agency Interpol, Argentine authorities raided the house and other properties belonging to Patricia Kadgien and her sister Alicia, seizing a rifle, a .32-caliber revolver and several paintings from the 19th century that they suspect may have been similarly stolen during the Second World War.
But police couldn’t find Portrait of a Lady. They found scuff marks and a pastoral tapestry on Patricia Kadgien’s living room wall where the portrait had been photographed.
The real estate ad, first posted in February, was swiftly taken down. Prosecutors on Thursday said that security footage showed people removing the “for sale” sign from Kadgien’s front yard as media scrutiny intensified last week.
In presenting the charges, Martínez told the court that the couple was “aware that the artwork was being sought by the criminal justice system and international authorities”, but went to great lengths to hide it.
“It was only after several police raids that they turned it in,” he said.
With the defendants under house arrest on Monday, their lawyer, Carlos Murias, filed a petition with a civil court in Mar del Plata asking that Kadgien be allowed to auction the painting.
The court rejected the request, arguing that it lacked jurisdiction given the painting’s provenance.
On Thursday, Martínez told reporters that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had informed his office that Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s heir, had lodged a legal claim to Portrait of a Lady at the FBI’s New York office. The bureau declined to comment.
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