Word: ofonly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...young ex-serviceman at the door of Edward Eliçofon's Brooklyn home had a knapsack full of paintings for sale. They had been bought at a flea market in Germany, the young man said. Eliçofon, a lawyer and passionate collector, was intrigued. He did not know, on that afternoon in 1946, that what the man offered was a collector's dream-and ultimately, a $10 million disappointment...
...ofon paid the ex-serviceman-whose name he says he has long since forgotten-$450 for two 11 -in. by 9½-in oil-on-wood portraits, one of a man, the other of a woman. He had no idea who painted them but thought "they were very beautiful." For 20 years they nestled in his jumbled collection of pictures, books, antiques and objets d'art. Then in 1966 an art historian friend recognized the paintings in a book on artwork that had been lost or destroyed in Germany during World War II. Soon the finding was authenticated...
Federal District Judge Jacob Mishler of Brooklyn ruled this month that Eliçofon, now 77, must return the paintings whose value is now estimated at up to $5 million apiece, to the Art Collection of Weimar, a museum in East Germany. In his 87-page decision, Mishler wrote that the museum "has demonstrated that the Dürers were stolen and that it is entitled as owner to possession." Of the 7,900 paintings listed as "destroyed and vanished" between 1939 and 1945 in East and West Germany, the Dürers are the only notable works that have...
...ofon calls the verdict "wrong and unfair." Instead of granting a motion for summary judgment, he argues, Judge Mishler should have submitted the case to a jury to decide whether the Weimar museum had really proved its contention that the Dürers were stolen. He also maintains that he bought the paintings in good faith and that no one could prove that the seller had not somehow acquired valid title to them in Germany. Therefore, he contends, the German law of "good faith acquisition" should protect his ownership. Says...
...while, the Dürers will remain in a Manhattan bank vault, where they have been locked away from the skirmishes of the past 15 years. If Eliçofon, a Latvian-born Jew who grew up in a New York tenement, wins his appeal, he plans to sell the Dürers and donate some of the proceeds to Jewish charities. Says he: "It would be a minute reparation for the wrongs done to the Jews by the Germans...