Author: Camille Freyermuth
The Bacri family made their fortune in North Africa, as grains merchants and bankers of the dey of Algiers. In the 1860’s, they moved to Paris, where Jacob Bacri (1831– before 1911) and his brothers established themselves as merchants, jewellers and antiques dealers. Martin (1868–1948) and Léon Jules (1873–1966), the two elder sons of Jacob Bacri, bought their father and uncles’ business on 22 July 1895.1 Their two other brothers, Vidal (1877–1954) and Henri (1880–1958), joined them in 1904 and 1911. The enterprise “Martin & Jules Bacri” thus became “Bacri Frères.” Founded on the rue de Rivoli, the enterprise changed address several times: it finally settled at 141 boulevard Haussmann during the 1930s.
Before the Occupation, the family’s reputation was solidly anchored in Paris and in the whole world, especially in Europe and in the United States. The Bacris were in business with a number of national and foreign museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and they took part in many exhibitions of ancient art in France and abroad, such as the New York World’s Fair in 1939. 2
On 11 June 1940, just three days before the occupation of Paris by German troops, the Bacri brothers hastily left Paris for Cusset,3 a commune near Vichy. They left behind a twenty-five-room-building filled with objects of all kinds – medieval and Renaissance tapestries, wood carvings, ceramics, paintings and sculptures – the whole of their business inventory, but also their personal collections.
From the very first days of the Occupation, the collections of major Jewish merchants in Paris were subject of lootings by the German authorities. Moreover, a German ordinance already passed on 20 May 1940 allowed provisional administrators to be appointed to take over and manage companies in occupied territories left behind by their owners because of their flight, and also provided for the possibility of selling the said company. Before an administrator was named to manage the Bacri’s firm, four lootings were already organized by Josef Angerer (1899–1961), Reichsmarschall Göring’s art dealer. The first one took place on 1 July 1940, then on 8 July, when Angerer returned to the building, this time accompanied by Jacques Beltrand (1874–1977), who estimated the value of the objects carried off by the occupying authorities. The two of them returned on 4 August 1940, then a second time during the same month.4 Bruno Lohse (1911–2007), Göring’s principal agent and one of the most important figures of the ERR, confirmed after the war, in an interview reported by Rose Valland to Albert Henraux in 1949, that part of the Bacri collection was sent directly to Göring, without passing through the ERR.5 Later on, other merchandise was carried off by the Germans, since eighty-eight works not on Angerer’s list were passed on to the Jeu de Paume between 15 and 18 August 1942.
On 31 October 1940, Léon Pioton (1896–1984) was named administrator of the firm Bacri Frères by the Commissariat general aux questions juives (CGQJ). However, he never executed his authority and on 9 April 1941, militants from the fascist Rassemblement national populaire (RNP), illegally occupied the Bacri building. Militants from the Mouvement social révolutionnaire (MSR), another collaborationist party close to the RNP, also looted the Bacri collection. Most of the merchandise stolen from the Bacri enterprise was carried off between the time of the inventory made by Maurice Michaud and Préau in April to May 1941 at the request of Pioton and the inventory made between November 1942 and January 1943, demanded by Roger Noël, named to replace Pioton as administrator in 1942.6 On 7 January 1943, Paul Jourdan replaced Noël as administrator of the firm. He ordered the sale of merchandise remaining in the Bacri Frères building: three auctions were thus organized at the Hôtel Drouot on 30 January, 19 May and 21 May 1943.7
It is difficult to know what became of the Bacri family during the war. They seem to have fled to the Côte d’Azur, according to a document in the Bacri’s BrüG file, then probably to North Africa.8 Unfortunately, no other source was found concerning their flight during the war.
After the Liberation, Jacques Bacri, the son of Léon Jules, took charge of claims for restitution and indemnity. The Bacri brothers were summoned to appear before the President of the Seine Civil Court on 17 November 1947 with a view to applying the Order of 21 April 1945, leading to the creation of a restitution order. The three sales carried out in January and May 1943 by the commissaires-gérants (administrators) constitute acts of spoliation; the purchases made at these sales by various buyers are considered null and void. It is difficult to know why only some of them were prosecuted; they were instructed to return the items to the claimants, so that a bailiff could assess the damage suffered by the Bacri brothers.9
Jacques Bacri then submitted a file to the CRA. In this file, he provides a history of the company since it was established in Paris; he also included inventories of the stock available before the war, as well as the inventories kept by the commissaires-gérants during the Occupation.
Over the following years, Rose Valland and Jacques Bari would exchange a large number of letters about the restitution of artworks found on the territory conquered by the Third Reich. This precious correspondance not only highlights the work of the CRA, which tried to make the demand for financial compensation for the victims easier, for example by providing detailed lists of what had been restituted and what had not. But it also gives an insight into the relationship between the various French and the German administrations over the course of these early postwar decades, with the changing of competences, responsibilities and institutions
In a letter written on the Bacri Frères official paper dated 31 July 1945, Jacques Bacri sent Albert Henraux, Chairman of the CRA, a file concerning the removal of objects from their building at 141 boulevard Haussmann by the Germans and various political groups.10 The works looted from the Bacri family during the Occupation were recovered throughout the German territory. The vast majority were recovered in Buxheim, where the works taken by the ERR in the summer of 1942 were sent, but also to Karlsruhe, Berchtesgarden (in Bavaria, close to the Austrian border) and Kogl (near Vienna), where some of the goods were found that had been sent directly to Göring without going through the ERR.11
The first artworks to be returned to the family were those looted by the ERR in 1942 and found at the Buxheim monastery in southern Bavaria; they arrived on the 28 December 1945 convoy and then on the 4 March 1946 convoy. They were officially recovered on 30 April 1946 and 14 January 1947. On 21 June 1949, the antique dealers recovered the works of art looted by Angerer in 1940, as well as items that were not on either the ERR or Angerer lists.
Eager to provide further information on these missing items, Jacques Bacri attempted to visit the Collecting Points in order to identify his family’s lost property.12 Although visitors were usually not allowed to enter the Collecting Points, Jacques eventually went to Munich in April 1951. There he met Rose Valland and Lieutenant Samson Lane Faison Jr. (1907-2006), a former Monuments Man who became director of Munich’s Central Collecting Point in 1950. During this visit, Jacques recognized two artworks: a painting by Dirk Bouts representing Saint Joseph and a sixteenth century sculpture of a civilian, looted by Angerer on 8 July 1940; on 11 April, Jacques sent the pictures of these two artworks to the Lieutenant.13 On 19 April, Samson Lane Faison Jr. confirmed that the two pieces would be returned; however, he asked Jacques for a proof of purchase for a painting formerly restituted to him, a Lying Nymph by Lucas Cranach the Elder, painted ca. 1537. Indeed, this painting, which arrived at the CCP in 1947, was restituted to Jacques on 26 September 1950. Still, it seems it was an undue demand: According to Gisela Limberger (1893-1957), Göring’s personal secretary, the painting was gifted by the Luftwaffe to Göring on 4 November 1938.14 Since it was sold before the Occupation in France, this transaction could not be considered as made under duress. In a letter dated 15 May 1951, S. Lane Faison Jr. explained to Rose Valland that he can’t give Dirk Bouts’ painting and the sixteenth century sculpture back “until the matter of the Cranach is cleared up.”15 (Fig. 1) Jacques wasn’t opposed to giving back the painting but asked for a proof that Angerer bought it before the war. He was given a photocard attesting that the painting was in Göring’s possession from 1938 onwards, and he was therefore obliged to return the painting to the American authorities. Once the painting arrived on German territory, the CCP accepted to ship the two artworks, which arrived in France with the 40th and 41st convoy; they were restituted to the family on 26 November 1952.16 It remains unclear what the actual motivation and legitimation was behind this holding back of the just restitution of two artworks.

After that, less artworks were restituted: six on 26 September 1950, three on 26 November 1952 and two on 23 November 1959.
Jacques Bacri’s large library of books on art and archeology was also plundered,17 part of which he was able to recuperate on 29 July 1948 thanks to the work of the CRA’s sub-commission of books.[39] However, the artworks which disappeared during the occupation of the building by the collaborationist parties were never found. Only a small black lacquer table belonging to the Bacri brothers was found during the search of the Noüe château in Villers-Cotterêts on 25 April 1944, former home of the MSR’s founder Eugène Deloncle (1890-1944).
Rose Valland followed the Bacri brothers’ requests until 1960. In a letter dated 19 May 1960, Rose Valland gave Jacques Bacri a point-by-point explanation of the letter sent by the Federal Office on 11 March 1960.18 This letter served to clarify the history of the restitutions to the Bacri firm. Indeed, the first paragraph cites the latest restitutions granted or rejected by the Federal Government since the Paris Agreements in 1954. The second and third paragraphs list the works of art already returned by the Allied services, while the fourth paragraph, probably the most important, enumerates the works still claimed to this day, and for which the Federal Government services raised the question whether they might have been returned to France under different designations. Jacques needed this letter and those lists to begin the process of financial compensation by the German government. Indeed, Jacques started to file for the compensation, seeing that restitutions were less and less frequent. While still in contact with Rose Valland, he asked her for all proof needed to constitute the file required by the German government. In the Bacri case, as in many other cases, restitutions were numerous in the years following the end of the war, but became rarer from the 1950’s on. As time went by, searches became more and more complex, not only because of the aforementioned decline in state efforts. The possibilities in locating looted objects which had not been transferred to the CCPs but for example held in private collections or circulating on the art market without clear provenances were utterly limited. As it has been explained earlier in this article, this also resulted in the decisions of France and Germany to stop the researches and put an end to this procedure.
On 26 March 1961, Jacques Bacri informed Rose Valland of his wish to abandon future searches: “Further to the settlement reached with the Federal Minister of Finance for compensation for losses incurred during the German occupation, I have the honour of informing you that I am giving up the search for the works of art to be compensated, as further investigations appear to have little chance of success”.19 At that time, Jacques filed a demand to be financially compensated for the missing artworks thanks to the BRüG. The family received 1.965.000 Deutsche Marks (DM) which is roughly equivalent to 6.590.000 Francs.
While the development of restitution efforts and successes for the Bacri case can be drawn alongside the development – and eventually decline – of institutionalized restitution amidst the post-war political context, we know of no documents giving a deeper insight into the emotional impact the ending of further research had on Jacques Bacri.
However, with him verbalizing towards Rose Valland how any continuous research would have “peu de chances de succès”, we see this resigning as tainted by hopelessness. Although he successfully filed for a financial compensation, this would never replace the family’s lost objects.
Jacques Bacri died on 3 December 1965.20 He was the only one in his family to pursue the research regarding the artworks looted during the war. Indeed, his uncle Martin died on 5 April 1948 in Cannes, while Vidal passed away on 10 February 1954 in Paris. Henri, who had recovered some artworks, passed on 1 February 1958. The interruption of the research process overlapped with the beginning of the Trente Silencieuses.
The subject fell into oblivion until the early 1990’s, when the publication of scientific studies and the assumption of political responsibility led to the creation of the study mission on the spoliation of French Jews, better known as the Mattéoli Mission, in 1997. Jacques’ daughter, Clotilde Bacri Herbo, born in 1940, was able, thanks to research by the Mattéoli Mission, to recuperate four works, looted from the Bacri family on 8 July 1940. Sent to Göring’s residence in Carinhall, near Berlin, and found in Berchtesgaden, the four works were restituted to the family on 2 December 1999.
FINAL NOTE:
The Bacri family was our first case study showing the impact of dynamics and decisions on state levels on individual restitution claims.
About the author:
Camille Freyermuth is a provenance researcher associated to the French Ministry of Culture’s Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945. During her master’s degree in art history at Sorbonne University, she worked on Nazi-looted art by studying the Bacri family, Parisian antique dealers spoliated during the Occupation. She worked for a year and a half on the INHA research programm “Répertoire des acteurs du marché de l’art en France sous l’Occupation (1940-1945)”. She regularly takes part in conferences and workshops, such as ‘Le patrimoine en temps de guerre’ in October 2023 (Université Lyon III) and ‘Archéologie(s) et provenance(s)’ in November 2023 (École du Louvre).”
- History of the Bacri family, no date, in: Archives diplomatiques (MEAE), Services français de récupération artistique, 209SUP/26, dossier Bacri (later abridged MEAE, 209SUP/26). ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Letter to the CGQJ, 9 September 1943, in: AN, Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ), AJ/38/2798, dossier of the aryanization of the Bacri firm (later abridged AN, AJ/38/2798), Paul Jourdan. ↩︎
- Letter of Jacques Nouel, lawyer for the Bacri brothers, to Albert Henraux, 16 October 1947, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Letter of Rose Valland to Albert Henraux, 18 March 1949, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. See also Sworn statement of Josef Angerer, 4 March 1948, in: MEAE, Services français de récupération artistique, 209SUP/100, dossier A23. ↩︎
- Description of objects remaining in the premises of the Bacri Brothers firm requested by Roger Noël between 20 November 1942 and 11 January 1943, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Establishment of Jourdan’s remuneration for the administration of the Bacri firm, in: AN, AJ/38/2798. ↩︎
- Record of investigation, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Restitution order for the Bacri firm, 17 November 1947, in: Archives de Paris, Fonds judiciaires, Ordonnances de restitution des biens spoliés (1945-1976). ↩︎
- Letter of Jacques Bacri, 31 July 1945, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Locations in western Germany where items from the Bacri collection were found, no date, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Letter of Jacques Bacri, 31 July 1945, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Letter from Jacques Bacri to S. Lane Faison Jr, 11 April 1951, in: The National Archives, Ardelia Hall Collection: Wiesbaden Administration, Restitution Claim Records, France (Miscellaneous). https://www.fold3.com/image/231953137 (accessed 18 May 2021). ↩︎
- Letter of Rose Valland to Michel Florisoone, 22 May 1951, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Letter from S. Lane Faison Jr. to Rose Valland, 15 May 1951, in: The National Archives, Ardelia Hall Collection: Wiesbaden Administration, Restitution Claim Records, France (Miscellaneous). https://www.fold3.com/image/231953201 (accessed 18 May 2021). ↩︎
- List of works returned to the Bacri brothers on 26 November 1952, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- Poulain, Martine: Collections et bibliothèques d’art spoliées par les nazis, deux pertes irréparables, in: Perspective, Nr. 2, 2016, p. 153-160. https://journals.openedition.org/perspective/6905 (accessed 1 December 2020). ↩︎
- Letter from Rose Valland to Jacques Bacri, 11 March 1960, in: MEAE, 209SUP/26. ↩︎
- “Comme suite à la transaction qui a été conclue avec le Ministre fédéral des Finances pour une indemnisation des pertes subies au cours de l’occupation allemande, j’ai l’honneur de vous faire connaître que je renonce à la poursuite des recherches des œuvres d’art qui seront indemnisées, des enquêtes ultérieures paraissant avoir bien peu de chances de succès.” Translated by the author. Letter of Jacques Bacri, 26 March 1961, in: MEAE, Services français de récupération artistique, 209SUP/500, dossier indemnisation BRüG no. 108-35, Jacques Bacri. ↩︎
- Death certificate of Jacques Bacri, in: Civil Registry of Paris, 8N159. ↩︎
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art&diplomacy (October 9, 2024). The Bacri Family as a Case Study for the Restitution of Looted Artworks. Art and Diplomacy. Retrieved April 13, 2026 from https://artdiplomacy.hypotheses.org/617
