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C H R O N O F H O R S E . C O M FA L L 2 014 83 ments Men," written and directed by its star George Clooney, immortalizes the work of these Allied sol- diers.) Will Riders Be Returned? But some of those restored artworks went back to Hil- debrand Gurlitt, not their pre-war owners. Among these was the Liebermann oil painting Two Riders on the Beach (also sometimes referred to as Rider on the Beach, Riders on the Beach or Two Riders at the Sea), which was first exhibited in Berlin in 1901. After its showing, Paul Cassirer, a Berlin gallery owner, acted as intermediary in l905 and bought it for David Friedmann, a very wealthy sugar refiner from Breslau (modern-day Wrocław, Poland) with a lot of art and at least four houses. During WWII, the Nazis confiscated all his possessions and sold them at auc- tion, with proceeds going to the Reich. Friedmann died in 1942, and his daughter Char- lotte was deported to an SS death camp a year later and died there. e Liebermann painting then went to Hildebrand Gurlitt, obtained for him by the Nazi called Muller Hofstede, who had been appointed by the Reich to appraise the collections owned by Jews that would then sell on the open market. e Monuments Men confiscated the Lieber- mann from Gurlitt in 1946 but returned it in 1950, and Friedmann's descendants have been searching for it ever since. Now found, they want it back. "Our Liebermann…used to hang in Uncle David's house, in the room in front of the winter garden," said Friedmann's great nephew, David Toren, who man- aged to immigrate to New York City in 1939 at the age of 14—orphaned after his parents were killed in Auschwitz. Now 88, Toren has filed a civil suit against the Free State of Bavaria and the Federal Republic of Germany seeking the painting's return. "Two Riders apparently hung on [Gurlitt's] apart- THE YORCK PROJECT/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PHOTO

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