JAMIE KASTNER'S GRIPPING NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM, "THE SPOILS"
by Emeritus Professor of History Frank Chalk, Concordia University
Award winning Toronto film director Jamie Kastner previewed his latest brilliant documentary in Montreal on October 16, 2024. "THE SPOILS" is the gripping story of how Duesseldorf's mayor and several members of his city council shocked the Holocaust art restitution community, the museum world, and international art dealers' networks by forcing the City Museum of Duesseldorf to cancel its major Max Stern exhibition only four weeks before its scheduled opening.
Stolen art detectives Willi Korte and Marc Masurovsky, art historian and Max Stern Foundation director Clarence Epstein, Max Stern specialist Catherine MacKenzie (the author of Auktion 392: Reclaiming the Galerie Stern), and Philip Dombowsky, expert archivist of the Max Stern papers at the National Gallery of Canada, expose in fascinating and blood chilling interviews the Nazi looting in 1937 of Max Stern's art collection and financial assets facilitated by the Gestapo and Cologne's leading "Jew art" auction house.
At the heart of the film are Kastner's patient, but relentless interviews with the mayor, his powerful anti-restitution lawyer, Duesseldorf's flustered cultural minister, and the current director of the auction house who fall all over themselves trying to justify the cancellation of the Stern exhibition with half-baked and inconsistent excuses that keep changing. Condemned by Ronald Lauder, investigative journalists of major newspapers and art world publications, criticized by important politicians of the Federal Government of Germany, Kastner documents the mayor at first double-downing on his refusal to permit the restitution of "The Artists Children (1830)," a major painting by Wilhelm von Schadow which was credited to Max Stern's collection before Nazi persecution forced him into exile.
"THE SPOILS" ends with a bang, but I will not spoil it for all of you who can see it in cities across Canada throughout the fall and on Canadian documentary television shows this winter. Don't miss it and urge your local museums, libraries, memorial centers, universities, and religious institutions to sponsor showings.
Hats off to Jamie Kastner and his crew for proving once again the power of documentary film story telling and thanks, too, Jamie, for giving me a few minutes in your film to remind viewers that, contrary to the anti-restitution lobby, massive Nazi pressure forced Max Stern to auction off his art collection at rock bottom prices and that he was never a willing participant in his own impoverishment.
