New film looks at plundered Holocaust era art

By Regan Lipes

(AJNews) – On Sunday, April 27, Edmonton’s Metro Cinema hosted a captivating investigative documentary, The Spoils, directed by career film-maker Jaimie Kastner. Premiering in 2024, and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Miami Jewish Film Festival, Kastner’s work chronicles the repatriation of the art collection once held by Dusseldorf gallery owner Max Stern prior to the Holocaust.

In an April 2025 interview with Chris Knight of The National Post, Kastner commented: “The working title of the film for a while was drawn from a headline of an op ed in a major German newspaper within the last decade by a Berlin auctioneer, and it was ‘They say Holocaust and mean money.’” Indeed, Stern, prior to freeing Nazi persecution and emigrating to Montreal, was forcibly compelled to sell off his holdings for pennies on the dollar. As Helen Mirren’s 2015 performance alongside Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds in Woman in Gold illustrates, Nazi stolen art is a very current and controversial reality that many would prefer to ignore.

Kastner was first inspired to look into Max Stern and his stolen art collection in 2019 after a conversation with journalist Sara Angel. As he explained in a virtual question and answer session with audience members at the Metro Cinema, there had been plans to curate an exhibition dedicated to the life and legacy of Max Stern in his native city of Dusseldorf. Efforts were spearheaded by academics from the Max Stern Art Restoration Project housed in Montreal as a collaboration between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, McGill University, and Concordia University.

As Kastner’s documentary soon revealed, these efforts for transparency and truth were quickly blocked with dubious explanation by then Mayor of Dusseldorf, Thomas Geisel. During a disjointed and defensive interview with Kastner, Geisel presented as evasive and secretive, not able to provide definitive explanation for why he blocked the Canadian-German curated exhibition from premiering mere months before it was scheduled to open. The former mayor, who buffoonishly seemed more interested in glorifying his command of English, served in office from 2014 to 2020, clumsily fumbled trying to justify his interference when questioned about why a politician would have such a vested interest in an art exhibit. The only logical conclusion viewers could draw from the presentation, was that acknowledging that German galleries and private collectors still possess art stolen from Jewish ownership is a troublesome reality that Geisel, and others, would prefer not to admit.

This is supported by The National Post’s article when Knight states: “Ludwig Von Pufendorf, the lawyer who argues most vociferously against restitution, comes across as an almost stock villain, with his black turtleneck, caramel-coloured jacket and hands-clenched laughter.”  In the same article, Knight quotes Kastner who stated in his interview that at a Berlin screening of The Spoils, Von Pufendorf “got up and proclaimed the film ‘ein machwerk,’ which I gather is an arcane term meaning a shoddy piece of work, and perhaps not as politely as that. I’m tempted to put it on the poster, of course.”

Yet another troubling and hauntingly memorable interview was with Henrik Hanstein the current owner of Kunsthaust Lempertz, the opportunistic auction house once run by Hanstein’s grandfather, who acquired Stern’s collection for a mere pittance. Hanstein protested indignantly that Max Stern did not make any reference to reparations in his last will and testament, and therefore no wrongdoing could be claimed. They attempted to depict Stern’s relationship with his grandfather as amicable and professional citing that Stern visited in the 1950s.

The Stern exhibition finally opened in 2021 without the support of the local Jewish community, and with no consultation with National Gallery of Canada archivist and Stern expert Philip Dombowsky.  As Knight reports, Kastner commented that: “He’s not someone who actively seeks the limelight. Philip took some convincing to participate in this film altogether. But of course, his story was so important, having really been right in the middle of it at a few chapters, both the cancelation of the old exhibition, but then a witness to, but not part of, the preparations for the second exhibition.”

Kastner’s question and answer session with a mixed audience of Jewish community members, local independent cinema buffs, and academics was an interesting peek into the creator’s mind. Despite technical difficulties, the director was able to speak candidly about the hostile reception some German broadcasters have had to acknowledging this enduring injustice, even producing their own media representations glorifying the second highly censored and selective exhibition. Kastner considers the countless remaining stolen arti pieces, not just those once held by Max Stern, to be the final prisoners of the Holocaust, yet to be liberated.

Regan Lipes is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.