By Jonathan Stempel 
 
 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Heirs to the German Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim on Monday sued the German state of Bavaria, seeking the return of eight paintings by Max Beckmann, Juan Gris and Paul Klee that they said were looted by the Nazis. 
 
 According to the complaint by Michael Hulton and his stepmother Penny, the widow of Flechtheim's nephew and heir Henry Hulton, Flechtheim was forced to leave the paintings behind when he fled Berlin for Paris in May 1933 to escape Nazi persecution, four months after Adolf Hitler seized power. 
 
 The Hultons said Bavaria and the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen (Bavarian State Paintings Collections) have refused their demands for the paintings, including several displayed at Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne museum, despite its public commitment to "fair and just" treatment for Nazi-looted art. 
 
 They said some of the paintings may have passed through the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, one of four dealers the Nazis let sell "degenerate" art they disliked, and who had amassed a cache of roughly 1,400 works discovered in his reclusive son Cornelius's Munich apartment in 2012. 
 
 Michael Hulton, a San Francisco doctor, and Penny Helton, of Hertfordshire, England, believe the defendants cannot claim ownership "rooted in the seizure of Flechtheim's property in violation of international law," their complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan said. 
 
 "The paintings would have remained accessible to Flechtheim but for the climate at the time," the Hultons' lawyer, Nicholas O'Donnell, said in an interview. "The state-level program of Aryanizing Jewish businesses made the confiscation possible." 
 
 Andreas Frischknecht, a New York-based lawyer representing the defendants, declined to comment. The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment after German business hours. 
 
 According to the complaint, the eight paintings include Beckmann's "Duchess of Malvedi" (1926), "Still Life with Cigar Box" (1926), "Quappi in Blue" (1926), "Dream—Chinese Fireworks" (1927), "Champagne Still Life" (1929) and "Still Life with Studio Window" (1931); Gris' "Cruche et Verre Sur un Table" (1916) and Klee's "Grenzen des Verstandes" (1927). 
 
 Monday's lawsuit joins others seeking to reclaim art taken, sold or left behind after the Nazis took power in Germany. Many such lawsuits are filed in Manhattan, and say the defendants consented to that jurisdiction because they sell catalogs there. 
 
 Flechtheim died impoverished in London at age 58 in 1937, while his widow Betti, sometimes rendered as "Betty," committed suicide in 1941 rather than report for deportation, the complaint said. 
 
 Cornelius Gurlitt died in May 2014. 
 
 The case is Hulton et al v, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-09360. 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Alan Crosby and Jonathan Oatis) ||||| The heirs to Alfred Flechtheim, a famous German Jewish art collector, are seeking the return of eight paintings by Max Beckmann, Juan Gris and Paul Klee, which they say were looted by Nazis. 
 
 Flechtheim's grand-nephew Michael Hulton and his stepmother Penny Hulton have filed a complaint against the German state of Bavaria on Monday. 
 
 The dispute between the heirs and the state of Bavaria has been ongoing for years. Their lawsuit is one of many seeking to reclaim artworks seized or stolen by the Nazis. 
 
 According to the heirs' complaint, Flechtheim was forced to leave the paintings behind when he fled Berlin for Paris in May 1933 to escape Nazi persecution, four months after Adolf Hitler seized power. 
 
 They claim some of the paintings have been through the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazi art dealer who was allowed to sell works deemed as "degenerate." His name became well-known when some 1,400 paintings were discovered in his reclusive son's apartment in Munich in 2012. 
 
 The eight paintings include Beckmann's "Duchess of Malvedi" (1926), "Still Life with Cigar Box" (1926), "Quappi in Blue" (1926), "Dream-Chinese Fireworks" (1927), "Champagne Still Life" (1929) and "Still Life with Studio Window" (1931); Gris' "Cruche et Verre Sur un Table" (1916) and Klee's "Grenzen des Verstandes" (1927). 
 
 Some of these works are on display at Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne museum, despite its public commitment to "fair and just" treatment for Nazi-looted art. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) was one of the most important German art collectors at the beginning of the 20th century. He died impoverished in London in 1937, and his widow Betti committed suicide as she faced deportation, the complaint adds. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Common passion When Alfred Flechtheim, the son of a German industrialist, discovered art as his passion, there were no limits. He invested his money and his wife Betti's dowry in paintings. He encouraged young wild painters from the Parisian scene - and annoyed many from the German art scene. Nevertheless, he was responsible for the breakthrough of modern art in Germany. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Stolen Art With the Nazis, Flechtheim’s successful work came to an abrupt end. As a Jew, he was vilified and forced to flee to London in 1933, where he died penniless four years later. His galleries had been closed by the Nazis - the paintings were seized, sold and hidden. However, the painting "Houses on the Mountain" (1926) by Paul Klee, from Flechtheim’s collection, is now displayed in Stuttgart. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Years of arguing The Flechtheim heirs have been arguing with museums, collectors and galleries about many of the paintings. Many prestigious museums are displaying paintings from the Flechtheim collection, by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Degas and Munch. Also, this picture by Paul Signac - "Venice" (1908) - is on view in Hamburg. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Dispute over Kokoschka After Flechtheim’s escape, a close associate appropriated his estate and made money from his belongings. He sold the "Portrait of Tilla Durieux" by Oskar Kokoschka to the art collector Josef Haubrich from Cologne. He, in turn, donated his collection to the city of Cologne in 1946. The Flechtheim heirs sued the city, and it finally had to return the painting worth three million euros in June 2013. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Quick agreement While Cologne struggled with the return, other museums were more cooperative. The Art Museum of Bonn returned the painting "Lighthouse with rotating rays" (1913) by local expressionist Paul Adolf Seehaus. The heirs were paid and the painting could remain in the museum. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Clear provenance The provenance, the origin of the image, is not easy to determine - especially when it comes to Nazi-looted art. With this "Runner" by Willi Baumeister (1927) it is, however, clear that the artist gave it to Flechtheim, but later got it back and sold it to the collector Hugo Borst. His heir handed it to the State Gallery of Stuttgart where it remains on display. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde Museums work together To mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first Flechtheim Gallery on October 9, 1913 in Düsseldorf, 15 museums are displaying art from his collection. At the same time, a website called AlfredFlechtheim.com has bveen launched, which shows the journey the art took in the past decades. Even this "Still Life with Flowers" (1918) by Expressionist Max Pechstein is part of it. 
 
 Alfred Flechtheim: Fighter for the avant-garde A popular subject for "his" artists Whether it was Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klee, Munch, Cézanne or Pechstein - Flechtheim had pretty much every painter of the early 20th Century under his wing. Many became close friends of his. Not surprisingly, he was often painted by them; here, by Hanns Bolz (1910). Other portraits of Flechtheim are by Ernst Linne Kamp, Karl Hofer and Otto Dix. Author: Silke Wünsch/ rb 
 
 
 
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 MANHATTAN (CN) — Nazis called art collector Alfred Flechtheim the “art Jew” in the “Jewish world conspiracy” that was defiling the “German people’s soul,” but that didn’t stop them from looting his paintings when he fled for his life, his heirs claim in a lawsuit against Bavaria. 
 
 Flechtheim’s heirs, Dr. Michael Hulton and Penny Hulton, sued The Bavarian State Paintings Collections and the State of Bavaria on Monday, demanding the return of eight paintings: six by Max Beckmann, a Juan Gris and a Paul Klee. 
 
 The Beckmanns are “Duchess of Malvedi” (1926), “Still Life with Cigar Box” (1926), “Still Life with Studio Window” (1931), “Dream — Chinese Fireworks” (1927), “Champagne Still Life” (1929), and “Quappi in Blue” (1926). 
 
 The Hultons also demand the return of “Cruche et verre sur un table” (1916) by Juan Gris and “Grenzen des Verstandes” (1927), by Klee. 
 
 Flechtheim was one of the most important and influential patrons of avant garde art in the interwar-era in Germany. “Flechtheim fled Nazi Germany in 1933 in mortal fear and to save his life,” the Hultons say in the complaint. “These paintings were part of his privately owned large art collection and were lost to Flechtheim due to the policy of racial persecution and genocide.” 
 
 Michael Hulton is the grand-nephew of Flechtheim. His father, Flechtheim’s nephew Heinz Alfred Hulisch, was Flechtheim’s sole heir. Penny Hulton is the widow of Hulisch, who changed his name to Henry Alfred Hulton. 
 
 The Hultons accuse the State of Bavaria of giving greater priority to the privacy of a family that hoarded looted art for decades than it extends to the victims of the looting, by refusing to make public the purchasing records of Nazi art buyer Cornelius Gurlitt. 
 
 They claim the Bavarian State Paintings Collections title claims to the paintings are “defective because it was rooted in the seizure of Flechtheim’s property in violation of international law.” 
 
 The Bavarian defendants claim that Flechtheim sold his paintings to Gunther Franke in 1932. But the Hultons say “there is no proof” of this. “On the contrary, Flechtheim was still the owner of the paintings when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party seized power on January 30, 1933 and it was only the Nazi-induced destruction of his livelihood and subsequent escape from Germany that allowed Franke to possess these paintings much later before conveying them to the defendants.” 
 
 The Hultons say the Nazi looters were “opportunists who preyed on Flechtheim’s vulnerable position, as a result of Germany’s and Bavaria’s genocidal intent, [and] did so knowingly, and furthered the genocidal scheme of Germany and Bavaria.” 
 
 A single paragraph in the Hultons’ 51-page lawsuit sums up the Nazis’ systematic looting of art, and what happened to it when the war was over. 
 
 “Among the evidence that proves this theft is the recent scandal in which Bavaria is directly implicated, namely, the seizure of 1,280 works of art from the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt in 2012 that were amassed by Gurlitt’s father, the Nazi art dealer and Adolf Hitler’s art agent Dr. Hildebrand Gurlitt, during the Nazi era,” the complaint states. “As that story revealed, Hildebrand Gurlitt was appointed as a dealer for the Führermuseum in Linz and he traded in modern art, under orders from the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels. He was one of the four dealers appointed by the Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art (together with Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller and Bernhard Böhmer) to market confiscated works of art abroad. Some 16,000 so-called ‘degenerate’ artworks had been removed from museums and confiscated all over Germany. Many such works that were deemed unlikely to yield foreign currency were simply destroyed. Some of these works were exhibited in the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937, where Flechtheim was defamed with racist caricatures as a stereotypical Jew in the arts.” (Parentheses in original.) 
 
 An attorney for Bavaria said that the “Free State of Bavaria has not yet been served with the complaint, and it would not be appropriate to comment at this juncture except to say that we believe plaintiffs’ claims lack merit, and that no jurisdictional basis exists for this case to proceed.” 
 
 Flechtheim founded Der Querschnitt (The Cross Section) in 1921, which his heirs call “the leading European cultural magazine at the time.” It was well known by U.S. expatriates after World War I, such as Ernest Hemingway, who mentions it in his 1935 book, “Green Hills of Africa.” 
 
 Flechtheim died in London on March 9, 1937 at 59. 
 
 Representatives of The Bavarian State Paintings Collections did not immediately respond to request for comment. 
 
 The Hultons are represented by Nicholas O’Donnell with Sullivan & Worcester in Boston.
– Renowned German art dealer Alfred Flechtheim had been named part of the "Jewish world conspiracy" in the Nazi press even before 1933, so when Adolf Hitler came to power, he chose to flee, and died 4 years later in London, reports Courthouse News. His art collection remained in Berlin and at least eight paintings are now part of the Bavarian State Paintings Collection, reports the Art Newspaper. They should instead be with Flechtheim's heirs in the US and England, per a lawsuit filed against the state of Bavaria in US District Court in Manhattan on Monday. The widow of Flechtheim's sole heir (his nephew) and the nephew's son cite "a presumption of international law" that sales of Jewish property after Jan. 30, 1933, aren't legitimate because they were made under duress. And so in the case of the six paintings by Max Beckmann and two others by Juan Gris and Paul Klee, timing is the issue. The Bavarian State Paintings Collection argues the paintings, worth up to $20 million, were sold by Flechtheim in 1932. Penny Hulton of England and stepson Michael Hulton of San Francisco—who've been locked in a years-long battle with Bavaria over what Deutsche Welle calls "one of the world's most disputed estates"—say the paintings were sold after he left the country in May 1933. They "would have remained accessible to Flechtheim but for the climate at the time," their lawyer tells Reuters. "The state-level program of Aryanizing Jewish businesses made the confiscation possible." (These Jewish heirs want back their gold and jewels.)