A State Supreme Court judge today ordered that Sotheby’s auction house withhold the transfer of all funds and properties it has in its possession from the auction last June of a rare collection of Judaica books and manuscripts whose ownership has been the source of a running dispute for two months. The auction house said it would comply with the court’s decision.
The order was issued by Judge David White and it seeks to retain as the status quo the dispute over the Judaica items which were sold for some $1.45 million, according to the office of the Attorney General which brought the suit against Sotheby’s, charging it with”persistent fraud and illegality”in the sale.
Furthermore, it was revealed that the purported owners of the books and manuscripts, which were initially believed to have been destroyed by the Nazis during World War II, are Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Guttmann, who claimed in an affidavit filed earlier to have been given the materials to take out of a Berlin Seminary.
At the heart of the dispute is whether the alleged owners are in fact legal owners of the 59 rare books and manuscripts that went on sale June 26 in New York City. They included items dating from the 13th to 19th centuries.
Sotheby’s has maintained that the Guttmanns are in fact the legal owners of the materials and thus are able to legally transfer title of the items. Jewish groups in New York and the State Attorney General Robert Abrams have challenged this contention.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s office today said Judge White indicated that he thought the possibility that Guttmann had received the books and owned them outright was ” implausible.” Guttmann said the books were given to him while others, including a source in the affidavit provided by the Attorney General, said the books were only given to Guttmann for safekeeping.
In an affidavit submitted today, Herbert Strauss, who was a student at the Seminary, the College for the Scientific Study of Jewish Culture, said that after the infamous Crystal Night pillage in 1938, a meeting was held to discuss ways of smuggling seminary books out of Germany.
While some books, according to Strauss, had been given for safekeeping to Ismar Elbogen, a professor, plans were made to give some other books for safekeeping to Professor Guttmann. Strauss claimed that the books were merely for safekeeping and not for ownership.
Guttmann has been a professor of rabbinics and talmudics at the Hebrew University in Cincinnati since 1940. Sotheby’s has indicated in the past that the owners had brought the items to the U.S.”at great personal risk.”
Another court date has not been scheduled but it is expected to take place in two weeks. The Attorney General seeks to have the sale nullified, the buyers reimbursed and that the books be returned to an institution where they would be available to the public.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
