User:Eli185/Carel van Lier

Charles (Carel) van Lier (The Hague, September 5, 1897 - Hannover-Mühlenberg, March 15, 1945) was a Dutch art dealer deported in World War II and died in 1945 in a concentration camp

Biography
Carel van Lier was the son of Samuel van Lier and Franciska Adelaar. He married twice and lived in Blaricum after his second marriage.

In 1927 Van Lier opened the Kunstzaal Van Lier at the Rokin 126 in Amsterdam. He exhibited works by contemporary artists from the movements of realism, magical realism, expressionism, as well as ethnography.

Artists who exhibited with him before the Second World War included Henk Chabot, Edgar Fernhout and Rachel Fernhout-Pellekaan, Jan van Herwijnen, Raoul Hynckes, Dick Ket, Wim Schumacher, Jan Sluijters, Charley Toorop, Henri van de Velde and Carel Willink.

Arrest
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Because Van Lier was of Jewish descent, his art gallery was put under management in 1942, but his marriage to a non-Jewish woman did not pose any immediate danger. However, on April 6 or 7, 1943, he was arrested by the Germans in Blaricum for his involvement in the resistance. Together with Willem Arondeus, he helped artists in hiding by arranging false identity cards for them.

He first ended up in the prison on the Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam and was ended up in Westerbork via camp Amersfoort. On 23 March 1944 he was "deported" to Auschwitz, where he had to work in the Laurahütte. Via Mauthausen and Neuengamme, he ended up in the Hannover-Mühlenberg satellite camp, where prisoners may have had to work for Hanomag. He died there in 1945.

After the war, the art hall was continued by his widow until 1949 and then by others until 1956.

In 2003 TOTH published a description of his life and his art gallery by the hand of his grandson under the title Carel van Lier - Art dealer, trailblazer, 1897 - 1945.

Restitution Claims
Van Lier died in Mühlenberg concentration camp in Germany between 1 and 15 March 1945. On 30 March 2007 the grandson of the Amsterdam-based art dealer ‘Carel van Lier’ submitted a restitution claim to the Dutch Restitution Committee for artworks sold to the' Museum für Völkerkunde in Frankfurt am Main 'in Germany on 11 April 1941. However the Dutch committee rejected the claim stating "were sold by Van Lier himself and that there is no evidence that this sale was the result of any direct threat or coercion on the part of the Nazi authorities"

Lawsuits Nazi-looted art
Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art, 772 F. Supp. 2d 473 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)