The painting that missed Sofie Heilbronner’s crossing

In 1938 Sofie Heilbronner fled Nazi persecution for the United States. Before leaving Germany she had packed household property, including artworks, for shipment to New York. German authorities seized her belongings and took the proceeds when the goods were auctioned. Among the paintings she had owned in Munich was Albert Lang’s Music, a scene of figures making and listening to music in a wooded landscape.

The Bavarian State Painting Collections published the painting in the Lost Art database in 2015 as a possible persecution-related loss. Further research in 2020 found evidence of its route from a Munich depot into a Bavarian state office. The family had approached New York’s Holocaust Claims Processing Office in 2018. Working on the heirs’ behalf, the office contacted the Bavarian collections in 2021. Records from the Heinemann and Hugo Helbing galleries supported the identification of Heilbronner as the former owner.

On 22 September 2026, descendants attended the painting’s return at the German Embassy in Washington. The path to that ceremony linked family information to the Bavarian inventory and dealer archives. It also depended on the museum making its incomplete provenance public years before the picture’s ownership could be established.