I meant to say 1928. The lawyers staked out a timeframe from 1928 to 1939.
The preeminent artworld authority on van Gogh, Dr. J. Baart de la Faille, confirmed in his catalogues raisonnes of both 1928 and 1939 Margarete Mauthner was the owner of the van Gogh painting during the 1930s...
Think about it. This passage was just written by the Mauthner lawyers. There is a logical error in it. Can you spot it? How could de la Faille "confirm" in 1928 that Mauther owned the painting "during the 30s?"
When lawyers make an error like that it is usually to establish something, and my hunch is they want to establish by virtue of this silly catalog (rather than get authoritative documentation from Margarete Mauthner's own records) that the Mauthners owned the painting in the late 1920s. It's deceptive and so leads me to think they actually already know she sold the painting in the late '20s.
It’ll be interesting when (if) more facts come out, but I presume they intend it to confirm she owned it continuously from 1928 to 1939, or at least till 1935 (?-might be off a year) when the Decadant Art Act was passed. The piece, if known publicly, then would likely have been confiscated and sold regardless of who owned. I’d guess the piece as well as it’s ownership went underground by the mid thirties, emerging in the 60’s, a time when wartime gaps in ownership weren’t looked at very critically.