After his father’s death, Antony Easton discovered a suitcase that unveiled his family’s hidden past as wealthy German Jews whose fortune was seized by the Nazis, leading to a decade-long quest for restitution and the recovery of stolen assets. This revelation has sparked ongoing efforts to reclaim artworks and properties lost during the Holocaust, highlighting the enduring impact of historical injustice.
In 2009, Antony Easton found a small brown leather suitcase in his late father’s flat in Lymington, England, following Peter Easton’s death. Inside were immaculate German bank notes, photo albums, and documents that uncovered his father’s true identity as Peter Hans Rudolf Eisner, born into one of Berlin’s wealthiest Jewish families before World War II. The contents shattered Antony’s perception of his father as a thoroughly English man and revealed a past shrouded in secrecy and trauma. This discovery set him on a path to understand his family’s origins and the immense wealth they once held.
The suitcase’s records led Antony to learn about his great-grandfather Heinrich Eisner, who built the Hahn’sche Werke steel business into a massive industrial empire spanning Germany, Poland, and Russia. At the turn of the 20th century, Heinrich was equivalent to a modern multi-billionaire, with luxurious properties in Berlin and a collection of valuable artworks, including a painting by Hans Baluschek called Eisenwalzwerk. The family lived in opulence, with chauffeur-driven cars and staffed mansions, but their prosperity would soon be dismantled by the rise of Nazism.
As the Nazis gained power, the Eisner family faced escalating persecution, with Jews blamed for Germany’s economic struggles. In 1938, under intense pressure, they were forced to sell their business at a fire-sale price to Mannesmann, a conglomerate with Nazi ties. Later that year, they signed over personal assets, including properties, to Martin Hartig, a non-Jewish acquaintance, in what experts later deemed a forced sale to avoid state confiscation. However, Hartig permanently retained the assets, effectively stealing the family’s fortune worth billions in today’s terms.
Antony’s grandparents, Rudolf and Hildegarde, and his father Peter managed to escape Germany in 1938, traveling through Czechoslovakia and Poland before catching one of the last ships to England in 1939. They lost nearly everything, and most of their relatives were rounded up and killed in concentration camps. Rudolf died in 1945 while interned by the British on the Isle of Man, leaving behind a legacy of loss and displacement that Antony would only fully grasp decades later.
Antony hired an investigator, Yana Slavova, to trace the stolen assets, uncovering that Hartig had lived in one of the Eisner properties until his death in 1965. The painting Eisenwalzwerk was found in the Brohan Museum in Berlin, and after evidence of the forced sale was presented, the museum agreed to return it to Heinrich Eisner’s descendants. Another artwork has been repatriated from the Israel Museum, and additional claims are pending in Austria, offering a measure of justice for the family’s losses.
Meeting Hartig’s descendants revealed conflicting accounts; his daughter claimed he opposed the Nazis and helped the Eisners escape, while others acknowledged the possibility of exploitation. Antony has no legal recourse for property restitution due to expired statutes of limitations in former West Germany, but the return of artworks continues. For him, this journey is about reclaiming family history and identity, not just material wealth, as it has transformed abstract relatives into real people with profound stories.
The Eisner name, which disappeared when Peter came to England, now lives on through Antony’s great-nephew’s middle name, ensuring the family’s legacy endures. This process underscores that restitution is ultimately about honoring human lives disrupted by history, with implications for how societies address historical injustices today.