Furor over Two Long-Lost D

The American who bought them is out $450--or is it $10 million ?

The young ex-serviceman at the door of Edward Elic,ofon's Brooklyn home had a knapsack full of paintings for sale. They had been bought at a flea market in Germany, the young man said. Elic,ofon, a lawyer and passionate collector, was intrigued. He did not know, on that afternoon in 1946, that what the man offered was a collector's dream--and ultimately, a $10 million disappointment.

Elic,ofon paid the ex-serviceman--whose name he says he has long since forgotten--$450 for two 11 -in. by 9 1/2-in oil-on-wood portraits, one of a man, the other of a woman. He had no idea who painted them but thought "they were very beautiful." For 20 years they nestled in his jumbled collection of pictures, books, antiques and objets d'art. Then in 1966 an art historian friend recognized the paintings in a book on artwork that had been lost or destroyed in Germany during World War II. Soon the finding was authenticated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the paintings were 1499 portraits of a Nuremberg couple, Hans and Felicitas Tucher, by the German master Albrecht Duerer. They had disappeared in 1945 from safe-keeping at Schwarzburg Castle near Weimar during the American occupation. By 1969 Elic,ofon was embroiled in a fierce custody battle for the Duerers that was to involve several claimants and stretch over a dozen years.

Federal District Judge Jacob Mishler of Brooklyn ruled this month that Elic,ofon, now 77, must return the paintings whose value is now estimated at up to $5 million apiece, to the Art Collection of Weimar, a museum in East Germany. In his 87-page decision, Mishler wrote that the museum "has demonstrated that the Duerers were stolen and that it is entitled as owner to possession." Of the 7,900 paintings listed as "destroyed and vanished" between 1939 and 1945 in East and West Germany, the Duerers are the only notable works that have been found.

Elic,ofon calls the verdict "wrong and unfair." Instead of granting a motion for summary judgment, he argues, Judge Mishler should have submitted the case to a jury to decide whether the Weimar museum had really proved its contention that the Duerers were stolen. He also maintains that he bought the paintings in good faith and that no one could prove that the seller had not somehow acquired valid title to them in Germany. Therefore, he contends, the German law of "good faith acquisition" should protect his ownership. Says he: "We'll go all the way to the Supreme Court for vindication."

For a while, the Duerers will remain in a Manhattan bank vault, where they have been locked away from the skirmishes of the past 15 years. If Elic,ofon, a Latvian-born Jew who grew up in a New York tenement, wins his appeal, he plans to sell the Duerers and donate some of the proceeds to Jewish charities. Says he: "It would be a minute reparation for the wrongs done to the Jews by the Germans. "

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