From June 1921, Chaim Salomon Meisels and his brother Mendel Meisels were proprietors of Spirituosenhandlung OHG Fa. Rosa Marmoreks Nachfolger – Brüder Meisels at Fugbachgasse 17 in Vienna's 2nd district. As they were considered to be Jews, they were exposed increasingly to harassment after the annexation of Austria to the German Reich. The entire company was Aryanized in 1938 by Johann Goldeband and Alois Altmann, securities and jewellery were stolen from the apartment, and bank deposits expropriated. The properties at Fugbachgasse 17 and Schüttelstraße 71 in the 2nd district and partly owned properties at Taborstraße 2 in the 2nd district and Nussdorferstraße 60 in the 9th district, which belonged to the brothers, were forfeited to the German Reich. In summer 1938, Salomon Meisels is thought to have fled from Vienna to Abbazia/Opatija. In an export application in July 1938 he listed several oil or embroidery pictures and sixteen carpets. The Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Central Monument Protection Authority) authorized their export but withheld permission for a painting by Christoph entitled View into the Distance and the description "young woman, sitting alone on a mountain, her chin propped up in her left hand, looking contemplatively at the distant mountain landscape". It has not been possible to date to reconstruct its subsequent fate. Meisels lived from 1940 to 1945 in the Netherlands.

He settled in Zurich in November 1946, where he attempted with the assistance of the lawyer Josef Schnabel to recover his property. The real estate was restituted with additional compensation for the expropriated Steyr 20 motor vehicle. No claim for restitution of the painting by Christoph Christian Ruben has been identified to date. The work probably remained in Austria and found its way onto the art market, although its precise whereabouts between 1938 and 1953 cannot be reconstructed. It was not until 1953, when it was acquired by the Österreichische Galerie via the Dorotheum that the painting was localized again. Meisels remained in Zurich until 1969 and is thought to have died there. His brother Mendel Meisels managed to escape with his family to Britain in 1939, from where he joined his brother in claiming restitution and compensation. In 2002, a Swiss court determined the amount of compensation due to the heirs of Chaim Salomon Meisels for the accounts confiscated during the Nazi era. In 2008, the Austrian Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of the painting by Christoph Christian Ruben View into the Distance, considering it proven that Salomon Meisels owned an oil on canvas painting dated 1842 that had been banned from export.