New resolution allows Holocaust survivors to more easily reclaim Nazi-looted art in Germany

Holocaust survivors and their descendants will be able to claim cultural property for the first time after the German Federal Ministry of Culture (BKM) and the Claims Conference announced a new resolution in the restitution process on Thursday.

The Claims Conference is a nonprofit organization that has been advocating to secure material compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world since 1951.

For the last almost 80 years, since the end of the Second World War, survivors of the Holocaust and their families have faced obstacles in the process of trying to reclaim stolen property, such as works of art, jewelry, or musical instruments.

The process of claiming is already laid out in the internationally recognized 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, however, the process can be more difficult in practice.

The announcement that the ministry is working towards a comprehensive looted art restitution law in Germany will, as it hopes, give victims the ability to deal with what has been kept from them all this time.

Previously, both parties had to agree to visit an advisory commission for looted art, but now state-owned museums will be made to participate in an arbitration process even when they and the victims have not made an agreement.

The victims’ families will also be freed from their position as petitioners by having unilateral recourse to the arbitration tribunal.

The arbitrary body’s decision will be binding.

Coming to terms with history

Claims Conference President Gideon Taylor commended the decision of federal, state, and local governments, saying that it would restructure the way they processed looted art restitution claims of survivors and their families.

Systematic theft of art, Taylor added, was a central part of the Holocaust.

“Nazis stripped Jews of their cultural assets. Today, Germany is signaling to the world that it wants to come to terms with this part of its history,” he said.

Taylor continued by saying that the restitution law would be an essential part of overcoming existing legal hurdles faced by claimants.

However, Rudiger Mahlo, the Claims Conference representative in Europe, said that some key aspects, such as the statute of limitation and the acquisitive prescription (the ability of an owner to obtain good title to looted art by merely having ownership for more than 10 years) continue to block the restitution process.

“For us, a restitution law remains the goal,” Mahlo said. “Only on the grounds of a federal law can comprehensive justice and legal certainty be achieved. And it is only on the grounds of a federal law that victims’ families will have the chance to assert their claim for the restitution of their cultural property held in private hands, for example by foundations, insurance companies or banks.”

One of the first restitution claims for Nazi-looted art in Germany was in 2017 by the heirs of Kurt Grawi, a Jewish man who had been persecuted by the Nazis. For years, his family fought to have a 1913 painting by Franz Marc returned to them, succeeding in 2021.

Since then, over 50 paintings have been successfully returned to Germany, including ones by famous painters such as Edvard Munch and Henri Matisse.

According to the Washington Principles, “Nazi-confiscated” and “Nazi-looted” refer to what was looted, confiscated, sequestered, and spoliated during the Holocaust era between 1933-45 by the Nazis, the Fascists, and their collaborators through various means, including but not limited to theft, coercion, and confiscation, and on grounds of relinquishment, as well as forced sales and sales under duress.