Documented cases of Nazi-era dispossession, legal battles and the different paths to restitution.
Restitution can involve a physical return, a transfer of ownership or a financial settlement. Each case states its specific documented outcome.
A panel taken from a Belgian resistance fighter’s home turned up in southern France. His family’s postwar theft report helped bring it back.
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Drawings once kept in Fritz Grünbaum’s Vienna apartment reached five American holdings. In 2023 they were brought together for a handover in Manhattan.
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A German Jewish couple reached Britain in 1939. A canvas they left behind in Belgium spent 71 years in a museum before returning to their descendants.
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A sculpture standing in the Alte Nationalgalerie since 2001 was identified as property taken from the Mosse family.
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A tip from the art trade put an 1841 Dutch seascape back in the hands of the foundation created by Max and Iris Stern.
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A living-room photograph in Mar del Plata exposed the whereabouts of a painting taken from Jacques Goudstikker’s collection during the Nazi occupation.
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A small seascape sold in Gestapo-directed auctions took three generations to recover. Two illustrated catalogues helped establish its identity.
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An occupation-era entry pointed researchers to the wrong name and street. Reading it against a Paris address helped return two panels to the Javal heirs.
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A 1966 postcard, wartime connections and an unreliable museum inventory entry helped reverse an earlier refusal to return a 1910 painting.
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A Dutch landscape from a Budapest bank vault was on view in Boston. The war-loss catalogue had pictured a different painting.
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Renoir and Sisley entered the market as Grégoire Schusterman fled persecution. France later examined why the dealer had to sell them.
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Drawings left Germany safely. Their sale in Switzerland was needed to support a family that persecution had driven from Berlin.
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A German soldier sent the Florentine still life home during the retreat. Decades later, an image marked ‘stolen’ occupied its place in the Pitti Palace.
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French museums bought twelve works at the 1942 sale of Armand Dorville’s collection. A law passed in 2022 made their return possible.
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Her possessions were packed for New York in 1938. Documents in two galleries’ archives later helped return Albert Lang’s painting to her family.
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An auction listing led investigators back to a picture numbered 145 in an inventory compiled by the German occupation authorities.
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Two Jewish dealers fled Germany and France. Their heirs later agreed to let an Old Master remain on view in Boston.
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A 1946 permit reopened a British restitution inquiry into a seascape taken from the Hungarian collector Ferenc Hatvany.
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A military museum paid 100 Reichsmarks for Eduard Epstein’s watercolor in 1940. Its inventory helped identify the portrait and the man who lost it.
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A museum loan and a Nazi inventory number helped trace a wooded landscape to the collection of Dutch Jewish artist Joseph Henri Gosschalk.
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Maria Altmann challenged Austria for five paintings taken from her family.
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A Schiele portrait travelled to New York. The unresolved claim travelled with it.
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A picture stolen from a musician eventually returned through the artist’s own estate.
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A denied claim, a court challenge, and a later agreement changed the outcome.
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The decisive question was not simply where the painting had been sold.
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A celebrated Expressionist painting carried the unresolved history of the Hess collection.
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A Pissarro loan in Paris gave Simon Bauer’s heirs an opportunity to act.
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The dispute concerned a dealer’s dispersed stock and decades of unfinished postwar redress.
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A painting looted from Paul Rosenberg re-emerged in a collection hidden from public view.
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Identifying Nora Stiasny’s Klimt required correcting an earlier restitution mistake.
Read the case ↗Germany returned a group of works to France in 1994, including a Pissarro pastel from the Georges Couturat collection and a landscape now attributed to an anonymous artist in Courbet’s circle. The museum records document repatriation to France.
Confiscated from the Herzog family’s bank deposit in 1944, Courbet’s landscape entered the National Museum in Warsaw and was returned to the family’s heirs in 2011.
Christie’s identifies the painting as lot 98 in the 1913 Nemes sale and documents its return to the Hatvany heirs in 2005.
A 1945 investigation lists the Pissarro among works exchanged with Gustav Rochlitz in Paris. Its original collection and present location remain unverified.
The wartime investigation records Cows in a Stream and Farmers on a Country Road in ERR exchange 14 with Gustav Rochlitz. The present locations of both paintings remain unverified.
ERR exchange 16 with Alexander von Frey lists this signed oil measuring 41 × 54 cm and dated 1872. Its present location remains unverified.
A Pissarro oil measuring 47 × 38 cm appears in ERR exchange 23 with Gustav Rochlitz. The link to the Hamburger collection is tentative and its present location is unverified.
The UK panel recommended returning the Courbet seized from Robert Bing’s Paris apartment in 1941. The heirs’ representative records the completed return. The painting likely corresponds to LootedArt’s Forest Scene, whose reported exchange is uncertain.
The committee recommended returning two glazed porcelain figures, NK 933 A–B, to the heirs of Aron Salomon Hiegentlich. The occupying authorities liquidated his antiques business.
The Dutch committee recommended returning twelve works to the heirs of Mozes Mogrobi and Zilia Mogrobi-Jacobi. Researchers traced wartime sales to museums in Frankfurt and Lübeck.
Amsterdam agreed to return Matisse’s Odalisque, A795, to the Stern heirs after a binding opinion found that the 1941 sale to the Stedelijk took place under persecution.
The committee linked the October 1941 sale of the anonymous painting NK 3533 to persecution and recommended restitution to the Van Praag heirs.
Two Bavarian institutions returned a portrait by Hans Wertinger and two wooden figures of Adam and Eve to the heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt.
The committee found no evidence that the winter landscape by Klombeck and Verboeckhoven belonged to Marcel Wolf. It recommended rejecting the claim.
The committee backed return of a banquet scene by Hals and Van Delen and a still life by De Heem. The heirs’ representative documents that both paintings were returned.
The committee found it plausible that this pastel, RP-T-1944-247, was surrendered to Liro under occupation regulations in 1943. It recommended returning the drawing to the heirs of its joint owners.
The committee recommended returning two late fifteenth-century Florentine portraits, NK 2894 and NK 2895, to the heirs of Leo Nardus.
The committee found that the museum tapestry’s dimensions did not match the measurements of the objects reported missing after the war. It recommended rejecting the claim.
The committee recommended returning two works, NK 1978 and NK 2729, to the Levie heirs. The heirs’ representative documents their return and identifies Amsterdam Town Hall as a copy after Gerrit Berckheyde.
A binding opinion backed the return of The Landing Stage by Maerten Fransz. van der Hulst from the Groninger Museum. The painting was previously attributed to Jan van Goyen.
The committee linked the sixteenth-century tapestry BK-1955-98 to the Margraf Group and a forced sale. It recommended restitution to the Oppenheimer heirs.
The committee recommended returning three glazed ceramic dishes, NK 223, NK 444 and NK 575, after provenance researchers alerted a member of the Hamburger family.
The committee advised returning Jan Steen’s River Landscape with Figures and a Wagon by a Tower, NK 2655, to Wilhelm Mautner’s heirs.
The committee advised rejecting a claim by the Goldschmidt-Rothschild heirs for two alabaster sculptures attributed to Tilman Riemenschneider, NK 124 and NK 125.
A beech chest, NK 3201, was traced to the stock of Salomon van Leeuwen’s antiques business. The committee found the loss involuntary and recommended returning it to the business’s successor.
The committee found that Saint Christopher, NK 2556, had belonged to Otto Mayer and was confiscated in 1933. It recommended returning the painting to his estate’s beneficiaries.
A competing claim linked Hubert Robert’s landscape, NK 1432, to the Rosenbaum dealership. The committee found that the postwar identification was likely mistaken and recommended return to the Mathiason heir.
The committee traced Jan van de Velde II’s Winter Landscape to the 1933 sale of Curt Glaser’s collection in Berlin and recommended restitution to his heirs.
The committee recommended returning Adrianus Eversen’s View in a Dutch Town, NK 1762, to Joseph Stodel’s heirs.
The committee recommended returning Horses by a Stable, a watercolour by Wouter Verschuur II, NK 2569, to the heirs of Eduard Hollander.
The committee recommended returning Anna Rosina von Lisiewska’s Woman Playing a Lute, NK 1931, to the heirs of Sigmund Wassermann.
The committee examined the loss of Corot’s painting after the persecution and detention of George Eduard Behrens. It recommended restitution to his heirs.
The Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History returned four Torah binders to the Jewish community museum in Würzburg. They were linked to synagogues in Würzburg and Kitzingen.
The Silberberg trust and Bührle Foundation reached a settlement over the 1937 sale of Manet’s La Sultane. The painting remains in the collection and the terms are confidential.
The UK panel recommended returning the painting by Henry Gibbs to Samuel Hartveld’s heirs. It found that the work was looted after Hartveld fled Antwerp.
A nitrate copy of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson’s avant-garde film was identified in Germany’s federal archive. The BFI records its return to the UK in July 2021 and subsequent restoration in Warsaw.
The German advisory commission declined to recommend returning Lovis Corinth’s portrait. It found the evidence insufficient to establish persecution-related loss of this particular painting from Robert Graetz’s collection.
Germany’s federal art administration returned Rudolf von Alt’s Naples to Malvine Stern’s heirs in May 2021. An earlier request to export the work from Austria had been denied after the Anschluss.
The Bavarian State Painting Collections record the formal restitution of Joseph Wopfner’s painting to Alfred Isay’s heirs in December 2019. A planned handover ceremony was later cancelled.
A collector’s stamp linked Egon Schiele’s watercolour to Heinrich Rieger. Cologne records restitution to his heirs by a council decision of 23 March 2021.
The German advisory commission recommended restitution of Erich Heckel’s painting in December 2020. Baden-Württemberg’s culture ministry confirms that it was returned to Max Fischer’s heirs.
The German advisory commission recommended returning Jacob Ochtervelt’s painting to Carl Hagen’s heirs with a provision to share future sale proceeds with Bavaria.
A forest landscape formerly attributed to Simon de Vlieger was seized from a loan in Leiden and purchased at auction in 1943. The Bomann Museum returned it to the Jaffé heirs in 2018.
Taken from a bank vault in Arnhem in 1945, Jacob Ochtervelt’s painting was returned by the City of London to Smidt van Gelder’s daughter in November 2017.
Sprengel Museum records linked Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s watercolour to Max Rüdenberg. The German commission concluded that it had been sold under duress in 1939 and recommended its return.
Provenance research identified an Isaak Major drawing from the Arthur Feldmann collection. The Kunsthalle Bremen returned and repurchased the work in 2016.
The Bavarian State Painting Collections returned Flowers in a Stoneware Vase, from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder, to the heirs of Julius Kien.
The Wiesbaden Museum returned two architectural paintings by Gennaro Greco to Martin Tietz’s heirs. The heirs subsequently sold the paintings back to the museum.
