Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

After Snub, Jews Get Vote on Reclaimed Nazi Art

In a reversal,  Germany’s culture minister said she favors including a Jewish community representative on the country’s controversial committee for restitution of Nazi-looted art.

Minister Monika Grütters said she supported adding a Jewish delegate during a meeting Tuesday with Yehuda Teichtal, a rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin. Teichtal’s office announced her decision on Thursday following his meeting with the minister.

The decision concerns the so-called Limbach Commission, which is an advisory commission on the return of cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution, and especially Jewish property.

Earlier this year, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder criticized the Limbach Commission as having “no teeth” as a mediator in controversial art restitution cases. He has lobbied for the inclusion of a representative of the Jewish community on the body.

But Grütters resisted these calls, the New York Times in March: “We did not do this, and for good reason,” because a Jewish member “would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”

Named after its chairman, Jutta Limbach, the former head of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the committee has come under fire along with other restitution bodies following the 2012 discovery of 1,400 precious artworks in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose late father collected looted art on behalf of Nazi officials.

German authorities hid the discovery for approximately one year before a magazine broke the story.

Earlier this year, Lauder said the interim results of the investigation into the stash were “meager and not satisfactory.” Headed by a taskforce independent to the Limbach Commission, the probe flagged approximately 500 works in the Gurlitt trove that are under suspicion of being looted art and whose provenance the task force has been checking since 2013. Only a handful had been identified as stolen or returned.

During her meeting with Rabbi Teichtal, Grütters stated that she intends to “positively consider adding a member of the Jewish community to the committee board” in her forthcoming talks with the German states and municipalities, “in order to boost the confidence in the committee’s work and its transparency,” Teichtal’s office said in a statement.

“Minister Grütters is a true friend of the Jewish people and that if there are any arguments regarding certain issues, it is important to make sure that they are handled in the way arguments should be handled between friends,” Teichtal said.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.