Germany moves to ease return of art looted by Nazis

BERLIN

May 1945: American servicemen view art treasures on show at a former Luftwaffe barracks near Konigsee. Priceless paintings looted from all parts of Europe under orders from Hermann Goering.

The German government said on July 24 that it would make it easier for the victims of Nazi persecution to enforce claims for the restitution of artworks taken by the regime.

"Hundreds of thousands of cultural artefacts were illegally confiscated from their owners" by the Nazis, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in a statement.

The theft was part of the Nazis's "extermination policy" targeted "in particular" at Jews, who were deprived of their rights, Buschmann said.

Despite previous moves to encourage the restitution of cultural artefacts seized by the Nazis, many were "still not in the possession of their owners," the minister said.

While in many cases the whereabouts of stolen artworks were unknown, there were others where "the law makes it too difficult to enforce existing claims for return," he said.

The draft legislation would create a new "right to information" for people from whom the works were taken between 1933 and 1945, or their legal successors.

Anyone bringing the artworks to market would have to provide the names and addresses of previous sellers, purchasers and clients, as well as available information on the provenance of the item.

The information would clarify whether claimants were "still entitled to the property," the ministry said.

Under the government's proposal, restitution cases would be directed to regional courts, while a "special court" would be set up in Frankfurt to facilitate claims from abroad.

The new legislation would also suspend the statute of limitations — currently at 30 years in most cases — for the return of artworks, unless the defendant had acquired the object unaware of its origin and "in good faith," the ministry said.

The legal change would not however create fundamentally new "claims for restitution," the ministry said.

Germany in 1998 signed the Washington Declaration which commits its 44 signatory nations to track down and return art stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owners.

But almost 80 years after the end of Hitler's regime, the process of returning works to their rightful owners is still struggling to make progress.

The chair of an advisory commission set up by Germany in 2003 to arbitrate restitution cases called on the government last year to strengthen legal provisions "urgently" for the return of Nazi-confiscated property.