Works Returned to France by Germany in 1994

About the Exhibition
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Works of Art Seized by
Nazi Organizations
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The ERR’s Exchange
Operations
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Post-War Restitutions
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Works Purchased on the
Paris Art Market
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Works of Unknown Origin
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Works Returned to
France by Germany in 1994
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In 1972, Monsignor Heinrich Solbach of the archdiocese of Magdeburg deposited a group of twenty-eight nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings and drawings (including works by Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Seurat) at the Berlin State Museum. These works had been given to a soldier in the Wehrmacht towards the end of the war by a German officer stationed in Paris. The soldier was asked to take them to Germany, where the officer intended to retrieve them after the war. The officer never came, and the former soldier eventually decided to hand them over, in the secrecy of the confessional, to the prelate, who, in turn, sought to return them to their rightful owners.

The return of these artworks to France took place in the context of developments brought about by the unification of Germany after 1989. New investigations conducted within the former German Democratic Republic led to a reopening of the issue of the looting of artworks carried out by Germany during the war. A Franco-German working group on cultural assets was established and held its first meeting in March 1992. In a symbolic gesture on the occasion of the sixty-third Franco-German summit at Mulhouse on May 30–31, 1994, Germany’s federal Chancellor bestowed on the French president a painting from this group of artworks, Monet’s Snow at Sunset (on view here).

All of the twenty-eight works were exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris between October 17 and December 18, 1994. Investigations led to the restitution to two families of seven drawings and paintings (two works by Corot, two by Harpignies, two by Cross, and one by Gauguin). The remaining twenty-one works were registered in the MNR inventories.