Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media restitutes Nazi-looted art—Grütters: “It is exemplary that private individuals are taking historical responsibility”

Monika Grütters, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, today returned four drawings to the heirs of their former owners. They had been identified as Nazi-confiscated property and were most recently held in a private collection. The works are by the artists Charles Dominique Joseph Eisen, Augustin de Saint-Aubin and Anne Vallayer-Coster. The drawings were previously owned by the French industrialist family Deutsch de la Meurthe, who were persecuted by the Nazis and had their property expropriated. Representing the descendants of the family was Diego Gradis, the grandson of Georgette Deutsch de la Meurthe, who accepted the artworks today at the Federal Chancellery in Berlin.

In a statement, Monika Grütters said: “Once again, private individuals have decided to pursue a fair and just solution in line with the Washington Principles and return artworks from their own collection. That is exemplary. The return of the four artworks today cannot undo the injustice suffered by the Deutsch de la Meurthe family, but hopefully it serves as an example to show that private individuals are committed to the Washington Principles and are prepared to return Nazi-looted property to its rightful heirs. The German government has done its utmost to support this restitution because this is an important step towards meeting our shared historical responsibility. The German government still firmly believes that every restitution and every fair and just solution in accordance with the Washington Principles counts. That is precisely why we shall keep pushing ahead with investigating Nazi art theft in the future.”

The drawings once hung in Georgette Deutsch de la Meurthe’s Paris home, which was ransacked by the National Socialists during the Occupation and then inhabited by a German officer.

The four drawings were most recently held in a private collection. The owner of the works, who would like to remain anonymous, made them available for provenance research at the time the Gurlitt art trove was discovered in 2013, and promised to deal with them in line with the Washington Principles of 1998.
Because the works had once belonged to Hildebrand Gurlitt’s art collection, they were included in the German Lost Art Foundation’s Gurlitt Provenance Research project funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media. Experts definitively identified the drawings as Nazi-looted art in September 2018.