German Culture Minister Claudia Roth announced the adoption of a new reform which should facilitate the restitution of works stolen by the Nazis by introducing “greater legal certainty and a more restrictive system”. This reform, the result of numerous negotiations between the German federal government, the 16 Länder, the Central Council of Jews and the Jewish Property Commission, aims to replace the current advisory commission whose decisions are not binding with an arbitration tribunal for the restitution requests.
Created in 2003, the current advisory commission can be contacted on the condition that the applicant and, above all, the holder of stolen works consent to this arbitration. The commission had to find a “just and equitable solution”in accordance with the principles of the 1998 Washington Agreement. In particular, it could issue non-legally binding recommendations to resolve disputes, such as “recommend the restitution of the cultural property or its restitution in exchange for compensation”. The current commission consists of ten people with legal, ethical, cultural and historical expertise, and who do not hold a leading political position.
With the new reform, the advisory commission is replaced by an arbitration tribunal. Owners of works that they believe were stolen by the Nazis will be able to request seizure from the court without the agreement of the owner of the supposedly stolen work.
However, this decision was not unanimous. In an open letter, historians and heirs of Jewish collectors said the reform was “clearly a change for the worse”. They stressed that the operating conditions and prerogatives of the legal arbitration tribunal had never been discussed publicly, and insisted on the fact that more than 10,000 municipalities with cultural institutions had not given their agreement.
Conversely, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Jewish Claims Conference, which seeks damages for Holocaust survivors, both considered that this arbitration represented a “first step”.