In Osteuropa 1-2/2006

Pillaged and Looted Art
The German Coordinating Office for the Documentation of Lost Cultural Property

Michael Franz, Uwe Hartmann

Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

The Coordinating Office for the Documentation of Lost Cultural Property documents national and international reports on the search and discovery of pillaged and looted art from the Nazi-era. Its goal is to create transparency, bring together those who are seeking and those who have found lost cultural property, and to make restitution possible. The coordinating office is an ex-pression of the German federal government’s and the individual German state governments’ will to resolve the issue of looted art. In the German-Russian dispute over looted art, there has hardly been any progress on the political level since 1998. The unchanged Russian position has affected the practical work of the coordinating office. Through its data bank, , the coordination office simultaneously offers the possibility of returning a painting to Russia and contributes to preventing commercial transactions in looted art.

(Osteuropa 1-2/2006, pp. 401–414)