Nazi-loot returned
BERLIN — A Berlin museum Monday said it had formally restituted a 15th century religious wooden sculpture to the heirs of former owners, a Jewish couple who fled the Nazi regime. The heirs in turn agreed to sell back the medieval artifact, Three Angels with the Christ Child, at an undisclosed price to the Bode Museum, which will keep it in its collection. The agreement meant “righting an injustice,” said the head of Berlin’s public museums, Michael Eissenhauer, who thanked the heirs for the “grand gesture” that will keep the priceless piece on public display. The delicately carved 25 centimeter (10 inch) tall sculpture from around 1430 shows three floating angels in the clouds holding a cloth on which lies the sleeping infant Jesus. It once belonged to the private collection of Ernst Saulmann and his wife Agathe. The couple fled Nazi repression in late 1935, initially for Italy. The Nazis confiscated their wealth, including their land and business, and art collection. The more than 100 artworks were sold off at a Munich auction in 1936. The exiled Saulmanns in 1938 left fascist Italy for France, which the Nazis invaded two years later. The couple were interned in France in Camp Gurs. Ernst Saulmann died a year after the war ended, in 1946. Agathe committed suicide in 1951. In recent years, their descendants hired researchers who managed to locate 11 of the art objects, which had ended up in five German museums and three private collections abroad. “My family was able to reach different agreements with all these institutions and collectors,” said one of the heirs, Felix de Marez Oyens, at a press conference. “However, the Bode Museum is the only institution that conducted independent research and approached us with the results.” —