Nazi Stolen St John Sculpture Returned to Jewish Heirs by German Museum

BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK
By Catherine Hickley

A limewood sculpture of John the Baptist dating from 1510. 

GERMANY - A limewood sculpture of John the Baptist dating from 1510 will be returned to the U.S.-based heirs of a Jewish art-dealer couple persecuted by the Nazis, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said. The sculpture, housed in the Landesmuseum Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, was auctioned without the owners’ permission in 1937, said an e-mailed statement from Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Ministry for Science, Research and Art. The couple, Jacob and Rosa Oppenheimer, had fled Berlin in 1933. Their art was impounded in 1935, according to ministry spokesman Jochen Laun. “The state has a historical and moral responsibility to investigate and give back cultural goods seized from those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime,” Baden-Wuerttemberg Art Minister Theresia Bauer said in the statement. [link]