SPK appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Guelph Treasure restitution proceedings
Press release from 06/21/2019
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) will appeal to the United States Supreme Court to dismiss the action for the return of the Guelph Treasure on the grounds that the American courts lack jurisdiction.
- English version: please find PDF below German text -
The Guelph Treasure is a collection of medieval sacred artworks and is preserved in the Museum of Decorative Arts of the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage. Its restitution was first demanded in 2008. After several years of thorough research into the circumstances of the sale of the Guelph Treasure in 1935, the SPK was and is convinced that it was not a forced sale due to Nazi persecution. It therefore considers the claims to be unfounded. The question of whether the Guelph Treasure is Nazi-looted property has already been negotiated before the German "Advisory Commission" in accordance with the framework of the Washington Principles. This confirmed in 2014 that the sale of the Guelph Treasure in 1935 was not a forced sale due to Nazi persecution.
As a result, a lawsuit was filed in February 2015 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. for the return of the Guelph Treasure(Philipp and Stiebel vs. Federal Republic of Germany and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz). Irrespective of the fact that the SPK considers the lawsuit to be unfounded, it was and is of the opinion that this case - which concerns a historical transaction between Germans in Germany - does not belong before a U.S. court. It therefore requested that the action be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction ( motion to dismiss).
In these proceedings, the question of the jurisdiction of the US courts under US procedural law is initially examined in isolation. In this examination, the courts disregard whether the claim is well-founded and must assume that all allegations made by the plaintiff are true in order to assess the admissibility of the claim.
After the District Court, which was seized by the plaintiffs in the first instance, denied jurisdiction for the action against the Federal Republic of Germany, but only partially granted the SPK's motion and thus affirmed jurisdiction for an action against the SPK, the SPK turned to the Court of Appeals (U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit). A three-judge panel of the court rejected the appeal. SPK filed a motion to have the full court of appeals(en banc) decide the case. This request was rejected on 18 June 2019. However, one of the judges took up the arguments put forward by the SPK and wrote a dissenting opinion.
The SPK will now apply to the U.S. Supreme Court to revise the decision of the Court of Appeal and order that the action be dismissed as inadmissible. A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will also only relate to the question of whether an American court has jurisdiction over the case at all.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is strongly committed to fair and just solutions for the restitution of Nazi-looted property. Since 1999, the SPK has processed more than 50 restitution applications and returned more than 350 works of art and more than 2,000 books to their rightful owners. These included a drawing by Vincent van Gogh, works by Munch and "The Watzmann" by Caspar David Friedrich.
SPK is represented in the U.S. proceedings by the law firm Wiggin and Dana in New Haven.