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Welfenschatz: U.S. District Court dismisses lawsuit
Press release from 08/30/2022
Court finds: Action for surrender of Guelph treasure inadmissible - case does not belong before US courts
Last week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., ruled in favour of the SPK's motion to dismiss the claim for the return of the Guelph Treasure. The lawsuit was filed there in February 2015 (Philipp and Stiebel vs. Federal Republic of Germany and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz). The court has now ruled that American courts do not have jurisdiction over such an action. This ends the proceedings in the USA, unless the plaintiffs appeal.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, comments: "We are pleased with the decision of the U.S. District Court, which confirms the SPK's long-standing view that this claim for restitution of the Guelph Treasure does not belong before an American court.
The SPK is also of the opinion that the sale of the Guelph Treasure in 1935 was not a forced sale due to Nazi persecution and that the claim for restitution is therefore also unfounded on the merits. We arrived at this view, which was also confirmed by the Advisory Commission in 2014, after years of intensive research.
The SPK has been conducting professional provenance research on its collections for years. We have already restituted several hundred works of art and over 2,000 books and will continue to endeavour to find just and fair solutions in accordance with the Washington Principles in all future Nazi restitution cases."
The court granted the SPK's motion to dismiss the claim for two reasons. Firstly, the plaintiffs had in the meantime chosen a completely new argument to justify the jurisdiction of American courts. However, this was inadmissible. Secondly, even if the submission of a new argument had been admissible, the plaintiffs had not sufficiently demonstrated that the members of the dealer consortium were not German nationals. Therefore, under the principle of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that US courts may not adjudicate claims against states and their entities, the action should be dismissed.
The US District Court's decision follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in February 2021, which overturned the original decision to deny SPK's motion to dismiss. The U.S. Supreme Court instructed the District Court to consider the arguments raised by the plaintiffs for the first time in the proceedings before the Supreme Court.
SPK is represented in the U.S. action by the law firm of Wiggin and Dana.
