US to return paintings looted at end of war
The United States is returning to Germany three paintings that were stolen at the end of the Second World War after they turned up in an auction last year, the US Embassy said today.
US Ambassador William Timken will hand over the 19th-Century works by Heinrich Buerkel to the mayor of the south-western city of Pirmasens on February 10, the embassy said.
The three paintings, now valued at £70,000, disappeared from an air-raid shelter at a school where they had been stored to protect them from Allied bombing.
The Pirmasens Museums reported at the time that they were “lost during the arrival of the American troops” in March 1945, the embassy said.
German officials alerted the FBI after museum officials spotted the paintings offered for sale by an auction house in Concordeville, Pennsylvania last October.
“The consignor of the paintings agreed to voluntarily have them returned to Germany,” the embassy said.
Who brought the works to the United States is unclear, it said.
The paintings are being returned to the museums’ Buerkel Gallery.
