Return of property stolen by the Nazis: the 2023 framework law applied for the first time

France's 2023 framework law on the restitution of property looted by the Nazis was implemented for the first time with the return on Friday of a book looted from Paris in 1942 during the German occupation, the Ministry of Culture announced.

The framework law allows for exceptions to the principle of inalienability of public collections in order to remove an item from them without passing a specific law. In 2023, Parliament adopted such a mechanism to facilitate the restitution of property looted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

This text was first applied to a work devoted to the Italian painter Vittore Carpaccio, seized by the Nazis during the looting of the Parisian apartment of August Liebmann Mayer, a German and Jewish art historian who had fled Hitler's Germany in 1936.

Having taken refuge in France, he and his family suffered "anti-Semitic persecution" there, the ministry's press release stated. After being denounced, August Liebmann Mayer was arrested by the Gestapo in Nice in February 1944, before being deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on March 12, 1944.

The looted book was given to his daughter Angelika, who had been able to remain in Nice until the end of the war, the ministry said. This book, Vittore Carpaccio: the life and work of the painter , by Gustav Ludwig and Pompeo Molmenti, had entered the collections of the National Library of France after being found by French forces in May 1945 in Germany in the second home of Hermann Göring, a high-ranking official of the Third Reich.

"Returning looted property is essential to help repair past anti-Semitic atrocities," said Culture Minister Rachida Dati, quoted in a press release.

In 2023, Parliament also adopted a framework law to facilitate the restitution of human remains. Also promised by President Emmanuel Macron, the framework bill on the restitution of property looted during colonial rule , however, never came to fruition.