Free Republic

The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the Nazi-bought Guelph Treasure will not return to its Jewish heirs. The decision is in line with the court’s traditional tendency to avoid a situation where foreign plaintiffs bring cases to US courts even if they have little connection to the US, according to a New York Law Journal report. The ruling was made despite the fact that the Jewish owners of the medieval collection, who bought it in 1929, sold it to Nazi agents of Hermann Göring in 1935 during a time when they were under a lot of pressure to...

The Guelph collection, a trove of medieval Christian art, was sold to Nazi-run Prussia in 1935. Was the sale fair, or did Goering make its Jewish owners an offer they couldn’t refuse?In October 1935, Prussian premier Hermann Goering proudly announced in a much circulated press release that he would soon present Adolf Hitler with a “surprise gift” — an extraordinary collection of medieval gold artifacts known as the Welfenschatz, or Guelph treasure. Forged of jewel-encrusted gold at the dawn of the second millennium CE, the dozens of Christian devotional masterpieces — ornate crucifixes, reliquaries of improbable detail, portable altars —...