Germany – Mid-January Battle Upcoming Over Nazi-Owned Guelph Treasure

Germany – An upcoming hearing in mid-January will attempt to—once-and-for-all—determine ownership the Guelph Treasure, a collection of Christian gold artifacts with an estimated value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and which was once given as a gift to Nazi Fuhrer Adolph Hitler.

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL (http://bit.ly/1bVhO1J) reports that the trail of ownership is a long and complicated one, with ownership dating back to John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg.

Frederick’s heir Ernest Augustus sold the collection to a group of German Jewish art dealers in 1929 who, after the economy bottomed out, sold it to the Prussian Government.

Nazi Party leader Hermann Göring then bought it as a gift for Hitler.

With the collection now housed in a Berlin museum operated by the SPK (the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) the Limbach Commission—another name for the “Advisory Commission in connection with the return of Nazi-confiscated art, especially Jewish property”—is set to hear arguments from lawyers for both the SPK and the heirs of the Jewish consortium of art dealers who originally purchased the collection in 1929.