Restitution claims

Six-hundred rare books, manuscripts and prints which were lost or stolen from a German library during the Second World War have been returned after they were consigned to Sotheby’s.

A cathedral in Germany has returned a painting that was seized by the Nazis in 1941 to the heirs of its original Jewish owners. The work had entered the collection of Adolf Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and was found among the numerous works he kept in a castle in Bavaria at the end of the Second World War.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been returned to China.

A Persian limestone relief sculpture is to be returned to Iran, a New York court has ruled.

A Washington DC appeals court has upheld a decision to allow a ‘Nazi forced sale’ claim against a spectacular collection of medieval devotional art to go to trial in the US.

A Dutch Old Master painting looted by the Nazis after the Battle of Arnhem but now returned to its rightful owners after 73 years has sold at Sotheby’s for £1.6m.

A small bronze figure of a horse from ancient Greece is at the centre of a New York court case after Greece’s ministry of culture demanded its return and stopped its sale at auction.

A judge in a test case in international restitution law relating to Nazi-looted artworks has ruled in favour of a Holocaust victim's heirs rather than an art dealer who owned the pictures.

An Old Master portrait missing for nearly 80 years has been returned to the heirs of Dutch banker and art collector Fritz Gutmann. They now plan to auction the picture with an estimate of $1m-2m.

Camille Pissarro’s ‘Picking Peas’ is at the centre of a court battle in France between its current owner and descendants of the Jewish owner who was forced to part with it by the Nazis during the Second World War.

A 17th-century Dutch painting looted during the Second World War, which has been in the collection of the Lord Mayor of the City of London since the 1980s, is finally being returned to its rightful heir.

The UK government plans to renew the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 to extend beyond its 2019 end to ensure the law remains indefinitely.

A view of Venice by Michele Marieschi (1710-44) which was seized by the Nazis in 1940 will be offered at Sotheby’s this summer following an agreement over a longstanding restitution claim.