(Q108438558)
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The Search for Works of Art and Other Cultural Assets: A Business or Moral Obligation? (English)
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Goustave Courbet’s painting Landscape Around Ornans was mistakenly restituted to Poland by the Americans in 1946, from Fishhorn in Austria, as part of a group of paintings that had been looted by Germans from the Warsaw’s National Museum. The Courbet had been part of the Budapest collection of Baron Herzog, which was confiscated by the Nazis in 1944. In 2001, the Warsaw Museum received a claim to return this painting to Herzog’s heir, an American citizen. The Museum director finally decided to return the painting. But the Ministry of Culture refused to grant an export license. It refused the heir’s entitlement to the painting and voided the return. The Courbet remains in Warsaw’s National Museum as its legal prop- erty to this day. (English)