From June 1940, the Germans occupied Paris and the whole of France in 1942. They immediately looted cultural goods - works of art, books and archives - belonging to Jewish families, galleries, Freemason associations and French services, and sent them to Germany, the main depot being in Bavaria.
In May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. From this year onward, the entire restitution policy implemented by the Allied governments of the Western bloc has been based on the “London Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation or Control” of January 1943. In France, several services were shortly created to recover more than 100,000 looted works of art and more than 10 million books.
But in this terrible disorder, with the dispersion of hundreds of thousands of individuals, how was it possible to identify their owners? For art dealers, governments and museums, this question is still open. In an ever-changing international context, the cooperation between governments has helped the provenance research. I shall present from an official cultural perspective how this work can be done nowadays.
Read presenter's biographyImage caption: German soldiers of the Hermann Göring Division posing in front of Palazzo Venezia in Rome in 1944 with a picture taken from the Biblioteca del Museo Nazionale di Napoli before the Allied forces' arrival in the city.
