Vienna returns Nazi loot

The City of Vienna has returned 5,880 works of art that were stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners or their heirs, according to Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, city councillor of cultural affairs.

Since 1999 the origins of a total of 70,000 pieces in the city’s collections – stolen between 1938 and 1945 – have been researched. This resulted in the restitution of 3,025 objects from the Wien Museum and 2,855 books from the Vienna City Library at the Rathaus. In 2011, the City changed the time spectrum for works of art eligible for restitution, meaning that those purchased from Germany by the Wien Museum between 1933 and 1938 will be investigated in the next step of the process.