Swiss commission opens claims process for looted cultural property

Switzerland is opening a new route for people seeking the return of cultural property held in its museums. The Commission for Historically Problematic Cultural Heritage announced in September that it was ready to accept requests from victims of spoliation and their heirs. Its remit covers Nazi-looted art and objects removed from former colonies. The commission will review disputed cases and issue recommendations to help resolve restitution claims.

Former Swiss president Simonetta Sommaruga leads the body. At a press conference in Bern on September 30, she presented a commission created to assess claims that have long been handled through individual institutions and disputes. The launch gives claimants a national forum for contested cases, while placing Switzerland’s role in the art market at the centre of the discussion. Switzerland endorsed international principles on Nazi-looted art in 1998, but only now joins a group of European countries with commissions to assess such claims.

The commission arrives almost three decades after Switzerland endorsed the Washington Principles. In 1998, Switzerland joined 43 other countries and organisations in backing the non-binding agreement on Nazi-confiscated art. The principles call on governments to create national structures that can facilitate restitution from public collections.

Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom established commissions to evaluate claims more than two decades ago. Switzerland now joins that group. Sommaruga acknowledged the delay, saying, “In Switzerland, things sometimes take a little longer.” She added that Swiss museums had made progress over the years, with some taking what she called a progressive approach.

The new body’s recommendations are intended to help resolve disputed claims. Sommaruga said the state must take responsibility, pointing to Switzerland’s position as an important marketplace for art and cultural property both during the Second World War and today. The commission’s creation brings that responsibility into a national process for reviewing contested cases.

Swiss museum collections have already faced difficult provenance questions. The Bern Museum of Fine Arts inherited Cornelius Gurlitt’s collection in 2014. Gurlitt was the son of an art dealer who had bought art in occupied France for Adolf Hitler’s planned “Führermuseum”. The Bern museum researched the collection’s provenance and returned works that had been looted from Jews or sold under duress. Sommaruga said that work “set international standards”.

The Bührle Foundation collection has also drawn scrutiny. It went on display in a new extension at the Zurich Fine Arts Museum in 2021. Emil Bührle made his fortune selling anti-aircraft guns produced by his factories to Nazi Germany and was known to have bought paintings looted from Jewish owners.

In Bern, research into a separate donation led to questions about Swiss-Brazilian collector Georges F. Keller. He gave the museum 116 works between the 1950s and his death in 1981. An archival document linked him to Etienne Bignou, a dealer who traded art with Germans in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Switzerland’s commission will consider claims tied to both Nazi-era theft and colonial-era removals. That combination distinguishes it from the national commissions described elsewhere in Europe. Other countries have established separate bodies to address colonial-era acquisitions; Switzerland’s new commission brings both types of dispute under one mandate.

Sommaruga noted that Switzerland never had colonies of its own. The commission’s remit nevertheless covers cultural property removed from former colonies and held in Swiss museums. The approach recognises that claims about an object’s history can reach beyond the borders of the country where it is now kept.

For claimants, the body offers a place to present disputed cases and seek recommendations aimed at resolving them. For Swiss museums, the process adds a national forum to the provenance work already undertaken by some institutions. Sommaruga framed the broader issue as state responsibility, citing Switzerland’s role as a marketplace for cultural property. The commission’s assessments will now bring that history into formal consideration alongside individual claims.