# Guelph Cross > Unknown goldsmith, Lower Italian or Sicilian workshop - First half of the 12th century (c. 1100-1150); the engolpion above the relic chamber is earlier, 11th century > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/lower-italian-sicilian-goldsmiths-workshop-12th-century/welfenkreuz-guelph-treasure-bode-berlin/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown goldsmith, Lower Italian or Sicilian workshop - **Date:** First half of the 12th century (c. 1100-1150); the engolpion above the relic chamber is earlier, 11th century - **Medium:** Cloisonne (cell-sunk, Senkschmelz) enamel on gold; gold sheet and gold filigree; niello; gemstones and pearls; wood core; foot of cast silver, parcel-gilt - **Dimensions:** 33.1 x 12.5 cm overall, with its silver foot; 15.4 cm without the foot - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Romanesque, South Italian or Sicilian (Norman Kingdom of Sicily), 12th century - **Current location:** Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Museum of Decorative Arts, Berlin State Museums); historically shown at the Kulturforum, Berlin - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A portable reliquary cross made in a Lower Italian or Sicilian workshop in the first half of the twelfth century, holding a particle of the True Cross under rock crystal and, by its own nielloed inscription, relics of Peter, Mark, John the Baptist and Sebastian besides. It came into the treasury of Brunswick Cathedral at an undocumented date, at least a century after that treasury's own eleventh-century founding gift, and stayed there until the House of Guelph sold the entire 82-piece treasure to a consortium of four Frankfurt dealers in 1929.This cross was one of 42 pieces the consortium had not managed to sell by 1933. In 1935, amid the Nazi state's escalating economic campaign against Jewish-owned businesses, the consortium sold those 42 pieces to the Prussian state for 4.25 million Reichsmarks. Germany's Advisory Commission on Nazi-looted cultural property (the Limbach Commission) ruled in 2014 that this was not a forced sale; the dealers' heirs, who argue that it was, took the dispute to the United States Supreme Court, which in 2021 decided only a jurisdictional question about the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and never ruled on whether the sale itself was coerced. The case was dismissed on remand in 2022 and 2023 without reaching that question.The cross itself has not been to auction and carries no market price of its own; it has been German state property since 1935 and, since 2015, protected by name as nationally valuable cultural property. It is not currently on public display, having been withdrawn for a future permanent presentation of the Guelph Treasure whose date has not been set. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **undated** Unidentified patron or church, Lower Italy or Sicily `[documented]` (manufacture) Made in a Lower Italian or Sicilian workshop in the first half of the twelfth century, incorporating an older, eleventh-century Byzantine-style engolpion. The dating and regional attribution are the holding institution's own stylistic and technical judgement; no maker or original patron is named in any source consulted. - **-1929** House of Guelph, treasury of Brunswick Cathedral (St. Blasius), Braunschweig `[unknown]` (gap, then documented custody) No source consulted records when or how this cross joined the Brunswick treasury, whose own founding gift (a different portable altar and two different crosses, all eleventh-century Lower Saxon work now in Cleveland) predates it by roughly a century. By the 1920s the whole treasury, including this cross, was physically held at Gmunden, Austria, following the House of Guelph's loss of the Brunswick throne in 1918. - **1929-10-05-1935-06-14** Consortium of Frankfurt dealers: J. & S. Goldschmidt (Julius Goldschmidt), Z.M. Hackenbroch (Zacharias M. Hackenbroch), and I. Rosenbaum OHG (Isaak Rosenbaum and Saemy Rosenberg), joined over time by further stakeholders including Hermann Netter, Alfons Heilbronner, and interests connected to Mendelssohn & Co. of Amsterdam `[documented]` (purchase of the whole 82-piece treasure) Bought the entire Guelph Treasure from the House of Guelph on 5 October 1929 for RM 7.5 million, paid over four instalments across twelve months, three weeks before the Wall Street Crash. The House of Guelph had spent most of the 1920s trying and failing to sell the treasure to Duveen Brothers, the Metropolitan Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Austria, the German Reich, and the city and province of Hannover, all on grounds of price; this establishes the 1929 sale as an ordinary market transaction driven by the sellers' own financial pressure, unconnected to the buyers' religion. The consortium's internal composition and stakes shifted repeatedly and are only partly documented. - **1929-1933** Same consortium; this cross remained unsold `[documented]` (offered for sale, declined) The consortium sold roughly half the treasure by 1931 through exhibitions in Frankfurt, Berlin, and six American cities. This cross was specifically offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 1930 for USD 280,000; the Museum's own applied-arts curator considered it one of the most important pieces still available, but no purchase was made. It remained with the consortium as one of the 42 pieces still unsold when Germany's political situation changed in 1933. - **1935-06-14-1935-07-19** Prussian State, acting through Dresdner Bank and the Berlin state museums `[documented]` (purchase of the 42 remaining pieces) Sold under a contract dated 14 June 1935 for RM 4.25 million, agreed after Dresdner Bank's opening bid of RM 3.7 million (10 April 1935) and the consortium's counter of RM 4.35 million (26 April 1935). Payment was split between a broker's commission, a direct payment to the Hackenbroch firm, and a currency-controlled blocked Reichsmark account in Saemy Rosenberg's name, spendable only on further artworks for export; the Prussian state museums gave up several of their own paintings and sculptures to fund this part of the price, over internal objection from at least two department heads. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation's own archival account states it found no evidence that Hermann Goering was personally involved in these negotiations, though a 1934 memorandum drafted after consulting him had proposed, and then abandoned, a straw-man bidding tactic in his name. The pieces were handed over in Amsterdam on 17-19 July 1935 and shipped to Germany. - **1935-2008** Prussian State, later the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK), Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin `[documented]` (custody, undisputed) Held without any restitution claim being raised for over seventy years. - **2008-2014-03-20** Same; claim pending `[documented]` (restitution claim and Advisory Commission review) Heirs of the four consortium principals filed a restitution claim with the SPK in 2008, arguing the 1935 sale was in substance forced by Nazi antisemitic economic persecution and the resulting collapse of the market for art in Jewish hands. Germany's Advisory Commission on the return of cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution (the Limbach Commission) reviewed the claim on the basis of the SPK's own detailed historical account and, on 20 March 2014, recommended against restitution, finding the price adequate for the depressed market of the time and no evidence the dealers were pressured in the negotiations themselves. - **2014-04-04-2015-02-10** Same `[documented]` (formal legal protection) Registered by the Federal Republic of Germany as nationally valuable cultural property; registration opened two weeks after the Commission's recommendation and was finalised on 10 February 2015. - **2015-02-24-2023-07-17** Same; litigated in United States federal courts `[documented]` (US litigation, dismissed on jurisdictional grounds) Heirs sued Germany and the SPK in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in February 2015 under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The district court and DC Circuit denied Germany's motion to dismiss; the Supreme Court, in Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp (3 February 2021), held unanimously that the FSIA's expropriation exception incorporates a domestic takings rule under which a state's taking of its own nationals' property is not a taking in violation of international law for FSIA purposes, and remanded for the lower courts to consider whether the dealers should nonetheless not be treated as German nationals in 1935 given their persecution as Jews. On remand, the district court dismissed the case on 25 August 2022 for failure to plead adequate facts on that nationality question; the DC Circuit affirmed on 17 July 2023. No US court at any stage ruled on whether the underlying 1935 sale was in fact coerced. - **2026-present** Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin `[documented]` (current status: off view) The Kunstgewerbemuseum's own published information states the Guelph Treasure, including this cross, is not currently on display, having been withdrawn in preparation for a new permanent presentation whose opening date has not been announced. ## Open questions - When and by what route did this specific twelfth-century South Italian or Sicilian cross enter the Brunswick Cathedral treasury? It postdates the treasury's eleventh-century founding gift by roughly a century, and no source consulted records its acquisition. - Who commissioned the cross in Southern Italy or Sicily, and for what church or patron, before it reached Brunswick? - What happened to this object physically during the Second World War - was it evacuated from Berlin, and if so when and to where? No source consulted addresses this directly for this specific piece. - Beyond the abandoned 1934 straw-man proposal made in his name, was Hermann Goering personally involved at any point in the actual 1935 negotiations? The SPK's own archival account states it found no evidence that he was, which sits uneasily against the standard shorthand, repeated even in the heirs' own US court filings, that the treasure was sold 'to agents of Hermann Goering.' - Given that part of the 1935 price was paid not in cash but into a currency-controlled blocked account redeemable only for further artworks, what was the real, spendable value the consortium's foreign members actually received, as against the nominal RM 4.25 million headline figure? This bears directly on whether 'an adequate price' is the right test to apply. - What became of the Jason Vase, Small Quartz Jug, Porcelain Vase and Tapestry - Berlin museum pieces given up in lieu of cash in the 1935 deal, whose trail the SPK's own account states it lost because the corresponding museum records were destroyed during the war? - When will the Guelph Treasure's announced new permanent presentation open, and where within it will this cross be shown? No date had been set as of this record's research. ## Sources - [1] Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 'Restitution Request "Guelph Treasure" (Welfenschatz): Account of the established historical facts on the basis of the provenance research carried out by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation,' as of 30 November 2010 - the SPK's own detailed, archive-referenced factual submission to the Advisory (Limbach) Commission, signed by SPK president Hermann Parzinger. This is the institution's own account, prepared for and adopted in substance by the Commission's 2014 recommendation; flagged as an interested party's submission rather than an independent history. - [2] Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, press release, 'SPK welcomes recommendation of the Advisory Commission on the Welfenschatz restitution request,' 20 March 2014. - [3] SPK-Magazin, 'Why was the Sale of the Guelph Treasure not a Forced Sale?' - [4] SPK-Magazin, 'What is the Guelph Treasure?' - includes current display status and object description. - [5] Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, press release, 'U.S. Courts Lack Jurisdiction for Guelph Treasure Lawsuit, Appeals Court Confirms,' 17 July 2023. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Guelph Treasure' - consolidating press coverage of the 1929 sale, the 1930-31 American dispersal, and the 2014 Commission recommendation. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Commission's own published recommendation text where available. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp' - summary of the Supreme Court proceeding. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Court's own opinion. - [8] Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, 592 U.S. ___ (2021), opinion of the Court, via Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. - [9] The Art Newspaper, 'US district court dismisses Guelph Treasure Nazi restitution case,' 2 September 2022. - [10] The Art Newspaper, 'Once again, a US court dismisses Guelph Treasure art lawsuit,' 18 July 2023. - [11] Institute of Art and Law, 'Dismissal of Heirs' Claims for Guelph Treasure.' - [12] Sullivan & Worcester Art Law Report (via JDSupra mirror, original blog.sullivanlaw.com URL now 404), 'U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Germany's Appeal to Keep the Guelph Treasure, Taken by Nazi Agents in 1935' - source for the heirs' own characterisation of their claim in US court filings. - [13] museum-digital: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, object record for 'Welfenkreuz aus dem Welfenschatz,' Kunstgewerbemuseum inventory W 1. - [14] Kulturgutschutz Deutschland (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), national register of protected cultural property, entry for the Welfenkreuz, Berlin. - [15] Google Arts & Culture, in partnership with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 'Guelph Cross from the Guelph Treasure' - catalogue description including the museum's own 'reliquary grave' iconographic reading of the foot. Museum-catalogue source; flagged for replacement with the underlying scholarly catalogue (Falke/Schmidt/Swarzenski 1930, or Kotzsche's later Kunstgewerbemuseum catalogue) where accessible. - [16] Cleveland Museum of Art, object page for the Portable Altar of Countess Gertrude, accession 1931.462.a. - [17] Art Institute of Chicago, object page for the Reliquary Cross with the Arms of the Veltheim Family. - [18] Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, object page for the Monstrance (Reliquary with a relic of Saint John the Baptist). - [19] Deutsche Bundesbank, 'Purchasing power comparisons of historical amounts of money' - cited for the Bundesbank's own caution that consumer-price-index purchasing-power comparisons are of particularly limited informative value for amounts spanning the Depression-era Reichsmark, which is why this record does not attempt a modern equivalent for the 1929 or 1935 prices. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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