# Restitution to Whom
> A restitution is itself an undocumented transfer. This archive holds an object delivered to a family that had never owned it, a return conditioned on a further donation, and a panel that said no.
> The Study - 2026-08-25
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/restitution-to-whom/
## Key points
- The United States military's post-war policy, as the Department of Justice described it in 2010, was to return property seized from Nazis to the governments of the countries of origin. The first restitution of a looted object was therefore usually to a state, which then decided which private claimant received it.
- In the case of Schiele's Portrait of Wally, the schedule attached to the December 1947 receipt naming what the United States forces handed to the Austrian monuments office lists three Schieles and does not list this one. The court's 2009 findings state that Wally was among the paintings delivered anyway.
- The error was noticed in writing in June 1948, when a United States officer wrote beside the entry that the painting was not under control unless it was identical with Wally from Krumau, and that the seller's records did not state it came from the Rieger collection. The Austrian office's reply of 28 October 1949 made no mention of that letter.
- Austria conditioned export permits for restituted collections on the donation of prominent works to state museums, under the Export Prohibition Law of 1918. The Rothschild, Gutmann, Lederer and Bondy collections were all affected, and at least 225 works were given up this way; the 1998 restitution law exempted restituted works from that law for twenty-five years.
- A restitution committee ruling against a claim does not settle who gets the object. The Dutch Restitutions Committee gave a binding opinion in 2018 that Amsterdam was not obliged to return a Kandinsky, and the city handed it over anyway on 27 February 2022 under a settlement agreement.
## The first return was almost always to a government, not to an owner
## A painting that was never named travelled through three transfers
## The error was noticed in writing in 1948 and nobody acted on it
## A restitution conditioned on a further donation
## The same mechanism, on a family this archive holds twice
## A panel can rule against a claim and the object can still go back
## How to read a restitution line in a provenance
The argument about restitution is conducted as though the difficult question were whether an object goes back, and the files say otherwise. Returning it is a transfer, and a transfer needs a named object, a named recipient and a document that connects them; where any of the three is missing the object still moves and the error is preserved by the very act that was meant to correct one. A letter written in June 1948 named the problem in one sentence, and the reply that should have answered it did not mention it. Read the correspondence in a restitution file before the decision, because that is where the doubt is written down.
## Questions
**Who did the Allies return looted art to after the Second World War?**
To governments. The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York described the policy in 2010 as returning property seized from Nazis to the governments of the countries of origin, on proof of identifiability supplied by a claimant government. The receiving state then determined which private claimant, if any, received each object, and that second step is where the errors in this archive occur.
**Can an object be restituted to the wrong family?**
Yes, and this archive holds a documented case. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York found in 2009 that Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally travelled to the heirs of Dr Heinrich Rieger in 1950 without being named in the restitution paperwork, and that the museum defending the later forfeiture action offered no justification for treating the painting as having been part of the Rieger collection.
**What were the Austrian export-permit donations?**
Restituted artwork belonging to an owner living abroad who wanted to export it fell under Austria's Export Prohibition Law of 1918, and permits were often granted only on condition that prominent pieces be donated to Austrian museums. The Rothschild, Gutmann, Lederer and Bondy collections were all affected, with at least 225 works given up from the Rothschild collections alone. The art restitution law of December 1998 exempted restituted works from the export law for twenty-five years.
**Is a restitution committee's decision final?**
Not in practice. The Dutch Restitutions Committee gave a binding opinion in 2018 that the municipality of Amsterdam was not obliged to return Kandinsky's Bild mit Haeusern. After the Kohnstamm Committee recommended a new assessment framework in 2020, the city opened negotiations and returned the painting under a settlement agreement on 27 February 2022, without the committee reconsidering the case.
**How should a provenance record describe a restitution?**
As a dated, graded transfer with the instrument named, exactly like a sale. Record who physically received the object as distinct from who was held entitled to it, state whether anything was given in exchange, and preserve any contemporaneous document recording doubt about the identification, since in the Schiele case that document exists and is dated ten months before the transfer it should have stopped.
## Sources
- [1] United States v. Portrait of Wally, a Painting by Egon Schiele, 663 F. Supp. 2d 232 (S.D.N.Y., 30 September 2009). Full opinion read directly. Source for the Receipt and Agreement of 4 December 1947 and its schedule, for McKee's annotation of about 8 June 1948, for Demus's reply of 28 October 1949, for the Ministry of Finance consent of 10 May 1950 and the collection by the heirs' agent on 7 July 1950, and for the Belvedere contract of 27 December 1950.
- [2] United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, press release 10-223, United States Announces 19 Million Dollar Settlement in Case of Painting Stolen by Nazi, 20 July 2010. Read in full. Source for the statement of United States military policy on returning property to the governments of the countries of origin, and for the settlement terms.
- [3] Kunstdatenbank, The donations to Austrian museums. Source for the Export Prohibition Law of 1918 as the legal basis, for the conditioning of export permits on donations to Austrian museums, for the naming of the Rothschild, Gutmann, Lederer and Bondy collections, for the figure of at least 225 works from the Rothschild collections, and for the twenty-five-year exemption in the 1998 restitution law.
- [4] Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, press statement, Painting by Kandinsky handed over to the heirs of Jewish former owners, 27 February 2022. Read in full. Source for the 2013 application, the 2018 binding opinion that the municipality was not obliged to restitute, the 2020 Kohnstamm report, the February 2021 decision to open consultations, the settlement agreement and the handover.
- [5] NL Times, Amsterdam returns Kandinsky painting to heirs of Jewish former owners, 28 February 2022, and DutchNews.nl, Kandinsky painting handed back to rightful heirs is sold, February 2023. Used for the composition of the claimant group and for the subsequent sale.
- [6] Essential Vermeer, catalogue entry for The Astronomer, with the full provenance list including the confiscation for the intended museum at Linz between November 1940 and 1945, the return to the Rothschild family, Guy de Rothschild's ownership from 1949 to 1982 and the 1983 acquisition by the Musee du Louvre.
- [7] Christie's, lot record and catalogue note for lot 157, The Rothschild Prayerbook, sale of 29 January 2014. Cited as the published provenance for the 1938 confiscation, the post-war restitution, the transfer to the Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek and the second restitution under the 1998 Austrian law. Direct fetch was refused by the host; the provenance is corroborated by source 3 and by the archive's own record.
- [8] Iconotheca, records for schiele-portrait-of-wally-neuzil, rothschild-prayerbook, klimt-portrait-of-elisabeth-lederer, kandinsky-bild-mit-hausern, vermeer-the-astronomer and cranach-adam-and-eve-norton-simon, read in full before this article was written.