A Jewish family won its long battle yesterday against a German museum for the return of thousands of rare posters stolen at gunpoint on the orders of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, in 1938.
Judges at Germany’s top federal court said that it “would perpetuate Nazi injustice” not to recognise Peter Sachs, 74, the son of the original collector, as the rightful owner.
The ruling ended seven years of legal battles over the collection of at least 4,200 posters depicting theatre performances, exhibitions and consumer products that is currently valued at about €4.4 million.
“I cannot describe what this means to me on a personal level,” said Mr Sachs. “It feels like vindication for my father, a final recognition of the life he lost and never got back.”
The posters have been kept at the German Historical Museum in Berlin and few have been displayed. Mr Sachs and his family are now seeking a venue, if possible in Berlin, to make them available to visitors.
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Born in 1881, Hans Sachs was a dentist who began collecting posters while in high school. By 1905, he was Germany’s leading private collector and later launched the art publication Das Plakat, or The Poster.
After the seizure of the posters, Mr Sachs was arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin. When he was released about two weeks later, the family fled via London to the United States.
Mr Sachs was told after the war that the collection had been destroyed and accepted compensation of about 225,000 German marks (then worth about $50,000) from West Germany in 1961.
He learned five years later, however, that part of the collection had survived and been turned over to a museum in the Communist-controlled East Berlin. He wrote to the authorities about seeing the posters or even bringing an exhibit to the West but to no avail. He died in 1974 without ever seeing them again.
The posters became part of the German Historical Museum’s collection in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Peter Sachs, who lives in Nevada, said that he only learned of the existence of the collection in 2005 and began fighting then for its return.
Matthias Druba, Mr Sachs’s lawyer, said that, when his client received the posters back, he would repay the compensation that his father received. He said it was not yet clear what the amount would be in current terms, but that it could be in the “seven figures.” Mr Druba added: “This was never about the money, but about restoring the family’s history.”
Hagen Philipp Wolf, a spokesman for Germany’s cultural affairs office which oversees the public German Historical Museum, said that the decision would be respected.
“The Federal Court of Justice has decided, we have a clear ruling, the German Historical Museum must return the Sachs posters,” he said.
The museum said in a statement that it would meet with Mr Sachs soon to organise the return of his father’s property. It would consider the wider implications of the ruling once it had studied the written judgment, it added.