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FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY v. PHILIPP 

Opinion of the Court 

During the waning years of the Weimar Republic, a con-
sortium  of  three  art  firms  owned  by  Jewish  residents  of 
Frankfurt  purchased  the  Welfenschatz  from  the  Duke  of 
Brunswick.  By 1931, the consortium had sold about half of 
the  collection’s  pieces  to  museums  and  individuals  in  Eu-
rope and the United States, including many to the Cleve-
land Museum of Art, where they reside today.

Conditions  facing  the  consortium  changed  dramatically 
after the collapse of the German economy and the rise of the 
Nazi government.  After ascending to power, Hermann Goe-
ring—Adolf Hitler’s deputy and the Prime Minister of Prus-
sia—became  interested  in  the  remainder  of  the  Welfen-
schatz. 
The  complaint  alleges  that  he  employed  a
combination of political persecution and physical threats to 
coerce the consortium into selling the remaining pieces to
Prussia in 1935 for approximately one-third of their value. 
Two of the consortium members fled the country following
the sale, and the third died in Germany shortly thereafter. 
The United States took possession of the Welfenschatz in 
the course of the occupation of Nazi Germany at the end of 
the  war,  eventually  turning  the  collection  over  to  the 
Federal  Republic  of  Germany.    For  nearly  60  years,  the 
treasure  has  been  maintained  by  Stiftung  Preussischer 
Kulturbesitz (SPK)—the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foun-
dation—and  it  is  now  displayed  at  a  museum  in  Berlin. 
SPK is an instrumentality of the Federal Republic.

Respondents are two United States citizens and a citizen
of the United Kingdom who trace their lineages back to the 
three  members  of  the  consortium.  The  heirs  first  ap-
proached SPK claiming that the sale of the Welfenschatz to
the Prussian Government was unlawful.  SPK conducted its 
own  investigation  of  the  sale  and  determined  that  the 
transaction  occurred  at  a  fair  market  price  without  coer-
cion. 

In  2014,  the  parties  agreed  to  submit  the  claim  to  the 
German  Advisory  Commission  for  the  Return  of  Cultural