Guelph Treasure

The Guelph Treasure (German: Welfenschatz) is a collection of medieval ecclesiastical art originally housed at Brunswick Cathedral in Braunschweig, Germany. The Treasure takes its name from the princely House of Guelph (German: Welf) of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

In October 1929, the Treasure, consisting of 82 pieces, was sold by the former Duke of Brunswick to a consortium of Jewish art dealers. In 1935, in the Netherlands, they sold its major portion to agents of Hermann Göring, the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany.

After World War II, the art dealers' heirs unsuccessfully sought the restitution of the treasure. In Germany, the Limbach Commission, a government advisory body, found that there were no grounds for restitution, and in the U.S., the Supreme Court ruled in the 2021 case Germany v. Phillipp that the U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over the restitution claims.

History

The Guelph Treasure was originally housed at Brunswick Cathedral in Braunschweig, Germany. Most of the objects were removed from the cathedral in the 17th century and passed into the hands of John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, in 1671, and remained in the Court Chapel at Hannover until 1803.

In 1929 Ernest Augustus, former Duke of Brunswick, Head of House of Hanover, sold 82 items to a consortium of Frankfurt art dealers Saemy Rosenberg, Isaak Rosenbaum, Julius Falk Goldschmidt and Zacharias Hackenbroch for the price of 7.5 million Reichsmark.