The Spoils of War (symposium)

Worldwide interest in the subject was generated by announcements in 1991 of the location of objects confiscated by Soviet Trophy Brigades from German territory at the end of the war.

The program featured 48 notable speakers—government officials, diplomats, journalists, art historians, archaeologists, lawyers, and independent researchers—from Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Australia, England, and the United States.

The symposium was the first to address the issue in a public forum, and led to numerous initiatives on provenance research by the governments involved as well as museums, libraries, and art dealers internationally.

Acquisitions policies were revised in museums in Europe and the United States, and organizations were restructured to facilitate the identification of artistic and cultural objects that had been stolen or transferred illegally during and after the war.

Lyndel Prott, then Chief of the International Standards Section of the Cultural Heritage Division of UNESCO, offered a list of "Principles for the Resolution of Disputes Concerning Cultural Heritage Displaced during the Second World War": The "Spoils of War" symposium was covered extensively in the international press, including articles carried by the Associated Press[16] and in The New York Times,[17] New York Newsday,[18] The Wall Street Journal,[19] The Christian Science Monitor,[20] The Observer,[21] The Washington Post,[22] The Philadelphia Inquirer,[23] The Art Newspaper,[24] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,[25] Süddeutsche Zeitung,[26] Die Zeit,[27] and Pravda.

This resulted in a further set of "Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art,"[31] outlined by organizer Stuart E. Eizenstat, as well as "Declarations of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research.

"[32] The New York conference has remained influential, however, due to its broader scope—dealing as it did with losses that occurred throughout Europe, inflicted not only by the Germans but also by the Soviets and western Allies, and affecting all those peoples who suffered as a result of the Second World War.

German repository of looted possessions in a church at Ellingen, Bavaria, May 1945.
Generals Bradley, Patton, and Eisenhower examining works of art stored by the Nazis in the Merkers mine, Germany, April 1945.
The Spoils of War (1997), showing paintings stolen from the Russian palaces at Petrodvorets and Pushkin, abandoned in March 1945 in East Prussia by German soldiers fleeing the Red Army.
Captain Edith Standen at the Wiesbaden Collecting Point, 1946.
Heinrich Schliemann's wife, Sophia, wearing gold jewelry from Treasure A, Troy, ca. 1873.
The original Amber Room in the Catherine Palace , Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo), Russia, in an early 20th century photograph before it was lost as a result of the Second World War.