German Historical Museum: Berlin museum returns relief to Belgian city

According to the museum, the relief was created around 1927 and is part of a monument dedicated to the shooting of Belgian civilians by German soldiers during the First World War.

“Gap in reconciliation” closed

When the relief was handed over by museum director Raphael Gross, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Kingdom of Belgium, Martin Kotthaus, said: “The happy return of the bronze relief, which has commemorated the massacre since 1927, more than 80 years after the destruction of the original monument by the Nazis, closes a gap in the reconciliation between Dinant, Belgium and Germany.” According to Kotthaus, over 670 residents of Dinant died in massacres by German soldiers in 1914.

A postcard provided the crucial clue

A postcard from 1930 showed the bronze relief as part of a monument in the town of Dinant, but it was not visible in a recent photo from 2014, according to DHM. The confiscation was then confirmed by the German war commander of Dinant and Philippeville. According to the museum, it is obvious that the memorial plaque was brought to what was then the Nazi regime’s military museum: the Berlin Armory.

According to the DHM, the newly founded Museum of German History (MfDG) opened in the armory in 1952 as the GDR’s central socialist history museum. With reunification, the collections of the MfDG and the Berlin Armory were handed over to the DHM, which was founded three years earlier.

Since then, the DHM has been trying to find out who owns certain pieces. This also involves the question of whether works of art were stolen from Jewish owners during National Socialism and can be returned to their heirs.