THE HAGUE, 21 December 2020 – The Restitutions Committee has advised the Minister of Education, Culture and Science to grant the application for restitution of the painting The Marriage Feast at Cana by J.G. Platzer. The Minister has accepted this advice.

Before the war the painting The Marriage Feast at Cana by the Austrian artist Johann Georg Platzer was the property of Alfred and Fanny Mautner, who lived in Vienna. After Nazis came to power in Austria in 1938, they fled to Amsterdam in 1939. The painting was stored along with other household effects in Amsterdam and it was sold in 1941 to pay for storage costs. After that it was sold on to a museum in the former Czechoslovakia. After the war it was returned to the Netherlands and was taken into the custody of the Dutch State with the express instruction to return it – if possible – to the rightful claimants or their heirs. In 2020 an heir of Alfred and Fanny Mautner asked the Minister to restitute the painting. The Minister asked the Restitutions Committee to advise her about this application. The Committee advised the Minister that this request has to be granted because it is sufficiently plausible that Alfred and Fanny Mautner had to sell the painting as a result of fleeing from the Nazis.

About the Restitutions Committee

The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War advises about claims to items of cultural value lost during the Nazi period, also referred to as looted art. Since 2002 the Restitutions Committee has issued 164 recommendations and opinions and has had 187 claims submitted to it.

Relevant recommendations: Alfred and Fanny Mautner