Germany

A much-exhibited early 19th century drawing, restituted in August to the heirs of a Holocaust victim, has immediately appeared for sale in Germany.

Martin Klosterfelde, a former Berlin-based contemporary art specialist and director at Phillips, has joined Sotheby’s.

An auction of a Thracian coin – minted in the city of Apollonia Pontica (in modern-day Bulgaria) in the 4th or 5th century BC – was halted by eBay on the grounds the listing was ‘hateful or discriminatory’.

The Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim has had to close a major exhibition after collectors withdrew their loans following the approval of Germany’s new Cultural Property Protection Act.

German auctioneers are preparing to move sales abroad following the passing of a controversial new cultural heritage law.

Calls for greater transparency in the way German institutions deal with Nazi-looted art should be extended to the country’s art and antiques trade, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe has said.

The German Cultural Property and Heritage Protection Law (Kulturschutzgesetz) is due to be debated in the German Bundestag next spring after a “defused” draft of the law received cabinet approval on November 4.

A late 18th century bust of the Goddess Diana which was looted from the Royal Lazienki Palace in Warsaw by the Nazis has been returned to Poland after emerging at auction in Vienna.

In Germany, software billionaire Hasso Plattner has become the latest collector to demonstrate opposition to the proposed cultural property law changes.

Coin specialists AH Baldwin & Sons are encouraging their customers to sign the petition opposing an amendment to the controversial German Cultural Property and Heritage Protection Law.

Opposition to controversial new laws governing cultural heritage in Germany is gathering pace. Auctioneers, dealers and collectors are backing a petition ‘preserving the right to privately collect’ and calling for German the government to rethink its proposals.

Sotheby’s will hold a sale of the Bernheimer family collection in November and Konrad Bernheimer has announced the family’s Munich art dealership will move from its traditional Old Master specialism to concentrate on Modern and Contemporary art under the direction of his daughters.

Only one other major George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) manuscript has come up for auction in the last 40 years, so Stargardt in Berlin can be assured of an international audience for the extensive autograph work they will offer on March 24-25.

The April edition of the ‘Kunst & Antiquitäten’ fair will not go ahead this year.

The Kunstmuseum Bern has called the huge art bequest by Cornelius Gurlitt a “bolt from the blue, since at no time has Mr Gurlitt had any connection with” the museum.

In a series of sales to be spread over the coming years, Cologne auctioneers Lempertz are selling netsuke from the Kolodotschko collection.

The Berlin-based online art and auction house Auctionata has secured €21.5 million in new equity capital and funding following a second funding round from the existing investors.

Statute of limitations laws may prevent previous owners successfully reclaiming art acquired during the Nazi purge of the late 1930s that was hoarded in a Munich flat.

Details are slowly emerging regarding the discovery in Munich some two years ago of an extraordinary cache of art with a Nazi era provenance.

Stuttgart auctioneers Nagel achieved a new German auction record for Oriental art when they sold a Yongzheng mark and period wine pot and cover for €2.8m (£2.37m).