A German art collector lost out in his attempt to retain possession of an ancient mask deemed to have been looted from Egypt Friday, after a German court rejected his claim and upheld an earlier ruling, the German news agency DPA reported.
Dirk Gemünden, 80, filed a lawsuit against the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after the government confiscated a 2,000-year-old Egyptian coffin mask and a 3,500-year-old brooch from him in 2020.
But the Düsseldorf Administrative Court ruled Friday that the NRW Ministry of Culture was right to seize both items because it could not be ruled out that the objects were illegally obtained from Egypt.
The coffin mask was allegedly looted from excavations conducted between 2011 and 2017 before being auctioned in France in 2017, according to the DPA report.
Gemünden bought three art objects at an auction in the U.S. in 2020: the mask, the brooch and a 2,500-year-old coffin plaque. The collector was able to prove that the third item did not fall under the Cultural Protection Act. The law, passed in 2016, is aimed at combatting illicit trafficking of cultural property.
The court ruled that the brooch and mask can simply be national cultural property of Egypt, thus subjecting them to the law. Gemünden told the court he assumed the mask had been owned by a user in the United States since the 1970s.
However, Judge Andreas Heusch was open to a proposal from Gemünden, who argued that the mask would be displayed in an establishment he set up with his wife, the Obentraut 3 Museum, before being sent back to Egypt and disappearing. ” in a warehouse. ” . . »
Artnet News reached out to Gemünden for comment on the museum but did not hear back at the time of publication.
The court ruling comes while a restitution case is pending in French courts. Gabon’s transitional government, which suffered a military coup in August, has launched a legal war over the return of an old mask. The object is already in the middle of a judicial process. between an elderly couple and the antique dealer from whom they bought it, who, they say, defrauded them by making greater profits from its sale.
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