Polish authorities are outraged by a German auction house’s decision to sell a painting by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, a 1928 abstract watercolor that was stolen from the National Museum in Warsaw in 1984, and the new scandal is currently rekindling old tensions. between Warsaw and Berlin related to Polish cultural heritage looted by the Nazis, the BBC reported on Saturday, citing News.ro.

The auction house says it has investigated information received from the Polish Ministry of Culture that the painting was stolen and concluded there are no legal obstacles to the auction.

The work was already sold for 310,000 euros, but the Grisebach auction house in Berlin decided to suspend the completion of the sale after Warsaw’s angry reaction.

“He sold Kandinsky, even though he knew it was stolen from a Polish museum”

Polish officials say the back of the Kandinsky painting has a stamp from the museum where it came from.

Poland’s consul in Berlin, Marcin Krol, was present at the auction in Berlin, but was unable to prevent the sale of the work of art. He said it was included in Interpol’s stolen art database.

“The German auction house acted as a protective wall for stolen goods,” Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Piotr Glinski wrote on Twitter. “He sold Kandinsky, even though he knew it was stolen from a Polish museum,” he accused.

Poland’s culture ministry said it would go to court to try to get the painting back, calling the auction “absolutely unethical and contrary to the standards that should be applied in the international art market.”

In a statement, the auction house said it had “thoroughly” verified the ownership of the watercolor attributed to Kandinsky and had “clearly concluded that there are no legal impediments to the auction.” However, he decided to ask the court for an opinion and suspended the sale until he received mandatory clarifications.

Poland is trying to return thousands of works of art looted by the Nazis

The sale of the Kandinsky painting is particularly sensitive as Poland is still trying to return thousands of works of art looted by the Nazis during World War II. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Arkadiusz Mulyarczyk said that the sale indicates a broader reluctance of Germany to return stolen property to Poland.

“They don’t want to return the very important cultural values ​​that they stole from Poland. The main problem for us is that German law protects this theft. It doesn’t look good for the German rule of law,” he told the BBC. German law allows such sales because the work is no longer considered stolen after 30 years, he explained.

“I see this situation as a bigger problem because we see that the German government – and Germany in general – has problems with reparations and with stolen things, with cultural values ​​confiscated from Poland. Many of them are now in Germany,” said the Polish official.

Mulyarczyk chaired a parliamentary commission that estimated the damage inflicted on Poland by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945 at 6.22 trillion zlotys ($1.4 trillion). In October, the Polish government sent a diplomatic note to Berlin asking for compensation.

The German government believes that the issue of war reparations has been closed as a result of the agreement concluded in 1953 between the USSR and East Germany, according to which the Polish communist authorities have since renounced any further claims. However, Poland claims that this agreement is invalid because it was not independent of Soviet influence at the time.

Read also:

• Poland is launching a diplomatic campaign over the war reparations it is demanding from Germany. “Declarations of moral responsibility cannot replace a fair compensation agreement”
• Poland asks Germany for more than 1,300 billion euros for damages caused in the Second World War / Germany’s response
• The issue of Poland’s war reparations is “closed”, according to the head of German diplomacy