Giving Back the Loot Nazi-Era Claims Against UK Museums: In 2000 the British Government Set up a Panel to Examine Claims Against UK Museums by the Heirs of Collectors Whose Works of Art had been Looted During the Nazi Era, Martin Bailey Explains the Background and Examines the Eight Cases Currently in Process‪.‬

The Rape of Europa, a drawing once attributed to Durer and now given to Hans Baldung, is a telling example of the changing attitudes of UK museums towards Nazi-era loot. In 1997 it formed part of Edmund Schilling's bequest to the British Museum. It was known that the work had until World War u been at the Lubomirski Museum, in what was then the Polish city of Lwow. However, no particular concern was expressed that the Baldung might be subject to a legal claim, since it had been restituted to the Lubomirski family in 1950 and subsequently sold. Just a year after the Schilling bequest, UK national museums took up the spoliation issue. Had the bequest come in the late 1990s, The Rape of Europa would probably still have been accepted, since the British Museum remains convinced that the earlier restitution was correct. But its provenance would have been very carefully considered by both curators and trustees.