Catalogue description Memorandum on the Restoration to their Owners of Works of Art and Other Property...

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Details of FO 371/41004/2
Reference: FO 371/41004/2
Description:
Memorandum on the Restoration to their Owners of Works of Art and Other Property Misappropriated by the Enemy, sent by Herbert Maryon of Mill Cottage, Ipswich, to the Prime Minister, dated 4 September 1944. The Memorandum states that 'there is one way and one way only by which the German people could be made to realise that aggression does not pay. By the establishment of the principle that all lost works must be replaced in kind from the public or private collections of the aggressor nations [...] Germany is gorged with the loot of Europe. No firm line can be drawn between German public and private loot. Are the Hermann Goering collections any the less loot than the books and other objects stolen from art gallery, church or private house, by another German soldier and sent home? The establishment of the principle of reparation in kind would solve much of the difficulty [...] Germany has shown by the deliberate burning of the Naples Library and the destruction of innumerable cultured monuments in occupied countries that she is unable to appreciate the value to the world of such monuments. Why should she hold treasures from other lands when she has destroyed those which remained on their native soil? Let those works of art which are now in enemy hands be returned, to give to our allies an inspiration for the future and some compensation for the irreparable injuries that they have suffered'. Letter from the Foreign Office to Mr Maryon thanking him for his letter, dated 18 September 1944.
Date: 1944 September 04 - 1944 September 18
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Closure status: Open Document, Open Description

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