Irish lawyer wants to put valuable Christian relics back into the hands of rapacious Jews

The blue-eyed anti-German "nazi-fighting" Irishman, Nicholas O'Donnell, who is on a crusade to see justice done for the Jews. 

80 years ago, in 1935, some Jewish art dealers in Berlin sold a collection of medieval Christian relics, known as the Welfenschatz treasure, to one or more National Socialists “after they were unable to get a better offer.” The collection consists of dozens of gold and bejeweled relics that date to the Holy Roman Empire.

Some of the precious artworks in the Welfenschatz collection (known in English as the Guelph Treasure) on display in Berlin. Below right: a cross from the collection.

History of the collection according to Wikipedia

The collection of medieval ecclesiastical art was originally housed at Brunswick Cathedral in Braunschweig, Germany. Most of the objects were removed from the cathedral in the 17th century and dispersed in the 1930s.

The Treasure takes its name from the princely House of Guelph of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

In 1929 Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, sold 82 items to a consortium of Frankfurt Jewish art dealers Saemy Rosenberg, Isaak Rosenbaum, Julius Falk, Arthur Goldschmidt and Zacharias Hackenbroch. Items from the Treasure were exhibited in the United States in 1930–31.

Cleveland Museum of Art purchased nine pieces and more were sold to other museums and private collectors.

In 1934 the remaining 40 pieces of the collection, which had been retained by several German-Jewish art dealers from Frankfurt, were purchased for 4.25 million Reichsmarks via Wilhelm Stuckart by the Prussian State under its Prime Minister Hermann Göring and displayed in Berlin.

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According to a Boston Globe story of July 15, a Boston attorney named Nicholas O'Donnell, a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Worcester, is helping a private American Jewish group try to get possession of this collection from the German government. Please see here for more information.

The original Jewish art dealers were a consortium of three firms based in Frankfurt. They had purchased the treasure in 1929 as an investment and began trying to sell it as the Nazis rose to power. About half of the pieces were sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art and others, but the rest remained in their possession. [In other words, they were moving it outside of Germany where it originated and should rightly remain.]

Here are the original art dealers who were working their trade in Germany in the 1920's and 30's. Isaak Rosenbaum (top) and partners (from left) Zacharias Hackenbroch, Julius Goldschmidt, and Saemy Rosenberg

The Jews legal complaint claims that the Nazis organized a boycott of Jewish businesses that quickly reduced the revenue of their ancestors firms to nothing. It alleges the transaction was made under duress for a cut-rate price. 

However this narrative is vehemently denied by German authorities, who say the sale was thoroughly reviewed by an advisory panel and found to be valid.

The German side

The collection belongs to the German government and resides in the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Berlin where it is on display.

A German panel ruled in 2014 that there was insufficient evidence to prove the sale of the collection was influenced by the Nazis’ persecution. In response to the first US lawsuit brought by the American-Jewish “heirs,” the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation said the price was “fair and appropriate,” given the worldwide economic turmoil that undermined demand for pricey art collections.

Hermann Parzinger, head of the German government foundation that controls the treasure, said days after the lawsuit was filed in Washington, DC that he was “astonished by this step,” and that “I am confident that any court ruling on the merits would reach the same conclusion that we and the advisory commission have reached.”

What O'Donnell and his Jews claim

O’Donnell’s suit for his clients seeks to force the German government to return the $250 million treasure as restitution for alleged persecution under the Nazi regime. He said his clients are fighting for an acknowledgment that their ancestors were robbed of the treasure. The plaintiffs are only two, listed in the suit as Alan Philipp from London and Gerald Stiebel from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Of course, it's clear to us that they're fighting for $250 million dollars because they plan to sell the collection if they manage to get hold of it, just as their ancestors only wanted to profit from it. It was purely a financial investment for them, then and now. It goes without saying that Jews have no appreciation of Christian church art and symbols!

O’Donnell’s lawsuit is said to offer a detailed narrative (worthy of the holohoax, I'd say) of the years leading up to the sale. This is what it consists of, according to the Boston Globe story:

• Correspondence filed as exhibits in the case purport to show that Nazi officials plotted to undermine deals with other potential buyers of the Welfenschatz to force the art dealers — Zacharias Hackenbroch, Isaak Rosenbaum, Saemy Rosenberg, and Julius Goldschmidt — to lower their price. [Sounds like normal business practice to me.]

• In 1935, during final negotiations over the sale, Rosenberg stayed in a hotel along Potsdamer Platz in Berlin where, according to the complaint, he had a view of Hitler Youth demonstrations and could hear daily chants of “Do not buy from Jews!” [This is relevant? Was this supposed to have been instigated purposely to intimidate Rosenberg?]

• In June of that year, after fruitless efforts to achieve a better deal, the dealers agreed to sell the collection to the Nazis. [Is anything proven here? Doesn't seem so.]

• A few months later, the Welfenschatz was presented to Hitler. [Because it was given to Hitler on his birthday means the Nazis forced the sale? Circumstantial.]

• A Baltimore Sun article used as an exhibit in the lawsuit reported that the ceremony was presided over by Goering. [And this means …?]

• By Hitler's birthday, three of the dealers had already left the country; only Hackenbroch remained, and died two years later. [They were selling out because they wanted to leave. The fact that one did not leave shows their lives were not in danger.]
  

All of this is meant to invoke images and ideas of Nazi terror. It is sad that a law firm with the names Sullivan and O'Donnell would play a part in it. And I just learned of a new twist: The matter is complicated by the fact that in 2013 the Israeli Government officially requested Germany to return the treasure to the petitioners!!