Today’s election of Olaf Scholz as Angela Merkel’s successor marks the official start of the new „traffic light“ coalition government. The new government draws its name from the colours traditionally associated with the supporting parties: „red“ Social Democrats, „yellow“ Liberals and the “Green” Party. These three parties have set out their legislative programme in a 177-page coalition agreement (Koalitionsvertrag). Both Nazi looted art and art from a colonial context feature in the Coalition Agreement. Almost inevitably, like in other fields, the Coalition Agreement is short on detail. For Nazi looted art, however, its brevity notwithstanding, the Coalition Agreement defines four concrete legislative goals*. Here they are, with my initial assessment: Continue reading
Category Archives: Art Law
The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in August 2021
Coping with the Diesel Caseload
The Volkswagen wave of Diesel cases may be ebbing off in the lower courts, but Diesel-related claims against other manufacturers continue to be filed. In the Stuttgart district court (Landgericht), the number of new civil cases is up by 60%, driven primarily by Diesel claims against Daimler. And increasingly, cases end up in the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof). This had let the court to temporarily create an additional senate, i.e. a bench of five judges. a measure that is taken extremely rarely. It helps distributing the burden more equally across the bench, but does not add capacity, as the number of judges appointed to the Federal Supreme Court does not change. Continue reading
Settling Art Disputes by Alternative Dispute Resolution: Future and Challenges in Germany and Worldwide, 22 September 2021
The University of Bonn, via its “Forschungsstelle Kunst- und Kulturgutschutzrecht” and the Court of Arbitration for Art are organizing a webinar on alternative dispute resoution in the art world: Continue reading
Art Law: Constitutional Challenges against Cultural Property Protection Act Fail
Almost to the day five years after the Act on the Protection of Cultural Property (Kulturschutzgesetz; KGSG) entered into force, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) published a decision which dismissed several constitutional complaints (Verfassungsbeschwerden) challenging various previsions of the Cultural Property Protection Act. The constitutional complaints were brought by art and antiquity dealers and auction houses. They alleged that certain provisions of the Cultural Property Protection Act violated their basic rights (Grundrechte) based on Article 12, which protects the freedom to choose and exercise one’s profession and occupation and on Article 14 Basic Law (Grundgesetz),which guarantees and protects the right to private property. Continue reading