Unplundering art
When spoils of war seized from Germany are returned, where can the line be drawn on the repatriation of other art treasures?
IN OR about 586BC, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldaean king of Babylon, took Jerusalem, and behaved as conquering soldiers have always done—from the Roman imperial campaigners to the Norsemen raiders and the Christian crusaders through to the combatants in the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. So nobody should be surprised to read, in chapter 52 of the Book of Jeremiah in the Jerusalem Bible, that:
This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline “Unplundering art”
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