ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a research which has done in Switzerland on looted art traffic, and focuses with a case-story: the Beyeler/Kandinsky/Lessitzky-case. In 1926 Sophie Kiippers, widow at that time, gave the Kandinsky to the Provincial Museum Hannover as a loan. The picture was confiscated by the state with many others in the well-known operation against “degenerate” art in 1937. In 1939 the NS-state sold it to the art dealer Ferdinand Moller who gave it to Ernst Beyeler in 1951. In 2001 Jen Lis- sitzky, a son from Kiippers second marriage, filed a claim against Beyeler. He did not ask for compensation but for restitution; he wants the picture back as the entitled heir. The case, which is still open and will remain open for some time, raises several questions, some are historical others are purely legal. The official task of the Independent Commission of Experts was to give indications about the “volume” of assets as well.
