Cologne Returns Drawing to Heirs of Jewish Collector

The city of Cologne is returning a drawing to the heirs of a persecuted Jewish art collector. The pen-and-ink work "Venus and Amor," attributed to Johann Rottenhammer the Elder (1564-1625), had been in the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. The city council decided to restitute the piece. The drawing originally belonged to Michael Berolzheimer, a Jewish lawyer who fled Germany in 1938 due to Nazi persecution, leaving parts of his collection behind. The work was auctioned off at that time and changed hands multiple times before ending up at the Cologne museum. Other institutions, such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle, have also returned artworks to Berolzheimer's heirs.