Berlin's Bode Museum returns Nazi-looted treasure, heirs agree to sell back

A Berlin museum Monday said it had formally restituted a 15th century religious wooden sculpture to the heirs of former owners, a Jewish couple who fled the Nazi regime. The heirs in turn agreed to sell back the medieval artifact, “Three Angels with the Christ Child”, at an undisclosed price to the Bode Museum, which will keep it in its collection. The agreement meant “righting an injustice”, said the head of Berlin’s public museums, Michael Eissenhauer, who thanked the heirs for the “grand gesture” that will keep the priceless piece on public display. The delicately carved 25 centimetre (10 inch) tall sculpture from around 1430 shows three floating angels in the clouds holding a cloth on which lies the sleeping infant Jesus. It once belonged to the private collection of Ernst Saulmann, a Jewish industrialist, and his wife Agathe, an architect’s daugh