August 19th, 2010 – “Against the backdrop that the property relations on the ancient objects have not been sorted out by civil law so far, that there are hints that the Republic of Turkey demands the return of those objects and that the proceedings at the administrative court Frankfurt to our knowledge are not legally decided yet, the state government rates the conduct of the RGZM and his staff members not punishable by disciplinary law.”
That was the reply of the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Culture of Rhineland-Palatinate to the “Parliamentary Question” of the Members of the Landtag Werner Kuhn and Dr Peter Schmitz (FDP) who chased the topic up under item 6 and 7, respectively: “Has the legal regulatory body taken any disciplinary measures against the RGZM or individual staff members yet? If not, why not?”
The two delegates picked up the case of the five bronze bowls CoinsWeekly has already covered. They asked about how the state government rated the events. They wanted to know in particular “what steps the state government has taken yet” to “lead the RGZM to return the art objects to the owner”.
The answer read: “The state government was not involved in the administrative quarrel in Hesse. Hence, it has not taken any steps pertaining on the above-mentioned communication.”
Did it contact the RGZM afterwards? At least, the owner was finally given back his vessels. Dr Michael Müller-Karpe has opened his vault voluntarily. Perhaps he realised in the end that Germany is no legal vacuum.
If you are interested in the case history click here and here.