Germany will return to Poland valuable archives of the Teutonic Order, stolen from Warsaw during World War II, as well as a sculpture depicting the head of a saint, stolen from the city of Malbork (Marienburg), reports the Polish website Onet.
This will happen tomorrow during interagency consultations in Berlin and will be one of the most significant events in recent years in Poland's struggle to reclaim cultural heritage items stolen during the war.
It concerns 73 parchment manuscripts that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II from the Main Archive of Old Documents in Warsaw. Poland began seeking the return of these archives as early as 1948.
A fragment of a 14th-century sculpture will be added to the archives, namely the head of St. James the Greater, which was stolen after the war, in 1957, from the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Malbork (Marienburg).
It is worth noting that Poland has demanded post-war reparations from Germany amounting to over one trillion euros. Berlin has regularly rejected these claims, citing that the matter has already been legally settled.
Ultimately, they agreed on 73 parchment manuscripts and one head of St. James the Greater.
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