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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Poland has announced the return of four further historical objects that were among hundreds of thousands of artistic and scientific works that disappeared during World War Two, many of which remain unaccounted for. The items were recovered after being spotted at auction.
“We are gradually recovering elements of Polish heritage that were looted during World War Two,” declared culture minister Marta Cienkowska, presenting the four works. “To date, over 800 objects have been recovered from around the world, and another 190 are in the process of being restituted.”
But she also noted that the ministry’s public database of works it has identified as missing still contains around 70,000 items, and she encouraged people to help find them and secure their return. Many other items were deliberately destroyed by the Nazi-German occupiers.
Kolejne odzyskane dzieła wróciły do polskich zbiorów
Cztery zabytkowe obiekty utracone w czasie II wojny światowej zostały odzyskane dzięki działaniom restytucyjnym Ministerstwa Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego. Do Muzeum Narodowego w Poznaniu trafiły dwa obrazy Michała… pic.twitter.com/dYcLwKG9wL
— Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (@kultura_gov_pl) September 25, 2025
Among the items that have now been returned are two paintings by Polish landscape artist Michał Gorstkin Wywiórski that disappeared from Poznań’s Municipal Museum during the war: The Coming Spring, painted sometime in the early 20th century, and Self-Portrait in the Open Air from 1913.
During the war, both works were assigned German inventory numbers and were stamped by the German cultural office that oversaw the takeover of the museum. Subsequently, the museum’s collections were moved several times during the war, including amid the liberation of Poland in 1945.
In 1945, around 250 paintings from the museum disappeared. Some of them were later recovered from the Soviet Union. However, when the Municipal Museum’s remaining collections were transferred to the National Museum in Poznań in 1953, dozens of works – including by Wywiórski – were still missing.
The two paintings were discovered after being put up for auction in Poland in 2024. The culture ministry then intervened and secured their return from the owner, who has not been named. The artworks have now been donated to the National Museum in Poznań.
Another item now recovered is a Flemish tapestry from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, which was previously part of the collections of Gołuchów Castle near Poznań.
Shortly before the outbreak of the war, the castle’s most valuable holdings were evacuated to Warsaw and hidden there. However, in 1941 the stash was discovered and confiscated by the Germans, who later moved it to Austria, where parts of it subsequently disappeared.
Earlier this year, the tapestry appeared at an online auction (the ministry has not said where) and the sale was halted after the ministry’s intervention. After negotiations, the item’s owner agreed to return it, and it has now gone back to Gołuchów Castle.
In 2023, two historical paintings that were also part of the Gołuchów collection were likewise returned to the castle after being discovered at a museum in Spain.
Two historical paintings stolen from Poland during the Nazi-German occupation of WWII, and which subsequently disappeared for decades, have been returned after being discovered at a museum in Spain https://t.co/QP5ls2ESYX
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 26, 2023
Among the newly announced items returned to Poland, the fourth and final one is a 1745 print of a work by physician and chemist Johann Albrecht Gesner. It had been held in collections at various public institutions in Poznań before the war, including the university library.
The culture ministry believes that, in 1945, it was illegally sold and removed from Poland. It was recently discovered by staff at the university library after being put online for sale by the owner of an antiquarian bookstore in Germany, who has agreed to return it after learning of its provenance.
Poland has in recent years stepped up efforts to secure the return of historical and cultural items looted during the German and Soviet occupations.
In 2022, it appealed to UNESCO for help in securing the return of cultural items that remain missing after being looted by Nazi Germany. It also launched a campaign seeking the return of thousands of items that ended up in Russia after the war.
Polish President @NawrockiKn has called on Germany to pay Poland war reparations during talks in Berlin with Chancellor @_FriedrichMerz.
In response, Germany has reiterated that it considers the issue to be legally closed and that no reparations are owed https://t.co/sX07qtCFRL
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 16, 2025
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: MKiDN (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
