Britain can’t return art Nazis looted

The British Museum is barred by law from returning art looted by the Nazis to the heirs of a Jewish collector the U.K. High Court ruled Friday.

Peter Goldsmith, Britain’s Attorney General, had asked the court to determine whether the institute’s trustees could be permitted to return four drawings it suspects were stolen from Czech doctor Arthur Feldmann in 1939 on the grounds of “moral obligation.” Feldmann’s collection was seized from his home when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia.

The British Museum said in a statement after the ruling that the drawings presented “a unique moral claim,” which it had wished to meet. “It is now beyond doubt that, when there is a claim for an object in the British Museum collection which can be proved to have been stolen from a Jewish family by the Nazis, the object cannot be returned without the authority of an Act of Parliament,” the museum said.