Future:

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Speakers will be:

Stuart Eizenstat, Special Advisor on Holocaust Issues to the US Secretary of State
Key note (video message) 

James Bindenagel, US-Ambassador for Holocaust Issues (ret) (US-Sonderbotschafter für Holocaust-Fragen a.D.)
Just and Fair Solutions” – From the Washington Principles to the Law 

Professor Dr Matthias Weller, Mag.rer.publ., Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Professor for Civil Law, Art and Cultural Property Law; Director of the Institute for German and International Civil Procedural Law, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany
Learning from Teaching the Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art in Comparative Perspectives 

Professor Leora Bilsky, The Benno Gitter Chair in Human Rights and Holocaust Research, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University; Director, The Minerva Center of Human Rights, Tel Aviv University, Israel 
25 Years to the Washington Principles – In Search of a Comparative Perspective 

The Conference will mark the conclusion of a three-year’s joint project of the Bonn and Tel Aviv Universities. During the past three years, Professor Leora Bilsky and Professor Weller invited Israeli and German students to come together weekly on screen in the Winter Semesters from 2021 to 2023 to receive lectures on the restitution of Nazi-looted art in comparative perspectives, presented by the professors and a large number of international guest speakers from diverse backgrounds. This input included interdisciplinary perspectives from both provenance research and law as well as legal comparative perspectives, mainly from jurisdictions that implemented Washington Principles Numbers 10 and 11 (Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, UK) and from jurisdictions that are currently in the process of implementing these Principles (Israel, Switzerland). 

The project thus anticipated a demand formulated at the Terezin Declaration Conference 2022 in Prague, namely to develop and intensify formats for teaching on the restitution of property looted in the Holocaust, in particular Nazi-looted art. Over the last three years, the project has generated valuable experiences in teaching this challenging subject and significant insights on the subject matter. 

It is the objective of this Conference to reflect and discuss the fruits of the project and to provide for an outlook on the next 25 years of the Washington Principles, after their 25^th anniversary on 3 December 2023. 

We cordially invite you to participate in our video conference. In order to do so, please register with sekretariat.weller@jura.uni-bonn.de. You will receive a confirmation of your registration by email. Please allow us some time to process your registration. On the day before the event, you will receive the access data for the video conference via zoom per email, including our data protection concept. Please note that we intend to record the event to make it publicly available on the internet, and registration includes giving consent to this.

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