Descendants of a group of Jewish art dealers who are suing Germany over the iconic Guelph Treasure have lost the latest step in a long running legal battle.

The collection is at the centre of a long-running ownership dispute and includes silver and gold crucifixes, altars and other items worth more than £170m.

The most valuable is a 12th-century domed reliquary, shaped like a church and made of gold, copper and silver with figurines of biblical characters fashioned out of walrus tusk.

It has been on display in Berlin since the early 1960s and is now at the city's Bode Museum, run by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The group of heirs argue their ancestors were forced to sell the collection of religious art to Nazi Germany authorities in 1935 for less than their value.

But the state-run Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation which now owns the collection say the collectors were not forced to sell the treasures and stressed the collection was not even in Germany at the time of its sale.

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The cupola reliquary (Kuppelreliquar) of the Guelph Treasure (Photo: Getty Images)

The heirs to the art dealers sued Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in the US District Court in Columbia in attempt to recover the treasure in February 2015.

They argued the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) enables them to sue Germany in US courts for compensation of property taken from the dealers as "rights in property taken in violation of international law".

Germany sought to dismiss the case and argued the FSIA did not apply to the sale of goods that did not cross any international borders. But the district court denied the motion to dismiss and this was upheld at the appeal court. 

German authorities later declared the collection a national cultural treasure, meaning the art pieces can no longer leave the country without the explicit permission of the country's culture minister.

Germany later petitioned to the US Supreme Court to rule on the matter. The court certified Germany's petition and heard the case in December 2020.

The court sided with Germany in 2021 and returned the case to the district court to determine whether it might be tried on the grounds that the dealers were “non-citizens” at the time of the sale, having been stripped of their citizenship by Germany’s Nazi government. 

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A bust reliquary of Saint Blaise of the Guelph Treasure (Photo: Getty Images)

The brief filed by the heirs to the DC Circuit reads: “The Nazi state took the [Guelph Treasure] by forced sale because the consortium of dealers were Jews.

“That expropriation violates international law because, in 1935, there was no legal or colloquial definition of ‘German’ that could conceivably include these victims. 

“At a bare minimum, therefore, the case concerns property owned collectively by Dutch and German owners, the taking of which for discriminatory reasons plainly violates international law.”

Last summer, the district court found in favour of Germany before the descendants appealed that decision to the US appeals court once again. However, their appeal which was heard in April, was thrown out last week.

Nicholas O’Donnell of Sullivan & Worcester in Boston, who is representing the claimants, said: “We are continuing to review the opinion and consider our next steps.

 "Germany’s continued refusal to acknowledge the obviously coercive sale involving Hermann Goering’s agents for what it was—theft—stands in stark contrast to Germany’s obligations under the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art."

Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said: “This ruling confirms the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation’s view that a claim for the restitution of the Guelph Treasure should not be handled by a US court.”