The United States is returning to Germany three paintings that were stolen at the end of the Second World War after they turned up in an auction last year, the US Embassy said today.US Ambassador William Timken will hand over the 19th-Century works by Heinrich Buerkel to the mayor of the south-western city of Pirmasens on February 10, the embassy said.The three paintings, now valued at £70,000, disappeared from an air-raid shelter at a school where they had been stored to protect them from Allied bombing.The Pirmasens Museums reported at the time that they were “lost during the arrival of the American troops” in March 1945, the embassy said.

Posted: 02|5|06 at 9:21 am. Filed under: Auction News.