New York’s Supreme Court Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department ruled on May 30 that the family of Riven Flamenbaum, a Holocaust survivor who inexplicably left Germany after the War with an invaluable gold tablet about the size of a Post-It Note, must return the object to the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. The holding reverses a prior decision made by the Nassau County Surrogate Court, which ruled in 2010 that the Museum had taken too long to claim the ancient artifact.
According to the Appellate Court’s opinion, a German team of archaeologists excavated the tablet prior to World War I in what is now northern Iraq. The tablet describes the construction of the Ishtar Temple and dates to the reign of King Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (1243-1207 BCE). The Museum received the tablet in 1926, displayed it beginning in 1934, then placed it in storage in 1939 for protection from the War. Around the end of the war in 1945, the tablet was discovered to be missing. The Museum had no knowledge of its whereabouts until 2003, when Riven Flamenbaum’s son Israel Flamenbaum filed objections to the estate’s accounting and informed the Museum about the tablet. The Surrogate Court rejected the Museum’s efforts to recover it, finding that the Museum’s claim was barred by the doctrine of laches.
The Appellate Court reversed, reminding the executor that to establish laches, “she must demonstrate that the museum failed to exercise reasonable diligence to locate the tablet and that such failure prejudiced the estate.” The Court held that the executor demonstrated neither element, and directed that the tablet be returned to the Museum.