The recovery of works of art and movable objects looted during the Great War: the resources of the National Archives

The plunder of works of art and movable artefacts witnessed during the First World War in the regions invaded and occupied by the enemy contributed to the creation, after the war, of some specific and complex administrative organisms, which were supposed to help return the plundered works to their rightful owners. The papers left by one of these administrative organisms, the 'Sequestre general de biens restitues par les Allemands', which remained active up to the middle of the 1920s, are held today at the French national archives in the general subseries AJ/28 [Damages of World War One]. They throw new light on certain little known aspects of this consequence of the war.