The gold band set with a large square-cut diamond formed part of the “Royal Casket” assembled by aristocrat Izabela Czartoryska, one of the country’s most celebrated historic collections.
“We submitted a restitution claim to the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim in March 2023 and, via our embassy, to the German foreign ministry last October,” ministry spokesman Piotr Jędrzejowski told the daily Rzeczpospolita. “Every lost cultural object is assessed individually. We use all available legal tools to bring it home.”
The museum, located in Baden-Württemberg, has not commented on whether it will return the jewel or how it entered its holdings.
If the ring comes back, it will join the National Museum in Kraków under a 2016 deal in which the Polish state bought the Czartoryski collection and rights to any still-missing items.
From royal tomb to wartime loot
Art historian Prof Ewa Letkiewicz traced the piece’s journey in a 2007 study, noting it surfaced in 1963 at Pforzheim with 179 other rings from the private hoard of German collector Heinz Battke, who had acquired it between 1954 and 1962. Early in the 2000s, the German institution even lent it to a partner museum in Częstochowa, Poland.
Letkiewicz believes Queen Bona Sforza gave the ring to her husband Sigismund shortly before his death in 1548. During a 1791 exploration of Kraków’s Wawel Cathedral crypts, patriot Tadeusz Czacki removed the jewel and later sold it to Czartoryska, who stored it in a small ebony coffer.
After Poland regained independence, the casket was kept in the Czartoryski Museum. On 17-18 September 1939, German soldiers found and plundered the cache, which had been walled up in a country estate days before the invasion. Many artifacts are still missing.
Restitution experts say claims against public institutions stand a better chance than those involving private owners, yet Polish researchers possess only fragmentary documentation and a low-quality pre-war photograph of the ring, complicating talks.
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Source: Rzeczpospolita, TVP World