Getting a payout seems fair. I doubt the Germans paid anybody when they took it from Italy.

Like all of Europa, Germany and Italy have thousands of years of history together. You are using nationalist terminology that is not even 200 years old to try to grasp 2000 years of history.

At the time king Ludwig I of Bavaria acquired that bust, the nation you identify as "Italy" didn't yet exist. And that was in the early modern. For most of the medieval age, the small territories that today are within southern germany and northern italy were vassals of the same empires.

And while europa sure was almost constantly at war with itself, there was also a lot of trade going on. Who took that bust from whom and if they paid with coin or sword is most likely lost to time.

This just seems to reinforce the notion of "possession is 9/10ths of the law". I'm not saying she should keep it, but it's not obvious who it "belongs" to.

You're assuming it was taken by force. What if... it was bought from an Italian goodwill in the 1800's?

The "King" in front of his name definitely proves that either it or the wealth that was used to acquire it was ill-gotten. All power and wealth of royalty was taken by force.

By force, true, but not necessarily illegally.

Of course not. They used force to make unjust laws that allowed them to do it. The laws of royalty are fundamentally illegitimate.

Hell, maybe an Italian goodwill in the 400's.

Yep, maybe just commissioned by a citizen of the Roman Empire living in today's Germany back when Pompeius was a general still in the news.

> I doubt the Germans paid anybody when they took it from Italy.

Why? The museum was not built by nazis.

germans were invading and pillaging a long time before Nazi's came to power and that is not unique to Germany - think Napoleon, so it is more likely than not that it was simply stolen, perhaps repeatedly over a couple thousand years.

> germans were invading and pillaging

Ludwig I of Bavaria never invaded Italy but he did frequently travel there for pleasure, and was known for purchasing antiquities and art.

> so it is more likely than not that it was simply stolen

You really have little rational basis for this belief. Could it have been stolen? Sure, maybe by Ludwig or maybe by whichever Italian sold it to Ludwig, or maybe by the great-great-great-great-grandfather of whoever sold it to Ludwig. But "more likely than not" stolen by Ludwig? Such confidence is merely a reflection of your biases.

And the romans before that. Heck they even made just about to Aschaffenburg, where this relic was stolen.

I like that they tacked on that it would be on display in Texas for about a year as part of the deal. It kind of, sort of masks that this was probably a sizable financial transaction.