The Scottish government has opened an inquiry to find out whether a chandelier hanging in the first minister’s official residence was looted by the Nazis.
According to official records, the chandelier, which hangs in the drawing room of Bute House in Edinburgh, was found abandoned in a street in northern Germany in 1945 by English decorator Felix Harbord.
It was acquired as part of Bute House when the residence was taken over by the National Trust for Scotland in 1999.
But its origins have now been called into question, after a report by the Holocaust research organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Centre suggested it may have been “looted from the British collecting point at Schloss Celle, or it may be an object looted from legitimate German ownership”.
