Germany demands return of rare book Found in St. Louis

Lee Hadden says:

Provenance
One of the problems of establishing ownership is the record of the Staatsgaelrie library. Were the accession books preserved in the vault as well as the books? Many books were “donated” as “gifts” to Nazi officials from German libraries and museums, which were looted by the Nazis just as they were in the occupied countries. If these became part of a Nazi military officer’s collection, they may have been justifiably taken by US officials, in which case the Doty item may have been a theft from the US Government, rather than from the Staatsgalerie.
Boris Yeltsin nationalized any remaining German owned materials in Russia in 1998, saying that any Russian materials remaining in Germany can stay there, and any German materials in Russia can stay there. Arguments over ownership when so many people are dead and the records destroyed are just too complex. Certainly any statute of limitations of fifty years make the provenance of the item murky, and with the death of Doty, any infomration on how it came into his possession (legally or illegaly) is argumentative. Did the Staatsgalerie give him the book in recognition for his help in resotiring the collection? Fifty years later, it is hard to say what happened. But the Staatsgalerie would have to have exceptional records showing the ownership of the item from whenever they first acquired it and from 1934 through 1945 to convince me, and even then, I would probably side with Shene. The waters are just too murky for anyone to claim ownership from a collection that was bombed, buried, discovered and restored during war and looting from their own government, not to mention occuping forces (Stutgart was captured by the Frnech, and occupied by African forces as well as the other Allied forces)