Establishment of the Occupation Military Government-United States (OMGUS)

The Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone, OMGUS, was established in October 1945 to administer the U.S. occupation zone of Germany. In addition to its other postwar duties, OMGUS took control of all looted art pieces within its German and Berlin zones and returned identifiable objects to the governments of the countries from which they had been stolen. OMGUS attempted to return those pieces not identifiable to their possible country of origin, and items without any claims were turned over to Jewish successor organizations for restitution. The U.S. Allied Commission for Austria section of OMGUS (USACA) was the U.S. representative in Austria, which also restituted confiscated works. Due to the huge amount of cultural and religious objects, the U.S. Army consolidated the stolen objects into four central collecting points: Munich, Wiesbaden, Marburg (May 1946-June 1946; its content was subsequently distributed among the other three collecting points), and Offenbach. The remaining collecting points were assigned “specialties” in order to expedite restitution efforts: Munich contained materials needing restitution to foreign countries and to the Bavarian State Museums; Wiesbaden held German-owned materials from the former Prussian State Museum and Städel Institute of Frankfurt; and the Offenbach Archival Depot housed Jewish manuscripts, books, and archives. At their height, Munich held more than one million individual objects; Wiesbaden held more than 700,000 objects.