Grütters: We will miss her voice

As chair­wom­an of the “Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion”, which lat­er bore her name, she suc­ceed­ed in build­ing trust in our coun­try when it came to re­solv­ing dif­fi­cult mat­ters of resti­tu­tion.

Jut­ta Lim­bach had head­ed the “Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion on the re­turn of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly Jew­ish prop­er­ty” since 2003. Ac­cord­ing to State Min­is­ter of Cul­tur­al Af­fairs Moni­ka Grüt­ters, Lim­bach de­vot­ed her­self to this sen­si­tive and com­plex task “with great diplo­mat­ic fi­nesse, tact and par­tic­u­lar em­pa­thy.” As chair­wom­an of the Com­mis­sion, she was able to build con­fi­dence in our coun­try in the eyes of the en­tire world in deal­ing with the com­plex is­sues of resti­tu­tion.

Grüt­ters con­tin­ued by say­ing: “In her own way, she was con­vinc­ing and very res­o­lute, she al­ways strived to achieve con­sen­sus through un­der­stand­ing when pol­i­tics had some­times reached its lim­its. And I be­lieve that it was this char­ac­ter and this diplo­mat­ic skill that made her such a trust­wor­thy chair­per­son of the Com­mis­sion. Jut­ta Lim­bach es­pe­cial­ly de­serves to be re­mem­bered as pres­i­dent of the Goethe-In­sti­tut, in which po­si­tion she strong­ly pro­mot­ed cul­tur­al ed­u­ca­tion and the cul­ti­va­tion of the Ger­man lan­guage. Ger­many will sore­ly miss her voice.”