Poster collection stolen by Nazis is returned to family after 74 years

More than 4,000 art posters are to be returned to their owner's family more than 74 years after they were looted by the Nazi regime.

The Gestapo seized the valuable collection of artworks from the Berlin home of the Jewish dentist Hans Sachs in 1938.

On Friday his son Peter, a retired pilot, called the restitution a "final recognition" of what his father had lost. "I can't describe what this means to me," he said in a statement. "It feels like vindication for my father, a final recognition of the life he lost and never got back."

The 4,259 posters have an estimated value of more than €4.5m (£3.7m).

The country's highest court ruled that the German History Museum, which had been in possession of the collection since 1966, had to return them to the family, ending a legal battle which began in 2007.

Peter Sachs first found out about the collection in 2005 and approached the museum, the government and the state of Berlin requesting its return in 2007. He turned to the court after his claim was rejected.

The court in Karlsruhe ruled that an original owner had the right to artworks if they were impounded by the Nazis even if someone else subsequently believed they were the rightful owners.

The German government fears the ruling will open the floodgates to similar lawsuits from those who have accepted compensation for lost artworks. The Sachs ruling in effect allows heirs to claim anew for the restitution of works.

The museum said in a statement it accepted the ruling, but implied that it feared the wider consequences.

Hans Sachs began collecting posters as a schoolboy. He published a magazine on poster art, founded a poster society and was considered an authority on the subject. His collection, which totalled 12,500 posters and included works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Lucian Bernhard and Jules Chéret, was the biggest in the world at the time it was seized by the Gestapo, who said Joseph Goebbels wanted it for a wing of a museum which would focus on "corporate" art.

Sachs was arrested on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His wife managed to secure his release and together with their 14-month-old son, Peter, they escaped to the United States.

Proceeds from some Toulouse-Lautrec posters he smuggled in his luggage helped feed the family in the early days.

In 1961, assuming the collection had been lost, he accepted 225,000 deutschmarks in compensation from the West German government, but said nothing could compensate for his emotional loss which "won't heal for the rest of my life". Peter Sachs said he was willing to return the money in return for the posters.