Funding for provenance research regarding Wartime Losses

Funding for research into cultural property displaced as a result of war

Regardless of the legal situation in Germany or abroad, 80 years after the end of the Second World War there is still a need to address the displacement of cultural property as a result of war. With this in mind, the Foundation also offers advisory services and support in the event of the discovery of wartime losses in accordance with its Foundation statutes (§ 2(2)).

The Foundation supports basic research projects in this area. Eligible subjects are those that involve research into the displacement of cultural property as a result of war, covering the historical events, the structures and methods, the authorities and institutions involved, the actors and victims, and the provenance and loss of the items concerned. For this purpose, the German Lost Art Foundation collaborates with academic partners who are able offer special expertise in dealing with a gap in research, who have already carried out preliminary work on the subject, who dispose of special sources or who are particularly well qualified to undertake the research task. The two partners then jointly develop a project that covers an area within the scope of the subject where research is required and which has been clearly defined in advance.

This type of collaborative project in basic research is therefore not yet a provenance research project or an in-depth inventory assessment as such. Instead, such pilot projects are intended to establish the structures of organised displacements of cultural property as a result of the Second World War (methods, actors, people involved, groups of objects, goals), provide overviews and case studies, establish the archive situation (scope, locations, possibilities/difficulties involved in research) and leverage key documents.

The contact partner for all questions relating to possible project funding for basic research into cultural property displaced as a result of the war is the Department for Cultural Property Losses in Europe in the 20th Century.

Results

For details of research collaborations on the subject of wartime losses that have been launched to date, see the German Lost Art Foundation’s Project Finder. The object-based documentation of results in this subject area is mainly carried out via the Lost Art Database. In addition to this, the status of the German Lost Art Foundation’s expertise regarding the historical context of displacements and losses is gradually being expanded through the research database Proveana.