German Lost Art Foundation supports the SKD project on cultural property losses during the GDR era

There is ev­i­dence that con­nec­tions ex­ist­ed be­tween the SKD and for­eign trade com­pa­nies in the GDR from 1968. In the first known case, mu­se­um hold­ings were put up for sale to fi­nance the ac­qui­si­tion of the trip­tych Der Krieg (“The War”) by Ot­to Dix. In the years that fol­lowed, sev­er­al in­struc­tions were re­ceived from the state to re­move works of art from the mu­se­um hold­ings in or­der to pro­cure for­eign cur­ren­cy. The ori­gin of these works – whether they be­longed to the mu­se­um’s own col­lec­tion or were ac­quired through be­quests, de­posits or ex­pro­pri­a­tion – was ir­rel­e­vant.

The GDR for­eign trade com­pa­ny Kun­st und An­tiq­ui­täten GmbH (KuA) was found­ed in 1973 in or­der to gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change from the ex­port of works of art, an­tiques and oth­er goods. By tak­ing over both pri­vate and state-owned art deal­er­ships, KuA gained a monopoly on the ex­port and im­port of an­tiques, art and cul­tur­al sec­ond-hand goods. With the help of the Min­istry for State Se­cu­ri­ty (MfS), the com­pa­ny en­sured that col­lec­tors and an­tique deal­ers were de­lib­er­ate­ly crim­i­nalised, ar­rest­ed, sen­tenced and ex­pro­pri­at­ed so that their col­lec­tions could be used for ex­port pur­pos­es. Mu­se­ums were put un­der pres­sure to dis­card hold­ings.

KuA, which ex­ist­ed un­til 1990, op­er­at­ed a large ware­house in Müh­len­beck near Berlin. In the course of the liq­ui­da­tion of the ware­house, a large num­ber of art­works of dif­fer­ing prove­nance were again trans­ferred to the SKD’s Kun­st­gewerbe­mu­se­um (Mu­se­um of Dec­o­ra­tive Arts) hold­ings, 211 of which bear the note of ori­gin Au­flö­sung An­tiq­ui­täten GmbH Müh­len­beck, 1990, Preis... (“Liq­ui­da­tion of An­tiq­ui­täten GmbH Müh­len­beck, 1990, Price ...”).

In view of this back­ground, the ba­sic re­search project will seek to de­ter­mine the time frame of the in­flu­ence ex­ert­ed on the SKD’s hold­ings, con­duct re­search in­to the rel­e­vant ac­tors and the op­tions avail­able to them, and shed light on the forms of co­op­er­a­tion with GDR for­eign trade com­pa­nies as well as the un­der­ly­ing de­ci­sion-mak­ing pro­cess­es. The project is based on the records in var­i­ous archives and fo­cus­es on two col­lec­tions in par­tic­u­lar: those of the Kun­st­gewerbe­mu­se­um and of the Kupfer­stich-Kabi­nett (Mu­se­um of Prints and Draw­ings).
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