Nazi-looted cultural property
Colonial contexts
Wartime losses
Soviet zone / GDR

Founders of the Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung receive Federal Cross of Merit

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion warm­ly con­grat­u­lates the found­ing mem­bers of the Ar­beit­skreis Prove­nien­z­forschung e.V. (Prove­nance Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion) on be­ing award­ed the Fed­er­al Cross of Mer­it on Rib­bon (Bun­desver­di­en­stkreuz am Bande). As was an­nounced last week, Ute Haug, Kat­ja Ter­lau and Ilse von Zur Mühlen will re­ceive the award in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vices to prove­nance re­search.

Gilbert Lupfer, Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion:

“Af­ter Lau­rie A. Stein, a prove­nance re­searcher from the USA, was award­ed the Fed­er­al Cross of Mer­it in March 2020, I’m de­light­ed that the oth­er founders of the Prove­nance Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion are now al­so re­ceiv­ing this pres­ti­gious award. As well as rec­og­niz­ing the per­son­al com­mit­ment demon­strat­ed by these es­teemed col­leagues, it al­so re­flects an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of prove­nance re­search in Ger­many as a whole.”

The ini­tial­ly in­for­mal “Ar­beit­skreis Prove­nien­z­forschung” (Prove­nance Re­search Work­ing Group) was found­ed in 2000: it con­tribut­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of prove­nance re­searchers as well as pro­fes­sion­al di­a­logue and net­work­ing at both the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. The Work­ing Group ini­tial­ly op­er­at­ed as an open net­work of ex­perts, af­ter which the non-prof­it Prove­nance Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion was found­ed in 2014.

The Work­ing Group ini­tial­ly fo­cused its re­search on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion, but the As­so­ci­a­tion has be­come in­volved in oth­er fields of ac­tiv­i­ty, such as in­ves­ti­gat­ing cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed in the So­vi­et oc­cu­pa­tion zone and the GDR, as well as prove­nance re­search in­to pub­lic and pri­vate col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts.