Sources from the art dealership Julius Böhler now accessible online via the database Böhler re:search

The database pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18,300 works of art trad­ed by Böh­ler be­tween 1903 and 1948 as well as on the near­ly 9,900 ac­tors in­volved in these trans­ac­tions. Since Böh­ler was al­so ac­tive dur­ing the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist era, this source ma­te­ri­al is of out­stand­ing im­por­tance in the search for cul­tur­al ob­jects seized as a re­sult of Na­tion­al So­cial­ist per­se­cu­tion.

With the sup­port of the Ger­man Re­search Foun­da­tion (DFG), the Zen­tralin­sti­tut für Kun­st­geschichte (ZI – Cen­tral In­sti­tute of Art His­to­ry) in Mu­nich ac­quired the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 ob­ject in­dex cards of the Julius Böh­ler art deal­er­ship in 2015, along with some 8,000 pho­to fold­ers and the com­pa­ny’s cus­tomer in­dex of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,800 cards. In ad­di­tion to in­for­ma­tion on the trad­ed ob­jects, the in­dex cards con­tain the names of pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent own­ers, pur­chase and sale prices, as well as in­for­ma­tion on ap­praisals and pre­vi­ous prove­nances. As such, they not on­ly pro­vide im­por­tant back­ground in­for­ma­tion on the ac­tors, net­works and trad­ing prac­tices of the art mar­ket in the 20th cen­tu­ry, they are al­so a source of ev­i­dence of the his­tor­i­cal own­er­ship of the works trad­ed.

Since 2017, the ma­te­ri­al has un­der­gone schol­ar­ly in­ves­ti­ga­tion at the ZI, fi­nanced by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foun­da­tion, and since 2019, with fund­ing from the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, it has been made ac­ces­si­ble in a database based on the open-source sys­tem Wis­s­KI (Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion In­fras­truc­ture). Böh­ler re:search con­tains the tran­scribed, stan­dard­ised and linked in­for­ma­tion on ob­jects, ac­tors and trans­ac­tions in ad­di­tion to the dig­i­tal copies of the in­dex cards and pho­to fold­ers cre­at­ed up un­til 1948. With the re­lease of the ap­prox. five mil­lion da­ta records, mu­se­ums, prove­nance re­searchers, the art trade and col­lec­tors, as well as the de­scen­dants of per­se­cut­ed and ex­pro­pri­at­ed col­lec­tors world­wide, will be able to in­de­pen­dent­ly re­search the own­er­ship of ob­jects trad­ed by Böh­ler, re­con­struct col­lec­tions and clar­i­fy prove­nance.

The Julius Böh­ler art deal­er­ship in Mu­nich was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in 1880. In the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry in par­tic­u­lar, the com­pa­ny was ac­tive in Mu­nich, New York, Lucerne and Berlin: with its in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion it was con­sid­ered one of the most im­por­tant art deal­er­ships in the Ger­man-speak­ing world.

Ac­cess to the database: http://boehler.zikg.eu
To the project page: https://www.zikg.eu/forschung/pro­jek­te/pro­jek­te-zi/kun­sthand­lung-julius-boehler
In the blog ZI Spot­light, the project team pro­vides in­sights in­to on­go­ing re­search at ir­reg­u­lar in­ter­vals: https://www.zis­pot­light.de/tag/julius-boehler