Restitution of Rococo cabinet and needlework board belonging to Klara Berliner

In March 2014, the City of Hanover’s De­part­ment of Cul­ture sub­mit­ted a re­port on the Lost Art Database re­gard­ing a valu­able Ro­co­co cab­i­net held by the Mu­se­um Au­gust Kest­ner, an item of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Na­tion­al So­cial­ist per­se­cu­tion from the es­tate of Jew­ish in­dus­tri­al­ist’s daugh­ter Klara Berlin­er, in or­der to find the right­ful heirs. Suc­cess was not forth­com­ing, how­ev­er. It was not un­til the mu­nic­i­pal de­part­ment of prove­nance re­search at the Museen für Kul­turgeschichte (Mu­se­ums of Cul­tur­al His­to­ry) con­duct­ed re­search that it was pos­si­ble to lo­cate Klara Berlin­er’s heirs and the Man­fred Berlin­er Trust in Berke­ley, which ad­min­is­ters the heirs’ fi­nan­cial and le­gal af­fairs.

Three del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing the com­mu­ni­ty of heirs and the MBT trav­elled from Cal­i­for­nia to Hanover to meet the May­or of Hanover Be­lit On­ay and sign an agree­ment in ac­cor­dance with the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples re­gard­ing the fu­ture use of the Ro­co­co cab­i­net and al­so an un­fin­ished piece of needle­work from the His­torisches Mu­se­um (Mu­se­um of His­to­ry), which was al­so seized from Klara Berlin­er as a re­sult of Na­tion­al So­cial­ist per­se­cu­tion.

Af­ter the resti­tu­tion event, a small ex­hi­bi­tion was held in the lec­ture hall show­ing the two resti­tut­ed items, a gramo­phone record of Klara Berlin­er's cousin Hans Berlin­er from her fa­ther’s fac­to­ry and a book by her un­cle Her­mann Berlin­er.
Klara Berlin­er was the daugh­ter of in­dus­tri­al­ist Joseph Berlin­er, born in 1858, and his wife Therese Wild (1864-1934). Joseph Berlin­er, broth­er of the fa­mous in­ven­tor Emil Berlin­er (1851-1929), found­ed the first tele­phone fac­to­ry in Eu­rope and the first record fac­to­ry on Eu­ro­pean soil, Deutsche Gram­mophon GmbH in Hanover. Af­ter her fa­ther’s death in May 1938, Klara Berlin­er be­came his sole heir. In March 1943, she was forced to sign a so-called Heimeinkaufsver­trag – a con­tract im­posed on Jew­ish cit­i­zens pri­or to de­por­ta­tion – by which she was ex­pro­pri­at­ed of all her pos­ses­sions. She was then de­port­ed to There­sien­stadt, where she died of pneu­mo­nia in De­cem­ber of the same year.