Nazi-looted cultural property

Museum of City History Leipzig issues publication on the status quo of its provenance research

The Mu­se­um of City His­to­ry Leipzig presents the re­sults of its prove­nance re­search on Nazi-loot­ed art in the pub­li­ca­tion Vergessene Rück(an)sicht­en (“For­got­ten ret­ro­spec­tives”). In the project fund­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion from 2019 to 2022, the mu­se­um con­duct­ed re­search in­to ac­qui­si­tions made be­tween 1933 and 1945, ex­am­in­ing a to­tal of 323 works of art for pos­si­ble un­law­ful ac­qui­si­tion. From De­cem­ber 2022, a new project prove­nance re­search will fo­cus on oth­er se­lect­ed hold­ings from this pe­ri­od.

In its project Prove­nien­zrecherchen (“Prove­nance Re­search”) car­ried out in the Art and Crafts Col­lec­tion of the Mu­se­um of City His­to­ry Leipzig and fo­cus­ing on ac­qui­si­tions be­tween 1933 and 1945, the mu­se­um in­ves­ti­gat­ed the bi­ogra­phies of the con­signors, the Leipzig art trad­ing net­works and re­la­tions with the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties. In ad­di­tion, items ac­quired dur­ing the pe­ri­od through do­na­tions, pur­chas­es at auc­tions, trans­fers and barter trans­ac­tions were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and proac­tive­ly scru­ti­nised in or­der to iden­ti­fy cul­tur­al ob­jects seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. The lat­ter was clear­ly de­ter­mined in the case of sev­en items. All cas­es of ques­tion­able prove­nance can be viewed pub­licly in the mu­se­um col­lec­tion database and in the Lost Art Database.

The pub­li­ca­tion Vergessene Rück(an)sicht­en (“For­got­ten ret­ro­spec­tives”) presents the his­to­ry of the mu­se­um and an overview of ex­hi­bi­tions held be­tween 1933 and 1940. It al­so in­cludes a pre­sen­ta­tion of cer­tain ac­qui­si­tions and se­lect­ed as­pects of re­search. Oth­er ar­ti­cles deal with pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als’ pas­sion for col­lect­ing, pre­vi­ous ex­hi­bi­tions as a valu­able source of prove­nance re­search and the clar­i­fi­ca­tion of a ques­tion­able prove­nance in the mu­se­um li­brary. By way of an ex­am­ple, the pub­li­ca­tion al­so in­cludes an ac­count of the 2006 resti­tu­tion of the Karl Rudolf Bromme col­lec­tion, which in­cludes badges, books, games and ob­jects of ev­ery­day cul­ture. Sys­tem­at­ic prove­nance re­search and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of ac­qui­si­tions that may po­ten­tial­ly be linked to cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion will be con­tin­ued in an­oth­er re­search project start­ing in De­cem­ber 2022, which will again be fund­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion.

Vergessene Rück(an)sicht­en. Prove­nien­z­forschung am Stadt­geschichtlichen Mu­se­um Leipzig, edit­ed by Lina Frubrich and Anselm Hartinger on be­half of the Mu­se­um of City His­to­ry Leipzig, is avail­able from the Mu­se­um of City His­to­ry Leipzig.