Nazi-looted cultural property

Federal Arts Administration returns Nazi-looted work of art

The Federal Arts Administration (Kunstverwaltung des Bundes, KVdB) has restituted the painting Bildnis eines jungen Mannes mit Schreibgerät (‘Portrait of a Young Man with Writing Utensil’), attributed to Italian artist Jacopino del Conte. The work of art was returned to the heirs of Ilse Hesselberger, who suffered persecution as a Jew under the National Socialist regime and was later murdered.

Ilse Hes­sel­berg­er ac­quired the paint­ing in 1927. Prove­nance re­search sug­gests it is high­ly prob­a­bly that she was forced to sell the paint­ing in 1937 or 1938 as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion in con­nec­tion with the sys­tem­at­ic dis­en­fran­chise­ment per­pe­trat­ed un­der the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist tyran­ny. Ilse Hes­sel­berg­er was de­port­ed to Kau­nas in Lithua­nia by the Nazi regime on 20 Novem­ber 1941 and mur­dered there five days af­ter her ar­rival. In 1941, the work was pur­chased by the Re­ich Chan­cellery for the “Führermu­se­um” planned by Hitler in Linz. Ac­cord­ing to Hitler's plan, Linz was to be­come a cul­tur­al metropo­lis with a mon­u­men­tal Nazi art com­plex. Un­der the so-called Spe­cial Com­mis­sion Linz, the Nazi regime col­lect­ed thou­sands of ex­hibits for this mu­se­um by means of con­fis­ca­tions and pur­chas­es.

Af­ter the end of the Sec­ond World War, the Al­lies took pos­ses­sion of the art col­lec­tion, moved it to the Mu­nich Cen­tral Col­lect­ing Point and be­gan resti­tu­tion of the works. The works of art for which no ori­gin could be de­ter­mined or no ben­e­fi­cia­ries could be found were lat­er ini­tial­ly trans­ferred to the Bavar­i­an state pre­mier. The hold­ings that re­main af­ter fur­ther resti­tu­tions are now ad­min­is­tered by the KVdB.