Federal Government restitutes Nazi-looted art from the Arthur and Eugen Goldschmidt Collection

The Federal Art Administration has returned the painting The Mühlental near Amalfi by Carl Blechen to Edgar Moor (1912-1994), the rightful recipient of the restitution. The work dates back to around 1830 after the artist travelled to Italy. It is based on a nature study from Blechen’s Amalfi sketchbook. Until 1941/42, the painting was owned by Edgar Moor, nephew and heir to the brothers Arthur and Eugen Goldschmidt (1882-1938 and 1878-1938) from Berlin. Provenance research carried out by the Federal Art Administration and the OFP project funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media at Brandenburg State Archives revealed that the National Socialist state almost certainly confiscated the painting from Edgar Moor in November 1942 based on the “11th Decree to the Reich Citizenship Act”. The project involves digitisation and analysis of the files of the former “Asset Recovery Office” under the Chief Finance President (OFP) Berlin-Brandenburg.

The brothers Arthur and Eugen Goldschmidt owned an extensive art collection that included paintings, prints, sculptures and artefacts. Due to their Jewish origins they were subjected to anti-Semitic persecution under National Socialist rule, finally taking their own lives in the wake of the November pogroms in 1938. Emigrating from Berlin to Johannesburg in the same year, their nephew and heir Edgar Moor, also of Jewish origin, subsequently travelled on to the United States. The art collection remained in his uncles’ Berlin apartment and was confiscated by the Gestapo in July 1942. In September 1944, Blechen’s painting then most likely ended up in the collection assembled under Hitler’s Sonderauftrag Linz, an organisation tasked with collecting works of art during the Second World War, through the “Asset Recovery Office” run by the Chief Finance President of Berlin-Brandenburg and Berlin art dealer Hans W. Lange.

The painting was then stored in the so-called Führerbau in Munich, from where it was presumably stolen at the end of April 1945. The Munich criminal investigation department handed the work over to the Central Collecting Point (CCP) in Munich in 1946, where it was assigned the inventory number 20037. Most recently it was on loan from the Federal Government to the Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation in Cottbus.

The detailed results of the provenance research carried out on the painting The Mühlental near Amalfi by Carl Blechen (c. 1830. Oil on canvas, 74 x 99 cm, Munich no.: 20037; Linz no.: 3904) are published in the Federal Government’s provenance database: https://kunstverwaltung.bund.de/