Joint project to commemorate the fate of Jewish people by the SPK and the Bavarian State Painting Collections

In a project last­ing three years, a me­dia li­brary is to be cre­at­ed ded­i­cat­ed to peo­ple of Jew­ish ori­gin who were art col­lec­tors, pa­trons of the arts or cit­i­zen art col­lec­tors. This archive of for­got­ten lives is based on prove­nance re­search con­duct­ed by the two in­sti­tu­tions. In ad­di­tion to the me­dia li­brary, spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal me­di­a­tion for­mats are be­ing de­vel­oped for teenagers and young adults. The project is fund­ed by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia and the me­dia part­ners are Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg and Bay­erisch­er Rund­funk.

The project will shed light on the di­ver­si­ty of Jew­ish bi­ogra­phies in Ger­man so­ci­ety pri­or to 1933. In telling the sto­ries of these in­di­vid­u­al lives, the aim is to counter the kind of stereo­types that con­tin­ue to per­sist to this day. As Her­mann Parzinger, Pres­i­dent of the SPK, ex­plains: “Jew­ish col­lec­tors have shaped this coun­try, spon­sor­ing artists and giv­ing mu­se­ums their dis­tinc­tive rep­u­ta­tion. Many of them be­came vic­tims of the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists and had their col­lec­tions loot­ed. In our re­search, we keep com­ing across names that no one knows any more, but that were once syn­ony­mous with ma­jor col­lec­tions, at­ti­tudes and a life ded­i­cat­ed to art.” Parzinger hopes that by re­count­ing the life sto­ries of these in­di­vid­u­als it will be pos­si­ble to raise aware­ness of their im­por­tance once again.

The project aims to con­vey to a broad pub­lic – es­pe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion – the im­por­tance of prove­nance re­search be­yond ver­i­fy­ing the ori­gins of spe­cif­ic works of art.
The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion will be ac­tive­ly sup­port­ing this project.