Nazi-looted property in Rhineland-Palatinate museums?

The Museumsverband Rheinland-Pfalz e. V. (Rhineland-Palatinate museum association) has for the first time begun carrying out an examination of the collections held in small and medium-sized museums in Rhineland-Palatinate to check for items of Nazi-looted property. Checks have been run for cultural assets confiscated as a result of persecution since mid-November at the following museums, in this order: the Roentgen Museum in Neuwied, Bad Dürkheim municipal museum, the Eifelmuseum in Mayen and the Erkenbert Museum in Frankenthal (Palatinate).

The first check project is being financed by the German Lost Art Foundation over a period of six months with a maximum funding amount of EUR 40,000, so no costs will be incurred to the museums themselves. The project is being organised and coordinated by the Rhineland-Palatinate museum association. A state coordination centre for provenance research has been set up for this purpose which is being funded by the Ministry for Family Affairs, Women, Culture and Integration for two years:

the aim here is to sensitise Rhineland-Palatinate museums to the issue of the provenance of Nazi-looted property. While there is an urgent need to critically examine the history of collections, the museums often lack the human and financial resources to undertake an independent analysis of possible contexts of injustice in their collections.

The four museums in Rhineland-Palatinate share a long history of collecting dating back to the 19th or early 20th century. There are grounds for suspicion in all of them: while a collection of Judaica of unknown provenance is to be analysed at the Eifelmuseum Mayen, the Roentgen Museum Neuwied is focussing on an important item of furniture by cabinetmaker Georg Rudolph Gambs. The Erkenbert Museum in Frankenthal has already submitted an application for restitution, and there is a chance that other objects in the collection were also acquired in a context of Nazi injustice. Meanwhile there are two suspected instances of injustice at the municipal museum in Bad Dürkheim which are to be investigated in the course of the project.

Further details: Museumsverband RLP

To the project Erstcheck zu unrechtmäßig entzogenen Sammlungsgegenständen am Stadtmuseum Bad Dürkheim, dem Erkenbert-Museum Frankenthal, dem Eifel-Museum Mayen und dem Roentgen-Museum Neuwied [“First check on unlawfully confiscated collection items at Bad Dürkheim municipal museum, the Erkenbert Museum in Frankenthal, the Eifelmuseum in Mayen and the Roentgen Museum in Neuwied”]