Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and Bavarian State Painting Collections commemorate victims of Nazi art looting

It tells the sto­ry of Jew­ish peo­ple who were once high­ly in­flu­en­tial fig­ures in the cul­tur­al life of Ger­many but were sub­se­quent­ly os­tracised, dis­en­fran­chised, per­se­cut­ed, robbed and mur­dered by the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists. As such, the two in­sti­tu­tions are no longer fo­cus­ing sole­ly on works be­ing resti­tut­ed as a re­sult of prove­nance re­search but on the nu­mer­ous bi­ogra­phies of the art col­lec­tors to whom the pieces once be­longed, some of whom are un­known. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies Bay­erisch­er Rund­funk and Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg, these in­di­vid­u­als are to be memo­ri­alised on film. A sep­a­rate project web­site is be­ing cre­at­ed as a memo­ri­al mul­ti­me­dia me­dia li­brary.

At the launch event for the project at the Bode Mu­se­um, Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture Clau­dia Roth said: “Be­hind ev­ery stolen or ex­pro­pri­at­ed work of art is the sto­ry of some­body’s life and the in­jus­tice they suf­fered. Trac­ing these bi­ogra­phies be­hind the loot­ed works of art and il­lu­mi­nat­ing the di­ver­si­ty of Jew­ish life in Ger­man so­ci­ety be­fore 1933 pro­vides us with a key source of re­mem­brance for the fu­ture, which is why it re­mains an im­por­tant task for so­ci­ety as a whole. A ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to this en­deav­our is made by the project Kun­st, Raub und Rück­gabe [Art, Loot­ing and Resti­tu­tion], be­ing pur­sued by the SPK and the Bavar­i­an State Paint­ing Col­lec­tions, to­geth­er with Bay­erisch­er Rund­funk and Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg. The project stands for our on­go­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly re-ap­praise Nazi art loot­ing and the crimes com­mit­ted against hu­man­i­ty in con­nec­tion with the Shoah, as we strive to keep the mem­o­ry alive and en­sure that ev­ery­one can share in it.”

The me­dia li­brary will go on­line in ear­ly sum­mer 2023 with the first five life his­to­ries: these will be told in mul­ti­me­dia form through texts, im­ages, videos, maps and au­dio el­e­ments, suc­ces­sive­ly sup­ple­ment­ed by fur­ther life his­to­ries in the fur­ther course of the project. 30 per­son­al­i­ties are to be pre­sent­ed in the me­dia li­brary by the end of 2024.

The sto­ry of Friedrich Gutts­mann is one ex­am­ple: Gutts­mann (1888-1959) was a mer­chant and sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Due to his Jew­ish de­scent, he lost his em­ploy­ment and the fam­i­ly apart­ment in Berlin af­ter 1933, and he was then forced to sell his fur­ni­ture and art ob­jects due to the re­sult­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship. Gutts­mann sur­vived the Nazi era part­ly be­cause of his “priv­i­leged mixed mar­riage” to the Protes­tant Hen­ri­ette Franziska. His sons were able to leave Ger­many for Swe­den in 1939. Friedrich Gutts­mann fol­lowed with his wife in 1948. In 2019, the SPK resti­tut­ed a draw­ing from his es­tate to his de­scen­dants.