The Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has restituted Rudolf von Alt’s work “Häuser in Teplitz”

Thanks to a project ini­ti­at­ed by the Ar­beitsstelle für Prove­nien­z­forschung in Berlin (Bu­reau for Prove­nance Re­search, known to­day as: Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, Magde­burg), which was car­ried out by the mu­se­um to­geth­er with the Cen­tral In­sti­tute for Art His­to­ry, the prove­nance his­to­ry of the wa­ter­col­or was able to be clar­i­fied in all re­spects.

As ear­ly as 2015, the State Col­lec­tion “Staatliche Graphis­che Samm­lung” in Mu­nich had pre­sent­ed the work and its his­to­ry in the ex­hi­bi­tion en­ti­tled “Rudolf von Alt …ge­nial, leb­haft, natür­lich und wahr. Der Münch­n­er Be­stand und seine Prove­nienz” at the Mu­nich’s Pinakothek der Mod­erne. How­ev­er, at­tempts to lo­cate the heirs of the Vi­en­nese col­lec­tor Richard Stein were un­suc­cess­ful at the time. Then, in 2018, a Pots­dam law firm con­tact­ed the Staatliche Samm­lung on be­half of the heirs. There­upon, on­ly the in­her­i­tance rights had to be clar­i­fied. Fol­low­ing ini­tial de­lays caused by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, resti­tu­tion was now able to take place.

The wa­ter­col­or en­ti­tled “Häus­er in Teplitz” from the Os­car Kolm col­lec­tion was prob­a­bly ac­quired by Richard Stein in 1937. On the back of the sheet is the name Richard Stein in pen­cil and the fam­i­ly’s ad­dress in Vi­en­na at the time. In this re­spect, there could be no doubt as to the fam­i­ly’s orig­i­nal own­er­ship. The cir­cum­stances of the loss are com­pre­hen­sive­ly pre­sent­ed by Richard Stein in his state­ments in the con­text of the resti­tu­tion pro­ceed­ings in Aus­tria. Richard Stein stat­ed that Ms. Al­mas-Di­et­rich, an art deal­er from Mu­nich, had vis­it­ed him at the end of April 1938 – about two weeks af­ter the Ger­man troops had en­tered Aus­tria. She had in­formed him that his paint­ings were to be con­fis­cat­ed. He could avert the seizure through a sale. In his 1956 and 1958 tes­ti­mo­ny, Stein lists the works sold to Al­mas-Di­et­rich. Among them are three works by Rudolf von Alt, in­clud­ing one en­ti­tled “Teplitz”. The pur­chase price of­fered by Al­mas-Di­et­rich was dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the ac­tu­al val­ue of the paint­ings. Rather, it must be as­sumed that the sale was made sole­ly on the ba­sis of Al­mas-Di­et­rich’s pre­tend­ed predica­ment. Resti­tu­tion could not be made in the en­su­ing pro­ceed­ings be­cause the cur­rent lo­ca­tion of the work was un­known to the Vi­en­nese au­thor­i­ties.

At the end of the war, the work demon­stra­bly formed part of the Mar­tin Bor­mann col­lec­tion. The “Re­ich­sleit­er” of the NS­DAP, Mar­tin Bor­mann (1900-1945) had an ex­ten­sive col­lec­tion of Rudolf von Alt’s works com­piled from around 1938. He him­self prob­a­bly wished to ap­pear with­in the cir­cle of NS­DAP celebri­ties (along­side Her­mann Göring and Adolf Hitler) as an art col­lec­tor. He fo­cused on an artist he knew Adolf Hitler held in the high­est es­teem. In the pro­cess, Ms. Al­mas-Di­et­rich was demon­stra­bly ac­tive as a pur­chas­er for him. The wa­ter­col­or must have been ac­quired for his col­lec­tion be­tween 1938 and 1944. The ex­act cir­cum­stances of the ac­qui­si­tion can no longer be clar­i­fied. The work was trans­ferred from the Bor­mann Col­lec­tion to the Cen­tral Col­lect­ing Point in 1946. The State Col­lec­tion re­ceived the wa­ter­col­or in 1959 as a trans­fer from state own­er­ship.