In-depth indexing of business and artist correspondence (1917–1949) in the Ferdinand Möller archive

The estate of the gallery owner Ferdinand Möller (18821956) contains extensive material on the development of the art trade in the first half of the 20th century. Beginning in 1917 in Wroclaw, then in Berlin and Potsdam, and finally from 1951 to 1956 in Cologne, Möller was an important supporter of the BRÜCKE artists and German Modernism. Due to his far-reaching connections to collectors and brokers in Germany and abroad, he became involved after 1937 in the Nazi utilization of those artworks that had been confiscated earlier from museums and public collections in Germany as degenerate. Möller ran his gallery in Berlin until November 1943 before moving back to Zermützel near Neuruppin. From there, he then went to Cologne in 1949.

In 1984, Angelika Fessler-Möller made a donation to the Berlinische Galerie of correspondence, catalogs and press reports from the estate of her fathers gallery. These mostly relate to his work up until the point he relocated to Cologne. This material has been incorporated into the artist archive at the Berlinische Galerie as the Ferdinand Möller archive. The surviving records from the estate amount to one of the most abundant collections of written materials available in Germany relating to a gallery of contemporary art operating in the first half of the 20th century. They contain a wide variety of information on masterpieces that were exhibited, offered and sold at the gallery from 1933 onward.

To clarify the question of which of these masterpieces ended up on the market as a result of Nazi persecution, preparations were made for recording all the masterpieces named in the holdings in a database from 2006 onward. The aim was to be able to access information on when and in what context a work was mentioned, who was dealing with it and what path the work had taken in connection with Ferdinand Möller. This scientific in-depth indexing of the archive was one of the first long-term projects funded by the Bureau. It ran from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010.

At the end of a second 12-month funding phase from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, the project database contained a total of 7,829 artwork data records with 13,217 provenance links to 578 historic addresses.

Information on individual masterpieces is available in the artist archives of the Berlinische Galerie.

(c) Berlinische Galerie