German Lost Art Foundation approves approximately 2.1 million euros for 20 provenance research projects in the area of “Nazi-looted art” in the second round of funding in 2021

The Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Magde­burg-based foun­da­tion ap­proved ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.1 mil­lion eu­ros for prove­nance re­search at mu­se­ums, li­braries, aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions and for four pri­vate ap­pli­cants.

In the sec­ond round of fund­ing this year, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tions for 20 re­search projects in the field of “Nazi-loot­ed art”. On the rec­om­men­da­tion of its Fund­ing Com­mit­tee, the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Magde­burg-based foun­da­tion ap­proved ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.1 mil­lion eu­ros for prove­nance re­search at mu­se­ums, li­braries, aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions and for four pri­vate ap­pli­cants.

For ex­am­ple, the Evan­ge­lis­che Akademie Tutz­ing at Schloss Tutz­ing (Tutz­ing Cas­tle) on Lake Starn­berg is one of the first church-sup­port­ed in­sti­tu­tions to re­ceive fund­ing from the Foun­da­tion to ex­am­ine ob­jects sus­pect­ed of be­ing re­moved dur­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion. The cas­tle had been rich­ly fur­nished by its for­mer own­er, the Jew­ish-Hun­gar­i­an art col­lec­tor Mar­czell von Nemes, who died in 1930. The sub­se­quent own­er, Al­bert Hack­els­berg­er, and his fam­i­ly were per­se­cut­ed by the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists, and lit­tle of the orig­i­nal fur­ni­ture and art ob­jects re­main in Tutz­ing to­day.

The col­lec­tions of an­oth­er cas­tle are al­so be­ing close­ly scru­ti­nized: About 160 ob­jects from the for­mer pri­vate col­lec­tion of Philipp, Prince of Hesse are be­ing ex­am­ined, most of which are housed in the Mu­se­um Schloss Fasaner­ie in Eichen­zell near the town of Ful­da. Philipp, Prince of Hesse had been a mem­ber of the NS­DAP and the SA since 1930, he en­joyed close con­tact with Adolf Hitler and Her­mann Göring and trav­eled to Italy as a spe­cial am­bas­sador; he al­so took on the role of art agent for the “Son­der­auf­trag Linz” – an un­re­al­ized project com­mis­sioned by Hitler dur­ing the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist tyran­ny – among oth­er things. Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of sev­er­al ob­jects in the Mu­se­um Schloss Fasaner­ie that are (or could be) cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion, the Kul­turs­tiftung des Haus­es Hes­sen (a cul­tur­al foun­da­tion) now in­tends to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine the hold­ings for cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion.

The search for the heirs of con­fis­cat­ed art is the fo­cus of the Hochschule für Jüdis­che Stu­di­en (Col­lege of Jew­ish Stud­ies) in Hei­del­berg. It has iden­ti­fied nu­mer­ous books from the es­tate of Rab­bi Emil Davi­dovic (1912-1986) as Nazi-loot­ed art. The ma­jor­i­ty of the books ex­am­ined came from the huge stock of Nazi-loot­ed art that had been col­lect­ed dur­ing the “pro­tec­torate pe­ri­od” in the so-called Jew­ish Cen­tral Mu­se­um in Prague and in There­sien­stadt. The Hei­del­berg project is the sec­ond project of its kind since this fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty was new­ly in­tro­duced by the Foun­da­tion in 2019.

Since 2008, the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have fund­ed prove­nance re­search in­to Nazi-loot­ed art with a to­tal of 41.7 mil­lion eu­ros, with which 400 projects have been re­al­ized to date. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg, which was found­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the states and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions on Jan. 1, 2015, is Ger­many’s cen­tral point of con­tact on ques­tions of un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion re­ceives in­sti­tu­tion­al fund­ing from the Ger­man Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, from which it al­so re­ceives fund­ing for its projects. Ap­pli­ca­tions for longer-term projects can be sub­mit­ted by Jan­uary 1 and June 1 of each year.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion not on­ly funds re­search projects, it al­so doc­u­ments cul­tur­al prop­er­ty loss­es in its pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble database “Lost Art” as search and found-ob­ject re­ports. The Foun­da­tion presents the re­sults of the fund­ed projects in its re­search database “Proveana” via www.proveana.de

An overview of the fund­ed projects can be found in the an­nex.

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties is avail­able at: www.kul­turgutver­luste.de

Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion

Stiftung bürg­er­lichen Rechts (Foun­da­tion un­der Civ­il Law)
Lena Grund­hu­ber
Press Spokeswom­an
Hum­boldt­strasse 12 | 39112 Magde­burg

Phone +49 (0) 391 727 763 35
Fax +49 (0) 391 727 763 6
presse@kulturgutverluste.de