The struggle for art

When the war ended in 1945, millions of lives had been lost – people murdered in German extermination camps, others killed on the battlefield or in bombing raids. At the same time, countless works of art and cultural assets were destroyed, stolen, displaced or relocated: in many cases the search for them – and the disputes over them – continue to this day.

Shortly before the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, the German Lost Art Foundation is taking its spring conference as an opportunity to focus on the cultural losses resulting from the catastrophe caused by Germany. To be held in English, the conference 1945 – The struggle over art. Cultural property between loss, relocation and restitution will take place on 31 March and 1 April 2025 at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Haus Unter den Linden. The event is deliberately framed not from a German perspective but from a broader European one.

Gilbert Lupfer, Executive Chair of the German Lost Art Foundation: “We don’t want to engage in self-reflection and focus solely on the losses and destruction that ‘we’ suffered in the war. Instead our aim is to look beyond national borders – at the many displacements of cultural assets that all originated in the war started by Germany.” The year 1945 also marked a turning point in the plundering of Jewish communities in Germany, he noted, and in the territories occupied by the German army: “While the looting continued into the early months of the year, the first returns began in the western zones immediately after the end of the war via the collecting points – though this process is still not complete even today.” He added: “Sadly, the destruction and looting of cultural assets is not just a thing of the distant past. The tragic relevance of this issue is plain to see today in war-torn Ukraine.”

Researchers from Germany, the UK, France, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Hungary trace the complex paths of displaced possessions and looted museum collections across borders, showing how difficult it was for Jewish people to reclaim their property after the war, for example, and also documenting how much remains unresolved, despite significant efforts. Even today, for instance, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, like many other museums, still holds works of art confiscated from Jewish collections, as it has not been possible to clarify their provenance, or because there are no surviving heirs of the murdered owners.

Yet cultural property holds not only deep personal meaning but immense political symbolism, too. This is evident in France, where the postwar return of evacuated artworks to national museums was celebrated as a victory for the country.

The Soviet Union likewise claimed works from East German museums – not only as reparation for destruction and plunder inflicted by the Germans, but also as a way of affirming its status as a victorious power.
The unresolved issues and challenges of restitution will be discussed in a panel at the close of the conference.

For full details and the complete conference programme, see: https://kulturgutverluste.de/conference2025

Livestream and recording: The conference is an in-person event, but it can also be streamed live on the German Lost Art Foundation’s YouTube channel.

Day 1 (31 March 2025): https://youtube.com/live/qfIf0NHEIPI

Day 2 (1 April 2025): https://youtube.com/live/UcMj9NUPeTQ

A recording will be available afterwards at: https://kulturgutverluste.de/en.

Publication: The Foundation’s latest issue of its journal Provenienz & Forschung is dedicated to the theme of “1945”. It can be ordered from Sandstein Verlag Dresden and downloaded free of charge at https://doi.org/10.25360/01-2024-00010.

The Foundation: The German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg, founded on 1 January 2015 by the Federal Government, the German federal states and the leading municipal associations, is the central point of contact in Germany for questions concerning unlawfully seized cultural property. The Foundation receives institutional funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media; this is also the source of funding for its projects. The Foundation’s main focus is on cultural property seized under National Socialism as a result of persecution, especially Jewish property. Its fields of activity also include Cultural Goods and Collections from Colonial Contexts, items relocated as a result of war, and cultural property confiscation that took place in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR.

For further information on funding opportunities, see: https://kulturgutverluste.de/en