Systematic investigation of holdings in the departments of painting and sculpture at Kunsthalle Mannheim

Since late 2011, the Kunsthalle has been systematically researching the origin of all paintings, sculptures and graphic works in its holdings. The aim of this project is to clarify the changes in ownership of all artworks created before 1946 as comprehensively as possible. The hope is that as a result, artworks that were seized illegally during the National Socialist era will be identified and returned to their former owners or their descendants.At the start of the project, extensive details about previous provenance were known in only very few individual cases. An investigation in 2001 of all acquisitions made between 1933 and 1945 to identify suspicious gallerists and art dealers did little to change this unsatisfactory situation, even though it resulted in a number of works with suspicious provenance being reported to the Lost Art Coordination Office and some of these being restituted.

In the first project year, an overview of all the Kunsthalles works was created in which the individual objects were assigned to the categories of lawful (acquired before 1933, created after 1945, acquired from artist), not entirely clear (gaps in provenance between 1933 and 1945, open dates, etc.) and questionable (acquired from art market). While the first category contained 3,694 masterpieces and the second category a total of 2,253 masterpieces, 613 inventory LA25-I2017 had to be classified as questionable.

To ensure this quantity of individual cases could be dealt with properly, the focus in the second project year was solely on the departments of painting and sculpture. For the examination of these 667 unclarified provenances, the first step was to systematically review the Kunsthalle archives and the files of other municipal establishments. The subsequent individual analyses of the provenances unclarified to date managed to establish by the end of the project that the majority of the objects (515) had originated from lawful sources. The whereabouts of 135 of the objects between 1933 and 1945 could not be fully verified, but evidence suggested they were not among the artworks stolen by the Nazis. Eventually, 17 masterpieces were found to have been seized illegally by the Nazis. These potentially problematic objects have been entered into the Lost Art Database.

Following on from the examination of the painting and sculpture collections, the Kunsthalle is now carrying out a systematic investigation of its graphic print collection.

(c) Kunsthalle Mannheim