Colloquium // Provenienz- und Sammlungsforschung XV: „R. in M.“ Researching Jacques & Emma Rosenthal‘s lost art collection / Die Erforschung einer verlorenen Kunstsammlung

For the most part, Colloquium XV of the series “Provenienz- und Sammlungsforschung” informs about the results of the research project – funded from 2020 to 2025 by the German Lost Art Foundation – that investigated the private art collection of Jacques and Emma Rosenthal. This collection had been partly documented in the privately printed catalogue “Pictures and Globes Owned by Jacques Rosenthal” that Erwin Rosenthal had dedicated to his father, Jacques, on his 60th birthday in 1914. The project attempted to reconstruct the collection, its dispersal after 1933 and, to the degree possible, the current whereabouts of the objects that had been dispossessed or sold under duress due to Nazi persecution. Some restitutions have taken place in the course of the project, others are in process, and one return will take place Oct. 6 (2-7 pm) at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI), as part of the public program.

The colloquium, however, also branches out to include aspects beyond the project, which ends on October 30, 2025. This entails various loose ends pertaining to the internationally renowned antiquarian bookshop on Brienner Straße, such as the valuable stock that was confiscated. Presentations also address the fate of the antiquarian bookshop of Jacques’ brother Ludwig.

Like the project, the colloquium is carried out in cooperation with the descendants of the Rosenthal family, and serves as a platform or meeting point of researchers and family. It aims to share recollections and results, experiences and insights, wishes and visions, demands and reflections. Finally, we wish to discuss the nature of this specific category of research, which is being carried out on behalf of heirs or descendants of persons who lost their collections – and all else, including their stock – as a result of National Socialist persecution.

More information: https://www.zikg.eu/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/2025/provenienz-und-sammlungsforschung-xv