The search for Nazi-confiscated property – Provenance research in Saxony-Anhalt

The con­fer­ence, or­ga­nized by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, al­lowed the Foun­da­tion to present it­self to a wide au­di­ence for the first time in Sax­ony-An­halt.

Dr. Uwe Hart­mann (head of the Prove­nance Re­search De­part­ment at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion) gave an in­tro­duc­tion to the field of prove­nance re­search.Dr. Moni­ka Gibas (In­sti­tute of So­cial Sci­ences, Ot­to von Gu­er­icke Uni­ver­si­ty Magde­burg), Su­san­na Köller (em­ploy­ee of Kun­st­mu­se­um Moritzburg Halle) and Dr. Karin Heise (di­rec­tor of the Kul­turhis­torisches Mu­se­um at Schloss Merse­burg) al­so gave pre­sen­ta­tions on their prove­nance re­search projects, most of which are fund­ed by the Foun­da­tion.Prof. Ul­rike Höroldt (di­rec­tor of the Sax­ony-An­halt state archive) spoke about pos­si­ble sources for prove­nance re­search in the Sax­ony-An­halt archives. Math­ias Dein­ert (prove­nance re­searcher, cur­rent­ly work­ing for Mu­se­umsver­band Sach­sen-An­halt e. V.) pro­vid­ed an up­date on the progress of his prove­nance re­search at five se­lect­ed mu­se­ums in Sax­ony-An­halt.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion al­so an­nounced that the Foun­da­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive board had ac­cept­ed the fund­ing re­quest from the Bib­lio­theksver­band Sach­sen-An­halt li­brary as­so­ci­a­tion. The li­brary as­so­ci­a­tion will launch an ini­tial check project with the ap­proved fund­ing. The aim is to es­tab­lish whether the his­toric book hold­ings in pub­licly fund­ed mu­nic­i­pal li­braries (in Magde­burg, Dessau, Sanger­hausen, Wernigerode and Zerb­st) are sus­pect­ed of con­tain­ing cul­tur­al as­sets seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion (Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty). The ini­tial check can sub­se­quent­ly de­ter­mine whether or not there is a need for fur­ther, long-term prove­nance re­search. This is the first project of this kind to be car­ried out by a li­brary as­so­ci­a­tion.

“The projects pre­sent­ed here to­day re­flect the cur­rent in­creas­ing aware­ness of the need for prove­nance re­search in Sax­ony-An­halt,” said Schneede in his sum­ming up. This need is al­so demon­strat­ed by the over 100 par­tic­i­pants from mu­se­ums, li­braries, archives, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

Find the de­tailed meet­ing re­port here (PDF, 49 KB).

Press re­lease

Manuscripts of the speak­ers

Please note that the manuscripts are on­ly avail­able in Ger­man.

Manuscript (PDF, 809 KB) by Dr. Karin Heise, Kul­turhis­torisches Mu­se­ums Schloss Merse­burg

Manuscript (PDF, 60 KB) by Su­san­na Köller, Kun­st­mu­se­um Moritzburg Halle (Saale)

Me­dia re­sponse

Please note that the press re­ports are on­ly avail­able in Ger­man.

Volksstimme: Auf der Suche im Heimat­mu­se­um

MDR: Wis­senschaftler suchen recht­mäßige Be­sitzer

FO­CUS/DPA: Bib­lio­theken suchen nach NS-Raubgut

Pictues