Interim result: 30 suspected cases of Nazi-confiscated property in Görlitz Collections

In a project fund­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg, the Gör­l­itzer Samm­lun­gen für Geschichte und Kul­tur (Gör­litz Col­lec­tions of His­to­ry and Cul­ture) have dis­cov­ered around 30 sus­pect ob­jects dur­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion of their own hold­ings for Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty. The sus­pect items are paint­ings, prints and works of ap­plied art. The re­search turned up 300 sus­pect ob­jects in to­tal; how­ev­er, the ma­jor­i­ty are clas­si­fied as items lost dur­ing wartime and are no longer part of the col­lec­tions.

The project has been run­ning since Ju­ly 2016 and aims to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine all new ac­qui­si­tions made be­tween 1933 and 1945 for Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty. The re­sults of the re­search project will be pub­lished in the Lost Art Database op­er­at­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion.

Ev­i­dence had al­ready been found in the 1990s that a num­ber of items in the Gör­litz Col­lec­tions had been ac­quired in un­law­ful cir­cum­stances dur­ing the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist pe­ri­od. Sev­er­al years ago, in­di­vid­u­al art­works – in­clud­ing two paint­ings by Lo­vis Corinth and Max Slevogt – were re­turned to the right­ful heirs of the col­lec­tor to whom they had once be­longed.

Historisches Inventarbuch der früheren Städtischen Kunstsammlungen Görlitz aus dem Jahr 1937 Source:  Görlitzer Sammlungen für Geschichte und Kultur