Responsibilities and specific tasks of the German Lost Art Foundation

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion is a cen­tral point of con­tact in Ger­many for all mat­ters per­tain­ing to cul­tur­al goods which were un­law­ful­ly seized. The main ac­tiv­i­ties of the Foun­da­tion fo­cus on cul­tur­al as­sets con­fis­cat­ed by the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists through per­se­cu­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from for­mer Jew­ish own­ers (so-called “Nazi con­fis­cat­ed art”). The Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples of 1998 serve as the ba­sis of its ef­forts in this field, to which end Ger­many of­fi­cial­ly pledged to ful­fil its his­toric and moral obli­ga­tions in a Com­mon Dec­la­ra­tion in 1999. The Foun­da­tion is al­so re­spon­si­ble for in­ves­ti­gat­ing the war-re­lat­ed re­moval or re­lo­ca­tion of cul­tur­al as­sets (so-called “loot­ed art”) as well as the loss of cul­tur­al as­sets un­der So­vi­et oc­cu­pa­tion and in the GDR. As of April 2018, the Foun­da­tion is al­so ac­tive in the field of cul­tur­al goods from colo­nial con­texts. It sup­ports prove­nance re­search through re­search grants and pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on re­ports of lost and found cul­tur­al as­sets via its open-ac­cess “Lost Art” database.
The Ger­man fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the Län­der of the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many and the three na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions of lo­cal au­thor­i­ties es­tab­lished the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion on 1 Jan­uary 2015 as an in­cor­po­rat­ed foun­da­tion un­der civ­il law with head­quar­ters in Magde­burg.

Spe­cif­ic tasks

Strength­en­ing and ex­pand­ing prove­nance re­search

By pro­vid­ing in­de­pen­dent fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to re­search projects, the Foun­da­tion pro­motes the study of:

• The his­to­ry of art­works and oth­er mu­se­um items, books and archived ma­te­ri­als
• The fates of the vic­tims
• The roles of all oth­er ac­tive par­tic­i­pants

The Foun­da­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to:

• Cre­at­ing the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for ba­sic re­search
• Co­op­er­at­ing with uni­ver­si­ty and non-uni­ver­si­ty re­search in­sti­tu­tions
• Es­tab­lish­ing train­ing pro­grammes for prove­nance re­searchers as an in­te­gral com­po­nent of Art His­to­ry
• Sup­port­ing con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion mea­sures for mu­se­um staff

Build­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al trans­paren­cy

• Doc­u­ment­ing lost and found no­tices by Ger­man and in­ter­na­tion­al users via the “Lost Art” database
• Doc­u­ment­ing re­search find­ings
• Pub­lish­ing aca­dem­ic and sci­en­tif­ic works
• Co­or­di­nat­ing and stag­ing con­fer­ences and events
• Con­duct­ing press and pub­lic re­la­tions ac­tiv­i­ties

Ad­vis­ing and net­work­ing

• Pro­vid­ing ad­vice and sup­port to pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als in or­der to achieve “fair and just so­lu­tions”
• Me­di­at­ing and for­ward­ing in­quiries to the re­spon­si­ble fed­er­al, state and mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties
• Col­lab­o­rat­ing with non-prof­it prove­nance re­search or­gan­i­sa­tions in Ger­many
• Sup­port­ing the in­de­pen­dent “Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion on the re­turn of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly Jew­ish prop­er­ty”