In the first step, the writ­ten records re­lat­ing to the col­lec­tion con­cerned are con­sult­ed, if avail­able, in or­der to de­ter­mine the prob­a­ble ori­gin of an ob­ject and iden­ti­fy ref­er­ences to the own­er’s name. For these in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the fol­low­ing doc­u­ments are the most im­por­tant:

• re­ceipt doc­u­men­ta­tion, such as re­ceipt books, in­com­ing in­ven­to­ries, ac­ces­sion books, ac­qui­si­tion lists;
• col­lec­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion, such as col­lec­tion cat­a­logs, in­ven­to­ry reg­is­ters, card in­dex­es;
• cor­re­spon­dence from the pe­ri­od in ques­tion, such as ex­changes of let­ters re­lat­ing to the ac­qui­si­tion of an ob­ject, in­quiries to art deal­ers, sell­ers’ of­fers, mail reg­is­ters and post books;
• oth­er writ­ten records, such as auc­tion lots, an­no­tat­ed auc­tion cat­a­logs, in­voic­es, sales re­ceipts, art­work list­ings; and
• the ob­jects them­selves, such as paint­ings and graph­ic prints (no­ta­tions on back, stick­ers, in­scrip­tions, cus­toms stamps; for por­traits, al­so: those de­pict­ed as ref­er­ence to the fam­i­ly), books and writ­ten texts (book­plates, supral­i­bros, sig­na­tures, stamps, ded­i­ca­tions, gen­er­al marks of pre­vi­ous own­er), arts and crafts, house­hold goods, tex­tiles (mono­grams, en­grav­ings, coats of arms).

Free databas­es are like­wise avail­able to all prove­nance re­searchers. These on­line databas­es con­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion on in­di­vid­u­als,prove­nance mark­ings and ob­jects may at least help with the names and marks of for­mer own­ers that are al­ready fa­mil­iar with­in the re­search field.

There are al­so a num­ber of ser­vices for which users must pay. The charges for us­ing these ser­vices are el­i­gi­ble for fund­ing by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion and can there­fore be tak­en in­to ac­count in an ap­pli­ca­tion for project fund­ing.

Loss of own­er­ship or pos­ses­sion be­tween 1933 and 1945 cov­ered a wide spec­trum, from in­di­vid­u­al emer­gen­cy sale, auc­tion, ex­change, giv­ing away and fidu­cia­ry trans­fer to ac­quain­tances, through of­fi­cial seizures, con­fis­ca­tion, with­hold­ing, forced sale, ex­pro­pri­a­tion and “Aryaniza­tion”, to loot­ing and de­struc­tion by of­fi­cials or pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als. In­for­ma­tion about such pro­ce­dures is pro­vid­ed in par­tic­u­lar by:

• the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist Re­ich­sanzeiger (lists of ex­pa­tri­at­ed per­sons, lists of per­sons from whom ob­jects were ex­pro­pri­at­ed, lists of in­sti­tu­tions from which ob­jects were ex­pro­pri­at­ed), avail­able in li­braries or pro­vid­ed in full in dig­i­tal form by Mannheim Uni­ver­si­ty li­brary;
• the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist dai­ly press (ad­ver­tise­ments, an­nounce­ments—al­so of auc­tions) avail­able in vary­ing de­grees of com­plete­ness in lo­cal li­braries, mu­se­ums and archives;
• Na­tion­al So­cial­ist ad­min­is­tra­tive records re­lat­ing to the state, re­gion­al/provin­cial, area/dis­trict and par­ty au­thor­i­ties in­volved in the theft, in­clud­ing tax au­thor­i­ty files such as those of the re­gion­al fi­nance of­fice with as­set lists and buy­er lists from the so-called Jew­ish auc­tions (in the state archives), po­lice ad­min­is­tra­tion files (in the city, dis­trict and state archives; Gestapo files in the Fed­er­al Archives), cus­toms au­thor­i­ty files (in the Fed­er­al Archives), cul­tur­al ad­min­is­tra­tion files (of the provin­cial mu­se­um keep­er, provin­cial cu­ra­tor etc. in the state archives), Nazi dis­trict lead­er­ship files (in­clud­ing files on “Aryaniza­tion” and “de-Jew­ing”, the cap­ture of po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents etc. in present-day city, dis­trict and state archives), and many more;
• per­son­al doc­u­ments that be­longed to the vic­tims them­selves and peo­ple they knew (let­ters, post­cards, di­aries, note­books pre- and post-1945).

If the re­search in­to the archive doc­u­ments be­long­ing to the col­lec­tion it­self does not yield any find­ings about the fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships of the vic­tim, ref­er­ence works and spe­cial­ist lit­er­a­ture and some databas­es may help fur­ther.

Of these, the so-called “gray lit­er­a­ture” (non-for­mal­ly pub­lished works) is usu­al­ly more fruit­ful than ref­er­ence works or databas­es be­cause this lit­er­a­ture of­ten ex­tends be­yond mere for­mal in­for­ma­tion, de­scribes fam­i­ly his­to­ries and men­tions im­por­tant ad­di­tion­al de­tails (e.g. em­i­gra­tion des­ti­na­tions, name changes and fa­mil­ial re­la­tion­ships) which can be an­a­lyzed as part of the re­search. Gray lit­er­a­ture is col­lect­ed to a cer­tain ex­tent via the fed­er­al state and re­gion­al li­braries; more­over, it can on­ly be re­quest­ed in (city and re­gion­al) mu­se­ums, (dis­trict, city, spe­cial and pri­vate) archives and from (his­tor­i­cal, memo­ri­al and lo­cal) so­ci­eties.

In ad­di­tion to resti­tu­tion records and on­line re­search tools, the fol­low­ing archive sources are es­sen­tial for in­for­ma­tion on the pos­si­ble ex­is­tence of Holo­caust sur­vivors of a fam­i­ly (i.e. chil­dren, grand­chil­dren, spous­es, sib­lings, oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers) and on pos­si­ble dif­fer­ent per­son­al names of present-day le­gal suc­ces­sors:

• the Res­i­den­ten­liste—the list of Jew­ish res­i­dents in the Ger­man Re­ich 1933–1945 (in the Fed­er­al Archives)
• res­i­dents’ reg­is­tra­tion cards (in city archives, state archives)
• cit­i­zens’ reg­is­ters (in mu­se­um col­lec­tions, city archives, state archives)
• ad­dress books e.g. for iden­ti­fy­ing house­hold mem­bers or the date of em­i­gra­tion (in li­braries, mu­se­um col­lec­tions, city archives, state archives)
• so-called “Aryaniza­tion” and “de-Jew­ing” files (in city archives, state archives)
• files of the re­gion­al fi­nance of­fices (in­clud­ing with in­for­ma­tion on “cur­ren­cy of­fences” of fam­i­ly mem­bers liv­ing abroad)
All of these doc­u­ments up to the end of the war in 1945 con­tain in­for­ma­tion on mat­ri­mo­ni­al re­la­tion­ships and liv­ing cir­cum­stances as well as on house­hold and fam­i­ly mem­bers and their de­scen­dants. Rel­a­tives liv­ing abroad, or those who had al­ready em­i­grat­ed at the time the in­for­ma­tion was gath­ered, are fre­quent­ly men­tioned.

When con­sid­er­ing the is­sue of en­ti­tle­ment to claim, con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to whether ef­forts to reach a set­tle­ment or com­pen­sa­tion have al­ready been made in pre­vi­ous years (up to when the Fed­er­al Resti­tu­tion Law came in­to force in 1957) on an in­sti­tu­tion­al or pri­vate ba­sis. See de­tailed guide­lines 2007 (PDF, 2 MB), p. 97.

Pre­vi­ous at­tempts at re­trans­fer, ne­go­ti­a­tions about pos­si­ble re­lin­quish­ment, agree­ments re­lat­ing to the per­ma­nent loan of ob­jects and so on and so forth should be re­viewed and doc­u­ment­ed. Per­son­al ex­pres­sions of in­tent made by the vic­tim af­ter 1945 (e.g. an en­ti­tled per­son con­tact­ed a mu­se­um or made state­ments on the de­sired treat­ment of the loot­ed prop­er­ty as part of a resti­tu­tion pro­ce­dure) are al­so in­clud­ed here.

One the one hand, these doc­u­ments pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on places of res­i­dence and names af­ter 1945. On the oth­er hand, such in­for­ma­tion is in­di­rect­ly im­por­tant for dis­cus­sions with le­gal heirs and, where ap­pli­ca­ble, for the pos­si­ble re­quest for in­ter­ven­tion to the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion or for the work of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion with re­gard to its sup­port in find­ing a fair and just so­lu­tion (see step 10).

The Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia (BKM) and the Fed­er­al Of­fice for Cen­tral Ser­vices and Un­re­solved Prop­er­ty Is­sues (BADV) rec­om­mend that “the archive doc­u­ments from the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist era ad­min­is­tered by the BADV, De­part­ment C2, which have orig­i­nat­ed in con­nec­tion with prop­er­ty seizures with re­gard to per­se­cut­ed in­di­vid­u­als, as well as the avail­able case files are used for prove­nance re­search in ac­cor­dance with the Fed­er­al Resti­tu­tion Law (BRüG)” (see Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the BRüG).

An in­quiry to the BADV is made, on the one hand, to con­firm whether the claims to the prop­er­ty of an in­di­vid­u­al per­se­cut­ed by the Nazis are al­ready on file there and, on the oth­er hand, to avoid dou­ble com­pen­sa­tion (in ac­cor­dance with the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion 1999, I), if there were al­ready Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments.

Af­ter 1945, Holo­caust sur­vivors or their de­scen­dants sub­mit­ted claims for com­pen­sa­tion (non-ma­te­ri­al dam­ages) and resti­tu­tion (ma­te­ri­al dam­ages) to the oc­cu­py­ing au­thor­i­ties on a case-by-case ba­sis; from 1949 on­wards, these were sub­mit­ted to the resti­tu­tion of­fices in the fed­er­al states. In ad­di­tion to in­for­ma­tion on whether and what com­pen­sa­tion and oth­er re­mu­ner­a­tion ef­forts have al­ready been un­der­tak­en by the state, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing the files main­ly pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the pro­cess of loss of pos­ses­sion and the where­abouts of de­scen­dants, rel­a­tives and heirs.

For a re­mote ex­am­i­na­tion, on­ly the records of the Berlin resti­tu­tion of­fices are avail­able, and these on­ly to a cer­tain depth: the records are pre­sent­ed in sum­ma­rized form and can­not be read dig­i­tal­ly in their en­tire­ty. Re­search on site in each case is there­fore es­sen­tial.

The resti­tu­tion records are gen­er­al­ly lo­cat­ed in the rel­e­vant archives at the vic­tim’s last place of res­i­dence or, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of em­i­grants, at the place of seizure (e.g. in­ter­na­tion­al ports).

For in­for­ma­tion to be ob­tained on the pos­si­ble present-day where­abouts of fam­i­ly mem­bers af­ter the end of the war in 1945, heirs need to have al­ready made con­tact with na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties at an ear­li­er point in time (e.g. as part of a resti­tu­tion re­quest or a claim to a mu­se­um for the re­turn of an ob­ject). On­ly in such cas­es can file-based re­search be un­der­tak­en at na­tion­al lev­el, in­clud­ing at:

• lo­cal courts
• no­taries’ of­fices
• reg­istry of­fices
• res­i­dents’ reg­is­tra­tion of­fices
• mu­se­um archives (e.g. cor­re­spon­dence on miss­ing cul­tur­al as­sets)
• city archives
• state archives (e.g. resti­tu­tion records)
• BADV (e.g. resti­tu­tion records)
• the Cen­tral Coun­cil of Jews in Ger­many, Jew­ish re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties (pro­vid­ing the de­scen­dants have re­joined a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Ger­many), in­sti­tu­tions ded­i­cat­ed to re­mem­brance (if ge­nealog­i­cal in­quiries have al­ready been made to them or doc­u­ments hand­ed over, e.g. the Moses Mendelssohn Acade­my)

Oth­er than this, transna­tion­al re­search must be un­der­tak­en. The em­i­gra­tion des­ti­na­tions of in­di­vid­u­al fam­i­ly mem­bers can be de­ter­mined, e.g. (be­sides the al­ready men­tioned ref­er­ence, gray and spe­cial­ist lit­er­a­ture) through re­search in­to the dig­i­tized is­sues of the Jew­ish ex­ile press (text and ad­vert sec­tion), see Dig­i­tal copies.

Oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties (e.g. re­search in­to ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­i­ty files of oth­er coun­tries or the in­for­ma­tion from these, es­pe­cial­ly if first names—e.g. Moritz, More­au, Mau­rice—or last names—e.g. Kohn, Cohn, Co­hen, Cone—have changed in the des­ti­na­tion coun­try) are not avail­able at a na­tion­al lev­el.

In ad­di­tion, search­ing ge­nealog­i­cal databas­es is rec­om­mend­ed. The ge­neal­o­gy ser­vices (such as An­ces­try) that cost mon­ey can be used free of charge, e.g. on com­put­er ter­mi­nals at the Em­i­gra­tion Mu­se­um BallinStadt in Ham­burg and at the Ger­man Em­i­gra­tion Cen­ter in Bre­mer­haven.

It can be worth mak­ing an in­quiry to cen­tral in­for­ma­tion ser­vices (such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Trac­ing Ser­vice) or in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions (such as the Leo Baeck In­sti­tute or the Jew­ish Claims Con­fer­ence) be­cause these in­sti­tu­tions of­ten have a ge­nealog­i­cal body of knowl­edge at their dis­pos­al. More­over, quite a few Jew­ish as­so­ci­a­tions and or­ga­ni­za­tions (such as the Jew­ish cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties or Jew­ish re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties) have ei­ther al­ready car­ried out search­es for heirs or have es­tab­lished con­tact with the de­scen­dants of peo­ple that were per­se­cut­ed by the Nazis.

Mak­ing an in­quiry to in­sti­tu­tions and net­works that are spe­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ed to re­mem­brance (e.g. Yad Vashem) or fam­i­ly re­search (e.g. Jew­ish­Gen) is a pos­si­ble op­tion, as is send­ing a re­quest for sup­port to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ge­neal­o­gy as­so­ci­a­tions (e.g. Comp­Gen). How­ev­er, pro­cess­ing in­quiries like these may be time-con­sum­ing and cost mon­ey.

For less com­mon names in par­tic­u­lar, sim­ple search en­gine re­quests, ad­vanced search­es and the re­sult­ing at­tempts to es­tab­lish con­tact may re­veal peo­ple who have a par­tic­u­lar name. How­ev­er, this type of re­search is al­ways as­so­ci­at­ed with the risk of find­ing peo­ple who co­in­ci­den­tal­ly have the same name. The same is true when it comes to search­ing so­cial net­works.

If you know what coun­try the en­ti­tled heir cur­rent­ly lives in, mak­ing con­tact with the re­spec­tive em­bassy, where ap­pli­ca­ble, might yield re­sults.

By this stage at the lat­est, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for prove­nance re­search have been ex­haust­ed and, if ap­pli­ca­ble, the le­gal ad­vi­sor (le­gal of­fice or le­gal de­part­ment) of the body re­spon­si­ble for the in­sti­tu­tion is in­dis­pens­able.

Nowa­days, mak­ing con­tact per­son­al­ly with the pre­vi­ous own­er of a con­fis­cat­ed or stolen ob­ject is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly rare due to de­mo­graph­ic rea­sons. In most cas­es, any con­tact made to­day is with chil­dren, grand­chil­dren or oth­er de­scen­dants. Es­tab­lish­ing who the present-day fam­i­ly mem­bers are does not, how­ev­er, an­swer the ques­tion of whom the ob­ject should be resti­tut­ed to.

When doc­u­ment­ing the suc­ces­sors, you are most­ly re­liant on the as­sis­tance of the heirs them­selves (e.g. for the pro­vi­sion of in­for­ma­tion on branch­es of the fam­i­ly tree and the fate of fam­i­ly mem­bers). At this point, it is there­fore es­sen­tial to make ac­tive and di­rect con­tact with the prob­a­ble le­gal heirs be­cause re­search reach­es its lim­its here.

It is al­ways ad­vis­able for con­tact to be es­tab­lished with em­pa­thy and tact: there are cas­es where the de­scen­dants do not know about the ear­li­er per­se­cu­tion of their an­ces­tors, e.g. be­cause the Nazi pe­ri­od and the in­di­vid­u­al suf­fer­ing ex­pe­ri­enced as a re­sult, the dam­age and the loss of pos­ses­sions have re­mained de­lib­er­ate­ly hid­den with­in the fam­i­ly.

En­ti­tle­ment to claim is the ba­sic au­thor­i­ty to be able to as­sert claims. This en­ti­tle­ment is of fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance (see, for ex­am­ple, the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion, I).It is ob­tained through the clar­i­fi­ca­tion of suc­ces­sion or the re­con­struc­tion of the (present-day) com­mu­ni­ty of heirs with the help of wills, in­her­i­tance cer­tifi­cates, pow­ers of at­tor­ney, solemn dec­la­ra­tions or sim­i­lar doc­u­ments.

The claim, on the oth­er hand, is the spe­cif­ic right of a per­son, on an ap­pro­pri­ate ba­sis, to call for some­one else to do, or re­frain from do­ing, a speci­fi­able ac­tion, such as re­turn­ing an ob­ject con­fis­cat­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. With re­gard to civ­il law, most claims for re­cov­ery of prop­er­ty are al­ready statute-barred, i.e. their (le­gal) as­ser­tion is no longer pos­si­ble to­day. Ac­cord­ing to Ger­man law, the per­son present­ly in pos­ses­sion of the ob­ject has al­so of­ten be­come the own­er. Spe­cial­ized lawyers should be con­sult­ed in the event of a dis­pute.

Al­so against this back­drop, par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance is at­tached to the non-legal­ly bind­ing Joint Dec­la­ra­tion, as on a moral and eth­i­cal lev­el—in the ab­sence of legal­ly en­force­able claims—it pur­sues the ob­jec­tive of re­turn or work­ing to­geth­er to reach fair and just so­lu­tions.

Con­tact with the own­ers should be ini­ti­at­ed by the per­son in pos­ses­sion of the ob­ject (a con­nec­tion with the fam­i­ly has usu­al­ly al­ready been es­tab­lished to clar­i­fy suc­ces­sion, see step 8). Both sides—the present-day own­er and the le­gal heirs—should clar­i­fy by mu­tu­al agree­ment how to deal with the ob­ject con­cerned, to which the pre­vi­ous own­er was forced to give up his or her own­er­ship or pos­ses­sion.

A resti­tu­tion ac­knowl­edges the claim of present-day heirs. If the cul­tur­al her­itage in­sti­tu­tion is in­ter­est­ed in reac­quir­ing the resti­tut­ed ob­ject, pos­si­bil­i­ties can sub­se­quent­ly be dis­cussed as to whether all or some of the pieces may re­main in the col­lec­tion and on what con­di­tions this may be pos­si­ble.

Sci­en­tif­ic and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions (pub­lic or pri­vate) and pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als can be sup­port­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in their ef­forts to find a fair and just so­lu­tion in line with the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples and the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion of the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments (see So­lu­tions sec­tion of the Lost Art Database, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s pub­li­ca­tion se­ries or the pub­li­ca­tions of the Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­ter for Lost Cul­tur­al As­sets). How­ev­er, the Foun­da­tion does not car­ry out any re­turn or resti­tu­tion pro­ce­dures it­self, and does not pro­vide ad­vice in a le­gal ca­pac­i­ty.

If a fair and just so­lu­tion can­not be reached via the di­rect con­tact route or there are dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, it is ad­vis­able to lodge a re­quest for in­ter­ven­tion with the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion.The re­quest for in­ter­ven­tion is lodged by the for­mer own­er and their heirs, to­geth­er with the in­sti­tu­tions or per­sons cur­rent­ly in pos­ses­sion of the cul­tur­al as­set, by mu­tu­al agree­ment.The Com­mis­sion works to­wards an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment be­tween the par­ties and does not make any legal­ly bind­ing rec­om­men­da­tions.

Up to now, resti­tu­tions—pub­lic and across in­sti­tu­tions—have been pri­mar­i­ly record­ed or dis­closed in press re­ports, pub­li­ca­tions and some­times in the Lost Art Database. How­ev­er, in or­der to en­sure that re­turns of cul­tur­al as­sets con­fis­cat­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion are doc­u­ment­ed as ful­ly and ac­cu­rate­ly as pos­si­ble, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has set it­self the ob­jec­tive of pro­vid­ing a trans­par­ent overview of these:

An on­line form for dis­clos­ing resti­tu­tions as well as oth­er fair and just so­lu­tions has there­fore been per­ma­nent­ly avail­able on the Foun­da­tion’s web­site since spring 2018.In­for­ma­tion on re­turns that have al­ready been made in the past can al­so be en­tered us­ing this form.