Nazi-looted cultural property
Wartime losses
Soviet zone / GDR

New Perspectives on Provenance Research in Germany

The conference “New Perspectives on Provenance Research in Germany” on 27-28 November at the Jewish Museum in Berlin was a major success for the German Lost Art Foundation. Directed by Uwe M. Schneede, member of the executive board, the conference welcomed approximately 350 participants on both days.

Re­searchers from Ger­many and abroad used the oc­ca­sion to en­gage in in­ten­sive dis­cus­sions. The con­fer­ence was mod­er­at­ed by Ste­fan Kold­e­hoff and fea­tured pre­sen­ta­tions by Ulf Bischof (at­tor­ney, Berlin), Gilbert Lupfer (Dres­den State Art Col­lec­tions), Jane Milosch (di­rec­tor of the Prove­nance Re­search Ini­tia­tive, Smith­so­ni­an In­sti­tu­tion, Wash­ing­ton), Her­mann Parzinger (Pres­i­dent of the Prus­sian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Foun­da­tion) and Mał­gorza­ta Quinken­stein (Pol­ish Acade­my of Sci­ences) on their ex­pe­ri­ences with prove­nance re­search and what they ex­pect­ed of the Foun­da­tion. The lec­ture by Rüdi­ger Mahlo (Jew­ish Claims Con­fer­ence) was record­ed on film. The au­di­ence had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the is­sues with the speak­ers in more de­tail in sev­er­al dis­cus­sion rounds. The Foun­da­tion will post a de­tailed con­fer­ence re­port on this page short­ly.

The evening be­fore, on­ly hours af­ter the trustees had con­vened at the con­stituent ses­sion, Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er and chair of the board of trustees Moni­ka Grüt­ters of­fi­cial­ly opened the con­fer­ence with a keynote ad­dress. The trustees elect­ed Is­abel Pfeif­fer-Poens­gen (Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion of Ger­man States) as the chair­per­son of the board of trustees and Eckart Köhne (Pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Mu­se­ums As­so­ci­a­tion) as her deputy. Her­fried Mün­kler’s evening pre­sen­ta­tion ad­dressed the top­ic “Stolen or Saved? The Trans­fer­al of Cul­tur­al As­sets from around the World to the Cities of Eu­rope”. The manuscript and oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions are avail­able as PDF down­loads (in Ger­man on­ly).

 

Me­di­en­res­o­nanz (Se­lec­tion)

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

Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung: Die Suche nach Raubkun­st geht weit­er. Uwe M. Schneede über das er­ste Jahr des Deutschen Zen­trums Kul­turgutver­luste
Süd­deutsche Zeitung: Ver­luste aus­gle­ichen. Die er­ste Tagung des neuen Deutschen Zen­trums Kul­turgutver­luste
Der Tagesspiegel: Kul­turgutver­lust-Tagung

SWR 2: Uwe M. Schneede im Gespräch
Deutsche Welle: Kon­ferenz zur in­ter­na­tionalen Raubkun­st-Forschung in Berlin eröffnet