Federal, state and municipal authorities pass resolution to establish the “German Lost Art Foundation” – High-level meeting of cultural policymakers in Essen a success

At a top-lev­el cul­tur­al pol­i­cy meet­ing held in Es­sen to­day, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia Moni­ka Grüt­ters, the state min­is­ters of cul­tur­al af­fairs and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the lead­ing Ger­man mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions agreed to joint­ly es­tab­lish the “Deutsches Zen­trum Kul­turgutver­luste” (Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion).

The plan calls to es­tab­lish the cen­tre in Magde­burg in the com­ing year as an in­cor­po­rat­ed foun­da­tion un­der civ­il law. The found­ing part­ners are the Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and the lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions. Fol­low­ing the ap­proval of the plan by the Ger­man fed­er­al cab­i­net on 8 Oc­to­ber 2014, the joint res­o­lu­tion by the Con­fer­ence of the Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion and Cul­tur­al Af­fairs (KMK) and mu­nic­i­pal rep­re­sen­ta­tives was a de­ci­sive step to­ward es­tab­lish­ing the foun­da­tion on the part of the states and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er Moni­ka Grüt­ters stat­ed: “Es­tab­lish­ing the ‘Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’ one year af­ter the Gurlitt case is a ma­jor mile­stone on the way to in­ves­ti­gat­ing cas­es of Na­tion­al So­cial­ist art theft in Ger­many. It is sim­ply in­tol­er­a­ble that Nazi-loot­ed art­works are still held in Ger­man mu­se­ums al­most 70 years af­ter the Nazi ter­ror regime was van­quished. With the Foun­da­tion, we are send­ing a vis­i­ble sig­nal, a moral sig­nal, which is di­rect­ly linked to the per­son­al his­to­ries of the vic­tims re­flect­ed in the his­to­ry of stolen art­works. We must nev­er for­get them nor rel­a­tivise the suf­fer­ing which per­sists across gen­er­a­tions. The fact alone that the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions were able to come to an agree­ment to es­tab­lish such a foun­da­tion with an ex­treme­ly com­plex set of tasks in just a few months demon­strates the im­por­tance Ger­many places on com­pli­ance with the ‘Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples’. It is al­so an ex­am­ple of ‘co­op­er­a­tive cul­tur­al fed­er­al­ism’ at work. With the “Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’ we will joint­ly suc­ceed in bundling, strength­en­ing and ex­pand­ing prove­nance re­search on Nazi-loot­ed art, as well as sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove com­mu­ni­ca­tion with and be­tween all par­tic­i­pants. The Foun­da­tion rep­re­sents Ger­many’s ef­forts to mod­ernise the prac­ti­cal search for loot­ed art in mu­se­ums, li­braries and archives in the long term.”

The pres­i­dent of the KMK, Min­is­ter Sylvia Löhrmann, em­pha­sised that the de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish the foun­da­tion by the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions demon­strat­ed how strong­ly po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives at all lev­els wished to ad­dress the reper­cus­sions of the un­par­al­leled art theft per­pe­trat­ed by the Nazi dic­ta­tor­ship. “My thanks go to all who have worked with such ded­i­ca­tion and con­cen­tra­tion in the past months to get the ‘Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’ up and run­ning. This joint project rep­re­sents an ac­tive part­ner­ship be­tween fed­er­al, state and mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties in this field. All sides stand to ben­e­fit from this col­lab­o­ra­tion. The po­lit­i­cal sphere and the in­sti­tu­tions it sup­ports have ac­com­plished a great deal in the past and will con­tin­ue, bun­dle and ex­pand their ef­forts in the fu­ture,” said KMK pres­i­dent and Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion for North Rhine-West­phalia Sylvia Löhrmann.

The “Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion” will serve as the cen­tral na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­tact part­ner in Ger­many with re­gard to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the “Wash­ing­ton Con­fer­ence Prin­ci­ples on Nazi-Con­fis­cat­ed Art” (Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples) and the “Joint Dec­la­ra­tion” by the Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions to com­ply with them.

It will con­sol­i­date the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice and the Of­fice of Prove­nance Re­search un­der one roof and pro­vide di­rect sup­port to the in­de­pen­dent “Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion” head­ed by the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court Prof. Jut­ta Lim­bach, as well as lead­ing fig­ures in prove­nance re­search (e.g. re­searchers at non-prof­it prove­nance re­search or­gan­i­sa­tions or short-term projects like the “Task­force Schwabinger Kun­st­fund”).

The Foun­da­tion’s pri­ma­ry task, how­ev­er, is to con­sult and fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions in their ef­forts to search for Nazi-loot­ed art­works. In ad­di­tion, it will cre­ate a new fund­ing pro­gramme tar­get­ed at pri­vate col­lec­tors and pri­vate mu­se­ums who vol­un­tary com­ply with the “Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples”. The Foun­da­tion will pro­mote fur­ther net­work­ing in the field of prove­nance re­search, ini­ti­ate and sup­port na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions, and co­op­er­ate with uni­ver­si­ty and non-uni­ver­si­ty re­search in­sti­tutes. As per the coali­tion agree­ment which par­tic­u­lar­ly em­pha­sised sup­port­ing prove­nance re­search to in­ves­ti­gate the loss of cul­tur­al as­sets un­der So­vi­et oc­cu­pa­tion and for­mer East Ger­many, the Foun­da­tion will al­so be re­spon­si­ble for this area of ac­tiv­i­ty. The doc­u­men­ta­tion and con­sul­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties with re­spect to the war-re­lat­ed re­lo­ca­tion of cul­tur­al as­sets will con­tin­ue to be con­duct­ed at the Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice. As stip­u­lat­ed in the Foun­da­tion’s char­ter, fed­er­al and state au­thor­i­ties will con­tin­ue fund­ing the web­site project “Pro­tec­tion of Cul­tur­al As­sets in Ger­many” and the “Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Trea­sures” database.

The Foun­da­tion will be­gin op­er­at­ing with a 20-per­son staff, which will in­clude the for­mer em­ploy­ees from the Of­fice of Prove­nance Re­search and the Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice. The over­all num­ber of em­ploy­ees was in­creased to take in­to ac­count that the new Foun­da­tion will not on­ly be re­spon­si­ble for con­tin­u­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of its pre­de­ces­sor in­sti­tu­tions, but al­so to ful­fil new tasks, such as de­vel­op­ing new fund­ing mea­sures and ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing in press and pub­lic re­la­tions.

In ad­di­tion to the base cap­i­tal pro­vid­ed by its found­ing mem­bers, the “Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion” will re­ceive an­nu­al fi­nanc­ing by the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments. The Foun­da­tion will be al­lo­cat­ed at least four mil­lion eu­ros in 2014 from the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er of Cul­ture and the Me­dia. Start­ing in 2015, the Ger­man fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will in­crease fund­ing for prove­nance re­search to a to­tal of six mil­lion eu­ros. The Ger­man states, which had pre­vi­ous­ly fi­nanced the Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice and the Of­fice of Prove­nance Re­search with 608,000 eu­ros per year, will con­tin­ue con­tribut­ing this amount to the new foun­da­tion.

The sub­jects dis­cussed at the top-lev­el cul­tur­al pol­i­cy meet­ing in­clud­ed the up­com­ing amend­ment to the Cul­tur­al As­set Pro­tec­tion Law, so-called “dig­i­tal div­i­dends” and a project for a “Eu­ro­pean Year of Cul­tur­al Her­itage”. Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er Grüt­ters al­so re­port­ed on the cur­rent state of ne­go­ti­a­tions with re­gard to the pro­posed free trade agree­ment be­tween the EU and the USA (TTIP). The top-lev­el cul­tur­al pol­i­cy meet­ing ful­filled one of the goals of the coali­tion agree­ment. The fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments are now col­lab­o­rat­ing more in­ten­sive­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in plan­ning and fi­nanc­ing mat­ters (co­op­er­a­tive cul­tur­al fed­er­al­ism). In March 2014, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion for Cul­ture and the Me­dia called the first meet­ing in Berlin, to which the Ger­man Fed­er­al Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion and the Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion of Ger­man States were al­so in­vit­ed, in or­der to es­tab­lish reg­u­lar di­a­logue be­tween fed­er­al, state and mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties.