In the first round of funding in 2022, the German Lost Art Foundation granted some 3.1 million euros for 24 provenance research projects on the subject of Nazi-looted property

On the morn­ing of 6 May 1933, a group of Ger­man stu­dents stormed the In­sti­tut für Sex­u­al­wis­senschaft (In­sti­tute for Sex­u­al Sci­ence) in Berlin-Tier­garten, ri­ot­ing and loot­ing. Four days lat­er, the loot­ed writ­ings were burned on Berlin’s Opern­platz. In­sti­tute di­rec­tor Mag­nus Hirschfeld lat­er es­ti­mat­ed that 12,000 of his books had fall­en vic­tim to the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist regime’s book burn­ing. Large parts of his li­brary and archive went up in flames, while the re­main­ing archives, pa­tient files, works of art, demon­stra­tion items and sex­u­al ob­jects were de­stroyed, stolen, sold and dis­tribut­ed. Hirschfeld lat­er reac­quired some of these items in ex­ile with the aim of re-es­tab­lish­ing his in­sti­tute in Paris. But this was not to be: the sex ed­u­ca­tion ex­pert, who is to­day con­sid­ered a pi­o­neer of queer eman­ci­pa­tion move­ments, died in Nice on his 67th birth­day in 1935. As part of a project fund­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, the so­ci­ety found­ed in his name – Mag­nus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V. – will now at­tempt to re­con­struct the lost col­lec­tion and the con­fis­ca­tion that con­tin­ued un­til 1936. The aim is to pro­duce an il­lus­trat­ed cat­a­logue that can be used by mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions to check their hold­ings.

The project is one of 24 re­search projects on the sub­ject of Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty that will be fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg in the first fund­ing round of 2022. On the rec­om­men­da­tion of its fund­ing ad­vi­so­ry board, the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has ap­proved some 3.1 mil­lion eu­ros in this first round of pro­pos­als for prove­nance re­search to be con­duct­ed at mu­se­ums, li­braries, aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions as well as for pri­vate ap­pli­cants.

The Deutsches Mu­se­um in Mu­nich – one of the world's lead­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy mu­se­ums – will al­so be in­ves­ti­gat­ing the ori­gins of a size­able num­ber of its hold­ings. Un­til now, it was as­sumed that the mu­se­um was on­ly af­fect­ed in in­di­vid­u­al cas­es, but re­search has now re­vealed sus­pi­cions of pos­si­ble Na­tion­al So­cial­ist prove­nance in con­nec­tion with at least a three-dig­it num­ber of items. These in­clude type­writ­ers, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, a valu­able graphome­ter – and even an aero­plane.

Since 2008, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment and the Län­der have fund­ed prove­nance re­search on the sub­ject of Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty with a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 44.9 mil­lion eu­ros, en­abling 415 projects to be re­alised to date. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion (Deutsches Zen­trum Kul­turgutver­luste) in Magde­burg, found­ed on 1 Jan­uary 2015 by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, the Län­der and the lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions, is the cen­tral point of con­tact in Ger­many for ques­tions con­cern­ing un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion re­ceives in­sti­tu­tion­al fund­ing from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia; this is al­so the source of fund­ing for its projects. Pro­pos­als for longer-term projects can be sub­mit­ted by 1 Jan­uary and 1 June each year.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion not on­ly sup­ports re­search projects, it al­so doc­u­ments cul­tur­al prop­er­ty loss­es in its pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble database Lost Art in the form of search and find re­ports. The Foun­da­tion presents the re­sults of its fund­ed re­search projects in its re­search database Proveana at www.proveana.de.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, see: www.kul­turgutver­luste.de