Foundation board of the German Lost Art Foundation holds its constituent session at the Federal Chancellery

The board of trustees of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion con­vened Thurs­day for its con­stituent ses­sion at the Fed­er­al Chan­cellery. The trustees elect­ed Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia Prof. Moni­ka Grüt­ters to serve as chair­wom­an.

Moni­ka Grüt­ters stat­ed that “one of the few joy­ful mo­ments in the work of a min­is­ter of cul­tur­al af­fairs is to see a new foun­da­tion start a life of its own. To­day is one such mo­ment. The im­por­tant first step has been tak­en – our prac­ti­cal work has be­gun. Start­ing to­day the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has com­menced its ac­tiv­i­ties – and that with out­stand­ing names: Prof. Uwe Schneede was ap­point­ed to the ex­ec­u­tive board of the Foun­da­tion and Dr. Her­mann Si­mon was se­lect­ed as chair­man of the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee.” Moni­ka Grüt­ters added that “with the art his­to­ri­an Uwe Schneede man­ag­ing op­er­a­tions, we have some­one who made a name for him­self on ac­count of his great per­son­al com­mit­ment to search­ing for Nazi-loot­ed art in pub­lic col­lec­tions. His in­volve­ment en­hances the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion. With Dr. Her­mann Si­mon from the Cen­trum Ju­daicum in Berlin, the per­spec­tive of the Jew­ish vic­tims will ac­quire new sig­nif­i­cance in the com­mit­tees.” Fol­low­ing the meet­ing of the board of trustees, the Fed­er­al Com­mis­sion­er re­marked that “es­tab­lish­ing the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion (DZK) in record time was an en­cour­ag­ing sig­nal. The quick re­sponse to the dis­cov­ery of the art­works in Schwabing by the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions was a con­crete ex­am­ple of co­op­er­a­tive cul­tur­al fed­er­al­ism at its best in Ger­many. The board of trustees is the su­per­vi­so­ry body of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion. It is com­prised of fif­teen in­di­vid­u­als who rep­re­sent the found­ing mem­bers (the Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions). It is re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing de­ci­sions on all mat­ters of sig­nif­i­cance to the Foun­da­tion and its de­vel­op­ment. Es­tab­lished on 1 Jan­uary 2015, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion works to bun­dle, strength­en and ex­pand prove­nance re­search – in par­tic­u­lar with re­spect to Nazi-loot­ed art. It serves as the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­tact part­ner in Ger­many en­trust­ed with the task of im­ple­ment­ing the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples and the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion, a pledge by the Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions to lo­cate and re­turn cul­tur­al as­sets il­le­gal­ly at­tained through Nazi per­se­cu­tion. Its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude con­tin­u­ing the work of the for­mer Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice and the for­mer Of­fice of Prove­nance Re­search. The Foun­da­tion will be able to move in­to its prospec­tive head­quar­ters in Magde­burg in April 2015. In ad­di­tion to the start­ing cap­i­tal pro­vid­ed by its found­ing mem­bers, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion will al­so re­ceive fi­nan­cial back­ing from the Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments each year. In 2015, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment tripled its to­tal fund­ing bud­get for prove­nance re­search from two to six mil­lion eu­ros an­nu­al­ly.