German Lost Art Foundation and five partners publish a manual on provenance research for cultural goods seized during the Nazi regime as a result of persecution

The first prove­nance re­search man­u­al on iden­ti­fy­ing cul­tur­al goods con­fis­cat­ed as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion by the Nazis is de­signed to be a prac­ti­cal toolk­it for em­ploy­ees of mu­se­ums, li­braries and archives, for art and an­tiques deal­ers, and al­so for pri­vate col­lec­tions.

Any­one who has doubts about the prove­nance of cul­tur­al goods in their own col­lec­tions—be they paint­ings, sculp­tures, books, coins, porce­lain, graph­ic art or sil­ver table­ware—will find the need­ed tools in the guide­line: prac­ti­cal tips, case stud­ies as well as im­por­tant ad­dress­es, sources and web links.The pub­li­ca­tion is di­vid­ed in­to six chap­ters and al­so serves as a guide­line for ac­tion. The top­ics cov­ered range from his­tor­i­cal con­text, through ap­proach­es, plan­ning and meth­ods, to iden­ti­fy­ing heirs and en­ti­tled claimants. The guide­line sets out po­lit­i­cal, le­gal and eth­i­cal foun­da­tions; it al­so pro­vides de­tails of in­sti­tu­tions and net­works with­in the prove­nance re­search field.

The guide­line is a joint pub­li­ca­tion com­piled by five part­ners in ad­di­tion to the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion:

• Ar­beit­skreis Prove­nien­z­forschung e. V.,
• Ar­beit­skreis Prove­nien­z­forschung und Resti­tu­tion – Bib­lio­theken,
• Deutsch­er Bib­lio­theksver­band e. V.,
• Deutsch­er Mu­se­ums­bund e. V.,
• ICOM Deutsch­land e. V.

The au­thors of the vol­ume have been in­stru­men­tal in the sci­en­tif­ic, method­olog­i­cal and prac­ti­cal de­vel­op­ment of the field in past years, and they con­tribute their pro­found prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the guide­line’s 135 pages. In 1998, more than 40 coun­tries signed up to the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples and pledged to take proac­tive steps to iden­ti­fy cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. With the pub­li­ca­tion of this prac­tice-ori­ent­ed guide­line, a use­ful and prac­ti­ca­ble guide for ac­tion is now fi­nal­ly avail­able.The book fo­cus­es ex­plic­it­ly on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty lost dur­ing the Nazi rule. It does not ad­dress oth­er prove­nance re­search top­ic ar­eas such as ex­pro­pri­a­tions in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone and the GDR, items lost dur­ing wartime or ob­jects from the colo­nial era. Fur­ther­more, the guide­line can­not ad­dress ev­ery in­sti­tu­tion­al and struc­tural par­tic­u­lar­i­ty, but it will pro­vide im­por­tant start­ing points and ap­proach­es for all those who con­duct prove­nance re­search. The guide­line is al­so in­tend­ed to of­fer straight­for­ward and se­cure ac­cess to prove­nance re­search for small­er in­sti­tu­tions, in or­der to en­sure that this re­search is per­ma­nent­ly in­clud­ed as an es­sen­tial and in­dis­pens­able task in their prac­ti­cal ef­forts to safe­guard and pre­serve cul­tur­al her­itage.

The guide­line will be made avail­able free of charge by the pub­lish­er as a print­ed doc­u­ment and as an on­line pub­li­ca­tion. It can be down­load­ed here.