German Lost Art Foundation approves a further €1.9 million for 25 provenance research projects in 2019

Fe­lix Ganz, who held the hon­orary ti­tle of “Kom­merzien­rat” (Coun­cil­lor of Com­merce), was a high­ly re­spect­ed cit­i­zen of the city of Mainz. A World War vet­er­an, he was the pro­pri­etor of the long-es­tab­lished com­pa­ny “Tep­pich Ganz” and the own­er of an out­stand­ing col­lec­tion of Ori­en­tal and East Asian art. In 1934 his com­pa­ny was “aryanized” with­out com­pen­sa­tion, and his vil­la was con­fis­cat­ed and giv­en to the Gestapo of­fi­cer Adolf Weg­n­er. Fe­lix Ganz was stripped of all his pos­ses­sions. From that point on, he was forced to live in “Ju­den­häus­er” (Jew hous­es), be­fore he and his sec­ond wife, Er­na, were de­port­ed to There­sien­stadt in 1942 and sub­se­quent­ly mur­dered in Auschwitz in 1944.

What be­came of his prop­er­ty, his art col­lec­tion—the pic­tures, sculp­tures, draw­ings, car­pets?

The case of mer­chant Fe­lix Ganz is one of 25 re­search projects that are be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg from 2019 on­ward. With the agree­ment of Fe­lix Ganz’s great-grand­son Adam Ganz, who lives in Lon­don, the In­sti­tute of Art His­to­ry and Mu­si­col­o­gy at Jo­hannes Guten­berg Uni­ver­si­ty of Mainz is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the case and is aim­ing to clar­i­fy the where­abouts of the items and the pre­cise cir­cum­stances of their loss.

On the rec­om­men­da­tions of its Nazi-Con­fis­cat­ed Art Fund­ing Com­mit­tee, the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg has now ap­proved €1.9 mil­lion in a sec­ond ap­pli­ca­tion round for prove­nance re­search ac­tiv­i­ties at mu­se­ums, li­braries and aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions, and al­so for three pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als. This brings the to­tal amount of fund­ing award­ed by the Foun­da­tion this year to €4 mil­lion—a sum which rough­ly cor­re­sponds to the vol­ume of fund­ing of pre­vi­ous years.

The Fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have been sup­port­ing prove­nance re­search projects since 2008, and have pro­vid­ed a to­tal of €31.7 mil­lion to date. This fund­ing has been used to car­ry out 331 projects. Na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg is the cen­tral point of con­tact for all mat­ters per­tain­ing to cul­tur­al goods un­law­ful­ly seized in the 19th and 20th cen­turies that are now found in the col­lec­tions of cul­tur­al her­itage in­sti­tu­tions. Ap­pli­ca­tions for longer-term projects may be sub­mit­ted by Jan­uary 1 and June 1 each year. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion not on­ly funds re­search projects, but al­so doc­u­ments lost cul­tur­al prop­er­ty as search re­quests and found-ob­ject re­ports in its pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble Lost Art Database.