The German Lost Art Foundation launches pilot projects to investigate the cultural assets confiscated in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR

On Septem­ber 1, 2017, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion will be launch­ing for the first time two projects to con­duct a sys­tem­at­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ex­pro­pri­a­tion of cul­tur­al goods in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone (SBZ) and the GDR.

The Foun­da­tion will co­op­er­ate with two key part­ners: the Han­nah Arendt In­sti­tute for Re­search on To­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism (HAIT) at the Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy and the Fed­er­al Com­mis­sion­er for the Records of the State Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice of the for­mer Ger­man Demo­crat­ic Re­pub­lic (BStU). The work of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in this area fol­lows a res­o­lu­tion by the ex­ec­u­tive board. The Foun­da­tion will use the find­ings from the pi­lot projects to de­vel­op a medi­um- and long-term fund­ing con­cept for re­search in­to cul­tur­al as­sets con­fis­cat­ed or lost as a re­sult of the per­se­cu­tion and ar­bi­trary ac­tion in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone and the GDR.

In co­op­er­a­tion with the HAIT, the plan is to car­ry out re­search on “Ak­tion Licht” (Op­er­a­tion Light). Ak­tion Licht was a clan­des­tine op­er­a­tion car­ried out in Jan­uary 1962 in which the GDR Min­istry for State Se­cu­ri­ty (MfS) opened and emp­tied locked safes, safe­ty de­posit box­es, vaults and cel­lars on non-pri­vate prop­er­ty (e.g. banks) that had not been opened since 1945. The con­tents (e.g. jew­el­ry, coins, se­cu­ri­ties, stamps, art works of all kinds, notes, manuscripts, doc­u­ments) were dis­posed of in a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. In­for­ma­tion about the rea­son, mech­a­nisms and stake­hold­ers, but above all about the na­ture, ex­tent and fate of the cul­tur­al ob­jects and records found in this way, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­ter­mine the prove­nance of con­fis­cat­ed cul­tur­al prop­er­ty, will be made avail­able to the re­search com­mu­ni­ty for the first time at the end of the project. The joint project with the HAIT is ini­tial­ly lim­it­ed to two years.

In an­oth­er project with the BStU, a spe­cial in­ven­to­ry of se­lect­ed MfS doc­u­ments on the ex­pro­pri­a­tions of art and cul­tur­al prop­er­ty in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone and the GDR will be tai­lored to the needs of prove­nance re­search. The re­sults will be made avail­able as a re­search tool in a print and elec­tron­ic “find­ing aid”. It will pro­vide quick ac­cess to files and records re­veal­ing how the MfS dealt with cul­tur­al goods (seizure, stor­age and trans­fer). A dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of this co­op­er­a­tion is the use of ex­ist­ing skills: em­ploy­ees of the Stasi archive will per­form the archival in­dex­ing and the con­tent spec­i­fi­ca­tions will be de­vel­oped by Foun­da­tion em­ploy­ees. The project will ini­tial­ly run for six months.