The German Lost Art Foundation is organizing the digital fall conference "VEB Kunst – Kulturgutentziehung und Handel in der DDR" (VEB art – cultural property confiscation and trade in the GDR)

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion is shed­ding light on a field in prove­nance re­search that has so far been lit­tle dis­cussed in pub­lic: the do­mes­tic and for­eign trade in art and
an­tiq­ui­ties on the ter­ri­to­ry of the for­mer GDR be­tween 1945 and 1990.

Thir­ty years af­ter Ger­man uni­fi­ca­tion, the GDR may be a thing of the past, but the pro­cess of com­ing to terms with its his­to­ry is far from com­plete. With the dig­i­tal con­fer­ence "VEB Kun­st – Kul­turgutentzug und Han­del in der DDR" on Novem­ber 30, 2020, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion is shed­ding light on a field in prove­nance re­search that has so far been lit­tle dis­cussed in pub­lic: the do­mes­tic and for­eign trade in art and an­tiq­ui­ties on the ter­ri­to­ry of the for­mer GDR be­tween 1945 and 1990.

The GDR sold works of art and cul­tur­al prop­er­ty abroad to raise for­eign cur­ren­cy. The Kun­st und An­tiq­ui­täten GmbH (Art and An­tiques Com­pa­ny) even sold mu­se­um col­lec­tions on be­half of the state, while at the same time us­ing fic­ti­tious ac­cu­sa­tions of tax eva­sion to squeeze valu­able col­lec­tions from col­lec­tors and pri­vate deal­ers. While in­ten­sive re­search in­to in­di­vid­u­al cas­es has been car­ried out at many East Ger­man mu­se­ums since the 1990s, the role of even the most im­por­tant play­ers, such as the Min­istry of Cul­ture or the Min­istry of Fi­nance, has not yet been com­pre­hen­sive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed. There are al­so hard­ly any schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tions on the prac­tice of col­lect­ing. "Our con­fer­ence can­not elim­i­nate these deficits, of course. But it aims to raise aware­ness of the top­ic – and al­so of the re­search tasks that still lie ahead," says Prof. Gilbert Lupfer, Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg.

The dig­i­tal con­fer­ence, at­tend­ed by some 170 ex­perts and par­tic­i­pants, will present the lat­est find­ings on the GDR's trade in his­tor­i­cal cul­tur­al prop­er­ty on the in­ter­na­tion­al art mar­ket, deal with the of­fi­cial and un­of­fi­cial ex­ploita­tion of seized prop­er­ty, and al­so tell of the some­times trag­ic fates of those af­fect­ed, such as the own­er of the Hen­ning Gallery in Halle: His gallery was tar­get­ed by the SED lead­er­ship be­cause of its avant-garde pro­gram and was forcibly closed. Ed­uard Hen­ning took his own life a short time lat­er.

The con­fer­ence al­so pro­vides in­sight in­to the work of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion: Since 2017, the Foun­da­tion has been pro­mot­ing his­tor­i­cal con­text re­search on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty con­fis­ca­tions in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone and GDR in aca­dem­ic co­op­er­a­tion projects. The aim is to iden­ti­fy struc­tures and pro­tag­o­nists in or­der to al­so cre­ate a ba­sis for the pos­si­ble in­ves­ti­ga­tion of in­di­vid­u­al cas­es.

The state of the reap­praisal of this lit­tle-known chap­ter of GDR his­to­ry and how the in­ter­ests of vic­tims are tak­en in­to ac­count in the pro­cess was al­ready the sub­ject of a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the eve of the con­fer­ence. The de­bate with Ul­rike Lorenz (Pres­i­dent of the Klas­sik Stiftung Weimar), Roland Jahn (Fed­er­al Com­mis­sion­er for the Records of the State Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice of the For­mer Ger­man Demo­crat­ic Re­pub­lic), Ulf Bischof (lawyer) and Uwe Hart­mann (Head of the De­part­ment for Prove­nance Re­search at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion) will be broad­cast on De­cem­ber 1 at 10 p.m. on the pro­gram "MDR Kul­tur-Werk­statt" un­der the ti­tle "En­teignet, ent­zo­gen, verkauft. Com­ing to terms with the loss of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty in the GDR." Af­ter­wards, it can be ac­cessed in the ARD Me­diathek for one year.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg is the cen­tral point of con­tact in Ger­many for all ques­tions con­cern­ing un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion re­ceives in­sti­tu­tion­al fund­ing from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, from which it al­so re­ceives fund­ing for its projects. The Foun­da­tion's main fo­cus is on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized un­der Na­tion­al So­cial­ism, es­pe­cial­ly from Jew­ish own­ers. In ad­di­tion, the Foun­da­tion's fields of ac­tiv­i­ty in­clude cul­tur­al prop­er­ty and col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts and cul­tur­al prop­er­ty dis­placed as a re­sult of war (so-called loot­ed prop­er­ty), as well as cul­tur­al prop­er­ty con­fis­cat­ed in the So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone and the GDR.

The con­tri­bu­tions of the "VEB Kun­st" con­fer­ence, en­riched by fur­ther es­says on sim­i­lar top­ics, will be pub­lished in the fall of 2021 in the aca­dem­ic an­thol­o­gy "Zur Au­far­beitung der Kul­turgutver­luste in der SBZ und DDR" in the se­ries "Provenire" by the pub­lish­ing house De Gruyter, pub­lished by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion.