New book on the Gurlitt Art Trove

The case changed the art world: When the dis­cov­ery of rough­ly 1,500 works of art owned by the son of art deal­er Hilde­brand Gurlitt was re­port­ed in Novem­ber 2013, the al­leged “Nazi trove” made head­lines around the world.  Af­ter com­ple­tion of the sys­tem­at­ic study, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has now re­leased a sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tion on the “Gurlitt Art Trove” as part of its “Provenire” se­ries. The an­thol­o­gy, to ap­pear on 5 May, re­flects the lat­est re­search. It al­so il­lu­mi­nates pre­vi­ous­ly less­er-known as­pects of the spec­tac­u­lar case, which has sig­nif­i­cant­ly height­ened pub­lic aware­ness of the di­men­sions of Nazi art theft and was a vi­tal stim­u­lus for the ex­pan­sion of prove­nance re­search in Ger­many.

The Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, Moni­ka Grüt­ters, sup­port­ed the re­lease of the pub­li­ca­tion with funds from the fed­er­al cul­tur­al bud­get. Ms Grüt­ters stat­ed: “With ev­ery art­work we iden­ti­fy as hav­ing been mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed due to Nazi per­se­cu­tion and for which we find a just and fair so­lu­tion with the orig­i­nal own­ers or their de­scen­dants, we can make a small con­tri­bu­tion to his­toric jus­tice. We owe it to those peo­ple who were robbed of their prop­er­ty and their rights by the Nazi regime. From the be­gin­ning, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment thus rec­og­nized and sup­port­ed the sys­tem­at­ic study of the Gurlitt Art Trove as part of Ger­many’s his­toric re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in deal­ing with the lega­cy of Nazi art theft. The vol­ume pub­lished by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion con­tains a re­mark­able wealth of in­sights in­to the Gurlitt Art Trove gained through the fed­er­al­ly fund­ed re­search of the Task Force and cor­re­spond­ing fol­low-on projects. These in­sights are in­valu­able even be­yond the ‘Gurlitt case’, as they help clar­i­fy prove­nances and strength­en the over­all knowl­edge base of prove­nance re­search on Nazi art theft. This pub­li­ca­tion by no means marks the end of our ef­forts to deal with the lega­cy of Nazi art theft. Quite the op­po­site: it is a start­ing point from which to pur­sue the truth with even more re­searchers who are equipped with even bet­ter sci­en­tif­ic tools than be­fore.”

Hilde­brand Gurlitt played an im­por­tant role as buy­er for Hitler’s planned “Führermu­se­um” (Führer’s mu­se­um) in Linz, as a deal­er for mu­se­ums and not least in the dis­pos­al of what is known as “de­gen­er­ate art”. Con­tri­bu­tions in the vol­ume ad­dress, among oth­er top­ics, Gurlitt’s com­pre­hen­sive ac­tiv­i­ty in the French and Dutch art mar­kets and his net­work dur­ing the post-war era. Apart from in­sights about the struc­tures and stake­hold­ers of Nazi art trade, the book de­lib­er­ate­ly re­veals gaps and flaws in the re­search and sug­gests ap­proach­es to fur­ther work.

Gilbert Lupfer, Aca­dem­ic Di­rec­tor of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion and co-ed­i­tor of the vol­ume, com­ment­ed: “To­day, more than six years af­ter the world learned about the ‘Schwabing Art Trove’, we know a lot more than we did be­fore, for in­stance about the move­ments of art in oc­cu­pied France or in the Nether­lands. It is very for­tu­nate that many re­searchers who had al­ready been in­stru­men­tal in shed­ding light on the ‘Art Trove’ were will­ing to make their large­ly un­pub­lished re­search find­ings avail­able for this vol­ume.”

“Kun­st­fund Gurlitt. Wege der Forschung“ (Gurlitt Art Trove. Re­search path­ways), edit­ed by An­drea Bare­sel-Brand, Na­dine Bahrmann and Gilbert Lupfer, is the sec­ond vol­ume in the pub­li­ca­tion se­ries “Provenire” re­leased by De Gruyter (188 pages, 39.95 eu­ros).

In its pub­li­ca­tion se­ries “Provenire”, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion pub­lish­es sci­en­tif­ic pa­pers from the field of prove­nance re­search.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg was es­tab­lished in 2015 by Fed­er­a­tion, the Län­der and the na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions of lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. It is the cen­tral point of con­tact, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, for all mat­ters per­tain­ing to cul­tur­al prop­er­ty which was un­law­ful­ly seized. The Foun­da­tion’s pri­ma­ry fo­cus is on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty tak­en from its own­ers as the re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly Jew­ish prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion sees its work as an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards com­pen­sat­ing vic­tims for the in­jus­tice they have suf­fered.

Or­der­ing op­tion