In the second round of funding in 2022, the German Lost Art Foundation granted some 2.1 million euros for 19 provenance research projects on the subject of Nazi-looted property

In the sec­ond round of fund­ing in 2022, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion is award­ing funds for 19 re­search projects on the sub­ject of Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty. In this sec­ond round of pro­pos­als, the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has ap­proved some 2.1 mil­lion eu­ros for prove­nance re­search to be con­duct­ed at mu­se­ums, li­braries and aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions as well as for pri­vate ap­pli­cants.

The An­haltische Gemälde­ga­lerie Dessau, for ex­am­ple, is re­ceiv­ing fund­ing for two years to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in­ves­ti­gate paint­ings and works of graph­ic art that it ac­quired be­tween 1933 and 1945. Paint­ings of sus­pi­cious prove­nance were main­ly ac­quired through the art trade – for ex­am­ple from the art deal­er Dr. W. A. Luz (Berlin), who worked as an art ex­pert for the Re­ich Cham­ber of Cul­ture from 1937 on­wards and main­tained busi­ness re­la­tions with Adolf Hitler and Her­mann Göring, among oth­ers.

Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty Li­brary – one of Ger­many’s largest uni­ver­si­ty li­braries – is now al­so look­ing in­to items it ac­quired be­tween 1933 and 1945 to as­sess whether there are cas­es of Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty. From 1935 at the lat­est, the li­brary re­ceived books from con­fis­cat­ed hold­ings, while dur­ing the war it al­so ac­quired books from oc­cu­pied for­eign coun­tries. Fur­ther ac­qui­si­tions may have come from loot­ed stocks.

Since 2008, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment and the Län­der have fund­ed prove­nance re­search on the sub­ject of Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty with a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47.1 mil­lion eu­ros, en­abling 424 projects to be re­alised to date. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion (Deutsches Zen­trum Kul­turgutver­luste) in Magde­burg, found­ed on 1 Jan­uary 2015 by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, the Län­der and the lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions, is the cen­tral point of con­tact in Ger­many for ques­tions con­cern­ing un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion re­ceives in­sti­tu­tion­al fund­ing from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia; this is al­so the source of fund­ing for its projects. Pro­pos­als for longer-term projects can be sub­mit­ted by 1 Jan­uary and 1 June each year.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion not on­ly sup­ports re­search projects, it al­so doc­u­ments cul­tur­al prop­er­ty loss­es in its pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble database Lost Art in the form of search and Found-Ob­ject Re­ports. The Foun­da­tion presents the re­sults of its fund­ed re­search projects in its re­search database Proveana at www.proveana.de.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, see: www.kul­turgutver­luste.de