“To truly clarify everything”: German Lost Art Foundation presents new publication series “Provenire”. Volume one: Insights into ten years of funded provenance research

What be­came of the Führermu­se­um’s graph­ic works col­lec­tion? What hap­pened to Julius Gold­ner’s fa­mous He­ligoland stamps? Where do the “217 in­sects from Monte Gargano”, two hu­man hearts, and four fe­tus­es in the Übersee-Mu­se­um Bre­men come from? What role did auc­tion­eers play in the ex­pro­pri­a­tion of prop­er­ty owned by Jew­ish cit­i­zens in the Third Re­ich? How did the de­scen­dants of Dres­den cou­ple Ed­uard and Ri­ta Müller, who were mur­dered in Auschwitz, come to re­ceive back Emil Nolde’s paint­ing “Frauen im Blu­men­garten” (Wom­en in a Flow­er Gar­den) from Duis­burg 75 years lat­er? And why is it still such a ma­jor chal­lenge to shed light on the ori­gins of the once huge art col­lec­tion owned by Re­ich Min­is­ter Her­mann Göring?

Prove­nance re­search re­mains a vast and com­plex field 74 years af­ter the end of the Nazi dic­ta­tor­ship. But above all, it is a moral obli­ga­tion. To this day, there is no overview of what mu­se­ums and li­braries have giv­en back to the vic­tims of Nazi raids and loot­ing since 1945. “Prove­nance re­search is not an end in it­self. It should re­sult in just and fair so­lu­tions in the spir­it of the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples,” says Gilbert Lupfer from the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board, out­lin­ing the huge task. (In 1998, 44 coun­tries met in Wash­ing­ton and agreed a set of prin­ci­ples that in­clud­ed iden­ti­fy­ing Nazi-loot­ed art, trac­ing the own­ers or their heirs, and re­solv­ing cas­es in a fair and just man­ner.)

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s new pub­li­ca­tion se­ries “Provenire” shines a light in­to the dark­ness of his­to­ry and at­tempts to draw up a pre­lim­i­nary in­ven­to­ry, with­out claim­ing to be ex­haus­tive. Vol­ume one in the se­ries pub­lished by De Gruyter pub­lish­ing house metic­u­lous­ly de­scribes the har­row­ing fates of the vic­tims, the chill­ing au­dac­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors and the myr­i­ad chal­lenges fac­ing re­searchers to­day. This first vol­ume en­ti­tled “Prove­nien­z­forschung in deutschen Samm­lun­gen” (Prove­nance re­search in Ger­man col­lec­tions) pro­vides an in­sight in­to the ex­pe­ri­ences and find­ings from ten years of fund­ed re­search on many dif­fer­ent as­pects of Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty in mu­se­ums, li­braries and archives in Ger­many. The 372-page pub­li­ca­tion is ar­ranged by lo­ca­tion and by the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in Na­tion­al So­cial­ist plun­der­ing of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. It presents a wide range of re­search projects as ex­am­ples—these were fund­ed from 2008 on­wards by the Bu­reau for Prove­nance Re­search, and then from 2015 on­wards by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg.

“The var­i­ous con­tri­bu­tions in the book,” says Gilbert Lupfer, clear­ly demon­strate the in­ten­tion that has evolved over the years in Ger­many “to tru­ly clar­i­fy ev­ery­thing”. It has long since ceased to be a mat­ter for the few, he says, and is now a con­cern of the many: “There re­al­ly is no longer any ques­tion of ‘the mu­se­ums’ re­fus­ing to co­op­er­ate or hid­ing loot­ed art in their stor­age fa­cil­i­ties.”