"Der siebzigste Geburtstag des Kommerzienrats Valentin Manheimer" (The 70th birthday of Kommerzienrat Valentin Manheimer) by Anton von Werner, oil on canvas, 1887

The provenance research was prompted by a claim to the painting filed in May 2013 by one of the descendants of the grandchildren of Valentin Manheimer, who is portrayed in the painting.

Before the DHM acquired the painting in 1991, it was offered for auction in 1988 at Christie's in New York via Christies in Amsterdam. It failed to find a buyer. The painting subsequently returned to the Netherlands. It was offered to the DHM via the West German art market, and the Deutsches Historisches Museum bought the painting in July 1991.

One particular aim of the research project on the history of the painting was to help clarify the fate of the artwork between its last known whereabouts in Berlin in 1937 and its reappearance in the Netherlands and on the art market in New York in 1988 and then in the Netherlands again afterwards.

At this point, the findings of the research can be summarized thus: the archive holdings and available files indicate that the painting left the German Reich legally with the sons of the former owner in 1938 or 1939 in the course of an authorized departure and not in the context of an expropriation.

(c) Deutsches Historisches Museum