Provenance research became particularly important internationally
following the so-called Washington Declaration of 1998.
Since then, over 40 countries attempt to give back
so-called looted art, so cultural property dispossessed
due to prosecution during National Socialism,
to their rightful owners or their successors,
or to find some other fair and equitable solution.
As a result, museums including us, have begun
to increasingly devote ourselves to our inventories,
and to explore them.
Our provenance research focuses on two main areas:
firstly, on dispossession events during National Socialism,
and secondly on dispossession events during
the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR.
Because of our history, the German Historical Museum
especially deals with the second focus, because in 1990
the museum took over the collection of the the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte,
the historical, national museum of the GDR.
We exert this research in two sections:
On the one hand we are pursuing systematic inventory research,
that is, we look at individual objects,
in order to identify the many previous owners,
and on the other hand we, of course, also process
current enquiries and proactively proceed,
if we detect suspicious cases within our research.
On top of that we also engage in basic research,
which exclusively regards the Soviet occupation zone/GDR,
and here we work together with the German Lost Art Foundation,
to research networks, protagonists and methods of GDR institutions,
and thus to make them fruitful for the research of other German museums.
In the case of this particular painting from the collection of the DHM,
the 'Allegory of Mourning' which was acquired in 1996 at a Christie's auction,
the in-house provenance research conducted a basic examination
for this painting, meaning they searched the most important databases,
and also documented the reverse side of the painting,
because that often provides information on the original owners
found on lables, that can themselves provide further information.
The 'Germania' or the 'Allegory of Mourning' is rated as
the provenance category two, meaning that its provenance is charged,
and that the evidence requires urgent research.
The second object I would like to present
is a piece of 17th century furniture.
For this object too, we have conducted database research,
and scored with the database 'German Sales'.
And on the basis of this information, we found out,
that this children's chair was sold at an auction in 1930
of the art dealer Paul Cassirer.
And we were lucky enough to find the auction catalogue
through this database, which featured the selling price
and who bought the chair, in its annotations.
And through this match we were able to find out
who the original owner was, as shown here,
in the auction catalogue of Neumeister, indicating
that this children's chair was acquired in 2005.
Here we can see it, and see that it came
from the collection of Dr Albert Figdor.
This is how we were able to find out, that with this object no disposession
due to prosecution during National Socialism took place,
since at this time, during the critical period of 1933 until 1945,
the object was located in the United States.
And on this basis, we could then assign it the category five
in our database – the provenance is clear and unencumbered.
One context of disposession, with which we are particularly concerned,
is the context of desertion from the republic.
The so-called desertion from the republic
describes the fleeing of GDR territory
without a notice of departure or police permission.
The persons fleeing could of course not take
all their belongings with them and had thus
to leave most behind on site.
From this context we hold objects in the collection
of the German Historical Museum –
for example, this medal, a so-called Hanseatic Cross.
The medal itself is serially produced,
it has no individual provenance features
such as inscriptions or the like, on the basis of which
one could identify the origin of the object.
So, in order to determine where this object came from,
it is necessary to look into the documentation of the object,
and to study in-house sources.
In the files of the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte
we did find a document dating back to March 1959.
In this document, the council of the city of Cottbus addresses the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte
and offers them to receive the Hanseatic Cross.
The document also clearly mentions that this object
stems from the flat of a so-called deserter from the republic,
and that they would like to allocate it to the museum.
Thus, in this context, we have quite clearly proven,
that the object comes from a context of disposession,
and that it has a problematic provenance.
The next object is a chest of drawers, which the museum
bought from the Magistrate of Greater Berlin in 1952.
Through a furniture autopsy, that we performed on this object,
we were able to find further provenance features, namely a brand
with swastika and the imperial eagle on the backside of the object,
and the abbreviation R.M.f.V.u.P..
We also found the inscription 'Wittig',
and in the drawers the number 69.
And on the basis of these features, we could make further calls:
The abbreviation stands for the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,
the name Wittig implies an employee of the Magistrate of Berlin,
whom we could also find in the files, and the number 69
is the inventory number of the Ermelerhaus, the magistrate's art depot.
And on the basis of these characteristics, we can now do further archival research
by considering the inventories of the Bundesarchiv, the Landesarchiv,
the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,
or to the Magistrate of Berlin, in order to then
find out more information about the origin of this object.
Most of our research is lengthy, and often conclude in dead ends,
especially, since we have a cultural-historical collection,
and not a distinctly art-historical collection, in which you can explore unique pieces.
In cultural-historical collections one often deals
with objects of serial production, which is why it is extraordinarily difficult
to actually identify them as our objects in auction catalogues or archives,
and to be able to examine the many previous owners
and their provenance.
This also results in a greater probability, of us exploring an
increasing amount of objects being twice disposessed in the future.
Objects being twice disposessed means that objects were
already disposessed during the National Socialism,
and then later again during the Soviet occupation zone or the GDR.