Database on the "Munich Central Collecting Point"
This sizable database on the Central Collecting Point (CCP) in Munich goes online just a few months after the tenth anniversary of the Washington Agreement. This is a further and significant step in making the archives on the National Socialist cultural policy accessible to a wider public and follows the German Historical Museum’s Internet presentation of the Sonderauftrag: Linz (Special Commission: Linz) database in the summer of 2008.
Now, after more than 50 years, the database makes it possible to search without knowledge of the Munich inventory number for masterpieces from Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens or Cranach, for antique sculptures and objects from the applied arts such as tapestries, faience wares and ceramics, as well as for books and numismatic objects. The provenance information is taken from the listed historical sources and is not intended to express any opinion, including that of the DHM.
There are two search masks available:
A more precise search will result if it is carried out for the English term as well as for the German term. This is because the file cards’ original languages have been transcribed.
Editorial research
The DHM’s Central Documentation Department has so far performed only a cursory editing of the entries in the Access database. We have nonetheless decided to place the database online because a full-scale editing by a scholar would take approx. four years. Choosing between a four-year delay and placing the database online with its flaws was easy in the knowledge that the full-text search function makes it possible to locate the objects even if the entry is not properly placed. Spelling or orthographic mistakes in the names, however, will cause the full-text search to produce faulty results.
