During an inventory of the DHM’s holdings, staff responsible for the museum’s art collection looked into the bronze relief more closely. They were particularly interested in the historical context in which it had been created and the meaning it held in its original setting. These are fundamental questions when working on museum collections: where did the object come from, how was it created, and how was it originally used? Over the course of this research, a member of the collections staff came across a postcard from around 1930 showing the relief to be part of a memorial in Dinant. Prominently featured on the postcard was an inscription stating that the memorial had been erected to commemorate a massacre carried out by German Imperial troops at the beginning of the First World War. Further research, conducted with the assistance of staff from the mayor’s office in Dinant, uncovered archival records documenting an order for the memorial to be demolished and the shipment of the relief to Germany during the German occupation in the Second World War. In light of these findings, we naturally offered to return the relief, which was handed back in June 2026.

In the case of the Dinant relief, research into its origins and original context proved to be a means of establishing who the object actually belonged to. Ultimately, the core question is always where an object originally comes from. This also applies to provenance research in the narrower sense in which we understand it today, particularly in relation to specific historical contexts of injustice. Working with collections and researching individual objects is essentially about understanding the historical circumstances in which they were created, identifying their original owners, and tracing subsequent changes of ownership. Provenance research goes further, focusing explicitly on the forced transfer of property resulting from Nazi-era expropriation. Another area of emphasis is research into contexts of dispossession in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. These are our principal areas of provenance research. Where necessary, we also conduct research on wartime losses and objects from colonial contexts.

We try to approach it from several different directions. In addition to myself, as head of the team, we have one researcher working on Nazi-looted property and another whose focus is the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. A third researcher collaborates with the German Lost Art Foundation on projects tracing the often circuitous movement of objects in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. This kind of work is about mapping broad patterns rather than tracing single pieces. The way we divide the work reflects the different approaches to provenance called for by the particular history of the DHM’s holdings. We conduct systematic, collection-wide research in both areas – currently with a particular focus on the applied arts collection – and also investigate individual objects, either in response to outside enquiries or on the basis of leads arising from our own research. Our foundational research on the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR is crucial for assessing research findings in this area, particularly because we continue to hold and study the collection of the MfDG, the GDR’s main history museum. One of our most challenging jobs at the moment is verifying the provenance of the objects destined for the new permanent exhibition we’re planning. Thousands of objects have been earmarked for it, and we are looking into their histories. Over the next few years, we will be working primarily on unique items, most of them artworks or objects associated with specific individuals.