Provenire

The aim of disputes over property looted during the National Socialist era is to find a ‘just and fair solution’. But what are ‘just and fair solutions’? And how do you investigate cases of Nazi-looted property? This new kind of publication presents approaches to such cases and the development of solutions. ‘Alternate history’ elements such as Leonardo da Vinci's "Formula of Invisibility", Antonio Vivaldi's composition "The Five Seasons", or a map from 1506, which mentions a new continent called "America" for the first time are starting points for examining and resolving the cases. The Venetian cases thus provide bridges between art, history, law and ethics. They are accompanied by aspects and models of solutions, as well as a sample restitution agreement.

The debate about the return of cultural assets to former colonial territories is highly topical and at the same time much older than most assume. Authors from countries in the Global South and North shed light on the long history of restitution claims from colonised countries. Their research reveals disputes about restitutions sometimes lasting for decades, traces veiled references to colonial violence by the former colonial powers in archives, and discusses what the "homecoming" of human remains can mean for societies.

Despite efforts by a reunited Germany to regulate "pending property issues", cultural heritage institutions are still having to address questions of museum ethics: Is it right that nationalized property dating from 1945–1990 forms part of public collections? What kinds of dispossessions took place? Who were those involved? When and under what circumstances did the objects make their way into public collections? From where?

These questions are of cross-border interest. Confiscated private collections and items of uncertain origin from the "Museumsfonds der DDR" (East Germany's museum stock), were exchanged for foreign currency on the international art market.

One of the functions of the German Lost Art Foundation is to investigate the confiscations of cultural goods in the Soviet Occupation Zone and East Germany, an area of research it has been facilitating since 2017.

2013 wurde infolge einer Beschlagnahme der „Schwabinger Kunstfund“ in den Blick der Weltöffentlichkeit katapultiert und damit der Kunsthändler Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), bei dessen Sohn Cornelius (1935–2014) sich die Werke befunden hatten. Eine Taskforce wurde gegründet, um die Herkunft der Werke aufzuklären, welche man wegen Gurlitts Tätigkeit während des Nationalsozialismus als „Raubkunst“ verdächtigte. 2014 tauchten weitere Werke aus dem Besitz Gurlitts auf. Im Fokus der Provenienzrecherche zum Kunstfund stand stets die zügige Aufklärung der Herkunft einzelner Werke, nicht jedoch die Grundlagenforschung. Im Zuge der komplexen Recherchen und des Umgangs mit dem heterogenen schriftlichen Nachlass ergaben sich jedoch zahlreiche weiterführende und für die Provenienzforschung wichtige Erkenntnisse, die hier in einer Auswahl vorgestellt werden.

The first volume in the Provenire publication series of the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Lost Art Foundation) presents the findings and experiences of provenance research on National Socialist looted assets in Germany. Supported by ten years of research funding, it is a compilation of materials collected by German institutions that preserve cultural heritage.

The publication is arranged encyclopedically by location and by the individuals involved or affected by National Socialist plundering of cultural property. It shows provenance research’s investigative methods to be a dynamic field of research, focusing on the institutional histories of the organizations as well as on the activities and networks of the players. Various research approaches in museums, libraries and archives are represented, as well as the diversity of the "just and fair solutions" that have subsequently come about, as called for by the "Washington Principles."