The never-ending post-Gurlitt “process”

by Marc Masurovsky

What is one to make of all this hoopla concerning provenance research in Germany? It took an ill-managed investigation into the activities of an octogenarian art collector, Cornelius Gurlitt, followed by a raucous international outcry to stimulate a debate over how museums in Germany treat their collections and the extent of knowledge they possess about the origins of the objects they own and curate.

Monika Gruetters to the left of Chancellor Angela Merkl

Since the announcement in early 2014 by Monika Gruetters, German Minister for culture, that she would increase funding for provenance research into the origins of art works in German state collections, the post-Gurlitt “process” has become even more bogged down in bureaucratic molasses as if the creation of yet another organization will magically make the problem of looted art simply go away.

The new entity, German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste), will move to Magdeburg, Germany, in April 2015. Magdeburg is where one can find the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, run by Michael Franz and his deputy, Andrea Baresel-Brand. It is the official German governmental database on art looted during the Third Reich, known as lostart.de. One can find in that database the items which make up the residual of the Gurlitt collection, euphemistically known as the “Schwabing Art Trove.” The Foundation will receive 6 million dollars a year to bolster provenance research, or triple the annual allocation to provenance research in Germany up to now.

Judging by Ms. Gruetters’ own statements regarding the creation of the German Lost Art Foundation, the Office of Provenance Research (Arbeitsstelle fuer provenienzforschung), run by Uwe Hartmann, and the “Degenerate Art” program at the Free University of Berlin directed by Meike Hoffmann, will remain independent and might benefit from the largesse of the new Foundation.

Professor Uwe Schneede heads up the honorary board of the Foundation and Dr. Hermann Simon chairs its Research Council. Prof. Schneede is a highly respected figure in the German art world and Dr. Simon, head of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, a leading scholar of Jewish life in Germany and especially the Berlin Jewish community.

Hermann Simon

Uwe Schneede

A board of trustees (Stiftungsrat) constitutes the governing body of the Foundation which comprises 15 drawn from Federal, regional and municipal institutions throughout Germany. One big question concerns the funding of the Foundation: do the monies come only from German public sources or will there be an expectation that private entities should contribute to the Foundation? If so, which ones? How much information will the public receive on the underwriting of the Foundation and how it spends money on research?

The Foundation's Stiftungsrat

Added to this top-heavy approach to provenance research, let’s not forget the Kuratorium, an advisory body consisting of 9 to 11 individuals, some or all coming from outside Germany. Are they specialists, pundits, heavy lifters in international reparations negotiations relative to assets looted during WWII? None of this is clear. Why so many people to oversee provenance research in Germany? Are these 11 advisors going to be savvy about the intricacies of the ways in which artistic, cultural and ritualistic objects changed hands illegally between 1933 and 1945 or is this going to be another political love fest aimed at placating foreign critics of the German way of examining cases of cultural plunder dating back to the Third Reich?

For a full reading of the articles establishing the Foundation, please click on the following link:

http://www.kulturgutverluste.de/images/Satzung_Deutsches_Zentrum_Kulturgutverluste.pdf

Teaching provenance research at the Free University of Berlin

Free University, Berlin
Source: Wikipedia

Last April, the Free University of Berlin announced that it had initiated the first academic program in Germany on cultural plunder. Classes would be taught at the undergraduate level towards completion of a Bachelors of Art. However, no details were forthcoming about the actual nature of the program, the number of classes offered, the length of the program, the inter-disciplinary nature of the curriculum, and the scope of the content being offered to students.

As it turns out, the program itself, new as it is, is far from being that ambitious. In fact, it is a provenance research program. The novelty of teaching provenance research in an undergraduate setting is duly noted, but the fanfare surrounding the creation of the program might have been a bit over the top.

Nevertheless, let’s take a closer look at what is actually being taught and by whom. The program addresses a number of broad themes: the historical background, the impact of National Socialist cultural policy; reparations and compensation (hopefully, restitution figures here as well); case studies of provenance research conducted for auction houses, museums, private collections and claimants; Art and the Law; Sources and Documentation. Students are expected to produce research papers and present their findings at the end of the course.

There is one lecture per week. A different specialist presents a specific topic at each lecture. The program is broken down into two segments; coursework in the first semester and independent archival research in the second semester.

Although the Third Reich orchestrated institutional acts of cultural plunder in every country that it occupied, the historical locus of the program remains Nazi Germany with some considerations given to collections stolen in other parts of Europe and to the methods of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR).

As to the types of looted cultural objects being covered in the case studies, emphasis, as usual, is on paintings and works on paper, but other categories are also being addressed like furniture, accessories, and Judaica.

Subsequent to the program, the Free University of Berlin has organized three month internships for the students with institutions in Berlin, Leipzig and London. The lecture “Cultural and museum policies and the art market during the Nazi era”  was taught by Meike Hoffmann together with Andreas Hüneke. Together with Uwe Hartmann, she also taught the lecture “Galleries, private collections, dealers and collectors (Aryanization, confiscation and duress sales)” while visiting the exhibition “Gute Geschäfte. Kunsthandel in Berlin 1933-45 (A Good Business: The Art Trade in Berlin 1933-45)” which was on display at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, 10 April-31 July 2011.

The following is a summary of the courses offered and a brief description:

Historical Background

"Looting during the Napoleonic wars and gaps in the historical record prior to the 20th century" Uwe Hartmann (AfP)

Presentation topics:

• The effect of secularization (1803) on the art trade and the development of private and public collections.
• Napoleon’s donations

"Cultural and museum policies and the art market during the Nazi era" Andreas Hüneke (Degenerate Art Research Centre, FU Berlin)

Presentation topics:

• The law to re-establish the civil service (7.04.1933) and its impact on museum directors.
• Auction houses and galleries during the Third Reich
• Consequences of Nazi Cultural Policy

"'Degenerate Art' – seizure, confiscation and exploitation of modern art" Andreas Hüneke and Meike Hoffmann (Degenerate Art Research Centre, FU Berlin)

Presentation topics:

• Confiscation of “degenerate art” at the museum of fine arts and applied arts in Halle in 1937.
• The exploitation of “degenerate art” through the art dealer Bernhard A. Böhmer.

"Galleries, private collections, dealers and collectors (Aryanization, confiscation and duress sales)" Uwe Hartmann (AfP)

Presentation topics:

• The art dealer Karl Haberstock (1878-1956) – Hitler's art dealer
• The Aryanization of the Heinemann Gallery

"Looted art and the art trade in occupied territory" Dr. Stephanie Tasch (Christie's)

Presentation topics:

• “Sonderauftrag Linz” (Special commission Linz) and the confiscation of the Adolphe Schloss collection
• Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and the confiscation of the Salomon Flavian collection.

Reparations and Compensation

"Public collections in Germany dealing with the burdened inheritance from1945 to the present (CCP – TVK – BADV)" Dr. Angelika Enderlein (BADV)

Presentation topic:

• The work of the American Allies in the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP)

"Provenance research as a political task and moral responsibility (“Washington Principles”, “Joint declaration”, current debates)" Peter Müller (BKM - Federal Government for Culture and Media)

Presentation topics:

• The dispute about the Sachs poster collection in the German Historical Museum
• The dispute about “Sumpflegende” by Paul Klee 

"Sumpflegende", Paul Klee
Source: Bloomberg

Case Studies

"Provenance research in the art trade" Isabel von Klitzing (Sotheby’s)

Presentation topics:

• The collection Henry and Emma Budge, Hamburg
• Lovis Corinth „Römische Campagna“, 1914, from the collection Curt Glaser, Berlin

"Provenance research at the Berlin State Museums" Dr. Jörn Grabowski, Dr. Petra Winter (ZA SMB - Central Archive of the Berlin State Museums)

Presentation topics:

"Der Watzmann", Caspar David Friedrich
Source: Amazon.com

• Caspar David Friedrich „Der Watzmann“ (1824/25). Acquired by the National Gallery in 1937 from Martin Brunn (Berlin)
• Johann Erdmann Hummel „Bildnis Frau Luise Mila“ (around 1815). Acquired by the National Gallery from a private collection in 1937

"Provenance research for collectors or claimants" Nina Senger (Jacques Goudstikker collection)

Jacques Goudstikker
Source: Jüdisches Museum, Berlin

Presentation topics:

• Hermann Göring and the confiscation of the Goudstikker collection
• Just and Fair Solutions: Restitution of confiscated Jewish collections in Holland using the example of the Goudstikker collection

Art & Law

"Results of provenance research as a basis for court decisions or out-of-court settlements" Carola Thielecke (HV SPK)

Sources & Documentation

"Archival material, databases and further electronic resources in use for provenance research" Dr. Andrea Baresel-Brand (Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg) 


According to the 13 April 2011 press release accouncing the program, for more information, please contact:

Dr. Meike Hoffman
Freie Universität Berlin, Kunsthistoisches Institut, Forschungsstelle Entartete Kunst
Telefon: 030 / 838-54523
E-Mail: meikeh@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Pearls of wisdom from the May 6-7, 2011 Provenance Research Seminar

“You can’t restitute if you don’t have good research,” Kaywin Feldman, AAMD

Interesting comment in view of the fact that, traditionally, American museums are loath to restitute regardless of how thorough and meticulous the historical research is on objects being claimed by victims.

“Who knew what when?.... There is no statute of limitations on genocide.” Jim Leach, National Endowment for the Humanities.

A marvelous truism by former Congressman Jim Leach, who was the most outspoken advocate of a public dialogue on Holocaust-era looted assets in Congress during the Clinton years. The principle that genocide trumps statutory limits is an ethical principle that has not permeated national courts either in the Americas or in Europe.

“Provenance research is restitution research,” Lynn Nicholas, author, The Rape of Europa

Here, I beg to differ with Lynne Nicholas. Restitution is a possible outcome of provenance research but it is not the incentive underlying it. Provenance research, above all, is about due diligence, transparency, and intellectual honesty.

“Why do we need footnote.com? Why not open source access to historical documents?”, Uwe Hartmann, Bureau for Provenance Investigation and Research, Berlin

Uwe Hartmann raised a fundamental point about the proprietary and for-profit nature of current research tools in the digital world that are being made available to the general and specialized publics. Indeed, the National Archives in the United States had entered into a contract with a private company that produces digital versions of archival records, www.footnote.com. Unfortunately, the idea of paying to have access to an un-indexed, un-catalogued, un-organized document that could just easily be retrieved from an archive without having to pay off is somewhat injurious, unless, of course, you have no plans on coming to College Park, MD, or Washington, DC, for that matter. The same holds true for the National Archives of the United Kingdom which charge for downloads of archival documents.

The idea of open source is one that is extremely popular in the computer programming world but one which has not entered into the habits of researchers and historians who are, by nature, proprietary about their work for obvious professional reasons guided by publishing and career-enhancing considerations.  Historical archives starved for cash are resorting to commercial tactics to replenish their coffers. By doing so, they penalize their audience and make it more difficult and penurious to conduct historical research.

Nevertheless, in an ideal world, digital historical information should be publicly-available much as the database of art objects at the Jeu de Paume tries to do by unleashing on-line as a public service all that there is to know, as of now, on art thefts in German-occupied France.