Double displacement – the indexing of Russian archive sources for the purpose of provenance research into Nazi cultural property theft

The aim of this binational research project with the participation of historians from the Russian Federation and Germany was the file-based indexing of sources accessible in Russian state and museum archives on Soviet confiscations from the so-called Sonderauftrag Linz (an organisation tasked with collecting works of art during the Second World War) in East Germany. The research centred on identifying holdings that included data on the history of art transfers, i.e. the displacement of art objects to the Soviet Union that were illegally acquired during the National Socialist era. The basis for determining this research data in Moscow archives was firstly the National Socialist documents on confiscations in various European countries (such as the registration files of Sonderauftrag Linz, which were taken to Moscow by the Soviet trophy commissions) and secondly the analysis of Soviet sources on the displacement of works of art confiscated in the USSR, with a focus on the so-called Sonderauftrag Linz. More than 300 files were examined in the following archives: State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Russian State Military Archive (RGWA) and the service archive of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. In the course of the research work, copies were made of 124 sheets of the documentation accompanying the Linz seizure from Weesenstein Castle, confiscations from the collection of Prof. Hermann Voss, and of the investigation correspondence and interrogation protocols; these were then analysed and described in a literature management programme (ZOTERO) as project outcomes. The project attracted international attention due to an interview with the project coordinator in Apollo. The International Art Magazine, which was incorporated in an article in January 2020: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/redarmy-trophy-art-germany/.

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