Examination of selected ethnological and natural history objects acquired by the Übersee-Museum Bremen from the period 1933 to 1945 whose provenance is thought to indicate persecution-related confiscation

The Übersee-Museum is a multidisciplinary museum with collections in the fields of natural history, ethnology and commerce. Around 1,200 accessions – individual items or collections – are recorded in the museum’s accession register for the period 1933 to 1945. Seven of these were included in the project as suspect provenances. It has not been possible to clarify the origin in all cases: there are still objects of questionable provenance. The investigations also brought new suspected cases to light.

Focussing on the provenance of natural history specimens and ethnographica, the project carried out in 2015/2016 entered an area of Nazi provenance research that has hitherto seen little activity. Problems arose in particular with the two entomological accessions of 1942 (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) and 1945 (Property Control). Since the animals were only described in unspecific terms in the available documents, it was not possible to identify them in the museum’s repository among 600,000 other insects. This meant that a key source for provenance research was lacking: the labels under the body of the pinned specimen, which usually contain details of the origin in terms of both geography and collector.

Nor was it possible to clarify the case of ancient American clay works donated by Bremen entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius in 1938. These items could have been acquired by the coffee merchant himself in Peru, but there are also indications that they may have come from an auction. There are still unresolved questions regarding the 1940 donation from shipyard director Franz Stapelfeldt, the executive of a company which was vital to the war effort. While Georg Müldner von Mülnheim was identified as being the previous owner and collector, Stapelfeldt transferred the collection of mainly geological materials to the museum. But the circumstances that led to Müldner von Mülnheim’s widow Jutta selling the items to the Bremen-based director of the shipbuilding company Deschimag remain unclear. Nonetheless, the possibility that the seller suffered prosecution is very unlikely to be confirmed.

Among the accessions included in the project, it was possible to identify a walrus skull from Bremen City Hall as being of unobjectionable? origin. Artistically designed, it was originally used for decorative purposes in the mayor’s office. It found its way into the museum at a time when the inventory of the city hall was moved to safety from aerial warfare in the summer of 1942. One accession from the second-hand furniture trade is also unsuspicious. In 1936 the museum bought a cupboard containing “exotic” animals from Brazil. Of these, it was possible to assign the bird skins to Bremen tobacco merchant Reinhard Wilhelm Bädecker as the collector. Bädecker stayed in Brazil as a young man in the 1890s for educational purposes, so he was most likely responsible for the other animal specimens finding their way into the museum, too. His cupboard probably ended up in Gerhard Klöfkorn’s furniture store Möbelmarkthalle when he moved away from the Hanseatic city for a few years at the end of 1934.

There is another accession which was included in the project which cannot be categorised as “confiscated as a result of persecution”: human specimens (four human foetuses, two hearts and other organ parts) that were given to the museum by a Bremen doctor in 1935. The question here was whether these originated from an unlawful context, as is known in connection with the procurement of corpses by Nazis from anatomical-pathological facilities, or whether their origin may possibly even have been linked to the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases”. Here again, research into this accession failed to produce a definitive outcome. It is thought to have come from the pathology department in Bremen, but there are no sources such as dissection registers or similar documents that might verify this and provide a chronological context.

Even though the exact provenance is still unknown in several cases, this research has afforded fresh insights into the history of the Übersee-Museum under National Socialism, in particular its natural history department. The provenance of a collection from the 1920s was established. The Bremen doctor who delivered the human specimens also left a large collection of Asian artefacts to the museum. As a result of conducting research into this individual, the museum has now obtained information that provides a basis for a more in-depth examination of the items in question.

In relation to the insect population, amateur entomologist Michael Aigner was identified: nothing was previously known about Aigner, whether in the museum or among experts. Other “newly discovered” items that likewise belong to the field of insectology are items that can be traced back to zoologist Hans Bytinski-Salz, who was persecuted as a Jew. Further investigation is necessary here. The same applies to two cases of possible persecution-related confiscation which emerged: the accessions from the art dealership Kunsthandlung R. Wagner/Berlin and Alba Franzius.

The outcomes of the project will be published and incorporated in a new permanent exhibition on the history of the museum.

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