Investigation of Provenance and Conditions of Ownership of Paintings Illegally Confiscated from Jewish Owners

The Landesmuseum Mainz houses a collection of 61 paintings, 159 prints (single sheets and sets) and 10 pieces of furniture, all of which entered the museum’s collection between 1941 and 1944 and which, after 1945, were recorded by the museum staff as special stock with the provenance information “Jewish property”. Correspondence in the archive of the Landesmuseum and in Mainz City Archive indicates that the stocks came into the museum as part of a number of successive transfers made by the Oberfinanzpräsidenten Hessen (OFP Hessen) in Darmstadt, as well as by the property utilization department of Mainz tax office. The items were originally Jewish property. The German Lost Art Foundation has been funding this project since April 2016. It focuses on researching the provenance and ownership status of these objects in order to clarify the circumstances of their confiscation and identify the former owners of the items.

In the first funding year, April 2016 to March 2017, research into the provenance of the 61 paintings took precedence. In the second and third funding years, April 2017 to March 2019, the provenance and ownership status of the Jewish-owned prints, furniture and handcrafted objects were examined.

The project in numbers

The number of objects examined consists of the following:

1. Transfers from Mainz tax office to Gemäldegalerie Mainz (Kupferstichkabinett) in 1941/42: 40 graphic prints

2. Transfers by the OFP Hessen in Darmstadt to the museums of the city of Mainz, September 1943: 61 paintings, 119 graphic prints, 9 pieces of furniture

3. Purchases by the Altertumsmuseum in Mainz from the tax office property utilization department, July 1944: 5 paintings, 11 decorative art objects

Classifying these groups using the color scale is unnecessary because the project focuses almost exclusively on objects that came into the museum’s holdings via the Reich Finance Administration. Confiscation as a result of persecution can therefore be assumed for all the objects.

List of persons and institutions that are historically relevant to the project

Today, the Landesmuseum Mainz is funded by the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (GDKE), but up to 1967 it was funded at city level and consisted of two establishments: the Gemäldegalerie (painting gallery) and the Altertumsmuseum (museum of antiquities). The two city museums were formally separate, but they had been overseen by a joint director since 1934. Because they received funding at city level, important decisions concerning the acquisition policy and exhibition policy of both museums were always made in consultation with the mayor, or the cultural department of the city of Mainz.

Important stakeholders in the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum and in Mainz city government in the years from approx. 1930 to 1950 were:

- Prof. Ernst Neeb, Director of the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum up to 1932 and for a short period in 1933–34

- Dr. Rudolf Busch, Director in 1932–1933; dismissed in 1933 due to his Jewish ancestry; reappointed as Director in June 1945

- Dr. Werner Schnellenkamp, Director of the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum briefly in 1934

- Dr. Heinz Biehn, Director of the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum from 1935 until December 1938

- Dr. Peter Keßler, Curator of the Altertumsmuseum from 1923; retired in 1937; called out of retirement in January 1939

- Dr. Will Haenlein, Administrative Board Member in the cultural department of the city of Mainz, seconded to Mainz city museums in 1942–1945

- Dr. Michel Oppenheim, worked in the cultural department of the city of Mainz between 1945 and 1951

- Dr. Fritz Arens, Director of the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum from June 1949

- Dr. Karl Heinz Esser, Assistant at the Gemäldegalerie from January 1950; Director of the Gemäldegalerie and the Altertumsmuseum from 1953

In the context of transfers by the OFP Hessen in Darmstadt, the following stakeholders are also relevant:

- Dr. Heinz Merten, Curator of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt up to 1945; deployed by the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of the Fine Arts) as a surveyor of the works of art stored at the OFP Hessen in Darmstadt

- Jakob Rath, Senior Tax Inspector at Mainz city tax office

With regard to the research into a set of graphic prints, including works by artists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, information on the following Frankfurt-based art dealership has emerged:

- Kunsthandlung Heinrich Trittler, proprietor: Paul Schiltz, Goetheplatz 6–8, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

(c) Landesmuseum Mainz