Nazi-confiscated cultural goods as a result of persecution in the collection holdings of the KSW

The Klassik Stiftung Weimar’s most important task is to preserve, supplement, scientifically analyze and publicly communicate information about its unique culturally historic holdings. This is also the reason for its special responsibility with regard to implementing the Washington Conference Principles of 1998 and the 1999 Joint Declaration of the German federal government, the federal states and the leading municipal associations to locate and return cultural goods confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution.

Using systematic, scientifically sound procedures, the research project aims to clarify to what extent the KSW’s collections contain objects that are proven to have been, or are initially just presumed to have been, acquired under legally and/or morally or ethically dubious circumstances during the National Socialist dictatorship from 1933 to 1945.

In the project, which was initially proposed for a period of two years, the KSW’s four large core inventories are being examined for relevant suspicious factors: these are the holdings of the former Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, of the Goethe and Schiller Archive, of the Goethe National Museum and of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek. The institutions—which today are all brought together in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar—were all independent during the examination period, but at the same time there existed close relationships between them due to personnel-related, content-related and informal connections. In the project, a research and documentation procedure is being developed that is tailored to the respective institutions and takes account of their diverse past history. This procedure reveals not only specific suspect cases but also the sources and the structures of acquisition processes. This will subsequently enable any necessary further systematic analysis, where appropriate, and investigation of Nazi-confiscated cultural goods at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. It will also facilitate the evaluation and clarification of resulting compensation and restitution claims.

(c) Klassik Stiftung Weimar