Project research to determine the provenance of all Wilhelm Busch artworks acquired after 1933 which are kept in the collection holdings of the Museum Wilhelm Busch in Hanover
Description
The Wilhelm Busch collection in the Museum Wilhelm Busch—The German Museum for Caricature and the Art of Drawing was mainly compiled in the 1930s and 1940s. For many of the acquisitions made in these two decades, the question of provenance had remained unclear or largely unknown to date. The main focus of the project, therefore, was to clarify as fully as possible the origin of all the works that had entered the Wilhelm Busch collection during the National Socialist era with the aim of identifying any masterpieces that had been unlawfully acquired from Jewish or other owners and, where possible, restitute them.
The Wilhelm Busch collection contains 335 paintings, 1,500 drawings, 50 illustrated stories, six sculptures, 896 letters and 193 pieces of prose and poetry. Of this current total stock, 2,209 works came into the collection between 1933 and 1945.
Thanks to financial support from the Bureau for Provenance Research (AfP), investigations into the origin of all Wilhelm Busch works acquired in the period 1933–1945 which are held in the collection of the Museum Wilhelm Busch—The German Museum for Caricature and the Art of Drawing (formerly the Wilhelm Busch Museum Hanover) began on August 1, 2010. The work on the project was carried out by a researcher in a part-time position which was funded by the Bureau for Provenance Research in Berlin for the duration of one year. With the aim of clarifying as fully as possible the origin of the Busch works that had entered the collection during the National Socialist era, a systematic review was first carried out of the complex documents found in the museum’s archive. They were recorded and a partial analysis was conducted during the approved project period. Except for the written documents from Walther Lampe (deputy chairman of the Wilhelm Busch Society 1930–1971, then chairman 1971–1978), which could only be partially analyzed to date due to time constraints, nearly all the documents relevant to the research project in the museum were reviewed and processed. At the same time, the backs of all the paintings were examined and recorded; their secondary labeling and stickers had been treated carelessly in the past. During this work, numerous initials and annotations on the backs of the paintings were identified. Paired with the inheritance and sales lists of Wilhelm Busch’s descendants found in the museum’s archive, these enabled 65 collection acquisitions to be clarified.
The online research in the Galerie Heinemann, which had been possible since summer 2010, proved to be a stroke of exceptionally good fortune right at the beginning of the project. The first public exhibition of Wilhelm Busch’s works had been held in this Munich gallery in April 1908, i.e. nearly four months after his death. In the course of this high-profile sales exhibition, the artist’s paintings and drawings were, for the first time, acquired by owners outside his family and the publishing houses that had released his illustrated stories. With the aid of documents from Galerie Heinemann, a large amount of important information about the buyers and sellers of the works sold in Munich in 1908 was obtained. Nothing had been known about them before then. This new knowledge not only relates to the more than 150 works in the museum’s own collection holdings, but also to around 200 more works by Wilhelm Busch that are privately or publicly owned today.
In the course of the project, valuable insights were also provided by the analysis of a folder containing around 500 invoice documents and bearing the inscription “Invoices W.B.G. 1930–March 31, 1944.” Just over 100 of the receipts contained in the folder document the acquisition of Wilhelm Busch works for the collection. The documents were discovered in 2005 among Walther Lampe’s papers, but it was only during the project that they were able to be analyzed extensively. As a result of this work, it was possible to reconstruct the acquisition of a total of 221 collection objects obtained between 1933 and 1945.
Basic information
Research report and other sources
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Related content
Personen/Körperschaften
- Verweist aufLampe, Walther
- Verweist aufConrad, Emil
- Verweist aufNeugass, Rudolf
- Verweist aufHafner, N.N. (männlich)
- Verweist aufHaltenhoff, Henricus
- Verweist aufMenge, Arthur
- Verweist aufWilhelm-Busch-Gesellschaft
- Verweist auf
- Verweist auf
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Ereignisse
- Verweist aufErste öffentliche Ausstellung nach Tod Wilhelm Busch
Sammlungen
- Verweist aufNachlass Walther Lampe