Provenance research into acquisitions from 1946 onwards in the graphic art collection of Schleswig-Holstein State Museum of Art and Cultural History

Conscious of its responsibility to reappraise the history of its collection and to restitute items of art and cultural property seized as a result of persecution during the National Socialist tyranny in accordance with the 'Washington Principles' of 1988 and the 'Joint Declaration' of 1999, the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Schloss Gottorf Foundation has been conducting systematic research and analysis of the collection holdings of the Museum of Art and Cultural History since April 2013. In an initial project (April 2013 to January 2016), the focus was on new acquisitions from the period 1933 to 1945. A second project (February 2016 to January 2018) subsequently focused on the museum’s new acquisitions from 1946 onwards. A total of 80,512 new accessions were inventoried at the Museum of Art and Cultural History for the period 1946 to 2017. Due to the large number of items that have found their way into Schleswig-Holstein State Museum since the end of the Second World War, the focus of the project was subsequently placed on the paintings.

From February 2018 to January 2020, a further provenance research project was carried out at the Museum of Art and Cultural History which focused on the graphic holdings in the collection. The State Museum once again received support from the German Lost Art Foundation.

Since the immediate post-war period, the museum’s collection of prints has been continuously expanded, alongside the traditional focus areas of Schleswig-Holstein handicrafts and folklore. With a total of 27,110 items, graphic works account for around 34% of the total number of new acquisitions from 1946 to the present day. These were purchased from various art dealers and private individuals or else were acquired by the State Museum as donations or through other channels. The period from 1946 to the early 1970s is particularly interesting since it was during this phase that many of the individuals who were involved to varying degrees in the expropriation of art and cultural property as a result of Nazi persecution continued to hold their positions and were able to go on selling such items, especially in the art trade.

Based on art dealers and auction houses known to be involved in potentially objectionable dealings, a whole series of suspicions emerged relating to the new graphic acquisitions that were investigated in detail in connection with this research project. The main focus was on acquisitions from the antiquarian dealership Antiquariat Ackermann & Sauerwein in Munich, Galerie Commeter in Hamburg, the art antiquarian dealership Kunstantiquariat C. G. Boerner in Leipzig/Düsseldorf and the former art auction house run by Adolf Weinmüller. In addition, there were some donations and purchases in the field of graphic art and handicrafts that were categorised as “suspicious” based on certain individuals with various connections to the art market during the Nazi era. These included figures such as Walter Andreas Hofer, Johannes Hinrichsen and Dr. Klaus Graf von Baudissin.

Following this prioritisation, a total of 81 items from the graphic arts and handicrafts collections were subjected to intense, case-by-case research. Of these, seven were categorised as 'orange' (questionable) and 74 as 'yellow' (not definitely unobjectionable).

In addition, further acquisition documents were examined in the archives of the Museum of Art and Cultural History. These included the documents relating to the antiquarian dealership Antiquariat F. Dörling in Hamburg, from which the State Museum acquired a total of 612 prints between 1946 and 1972 – partly as individual sheets, but mainly as larger bundles.

Meanwhile, four Danish art dealers based in Copenhagen stood out in particular during the same period based on the collection accession registers – here the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum evidently favoured acquisitions in the field of graphic art: the dealers concerned were Skandinavisk Antikvariat Gunnar Wandel, Emil Wang’s Kunsthandel, Antiquariat Kaabs/Kaabers Antiquariat and Andersen Billed Antikvariat. A total of 392 graphic prints were purchased from these antiquarian dealerships and art dealers. Here, too, the purchase documents were scrutinised as far as possible.

© Stiftung Schleswig Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf