Provenance research into acquisitions at the Museumsberg Flensburg after 1933

Museumsberg Flensburg was founded as a museum of applied arts in 1876 and has been housed in a historic museum building in the Westliche Höhe district of Flensburg since 1903. Collections on the history of art and culture were added after 1918. Director Fritz Fuglsang (term in office 1928–1961) continued to collect objects for the museum during the Nazi era. As the well-known examples of the Teppich collection and the List collection show, the provenance of Jewish-owned works was irrelevant to him. Since he had only very limited funds at his disposal, most of the new acquisitions between 1933 and 1945 were donations or purchases from private individuals in Flensburg. However, from 1937 onward, there was a series of acquisitions of unusually valuable objects and collections from art dealers in Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Kiel and other major cities, including several lots of Dutch Old Master drawings. Fuglsang also made purchases in the occupied territories. In 1943, the collection was relocated for storage; however, few wartime losses were identified in the inventory of 1947.

Sections of the stock were examined during the preparation of various collection catalogs and also as part of ongoing digitization in the DigiCult project, however, up until now there had been no focus on the provenance of the objects. The city of Flensburg proceeded to carry out a comprehensive, systematic investigation of the problematic stocks within its collection in order to meet its responsibility with respect to implementing the Washington Conference Principles and the Joint Declaration of the German federal government, the federal states and leading municipal associations to locate and return cultural goods confiscated through Nazi persecution. In a research project initially set to run for two years, the aim was to explore the provenance of relevant objects and subsequently publish the findings. The focus was on acquisitions and donations that had been made during the Nazi era.

In an Initial Check of all the acquisitions from the years 1933–1945, a total of 44 objects were identified as suspicious. A scientific investigation was then carried out and the objects classified according to the traffic light system, resulting in 11 green, 5 yellow, 27 orange, and 1 red case. Two cases that had previously been dealt with were already known about before systematic investigation into the provenance of the objects began. One of these concerned the acquisition of a 700-piece collection belonging to Leopold Teppich, a businessman of Jewish descent, which was clearly identified as unlawfully acquired property. The owner’s rightful heir received a compensation payment for this in 1952. The second concerned a glass cup from the List collection, which had been auctioned in 1939 at Hans W. Lange in Berlin and later restituted to List’s heirs in 2013. In light of new findings relating to the sale of the List collection, the earlier decision to restitute the item must be viewed as too hasty, though it was backed up by documents from the law firm claiming the item.

The project ended with the exhibition “Wem gehört die Kunst?” (To Whom Does Art Belong?), in which the findings were presented to a wide public audience from March to June 2019. The focus was on communicating the project content relating to the acquisitions made between 1933 and 1945. In addition, it was also very important to introduce visitors to this complex subject by looking, in particular, at the aspects of looted art, discriminatory legislation, the Nazi art trade, and methods of provenance research. The exhibition budget for the design and production of information panels was used carefully and sensibly to ensure that the complicated subject matter was presented in way that was visually appealing, but also clearly and coherently organized. The information panels were published online, but for cost reasons it was decided not to publish them in book form as well.The design of the exhibition allowed some exhibits to be viewed from both sides, and interested visitors were able to set out on their own search for clues by making use of original documents and hands-on elements. This was the first time a museum in the state of Schleswig-Holstein had dedicated a special exhibition to the subject of provenance research. Colleagues at other institutions were very enthusiastic about the transparent presentation of our research and working methods, thus showing that there is a strong interest in the investigation of Nazi-looted art also outside the major cities.

(c) Museumsberg Flensburg