Provenance research on the Asian art collection of Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma

The collection of Asian art owned by the Hamburg tobacco manufacturer Philipp F. Reemtsma (1893–1959) was compiled within a core period of six years between 1934 and 1940. It contained 342 art objects, primarily from China. However, since earlier and later acquisitions generally cannot be ruled out, the period of investigation within the specialist literature and the auction catalogs has been expanded to cover the years from 1925 to 1940. This allows movements on the art market to be taken into account. In individual cases, collection objects from the Reemtsma stock of artworks could be clearly identified before they came into this collection.

For the period 1926 to 1940, it was possible to find evidence of a total of 14 auctions where objects from the Reemtsma collection were traded. With the aid of substantially annotated catalogs in the MKG library, researchers were able to identify eight large collections from which Reemtsma had acquired Asian art. These include the stocks of the Berlin art trading company Dr. Otto Burchard & Co., the collection of Margarete Oppenheim, the works of art belonging to the travel writer Georg Wegener and the collections of the Dresden surgeon Dr. Friedrich Hesse and the Berlin engineer Johannes Bousset. During his active years as a collector, Reemtsma either placed bids for items at auctions or purchased pieces that had ended up on the art market from auctions.

His advisors included Martin Feddersen (1888–1964), head of the East Asia department at the MKG, and Leopold Reidemeister (1900–1987), who became the director of Berlin’s Museum of East Asian Art in 1938. Reidemeister introduced Reemtsma to the Berlin art market, the hub of trade in East Asian art. The top address for Asian art was China-Bohlken, a store dealing in direct imports from the Far East. It was visited regularly by Reemtsma. Because he acquired a large part of his collection there, it can be presumed—but demonstrated only in two cases—that the auction items were resold to Reemtsma via China-Bohlken. The gallery’s business records were destroyed in an air raid in 1945. This meant an important source of information for provenance research was lost.

After Reemtsma’s death in 1959, his Asian art collection remained in the family’s possession. In 1969, Gertrud Reemtsma (1916–1996) commissioned the Hamburg art dealer Hans-Jörgen Heuser to produce a catalog to mark the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death and the collection was thus publicized for the first time. According to the catalog, the collection contained 342 items, 304 of which have been donated to the museum. A discrepancy concerning the true number of pieces in the collection reveals that some objects have been subsumed under one collection number as pairs. This gives a actual number of 319 objects. The aim of the project was to determine the origin of these art objects and make restitutions where required.

Overall, it was possible to clarify or narrow down the provenance of 91 objects from the Reemtsma collection. Added to these are 25 museum acquisitions by Martin Feddersen from the East Asia department, for which proof of origin could be provided in the course of research activities across projects. Three unsuspicious acquisitions from the field of European decorative arts were also identified. Two further acquisitions from this department were assigned to the List collection; however, research on these is still required. Claims are currently pending for other porcelain pieces. For two pieces, evidence of the acquisition source could not be reliably provided despite the suspicion that they are problematic acquisitions. A Chinese bronze object, for which the need for restitution has also been determined, is one of the museum’s wartime losses. In the course of the research for the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, proof of origin for a total of 125 objects was provided. All unclarified acquisitions from the Reemtsma collection were registered in the Lost Art Database.

(c) Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg