Provenance research in the holdings of the applied arts collection, especially evidence of Berlin’s silversmith crafts and of the former Märkisches Museum in the Stadtmuseum Berlin

The Stadtmuseum Berlin was founded by the state of Berlin in 1995 with the aim of bringing together municipal cultural institutions in the Eastern and Western parts of the city into one organization. This has resulted in a current inventory of approx. 4.5 million objects spread across 40 collections and mainly originating from the Märkisches Museum (est. 1874) and the Berlin Museum (est. 1962). As the legal successor of the unified museums, the Stadtmuseum began dealing with restitution inquiries in the years immediately after it was founded.

However, it did not have the required staffing resources to carry out fundamental scientific provenance research. Following the establishment of the Bureau for Provenance Investigation/Research in 2008, research into collections was able to be professionalized with staff financed under third-party funding arrangements. Two individual research cases were successfully dealt with in 2008 and 2009 with assistance from the Bureau. The Senate Department for Cultural Affairs has also provided financial support for the necessary provenance research in Berlin’s institutions since 2010. This made it possible for the Stadtmuseum to draw up a comprehensive

plan of action

setting out the progressive stages for research into acquisitions made in the period 1933–1945. The paintings collection (2010); the prints collection, especially drawings (2011) and the applied arts porcelain and silver objects section (2012/13) were under investigation. All finds made were meanwhile reported in the Lost Art register maintained by the Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets in Magdeburg.

During the research in the museum’s archive, the files (registers of items received, inventory, correspondence and invoices, other written evidence) were reconciled and recorded in table form. These are broken down as follows: consignors, purchase/donation and price, assessment of provenance and source(s). The findings were rounded off by an in-depth examination of the objects under investigation and the documentation of their literature. As well as registering suspicious objects in the Lost Art Database, the entire results were captured in the museum’s DAPHNE database and are thus accessible to a wider public audience.

(c) Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin