Provenance research into the paintings collection at the Modern Gallery

The holdings of the Modern Gallery at the Saarland Museum today contain around 220 paintings covering the period from the end of the 19th century up the 1940s. This project investigated the history of ownership of the paintings before and during the National Socialist regime in Europe. One of its key areas of focus was the Kohl-Weigand private collection, which was given to the museum in 1982. The 125 artworks that were owned by the Saarland private collector Franz-Josef Kohl-Weigand mainly comprise works by artists from the south-west: Max Slevogt, Albert Weisgerber and Hans Purrmann. According to information from the previous owners, and as the state of research so far shows, no purchase documents have been preserved for this collection.

It had already been proven several times that Kohl-Weigand also purchased items from art collections seized as a result of Nazi persecution. These acknowledgments prompted extensive investigations which were conducted in connection with a number of requests for provenance clarification received by the Saarland Museum over recent years. In some cases, these research activities allowed objects to be restituted to the legitimate successors of the original owners. The most recent provenance research project was accompanied by systematic indexing and analysis of Kohl-Weigand’s extensive private archive which, like the artworks, had also been given to the Saarland Museum.

During the first two years of the project, it was possible—despite a complete lack of purchase documents—to extensively clarify the provenance of half of the 220 objects, the half that was more controversial in terms of its ownership history. In the case of suspicious works, contact was made with the rightful owners.

Besides the paintings from the Kohl-Weigand collection, the investigation looked at around 95 pictures that had been purchased from European—mainly German—art dealers, 75 of which were bought during the 1950s. The purchase documents are normally preserved in the Saarland Museum archive or in the Saarbrücken state archive. However, there was often no knowledge about previous owners, nor about consignors at the respective art dealers. The third year of the investigation should result in certainty about the history of ownership of these particular works.

The provenance research has been incorporated into the academic inventory catalog of paintings in the Modern Gallery, which was published in 2017.

Since the reopening of the Modern Gallery in November 2017 after its structural expansion, a permanent exhibition has provided insights into the research project and provenance issues in general. Visitors are introduced to the methods, practices and findings of provenance research using 14 paintings and 3 sets of graphic prints as examples. The presentations featuring these selected works are very closely linked to the fates of their owners, whose stories are also told here. Furthermore, completed and ongoing restitution cases are portrayed. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog (“Bilder/Schicksale” (Pictures/Fates), Saarbrücken 2017) and a continuous educational program.

(c) Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz, Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken