Provenance research in the paintings section of the Staatliches Museum Schwerin/indexing of the new sculptures inventory

In the project, a systematic investigation of further categories of objects in the museum was conducted on the basis of the inventories, item listings and documentary evidence in the Staatliches Museum Schwerin (SMS), including the archival documentation work already completed and with the results obtained from this. Following on from the investigation of the museum’s paintings section was the identification of cultural goods confiscated due to Nazi persecution in the stocks of sculptures, artisan craftwork, coins, medals, drawings and graphics. The period of investigation was defined as limited to the National Socialist era (1933 to 1945).

The focus was on items with, in some cases, clearly suspicious provenance, such as acquisitions from the Leipzig-based art and antique dealers Curt Naubert and C. G. Boerner, the Hamburg gallery Kurt Köster and the antiquarian art dealer Reinhold Püppel in Berlin. Dealers trading in antiques and coins in Mecklenburg during the Nazi era—such as Ludwig Grabow (Rostock), Else Spangenberg (Rostock) and Carl Friedrich Michaelis (Neustrelitz)—required detailed investigation and the art objects acquired from them were subjected to particularly careful examination.

A more in-depth and time-consuming investigation was needed particularly for the objects in the drawings and graphics collection category. Increased attention was required when making comparisons with the auction catalogs from the various galleries because it transpired that when data had been transferred from the acquisition book to the collections’ inventory books and card indexes, incomplete or incorrect information had often been entered or the provenance of items had not been recorded.

The research project therefore included all of the SMS’s collection categories and the results were documented. A list of all masterpieces confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution with clarified and incomplete provenances and the associated relevant results are accessible to the public in the Lost Art Database. In addition, efforts were also made to present a detailed collection history and the acquisition policy of the Mecklenburg State Museum from 1933 to 1945 and thus meet the museum’s present-day moral responsibility to urgently deal with this dark chapter of German history.

(c) Staatliches Museum Schwerin