Provenance research in Stadtmuseum Berlin into the holdings of the decorative arts collection, primarily specimens of Berlin silversmithing and items from the former Märkisches Museum

Stadtmuseum Berlin was founded in 1995 by the state of Berlin with the aim of unifying municipal cultural institutions from East and West. This produced a collection which today comprises some 4.5 million items spread across 40 collections and mainly originating from the Märkisches Museum (founded in 1874) and the Berlin Museum (founded in 1962). As the legal successor to the unified museums, the Stadtmuseum began dealing with restitution requests in the very first years of existence.

However, there were insufficient human resources to carry out fundamental scholarly provenance research. With the establishment of a provenance research bureau in 2008, it was possible to professionalise collection research by hiring staff financed from third-party funds. In 2008 and 2009, two individual case investigations were successfully carried out with the help of the provenance research bureau. Since 2010, the Senate Department for Cultural Affairs has also provided financial support for the necessary provenance research in its state-owned institutions, enabling the Stadtmuseum to draw up a comprehensive plan of action.

This involved step-by-step research into the accessions for the years 1933-45. An investigation was carried out into the paintings (2010), the prints and drawings (2011) and the decorative arts, porcelain and silver objects (2012/13). All completed findings have now been entered in the Lost Art database maintained by the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office) in Magdeburg.

In the course of the research, the files (receipt registers, inventories, correspondence and accounts, as well as other written documents) were compared and tabulated in the in-house archive. These are categorised according to the following: consignors, purchase/gift and price, assessment of provenance, and source/sources. The findings were finalised with a physical inspection of the items in question and their literature documentation. In addition to entering suspicious objects in the Lost Art database, all the results were summarised and made available to a broader public in the museum database DAPHNE.

© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin