Provenance research in town and regional museums in Brandenburg. Follow-on project

Following the successes of previous rounds of research, Museumsverband des Landes Brandenburg e.V. (Brandenburg Association of Museums) initiated a new wave of research in 2014 with support from the Bureau for Provenance Research. Once again, professional preliminary research on provenance was carried out in six museums. As in the preceding projects, acquisitions made for the museums’ collections after 1933 were systematically examined. The research project benefited from an established and highly efficient team of provenance researchers who are very familiar with the particularities of the Brandenburg museum landscape.

Research was conducted in the following establishments: Stadtmuseum Cottbus, Museum Eberswalde, Museum Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Stadt- und Regionalmuseum Lübben, Stadt- und Brauereimuseum Pritzwalk and Wegemuseum Wusterhausen. Unlike in the previous research rounds, the latest round in 2014 was the first to include two institutions (Pritzwalk and Wusterhausen) that had been established after 1945. Their collections are partially based on exhibits that were compiled before 1945 and which, in some instances, took a convoluted route to reach the two museums. As a result, it can be said that at least three museums are recommended to undergo further research on individual elements of their collections. Here, there were growing indications during the Initial Check to suggest the possibility that objects had been confiscated due to Nazi persecution.

Even though the final reports on the research have not yet been assessed in detail, it can be stated that the increasing awareness among Brandenburg museums for dealing with the provenance of their collections is a significant achievement of the research round. From the outset, the institutions had a keen interest in the project and, in particular, there was active support locally. The response from other museum associations in Germany to the Initial Check in Brandenburg’s museums shows that the right course has been taken here.

(c) Museumsverband des Landes Brandenburg