Structured investigation of the Municipal Collection holdings for masterpieces confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution, particularly in the years 1941 to 1945

The Würzburg Municipal Collection, which nowadays is housed in the Museum im Kulturspeicher, was established in 1941 on behalf of the National Socialist city government. A targeted search of the holdings for artworks that had been seized as a result of Nazi persecution therefore seemed advisable.

In the funded provenance research project that ran from November 2014 to October 2017, researchers examined the new acquisitions that had been made between 1941 and 1945.

The longstanding head of collections, Heiner Dikreiter (1893–1966), acquired 5,178 works in this period. Most of these were obtained for the Municipal Collection as purchases or donations directly from the artists or their heirs. This means that 3,231 objects have an unsuspicious history of origin. By contrast, 1,633 works could not be considered lawful for certain; in total, 10 percent were clarified. The research was focused on paintings. They numbered 227 with 79 originating from the art market, which is why they came under general suspicion. At the end of the project, the provenance of 61 paintings had been fully clarified; 58 were classified as lawful and three must be considered problematic.

The starting point for the provenance research was the inventory books which were first created in the post-war era by Dikreiter’s colleague Annemarie Pabst.

The information in them can no longer be understood today due to missing acquisition documents. The other internal file archives are composed of separate bits of correspondence in the artists’ files and papers belonging to various artists. There are also papers and notes from Heiner Dikreiter and Annemarie Pabst.

Those of the former are extensive, but unfortunately the time-consuming investigation and examination yielded no provenance information on the acquisitions made in the years 1941–1945.

It is not uncommon to come across the well-known name Gurlitt in the inventory. This refers to the Galerie Gurlitt in Berlin. Museum director Dikreiter was on almost friendly terms with the owner Wolfgang Gurlitt who, after being bombed out, lived for a short time in Würzburg. It has been proven that Gurlitt dealt in cultural goods that had been confiscated from their Jewish owners as a result of persecution, which is why the 18 paintings acquired from him up to 1945 are a particular area of focus in the investigation. The inventory records a further 28 art dealers by name.

From 2015, a short guided session was offered on a regular basis: a changing series of case studies helped to explain the complex research paths to an interested public audience. Talks and workshops were part of the museum’s educational work, as was participation in training programs. Continuous press coverage also contributed to the transparency of the provenance research at the Museum im Kulturspeicher.

(c) Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg