Systematic investigation of the collection holdings of Schleswig-Holstein’s Museum of Art and Cultural History (acquisitions 1933–1945)

Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig is the largest museum institution in Schleswig-Holstein. It was formed in 1999 from two state museums that had operated independently up to then: the Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Art and Cultural History. The two museums have been located in Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig since the Second World War. Their predecessor institutions—the Museum vaterländischer (from 1936: vorgeschichtlicher) Alterthümer and the Kunstgewerbliche Thaulow Museum (from 1920: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum)—were based in Kiel.

Up to the end of World War Two, the body responsible for the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum was the Provinzialverband Schleswig-Holstein, a provincial association of the Prussian state under the provincial governors Otto Röer (1932–1938) and Wilhelm Schow (1938–1945). The museum houses a collection which has been growing since 1878 and contains objects from the Middle Ages to the present day. Under the longstanding museum director Ernst Sauermann (1920–1947), the main focal points of the collection were furniture, handicrafts and folklore. The museum’s collecting activities began to focus on fine art only after the Second World War. During the Nazi era, the museum never had more than two scientific staff—the most prominent of these were Dr. Walter Passarge (1898–1958), who was directorial assistant from 1927 to 1936 until he moved to the Kunsthalle Mannheim as its director in 1936, and Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler (1902–1992), who was employed as the museum's scientific assistant from 1927 to 1939 and was primarily responsible for its scientific cataloging.

From April 2013 to January 2016, Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation systematically investigated the provenance of the collection holdings of the Museum of Art and Cultural History. In a research project covering two years (April 2013 to December 2014 and November 2015 to January 2016), which was funded by the Bureau for Provenance Research, an examination was carried out of the new acquisitions made by the Museum of Art and Cultural History between 1933 and 1945. Since February 2016, work has been going on in a follow-up project to check the museum’s new acquisitions made after 1945.

From 1933 to 1945, a total of 5,653 inventory numbers were allocated for new collection acquisitions at the Museum of Art and Cultural History. At the center of investigations are the 40% of objects acquired for the museum as purchases. A total of nearly RM 150,000 was spent on 2,366 objects between 1933 and 1945, with above-average acquisition budgets being recorded in the years 1937 to 1939 and again during the war in the years 1943 and 1944. Particularly noteworthy in these periods are the museum’s acquisitions at auctions in Berlin and its purchases in the occupied territories.

The first objects that were restituted by the State Museums Foundation also came from Berlin auctions. These were five Gobelin objects from the Emma Budge collection which the museum acquired at the Paul Graupe auction house in Berlin in August 1937. A settlement is currently being negotiated for another object from the Budge collection.

An object of Dutch provenance, acquired for RM 350 on September 30, 1942, from Mozes Mogrobi, a Jewish art dealer from Amsterdam, was restituted to Mogrobi’s heirs on June 20, 2016.

(c) The Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation Schloss Gottorf