Systematic research into the collection of handicraft items held by the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, in order to check for unlawfully appropriated art objects which previously belonged to Jewish citizens and to clarify unresolved questions regarding remaining objects from the Goldschmidt-Rothschild collection

From August 2016 and August 2019, the Museum Angewandte Kunst examined its arts and crafts collection for unlawfully appropriated objects from Jewish ownership during the National Socialist era. Funded by the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg, the project in particular sought to continue research into the Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild Collection, which was originally started in a previous research project (2009). The recent research involved a detailed review of the files in order to identify as many objects as possible that are still in the museum’s collection and analyse the circumstances of their whereabouts. Initial research findings relating to the Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild Collection were published in 2019 as part of the Gesellschaft für Frankfurter Geschichte e. V. series and also in a blog post by the Metropolitan Museum New York.

In the inventory lists of the Museum Angewandte Kunst (formerly Museum für Kunsthandwerk) from the years 1933 to 1945 and the post-war years, the project found more than 2,000 objects with unexplained, incomplete or objectionable provenances, mainly from the European and Asian collections. Research interest was focused on all those works of art that were purchased at auction houses from 1933 until into the post-war years, purchased from German art dealers, or donated to the museum. The inventory lists contain reference to acquisitions from a number of art dealers in Frankfurt am Main including Walter Carl, Joseph Fach, Walter Hauth, Hugo Helbing, Wilhelm Henrich and Carl Müller-Ruzika. Dealers beyond the region are also listed such as the Berlin auction houses Hans W. Lange and Rudolph Lepke, the Munich dealers Julius Böhler, Siegfried Lämmle and Adolf Weinmüller and the Galerie für Alte Deutsche Kunst in Bremen.

At two auctions held by Hugo Helbing (1934 and 1935), for example, 17 items were acquired from the former estate of Ottmar Strauss (1878-1941), a wealthy entrepreneur from Cologne who owned an extensive and valuable collection of antiques and artefacts. He emigrated from Germany in 1936 as a result of being persecuted for racist reasons as a Jew during the National Socialist era. He was forced to sell his art collection in preparation for his emigration and in order to pay the required Reich Flight Tax and other discriminatory levies. With the aim of arriving at 'just and fair solutions' in accordance with the Washington Principles (1998), the Museum Angewandte Kunst was in dialogue with the rightful heirs of Ottmar Strauss during the course of the project.

The Museum Angewandte Kunst contributed to the first 'Provenance Research Day' (10 April 2019) with a workshop discussion entitled Der 'Sitten-Fuchs' und sein Drache [The 'Moral Fox' and his Dragon]. – Thanks to scholarly cooperation with another project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation (Sammlung Eduard und Margarete Fuchs: Rekonstruktion der geraubten Kunstwerke der Sammlung [The Eduard and Margarete Fuchs Collection: reconstruction of the looted artworks in the collection]), it was possible to attribute two items in the museum’s holdings to the former collection of the socialist and successful author Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940), who was politically persecuted under National Socialism; these were auctioned off at the auction house Rudolph Lepke’s in 1937.

In addition, there are still numerous objects in the collection today which according to inventory register entries were acquired for the museum as 'adopted items' from 'Frankfurt legacy property', from the 'Frankfurt tax office' or from the 'Frankfurt pawnshop', or which were 'transferred by the municipal authorities'. This also includes over 100 silver objects formerly owned by Jews, acquired by the municipal loan institution Städtische Darlehensanstalt in Frankfurt in 1939 in connection with the compulsory levy on precious metals for Jews. Labelled with a 'Ju.' number, they were inventoried by the museum after being acquired by the municipal authorities. The museum entered the silver objects with this provenance as found object reports in the Lost Art database.

The exhibition Stolen. Collected. Obscured. The Pinkus/Ehrlich Collection and the Museum Angewandte Kunst at the Museum Angewandte Kunst (7 June to 9 December 2018) showed silver objects from the Joseph Pinkus/Hedwig Ehrlich Collection identified as Nazi-looted property, focusing on their history. The latter was also published in 2019 as part of a documentation in cooperation with the Historical Museum Frankfurt, the Jewish Museum and Museum of World Cultures. In memory of Hedwig Ehrlich (1864-1948), the Museum Angewandte Kunst initiated the laying of a Stolperstein in front of her former home at Westendstraße 62 in Frankfurt on 17 May 2018. Provenance research revealed that the museum’s holdings still contain over 60 objects that the then director Walter Mannowsky (1938-1948) purchased or exchanged in Paris under German occupation (1940-44) through various art dealers, including Buvelot, Chalom, Garabet-Kevorkian, Kalebdjian, Michon, Perret-Vibert, Recher and Tierard. In the post-war years, the museum apparently did not return these so-called foreign acquisitions to their former owners in France via the Central Collecting Point (CCP) run by the American military in Wiesbaden. The museum entered these items with incomplete provenance in the German Lost Art Foundation’s Lost Art database as found-object reports.

© Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt am Main