Kulturstiftung Dessau Wörlitz / Kulturstiftung Dessau Wörlitz

Provenance research on Nazi looted art

By signing the Washington Declaration of 1998, the Federal Republic of Germany committed itself to restituting cultural property seized as a result of persecution to the original owners or their heirs. The museums were instructed to search their holdings for such art objects.

Accordingly, the Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz also took on this task and examined its collection holdings to determine whether cultural property was incorporated between 1933 and 1945 or immediately thereafter that had been seized from other persons or institutions in the context of political or racial persecution.

The research referred to objects that are now in the holdings of the Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz, but do not belong with the original furnishings of the palaces and cannot be proven to have come into the collections as ground reform property. Due to the lack of records, it is very difficult to prove provenance. In the course of processing, it was possible to establish proofs of origin for 92 objects, which allow a secure legal allocation to the holdings of the Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz.

For the objects listed below, it has not yet been possible to establish a precise proof of provenance. However, the unclear origin of the objects is not necessarily synonymous with provenance from Nazi looted property.