Provenance search, tools and method
The search for provenance for works, books, musical instruments and works of art consists in documenting their history and changes in ownership between 1933 and 1945. It relies on archival documents and many specialized sites.
What is provenance research?
Training in search of provenance
Methodology
Inventory of Stolen Property
Main databases
The search for provenance on books
The search for provenance on musical instruments
Useful sites for research purposes
Origin records
Bibliography
What is provenance research?
Definition
Provenance research involves “researching and documenting, to the extent possible, the complete history of an object and establishing changes in ownership between 1933 and 1945 in accordance with “Washington Principles”. The history of objects must be clearly presented, starting with the creation of the object and ending today. Traces of the course of works can be found in primary sources, bibliography and databases. Research on people and institutions illuminates the different stages of the history of the object and makes it possible to identify the successive owners of the object during a given period. Gaps in provenance must be revealed and suspicious facts reported.”
Source: Provenance Research Manual, To identify cultural property seized due to persecution during the National Socialist era, German Lost Art Foundation, Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e. V., Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung und Restitution - Bibliotheken, Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e. V., Deutscher Museumsbund e. V., ICOM Deutschland e. V., 'Methods of provenance research', Jana Kocourek, Katja Lindenau, Ilse von zur Mühlen and Johanna Poltermann, p. 39
Training in search of provenance
Training in research from France is in its infancy. Several initiatives have already been put in place.
Since 2019, the Institut national du patrimoine (INP), the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA) and the Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945 (M2RS) have organized a seminar entitled «Heritage plundered during the period of Nazism (1933-1945)».
All sessions are available on Youtube.
Students:
In the second year of the second cycle, the Ecole du Louvre proposes a seminar on «Provenance research».
In 2019-2020, students of the Master in Law and Taxation of the Art Market of the Institut Droit, Art, Culture (IDAC) of the University of Lyon III Jean Moulin were able to follow a provenance research seminar of the MNR works.
TheINP and the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB) offer seminars on dispossession as part of the initial training of heritage curators and libraries.
Paris Nanterre University created in February 2022 a university degree course (graduate) dedicated to the search for provenance of works of art.
Proposed jointly by the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the UFR of Law and Political Science, the training aims to train young graduates and professionals initiated in art history and/ or law, both within museums, international institutions and the art market.
Since the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, the Ecole du Louvre has opened a new path of M2, «Sensitive goods, origins and international issues». Its purpose is to meet the current needs of museums, heritage institutions and the art market world regarding the acquisition of works and objects, their circulation, the documentation of their origins, new issues and issues raised by the international context.
Heritage and library professionals:
The INP and the ENSSIB organize ongoing training on cultural property for heritage curators and libraries, documentalists, documentary researchers, librarians, curators of collections, conservation attachés, conservation assistants, heritage assistants, research engineers, design engineers, heritage fund managers, state, local authority and private sector personnel.
Methodology
Before consulting the bibliography and the specific databases of spoliations, it is important to be interested in the materiality of the object, study the reverse side of the work in search of marks or labels (see Useful sites, Marks and inscriptions).
Any research should begin with consultation with catalogues raisonnés (IFAR) which can give elements of provenance (see Useful sitesresearch on works). However, it is necessary to be vigilant to changes in attributions or titles that may mislead.
It must be determined whether the work was able to go on public sale, thanks to sales cataloguess, especially those that have been digitized (INHA, Heidelberg or WPI).
Catalogues are sometimes annotated and can then provide valuable information about buyers and sellers, as well as transaction amounts.
The minutes of these sales make it possible to know the names of buyers. They are kept in the departmental archives, and therefore archives of Paris for the Hôtel Drouot, for example.
The Gazette of the Hôtel Drouot, online since March 2021 of first issue of February 1891 until the n°48 of December 1950, is also a source for the names of buyers. The set is available on the INHA Digital Library.
Identifying successive owners and people involved in the movement of an object is also a major step in the search (see Useful sites, research on people).
The project «Directory of actors of the art market in France under the Occupation» (RAMA) - Research programme run by the National Institute of Art History and the Technical University of Berlin - aims to study and identify the main players; (art dealers, gallery owners, brokers, experts, antique dealers, auctioneers, transporters, photographers, art historians, museum staff, artists, collectors, amateurs, victims, intermediaries of all kinds...) who found themselves at the heart of artistic and commercial exchanges between France and Germany.
A research guide in the French archives on the looting of works of art during the Second World War and their restitution is available to better orient oneself in research.
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted has compiled a guide listing theEinsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). Indeed, after the Second World War, the original documents of the ERR were widely dispersed and are today preserved in more than 40 repositories in 10 countries.
This guide indicates the current location of the remaining ERR folders and related sources, details their contents, and provides links to the many folders now online.
The German Centre for Missing Cultural Property (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) - in cooperation with the Association of Researchers of Provenance (Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung), the Association of Researchers of Provenance for Libraries (Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung und Restitution - Bibliotheken), the German Library Association (Deutscher Bibliotheksverband), the German Museum Association (Deutscher Museumsbund) and ICOM Germany - has published a provenance research guide, available into German and in English.
An appendix of the Guide, regularly updated, is available here.
In Canada, the Holocaust Art Provenance and Best Practice Guide (CHERP) Research Project has been accompanied by the release of many resources on the search for provenance.
- The Collectif pluridisciplinaire de recherche de provenances (CPRProvenances) was founded in France in 2023 on the initiative of a group of researchers from the same academic background. Historians, curators, archaeologists or lawyers by training, their specialties make up the richness of this collective, which includes researchers specializing in different periods (World War II, colonial period, contemporary conflicts) and different regions.
- Within the association of German-speaking researchers (Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e. V.), there is a working group (AG Frankreich) to facilitate contacts between researchers working in France.
Contact: ag-frankreich@arbeitskreis-provenienzforschung.org
Inventory of Stolen Property
The Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945 (RBS) was published between 1947 and 1949, based on declarations of spoliations made mainly by the persons spoliated themselves to the Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP). The complaint files filed by the families are kept at diplomatic archives.
It is not a complete catalogue of works looted in France but a directory of claimed objects that were not yet returned at the time of publication (1947-1949). This is why some stolen and claimed works are not included because they had already been returned on that date.
The original RBS has been fully digitized, as well as 3 annotated volumes, which make it possible to follow the evolution of procedures and restitution after publication, until about 1965-1970. The digitized copy is particularly valuable because it can be used as a real tool to know if a work has been restored or not (although it is always necessary to check the primary source preserved in diplomatic archives).
In the RBS, references to works may be crossed out in red or blue. The red cross-reference normally indicates that the work has been restored; it is often supplemented by a capital "R" or the abbreviation "Rest." or more rarely the full word “Returned”. The precise date of the return is in principle mentioned.
The blue cross-references refer to works that have not been returned (as of the date of termination of the annotation indicated at the beginning of the volume) with often the mention «Procedure closed», which means that the searches have stopped.
Access to RBS volumes with detailed tips for use.
Main databases
These are the main databases, a more complete list is available in the Useful sites
https://irp2.ehri-project.eu/search
This international research portal is a collaboration between national institutions and other archival institutions whose documents relate to Nazi-era cultural property. It questions the following bases:
- Art Database of the National Fund (Austria)
- National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism
- Belgium Holocaust Assets Finding Aid
- State Archives in Belgium
- Central Collecting Point München
- Deutsches Historisches Museum
- Database of Art Objects at Jeu de Paume
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Findbuch
- German Sales Catalogs, 1930-1945
- Lost Art Internet Database (Magdeburg)
- Memorial of the SHOAH Archives
- National Archives of the United States Catalog
- National Archives of the United States Holocaust-Era Assets on Fold3 (Ardelia Hall, etc.)
- National Archives of UK
https://www.errproject.org/
This database collects, in an illustrated and searchable form, the remaining registration cards and photographs produced by the ERR concerning more than 40,000 art objects taken from Jews in France under German occupation and, to a lesser extent, in Belgium. The database, which can be accessed by individual objects and by the owners to whom these objects were removed, is a detailed record of a small but important part of the vast seizure of cultural property that was an integral part of the Holocaust.
The base is also enriched by other funds: NARA, Washington, USA; Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, Germany, and MEAE, Paris, France
Late October 1940, theEinsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) gathers at the Jeu de Paume museum more than 400 cases of works seized. Nazi dignitaries come to see the works to select what they want to remember, including Hermann Goering who goes there twenty times. The works are then hung as in a museum and many shots are taken by the German staff.
14 negatives kept in France were digitized and analyzed.
https://www.lootedart.com/search2.php
This site has a database of about 25,000 missing or stolen objects in more than 15 countries, allowing searches by artist or object.
It also offers a follow-up of international news on research and restitution of cultural property stolen between 1933 and 1945, as well as an important bibliography.
https://www.lostart.de/Webs/EN/LostArt/Index.html
This database lists works that have been declared stolen by their owners, but also cultural objects that are found in institutions whose provenance is uncertain or incomplete. This database mainly covers objects missing in Germany; for some headings it also provides information on Austria, Luxembourg, Finland and Ukraine.
https://www.artloss.com/
The Art Loss Register (ALR) contains the world’s largest private database of lost, stolen and looted works of art, antiques and collectibles; it currently lists more than 700,000 items. The database is not searchable by the public; it is the company Art Loss Register that ensures the searches for its subscribers.
https://www.proveana.de/
The Deutsche Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (DZK) funds provenance research in public or private institutions. The results of these research projects are publicly available in the Proveana database
https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Cultural-heritage-crime/Stolen-Works-of-Art-Database
The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) is an intergovernmental organization. Its database of stolen works of art combines descriptions and images of more than 50,000 objects. It is the only international database containing certified police information on stolen and missing art objects.
https://www.dhm.de/sammlung/forschung/provenienzforschung/datenbanken/so
The «Führermuseum» was a gigantic German museum project located in Linz, Austria, imagined by Adolf Hitler to host the greatest works of «real» art, as opposed to the «degenerated» art of modernity. A number of works of art were stolen or purchased for the museum.
The database includes many photographs.
https://www.dhm.de/sammlung/forschung/provenienzforschung/datenbanken/
This database features paintings, sculptures, furniture, tapestries and other handicrafts that Hermann Goering purchased or collected from confiscated and stolen property between the late 1920s and 1945. These objects were mainly to constitute the collections of the museum that Goering wanted to create in his residence in Carinhall near Berlin, the «Norddeutsche Galerie».
http://www.civs.gouv.fr/fr/spoliations-culturelles/base-ted/
The TED-CIVS database lists the tables and drawings (TED = tables and drawings) mentioned in the files filed by families with the Commission pour l'indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS) since its creation in 1999, whether they were found and returned or never located.
https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/ccp/dhm_ccp.php?seite=1&lang=enso
The Munich Central Collecting Point was a depot used by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program at the end of the Second World War to study, photograph and return to their country of origin works of art and cultural objects that were confiscated by the Nazis and hidden in Germany and Austria, or simply bought by the Germans across Europe. This database brings together the property cards (Data sheets showing the indications of origin known during the Collecting Point) and photographs of the works Collecting Point munich.
https://go.fold3.com/holocaust_records
In partnership with the US National Archives, Fold3, a genealogy site specializing in military records, has scanned and indexed important records concerning looted property, concentration camps and the Nuremberg trials.
https://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path=pi/pi.web
The Getty Provenance Index® currently contains over 2.3 million records from archival inventories, auction catalogues and merchant inventory books.
http://wga-datenbank.de/recherche.php?s=3
On 19 July 1957, the German Parliament adopted the law Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz, known as BRüG, which compensates for movable property confiscated outside German territory and transferred to Germany, the territory of the future Federal Republic of Germany and Berlin. In Berlin, claims for compensation under the BRüG law are grouped into two archive centres: the Landesarchiv, public archives of the Land of Berlin, and the Bundesamt für zentrale Dienste und offene Vermögensfragen, under the Department of Finance.
These archives may include, among other things, inventories provided by families.
The search for provenance on books
One of the difficulties for research on wartime seizures is that few original lists of library seizures are available in France.
From 1947, the French government published the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre, based on post-war claims submitted to the Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP). The seventh volume of the RBS, devoted to archives, manuscripts and rare books, lists many collections of libraries seized during the occupation, although it does not give a complete picture of the losses of libraries in times of war.
The examination of the files of the Books Sub-Committee within the Commission for Artistic Recovery held in the National Archives (records of the Subcommittee on Books and libraries during the Second World War) and the Diplomatic Archives (book subcommittee and individual files) helped to identify the importance of library disposals.
A database of spoliated persons and institutions is available on the website of Holocaust Memorial.
- At least 2,248 people were robbed; they were given back or given 348,524 pounds;
- At least 408 institutions were robbed; they were given back or given 199,384 pounds.
Other spoliators who filed a file have never benefited from any book, neither in restitution nor in attribution. In this case, it is indicated on the database: neither restitution nor attribution.
https://www.errproject.org/looted_libraries_fr.php
Although the looting of books and archives by the ERR has been even more widespread than the looting of works of art in many of the countries occupied by Germany, specific compilations of German documents on the seizure of libraries have long been lacking. The presentations on the ERR Project website provide an overview, in specific countries, of the ERR library input scheme and the main destinations of the books entered. The site is in English.
https://www.lootedculturalassets.de/
Looted Cultural Assets (LCA) is a cooperative database created in 2016, used by German libraries that engage in the search for goods stolen by the Nazis and attempt to return them to their current owners. LCA allows research on stolen goods in libraries and other cultural institutions, in France and other countries. Currently, LCA includes more than 32,000 indications of origin and information on more than 10,000 individuals and institutions. The site is in German.
The search for provenance on musical instruments
Particularities of the instruments to be taken into account in the search for provenance:
- A difficult identification of the instruments: the instrument being a usual object, it can be modified over time, accidentally or to be kept in a state of play. Its attribution and descriptions in dated documents should be taken with caution as they may vary depending on the sources and knowledge available at the time of the expertise.
- A lack and incompleteness of sources, particularly the archives of the actors of the instrumental invoice: the study of the activity of traders of active instruments at this period and the market of the instrument is only in its infancy because the sources are still not very accessible.
- A division of instruments into categories: prestigious instruments or instruments with low financial value did not receive the same treatment either during the plunder or during their return. The value instruments are in fund 209SUP (MFA archives), while the ordinary and non-identifiable instruments are in fund 13/BIP. In addition, during the restitution requests, the instruments of low value are integrated into the lists of furniture by the claimants (series AJ/38, National Archives, and Paris Archives), which makes their quantification difficult.
Archives of the Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ) and the Service de restitution des biens spoliés, files AJ38. (These microfilmed files are also available at the documentation centre of the Shoah Memorial). http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/series/pdf/AJ38_2011.pdf
Archives of the National Interprofessional Purification Commission (CNIE).
Judicial restitution: orders for restitution.
To document the seizures of the Möbel Aktion The Land Requisition Fund and Compensation; 17,000 individual claims.
Sources related to public auctions: the Paris auctioneers' studies fund, composed of minutes, sales records, minutes of sale and sometimes directories.
About the actors of spoliation: the funds of the committees of confiscation of illicit profits of the Seine; 19,000 individual files.
The funds of the Commission de Récupération Artistique, 1200 boxes around, composed of about fifteen series of funds, including the files of claims of the victims and the photographic albums of the stolen collectors.
The Book of Thieves.
The microfilmed archives of the Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ) and of the department for the restitution of stolen property.
Created in 2017, the association Music and plunder Its mission is to shed light on the question of the dispossession of musical instruments. If priority is given to the collections of the last direct or indirect testimonies, the association also strives to establish and cross existing lists and databases, explore the archives, sensitize the musical and scientific community, encourage publications, and accompany new requests for restitution or provenance research.
Contact: contact@musiqueetspoliations.com
Bernheim, Pascale. "The Dispossession of Musical Instruments and Documents – The Case of Wanda Landowska (1879-1959)", in Arts and politics, The art market between France and Germany from the interwar period to the Liberation, edited by Julia Drost, Hélène Ivanoff and Denise Vernerey-Laplace, Heidelberg, arthistoricum.net, 2022 (Passages online, Band 13).
LÖSCHER, Monika. “A very significant and welcome addition to our collection…”. The search for provenance in the collection of ancient musical Kunsthistorisches Museum vienna”, The History of the HolocaustNo. 213, March 2021, pp. 127-141.
PIKETTY, Caroline. «The pianos of the Jewish families of Paris in the spring of 1945», Paris, The History of the HolocaustNo. 213, March 2021.
SHAPREAU, Carla and GETREAU, Florence. The Loss of French Musical Property During World War II: post-War Repatriations, Restitutions, and 21st Century Ramifications, Institute of European Studies, 2014.
Shapreau, Carla, Laloue, Christine and Echard, Jean-Philippe. "Documenting the Violin Trade in Paris, 1930-1945. The Archives of Albert Caressa and Emile Français, Collecting and Provenance. A Multidisciplinary Approach, (Eds.) Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce, USA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp.189-204.
VRIES, Willem (de). Commando Musik. How the Nazis robbed musical Europe, 1996, Paris, Buchet-Chastel, 2019.
Useful sites for research purposes
You will find in the PDF below a wide list of sites used for provenance search. They are classified by theme. The bookmark menu allows you to go directly to the relevant party.
Origin records
Provenance record for localized work
List of the main databases to be checked, when researching the collections of a museum or an acquisition by a museum or an individual.
Provenance record for work not located
List of the main databases to check, when looking for a work spoliated with the unknown location (search from a list of spoliated works made by the spoliated person himself or his family, from family memories, etc.)
Bibliography
The bibliography The focus of the proposal is on the history of the dispossession of cultural property during the Second World War. It includes general works, works on collections of works of art, books and libraries, musical instruments; Paris, museums, the art market, during the war; post-war, trials, reparations, restitutions; institutional reports; testimonies on the period and current family narratives
Consult the other sections
- Request for restitution or compensation
- Mission, objectives and skills
- Stolen cultural property
- MNR and Base Rose Valland (MNR-Jeu de Paume)
- Historical and legal documentation
- Museum and library professionals
- Partners
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