Welcome to the Provenance Researchers of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation!
Every object has its own history, which begins long before it arrives in a library or museum, often along a winding path. Previous owners, changes of location and different collection contexts can leave many traces - not least on the objects themselves. But often the events worth telling about a provenance receive little attention and are forgotten over the years.
The task and goal of provenance research at museums, libraries and archives is to bring these past, hidden and sometimes deliberately concealed stages in the biography of books, works of art and everyday objects, their history and stories back to light and to make visible not only the things themselves but also the places and people associated with them. Layer by layer, the provenance researchers work their way through the ages, moving along main and side paths, landing at dead ends and discovering many exciting, sometimes cruel and often touching episodes.
The cosmos of objects gathered under the umbrella of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, and thus, the diversity of the stories interwoven with them is unique worldwide.
With this virtual exhibition, we invite you to discover with us the paths and fates of the objects, to illuminate the people and places intertwined with them, and to look over our shoulders as we interpret often inconspicuous traces.
Join the Berlin provenance researchers at the Staatliche Museen and the Staatsbibliothek in their work!
Spotlight on the Object
PERSON, PLACE or THING
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
01
PERSON
A Drawing from the Baltic States for Berlin
In early 1939, Paul Ortwin Rave, the director of the Nationalgalerie Berlin, received a visit from a gentleman from Riga. He introduced himself as Douwe Remmerssen and offered to sell him a drawing by Jakob Philipp Hackert, a painter of German classicism. He had acquired it from "gräflich Manteuffelschem Besitz" in Estonia. Rave wanted the drawing, although this meant for him having to overcome some bureaucratic hurdles at customs. This is how the Landscape with Rock Grotto (The Ear of Dionysus) near Syracuse ended up in the "Sammlung der Zeichnungen," which at the time belonged to the Nationalgalerie.
The "Sammlung der Zeichnungen" under Paul Ortwin Rave
Paul Ortwin Rave had been director of the Nationalgalerie since 1937. Thus, the "Sammlung der Zeichnungen" was also under his care. This collection of oil sketches, watercolors and drawings from the predominantly 19th and early 20th centuries was established as a separate department of the Nationalgalerie in 1878 due to a transfer from the former Königliches Kupferstichkabinett. Only in 1992 did this collection rejoin the Kupferstichkabinett. During the Nazi era, around 1,300 works were acquired for the "Sammlung der Zeichnungen".
A second Offer
A few weeks after acquiring the Landscape with Rock Grotto, Remmerssen wrote Rave a letter from his hometown of Riga; he had another Hackert sheet that he could offer him. Although Rave found this drawing even better than the first, he regretfully declined. Customs clearance had been a bit too complicated for him the last time. At the end of the year, however, Rave was able to have the Stone Bridge in the Swiss High Mountains entered in the inventory book as a new acquisition. Remmerssen had moved to Berlin with the drawing. His address was now: "Berlin, Foreign Office".
Douwe Remmerssen
Remmerssen was born in Moscow on October 27, 1904. His German-Baltic parents had him baptized as a Protestant. As a teenager he moved with them to Riga. After studying law at various European universities, he opened his own law office in Riga. In 1939 he toyed with the idea of moving to Germany. He travelled to Berlin several times – one of these stops took him to Rave's museum office – to sound out the situation. He finally decided in November 1939 to pack his bags and move to the German capital.
Career under National Socialism
As a "Baltic repatriate", Remmerssen quickly and easily obtained German citizenship. He immediately applied for admission to the NSDAP. As a Baltic lawyer, he was not allowed to establish his own law firm. He would have been allowed to become a judge with retraining, but found a better-paid job as an interpreter at the Foreign Office because of his impressive knowledge of foreign languages.
Always a cosmopolitan, Remmerssen made many business trips on behalf of the Foreign Office starting in 1940. First he accompanied a delegation of the Reichspostministerium to Moscow. From September 1940 to January 1941, he was back in his old home town of Riga as a translator for a German-Soviet government delegation. In 1941 he was appointed to the "Sonderkommando Künsberg" - a brigade that carried out raids in the Eastern territories on behalf of the Reich. In 1943, he took over the leadership of the interpreter department of the Waffen-SS and in 1944 worked at the "Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle" in the German consulate in Marseille.
The Turnaround
Remmerssen's life took a drastic turn in the summer of 1944. He was denounced for "homosexual activity" and "statements subversive to military morale". He was immediately dismissed from the party. The Gestapo arrested him in Marseille, took him to Paris and sentenced him to ten years in prison. He served his sentence in the SS penal camp Dachau.
In the Spruchkammer proceedings for the "denazification" of Germany, he was classified as a "blind follower". He was ordered to pay an "expiatory sum" of 300 marks into a reparation fund. He appealed against this verdict with reference to his imprisonment in Dachau. The proceedings were reopened and discontinued in 1951.
Francis La Flesche (1857–1932) is today considered North America's first Indigenous ethnologist. Raised on the Omaha Reservation, La Flesche attended Presbyterian boarding school, following his father's wishes. After successfully completing his law degree in Washington, D. C., Francis La Flesche assisted Ponca Chief Standing Bear in his fight for recognition of civil rights for all Native Americans in the United States. This experience shaped his later work as a scholar and political activist. In the 1880s, Francis La Flesche met ethnologist Alice Fletcher, who encouraged him to study Ethnology. Together they wrote the book "The Omaha Tribe," which is still considered a standard ethnological work on the Umóⁿhoⁿ.
Mon-'shon-pa-gdhon (feathered headdress) of the Umóⁿhoⁿ
The feather headdress, which must have been of particular importance to La Flesche, is mentioned right away as the first object in his catalog:
“The articles collected to illustrate as far as possible the life and customs of the Omaha Tribe of North American Indians and have all been gathered from the Indians themselves, or made by them after the ancient customs of the people. The Eagle Feather War-bonnet was made by a number of old Indian warriors in the ceremonial manner, War Honors were counted upon each feather and the ritual songs sung.”
After Francis La Flesche sent the collection to Berlin in the 19th century, Pierre Merrick is the first Umoⁿhoⁿ to touch the objects in more than a hundred years.
“The man that wore that must have been a kind of man that we don’t have in our tribe today. Because of the deeds that he had to do to be recognized as a chief, as a leader, it takes a lot of sacrifice to get to that point. Many of the objects, for example the feather headdress, that used to belong to a chief, don’t exist anymore at home. The only place you can find them is here in Berlin.”
Past, Present, and Future of the Umóⁿhoⁿ Community
The experiences of racism, violence, and land loss continue to shape the Umóⁿhoⁿ community today. In this context, the Berlin collection is of particular importance because it bears witness to resistance against colonization. It offers people the opportunity to reconnect with their ancestors and ways of life and to look with pride at their own history.
Bruno Kaiser - Literary Scholar, Marxist, Librarian and Bibliophile
Both personally and professionally, Bruno Kaiser was driven by the urge and passion to collect books. Already in his youth he began to build up a private library. Due to his involvement in the anti-fascist resistance and the distribution of illegal leaflets, as well as his Jewish origin, he was compelled to emigrate to Switzerland after being arrested, tortured and interned under the Nazi regime. He engaged in scientific research on socialism and was later recognized in the GDR for his Marx-Engels research.
Bruno Kaiser returned to Germany in 1947. In his position as department director of the Öffentliche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek (Public Research Library), the successor institution to the Preußische Staatsbibliothek (Prussian State Library) in East Berlin, he cared for the unprocessed holdings.
In 1949, he took over the establishment and management of the new specialized research library, which was founded at the Berlin Institut für Marxism-Leninism by a decision of the SED party leadership. In order to quickly build up the new library from scratch, recourse was made to the unprocessed holdings in the cellars of the former Preußische Staatsbibliothek – including part of the library of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main and thus Nazi-looted books.
Socialistica under new Signs in the GDR
Large specialized scientific libraries, such as those of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main, and also the libraries of politically persecuted parties, trade unions and workers' organizations fell victim to confiscation under the Nazi regime. Various Nazi institutions were also interested in the Socialistica, using the holdings as research sources for intelligence purposes. The collections were therefore frequently broken up and redistributed.
In the GDR, Socialistica were finally evaluated in a new light. The scientific study of socialism and the workers' movement was politically encouraged. The Socialistica holdings of confiscated and dispersed libraries were used to build up new libraries. Even though other distribution mechanisms took effect than under the Nazi regime, the collections remained shattered after 1945.
Confiscation and Destruction of the Library of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main in 1933
The Institut für Sozialforschung was founded in 1923 and was dedicated to the theory and history of socialism, Marxism and the labor movement. A library focussed on socialism and communism was built up, and its holdings grew to as many as 40,000 volumes by 1933. Under the Nazi regime, the Institute was dissolved in 1933 and the library was confiscated because it contained „subversive materials”.
While the institute continued its work abroad, the library was dismantled. About 20,000 volumes of "anti-state and subversive" literature were given to the Preußische Staatsbibliothek as the central receiving and distributing institution of literature confiscated in Prussia. The "unobjectionable" remaining stock was taken over by Frankfurt institute and seminar libraries.
Although the Preußische Staatsbibliothek began to incorporate the acquired books and exchanged duplicates with the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), most of them were stored unprocessed in the cellars of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin during World War II.
The Gift of a Queen
Queen Olugondo was the principal wife of King Kambonde (II) kaMpingana, who ascended the throne of Ondonga in 1884. Unlike the rulers in the neighboring Ovambo kingdoms, he supported the Finnish missionaries who had been trying to convert the population to Christianity since 1870. Hence, Queen Olugondo and Anna Rautanen knew each other since Anna’s childhood days, which she spent in the kingdom as the daughter of the missionary Martin Rautanen.
With the help of Nehoa Kautondowka, Chief Education Officer for Culture at the Namibia Commission for UNESCO and visiting scholar at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, we were able to retrace the relationship between the two women: As a child, Anna owned a European doll. When she returned to the Kindgom of Ondonga after a school stay in Finland, she had left the doll there, as adult women in Europe no longer played with dolls. In the Kingdom of Ondonga, however, they were much more than toys. They were an important part of a woman's growing up. Girls received dolls as gifts from their parents. At the engagement, the groom gave his future wife's doll a name to be given to the couple's first child. Now, in 1900, Anna was about to marry the German missionary Hermann Tönjes in the Kindgom of Ondonga. But was Anna to marry without an "Okana" (child), the Oshidonga name for such dolls?
Queen Olungondo made (or had made) an “Okanda” for Anna after the latest fashion of the kingdom and gave the doll her name. Thus, the queen and the doll became "Okadina" or namesakes. Queen Olugondo and Anna had thus established a relationship that would endure through Anna's marriage and departure from the kingdom.
Okadina - Expression of Royal Fashion
The Okadina doll was not only the sign of a long-standing friendship between two women. It was also an expression of the fashion and prestige of the royal court of Ondonga. Hertha Bukassa, cultural officer at the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture of the Republic of Namibia and visiting scholar at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, explains the significance of the individual fashion elements:
Onjeva was and is an adornment made of ostrich eggshells that young girls wear around on their hips; oshilanda, valued dark blue glass beads, adorn her upper body; a number of large buttons imported from Europe serve as surrogates for the precious and scarce omba, a jewelry made of ivory or shell.
Queen Olugondo thus processed only the most precious materials to express her appreciation for Anna.
Okadina can be considered an archive of Namibian fashion. The clothing, with some modifications, is still worn by women in the Ondonga Kingdom today, linking the past with the present.
Statement by Nehoa Hilma Kautondokwa, Museum Development Manager of the Museums Association of Namibia and visiting scholar at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.
Before 1945, the Gingerbread Picture had travelled a lot. Klee owed this above all to Flechtheim's commitment, as he represented the artist as a dealer.
At the Große Kunstausstellung in Düsseldorf in 1925, he presented Klee's picture to the public for the first time. In 1926, exhibitions followed in Dresden, Wiesbaden and Zurich, the following year again in Düsseldorf, this time in his own gallery, as well as in Mannheim and Paris. Further shows were mounted in Berlin, Brussels and Antwerp. The back of the small oil-collage also documents presentations in 1930 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and after 1945 in Milan and Bern.
To the question of whether the work has a problematic provenance, a document in the Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Central Archive of the National Museums in Berlin) provides a clear answer: The Berlin Nationalgalerie also exhibited the painting. In 1933, the year the National Socialists seized power, it was returned directly to Paul Klee on September 20, probably also to prevent the confiscation of the now outlawed art. In the letter, the curator Alfred Hentzen asked that the painting be returned along with three other loans, which the depot administrator Bähr confirmed with a note at the bottom of the document. To that date, Flechtheim held the painting on consignment and was trying to sell it on behalf of the artist and owner Paul Klee.
At this time, Klee had already been dismissed from his professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and moved to Switzerland with his wife. The Gingerbread Picture accompanied them and remained in the family until after World War II. Its varied exhibition history with 15 presentations in eight years, decisively set in motion by Flechtheim, was over for the time being. The fact that he managed to arrange the loan to the Nationalgalerie, but was unable to conclude it, illustrates the abrupt and bitter end of his work, which without provenance research as such would probably be forgotten today.
How exactly the ear jewelry, inventoried in the main catalog as a "wooden ring" came into the possession of the wealthy Leipzig publisher, geographer, historian, explorer, and later colonial politician Hans Meyer (1858-1929) cannot be proven on the basis of the sources reviewed so far. What was the significance and function of this object for Marealle and to what extent was it related to his position as mangi? Without answers to these questions, it is also impossible to clarify whether the object was considered alienable at all. The fact that Marealle handed over the jewelry could indicate how important he valued the relationship with Meyer, especially against the backdrop of the political power competition in the region.
In the historical main catalog of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, Hans Meyer is noted as the donor. Marealle is named in the object description as the previous owner of the earring. Names are rarely mentioned among the more than 8,000 objects from mainland Tanzania that were appropriated during German and also British colonial rule. Most of the previous owners, users and producers of the objects remain anonymous. German or European "collectors" usually only mentioned East African dignitaries and related them to the objects. Some of these objects had trophy status for the colonizers. Women in positions of political power are generally rare in the colonial archives; they usually remain nameless or are absent altogether.
Who was Marealle? At the present stage of research, this question can only be answered in fragments and from a very Eurocentric perspective. The starting point is initially the "colonial archives," the acquisition files of the Ethnologisches Museum, travel descriptions such as the one published by Hans Meyer in 1888, and historical literature. When Marealle was installed as ruler of Marangu in about 1880, he was still penniless and Marangu as a political entity was without significance. Through a skilful marriage policy, he consolidated his position among the strongly competing rulers of the relatively densely populated Kilimanjaro region. He increasingly succeeded in this by welcoming Arab and Swahili traders as well as European and American travelers to Marangu and establishing relations with them.
From the early 1890s, Marealle used his contacts with representatives of the colonial state to instrumentalize them in the interests of his power-political agenda. He discredited his rivals vis-à-vis the German colonizers and thus increasingly consolidated his position in the colonial ruling structure. Thus, in the 1890s, he finally advanced to become the most powerful mangi of the eastern Kilimanjaro region: He controlled 27 of the 44 small states of the Chagga living on Kilimanjaro and was given the name Kilamia, "the conqueror." But his position was also fragile, as he was dependent on the goodwill of the respective German station chiefs in Moshi. War campaigns against supposedly non-cooperating mangi as well as executions by the Germans were integral parts of colonial rule practices. Marealle finally abdicated in 1912.
In 1889, during his second visit to Marangu, Meyer again emphasized his friendly and personal relationship with Marealle. He did so, however, in an arrogantly benevolent, colonial ideologically pejorative manner. Meyer saw himself as a representative of the German Reich and was probably perceived as such. Representatives of the German East African Association (DOAG) accompanied him on his first trip. The idea was to make territorial claims to the area. A dubious, so-called protection contract of the DOAG with the mangi Rindi of Moshi served as its basis. When Meyer toured the Kilimanjaro area and came into possession of the earring, the German presence was still fleeting and the DOAG station, established in 1887, was only sporadically manned. Meyer, supposed explorers, European missionaries and traders, and DOAG representatives were dependent on the goodwill and support of the mangi in the second half of the 1880s.
02
PLACE
Carinhall
In Carinhall, situated on the idyllic Großer Döllnsee in the Schorfheide close to Berlin, Göring had a hunting lodge built in 1933 which, after substantial extensions in the years 1936-1937, became Göring's prestigious residence. It also housed his numerous works of art, which he had collected since the early 1930s. Göring profited in the compilation of his collection, among other things, from confiscations in the territories occupied by German troops. Among his works of art were also objects of Jewish ownership.
Lions and Art
The lion sarcophagus was purchased in 1942 by the art dealer Andreas Hofer (since 1941 "Director of the Art Collection of the Reichmarschall") from the Italian art dealer Ugo Jandolo in Rome.
In a letter to Göring dated October 14, 1942, Hofer reported:
Jandolo, Rome. After protracted negotiations I acquired the magnificent Roman sarcophagus with the two great lions in half relief... The owner of the sarcophagus had meanwhile learned from the dealer who had the sarcophagus on consignment that the piece was intended for you & suddenly no longer wanted to sell! Of course, this should serve the crook only as a pretext to induce me to offer a much higher price. After days of negotiations, I acquired both objects at the original price of L. 100.000.- for the sarcophagus....., plus 10% agreed brokerage fee. The sarcophagus is far more beautiful & important than the one you purchased from Brasini in the spring, in addition, except for unimportant trifles, preserved flawlessly, it will give you great pleasure.
The End of Göring's Hunting Lodge
The estate was destroyed in April 1945 on Göring's orders to prevent its capture by Soviet troops. Although preparations had already been made since February to transport the most valuable works of art to Veldenstein Castle, where Göring had had a bunker built to secure his collection, numerous objects still remained at Carinhall. No official records are known from the time of the capture of Carinhall by the Red Army.
And what did Carinhall look like when the Central Office began salvaging it after the Russians withdrew in June 1946? A pile of rubble.
So reports Kurt Reutti, head of the salvage office of the Magistrate of Greater Berlin ("Zentralstelle zur Erfassung und Pflege von Kunstwerken").
And yet there were still numerous works of art:
partly lying in the open, partly in the blasted bunkers and bunker corridors....
Among these works of art was also the lion sarcophagus - it had remained in Carinhall.
The Sarcophagus on Museum Island
The sarcophagus was recovered in Carinhall after the war and transferred to the Berliner Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities). The photo shows it being cleaned by female staff after being transported to Museum Island. The photograph can be dated to the time immediately after the transfer from the "Zentralstelle" (around 1947).
Chugach Hunting Hat
This hat, woven from spruce, is probably a headdress for hunting. The outstanding design is reminiscent of American Northwest Coast motifs. It is decorated with numerous colorful beads and long whiskers of a sea lion. The red and black color of the hat is now slightly faded and hints at how colorful it must have once been. Such a hat was worn by the men at sea during the hunt. On the one hand, it protected them from rain and water, on the other hand, it served as camouflage.
From Alaska to Berlin
In the late 19th century, explorers and travelers shipped thousands of objects from southern Alaska to European and American museums.
Johan Adrian Jacobsen alone sent over 3,000 objects from Alaska to Berlin, including numerous human remains from graves.
His view of the Indigenous people shows the arrogance with which Europeans believed that these cultures would adapt to Western civilization.
Return to Berlin
In November 1883, Jacobsen returned to Berlin. There he unpacked and catalogued his collections, which had already arrived at the museum. During this time, with the help of a journalist, he prepared his diaries for publication, which appeared in 1884 under the title "Capitain Jacobsen's Reise an der Nordwestküste Amerikas 1881-1883: zum Zweck ethnologischer Sammlungen und Erkundigungen nebst Beschreibung persönlicher Erlebnisse". (Capitain Jacobsen's voyage on the northwest coast of America 1881-1883: for the purpose of ethnological collections and inquiries, together with a description of personal experiences)
Jacobsen's Travelogue
In his travelogue (1881-1883) Jacobsen mentioned the objects of Chenega Island only once:
In the evening we returned to the village, where I bought all the ethnographic objects that were available. [...] The ethnographic objects that I bought here consisted of stone axes, wooden plates with inlaid beadwork, large stone lamps, beadwork, jackets made of eagle skins, and more.
In the travelogue the hat is not mentioned at all, but is probably among the objects Jacobsen acquired on Chenega Island. Such hats were valuable family heirlooms. Why was this striking and important object not mentioned?
As with many other objects in the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum, the exact circumstances of the acquisition of the Hunting Hat from southern Alaska are and remain unknown.
"What happened to our Ancestors?"
In the fall of 2015, a delegation from the Native Alaskan cultural organization, Chugachmiut, travelled to Berlin with the goal of establishing cooperation for a virtual collection of all Chugach objects worldwide. In the depot of the Ethnologisches Museum, an emotional moment occurred when John Johnson, vice president of the Chugach Alaska Corporation, read from the travelogue of Johan Adrian Jacobsen. In it, Jacobsen describes removing human remains from graves, including a woman and child whose bones decayed in Jacobsen's hands.
What happened to our ancestors?
John Johnson wants to know today.
Restitution and the Future
In 2018, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz returned nine objects to the Chugach Alaska Corporation, that Jacobsen had stolen from graves. The whereabouts of the human remains could not be determined and are being investigated cooperatively as part of provenance research.
Approximately 200 objects from the region remained in the Ethnologisches Museum's collections and are now part of collaborative research. For this purpose, a delegation of representatives of the Chugach visited the Ethnologisches Museum again in 2019.
Kurt Reutti, employee of the Berlin magistrate, stated in an internal report:
Large reclining panther, marble. Recovered from a garden on Voßstraße
The Man who introduced Advertising to the Newspapers
The German-Jewish publisher Rudolf Mosse (1843−1920) lived in a prestigious palace between Leipziger Platz and Voßstrasse. In 1867, he opened the "Rudolf Mosse Zeitungs-Annoncen-Expedition" (Rudolf Mosse Newspaper Advertising Expedition) at Friedrichstrasse 60 with borrowed start-up capital, thus putting a bold idea into practice: He was one of the first publishers to lease entire pages in newspapers, which he then sold to advertisers for ads. In doing so, Mosse struck a chord with the times, as the rapidly developing press market with increasing circulations also raised production costs. Selling space for advertisements was thus a welcome means of increasing newspaper revenues.
Just five years later, the company had more than 250 branches in Germany and abroad and advertised confidently with "Inseraten-Annahme für sämmtl. existirende Zeitungen der Welt" (Accepting advertisement orders for all existing newspapers in the world). Beginning in 1871 Mosse published the high-circulation daily “Berliner Tageblatt”, which by 1933 had become the largest liberal daily newspaper in Germany and one of the most widely read German papers abroad.
Mosse also used his extensive private fortune as a promoter and patron, donating large sums to Jewish organizations as well as to vacation colonies, workers' country homes and destitute sick people, founding, among other things, an educational home for orphans and a pension fund for his employees. He also generously supported the Berlin museums; in 1891 he provided 30,000 marks for the purchase of Egyptian antiquities. One year later, more than 600 objects came to the Egyptian Museum as a "donation by Rudolf Mosse."
In the 1880s, Rudolf Mosse had the new city residence on Leipziger Platz built. He furnished it with works of art and a library. The surviving catalogs show an exquisite collection along with the Lion. Mosse was considered a great lover of sculpture and had commissioned August Gaul in 1902 to create a lion in stone for his new palace.
After his death in 1920, his palace became a gallery open to the public, and the publishing house was continued by his son-in-law Hans Lachmann-Mosse.
The seizure of power by the National Socialists in January 1933 finally made the economic survival of the already struggling Jewish publishing house and Germany's leading liberal newspaper completely impossible. Rudolf Mosse's heirs, his adopted daughter Felicia Lachmann-Mosse with her husband and three children, managed to emigrate to Switzerland in March 1933. All their private assets, the real estate and the art collection were confiscated, the publishing group was aryanized. In 1934, the art collection was offered at the Rudolph Lepke auction house in Berlin. From this sale, further objects entered the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, albeit through very different channels and until the 1970s. No object was acquired by the museums directly at the auction.
The Nazis also appropriated the Palais on Leipziger Platz; the NS-Akademie für Deutsches Recht (Nazi Academy of German Law) moved in here under its president Hans Frank, later Governor General of Poland. The Lion was not offered at the auction of Mosse's art collection in 1934, it remained on site until the end of the war, when Kurt Reutti finally discovered it in the garden of the property on Voßstraße and had it salvaged.
The knowledge of the history of the Lion formed the starting point for the further search for works from the Mosse Collection in the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Nine works in four different houses came to light. Almost every object has its own exciting story from its creation to its place in the art collection of Rudolf Mosse and its acquisition by the museums. All nine works were restituted to the Mosse family heirs in 2015/2016. Three important works have been repurchased and are still on Museum Island today: a Roman sarcophagus with depictions of eroticism from the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities) is on display in the Neues Museum. The marble sculpture Susanna by Reinhold Begas can be seen in the Alte Nationalgalerie.
And the Lion by August Gaul has been enthroned in stately fashion in the upper foyer of the James Simon Gallery on Museum Island since summer 2019, welcoming visitors here as it once did in Rudolf Mosse's palace.
In a neo-Rococo cartouche, the unmistakable view of the garden house on the edge of the park on the Ilm river, and above it, to remove any doubt, the bust of the great poet - the connection to Goethe and Weimar Classicism cannot be evoked more clearly. This place of pilgrimage for lovers of literature was used to mark the “Library of Erich Schmidt” – according to the inscribed plaque. The signature "G. Otto 96." reveals that this small print is one of the numerous ex libris designs by the graphic artist George Eugène Otto, who was initially trained in his father's store on Unter den Linden street in Berlin, and which he produced as a student of Emil Doepler from 1889 onwards.
Thanks to this concise bookplate, the "Erich Schmidt" named on it can be immediately recognized as the well-known Lessing and Goethe scholar of this name, which is otherwise difficult to individualize due to its frequency.
After graduating from school in Schulpforta, Erich Schmidt (1853-1913) studied classical philology in Graz, Jena and Strasbourg and in 1874 earned his doctorate degree of modern German literary history with Wilhelm Scherer. A year later he received a post-doctorate degree in Würzburg which qualified him to succeed Professor Scherer in Strasbourg in 1877. In 1880 Schmidt went to Vienna as professor and in 1885 became director of the newly founded Goethe Archive in Weimar. In 1887 he again succeeded Scherer as professor of modern German literary history at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, became founding director of the German Department, and was rector of the university from 1909 to 1910. From 1906 until his death he was president of the Goethe Society in Weimar, and as early as 1895 he was accepted as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
Schmidt was at home in the literary salons of Vienna and Berlin and was widely engaged as a university lecturer and science administrator.
"Die Bibliothek eines grossen und gelehrten Mannes ist mehrenteils ein charakteristischer Beitrag zur Denkweise und Biographie desselben.“ (Typically the library of a great and learned man contributes to his way of thinking and is a representation of his biography.)
From the often quoted preface to the auction catalog of Johann Gottfried Herder's library published in 1804
Erich Schmidt owned a large library of around 10,000 volumes with a strong background in German Literature Studies, which also included many bibliophile items such as first editions and dedication copies. His collection focused particularly on works by and about Goethe, but also Lessing and Kleist. At the same time, as a patron of modern literature from the post-classical period to naturalism, Schmidt received numerous dedication and review copies of contemporary authors. In addition to the bookplate and a stamp from his Viennese period, Erich Schmidt often left handwritten annotations and his signature in the books, so that there are usually clearly recognizable traces of provenance.
To the digital copy
After Erich Schmidt's death on April 29, 1913, the Berlin publisher Rudolf Mosse purchased the collector's complete library, prior to a planned auction from the Berlin antiquarian bookseller Martin Breslauer, thus saving it from destruction. However, Schmidt's autograph collection items were separated, and were offered and sold individually by Breslauer in 1914.
Rudolf Mosse had the library placed on the ground floor of the palace at Leipziger Platz 15 / Voßstraße 22, which had been built for him in the neo-baroque style and was splendidly furnished. From March 1914 he made it accessible to the public for two hours each day of the week. He hired Hans von Müller as librarian. Whether the four-volume, typewritten and alphabetically arranged "Verzeichnis der Büchersammlung Rudolf Mosse <formerly Univ.-Prof. Erich Schmidt>" dates from this time or was only created during the later sale of the collection is still unclear.
Surprisingly, the Erich Schmidt library, acquired by Rudolf Mosse in his seventieth year and thus saved from destruction, remains to this day one of the few verifiable possession of a book of this professional bookseller and internationally active publisher.
There is one exception that could not be more personal: The congratulatory album compiled as a gift for Rudolf Mosse on the occasion of his 70th birthday on May 8, 1913, gathered 302 contributions, of which 263 are still preserved today.
The print edition published in parallel by the editors of the album contains the texts as well as notes on the illustrations and thus gives an impression of the congratulations missing today in the original as well as of the condition of the original binding.
To the digitized version of the Mosse album
To the digitized print edition
This congratulatory page, designed by Brunswick caricaturist Hermann Wilke (1876-1950), cleverly combines a drawing with his own portrait photograph. As a permanent contributor to the satirical weekly magazine Ulk, Wilke dedicates an illustration titled, "View of his father city" to his employer. Inspired by the Mosse newspaper publications, he drew an elderly couple placed downstairs in front of their house. She is engrossed in the illustrated Welt-Spiegel and he in the Berliner Tageblatt.
Two other scenes of the drawing show a well-situated chubby reader of the Volks-Zeitung on the first floor and on the second floor, a laughing young man reading the Ulk. At that time, Ulk was a circulation-boosting free supplement for several newspapers of the Mosse publishing house.
For the National Socialists, the Mosse family was a symbol of the hated "Jewish press". It was persecuted immediately after the seizure of power because of its Jewish faith and also because of its political stance. Rudolf Mosse's adopted daughter and heiress Felicia and her husband Hans Lachmann-Mosse emigrated to the United States via Switzerland and France in the first half of 1933.
The Mosse Group was forced into insolvency proceedings. The Lachmann-Mosse property was then "administered" and "utilized" by Mosse-Treuhandverwaltungs-GmbH, the real estate was transferred by the Nazi state to its own institutions such as Hans Frank's Akademie für Deutsches Recht (Academy of German Law), and the valuable art holdings were auctioned off in 1934.
After the confiscation of the private property of the Mosse family, the sale of the library from the Mosse-Palais also began in 1934 via several antiquarian bookstores, with the provenance of Erich Schmidt being placed in the spotlight. The bookstore of Sophie Szczepanski in Berlin-Charlottenburg was involve from the beginning as it had a business relationship with the Staatsbibliothek at that time. Also still in 1934, a catalog of the Berlin Wertheim Antiquarian Bookshop "together with antiquarian Friedrich Korn" was published, followed by catalog offers from the Berlin antiquarian bookshops Agnes Straub and Der Bücherwurm.
Redistribution in the GDR: The Role of the "Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände"
The surviving files of the Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände - ZwA (Central Exchange Office for Academic and Research Libraries) show that in 1974 the ZwA took over and redistributed 1,000 volumes from the library of Erich Schmidt, which had come to the Christian Weise Bibliothek Zittau by unexplained means as unsold auction items. At this late date, a few more volumes from the Schmidt-Mosse provenance were taken over into the holdings of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
To the index of the
Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände (ZwA) - File Inventory
Diplomat and Private Scholar
Heinrich Friedrich von Diez was a highly unusual diplomat of the Prussian court. Universally educated and versed in numerous oriental languages, he had a decisive influence on contemporary scholars through his publications on oriental literature and history.
In 1784, he successfully applied for the post of envoy to Constantinople. Frederick II himself sent Diez to Constantinople as Prussian chargé d'affaires to the Sublime Porte, the Sultan's palace in Istanbul.
In 1791 Diez left the diplomatic service and worked first in Kolberg and then in Berlin as a private scholar. Here he devoted himself primarily to the expansion of his extensive universal library.
His stay in Constantinople and his affinity for the Orient shaped Diez throughout his life. In his house in Berlin-Stralau, the bachelor, described by his contemporaries as eccentric, owned a Chinese, a Persian and a Turkish room. He also dressed in oriental style.
Fragmented Biographies of the Albums
Five pasiting albums form one of the highlights of Diez's library; they provide information about the history of Persian-Central Asian painting. The miniatures were largely created in the 14th and 15th centuries in what is now Iran and Afghanistan.
It is unclear from which sources the more than 450 pictorial works in the albums, which vary considerably in origin, size, execution and quality, originated and under what circumstances they found their way into Diez's collection. That Diez acquired the albums in Constantinople as complete ensembles and only rebound them has since been contradicted. Diez most likely assembled the albums himself according to his taste.
He purchased numerous books at the bazaar, but he also had suppliers who provided him with books, manuscripts, and works of art directly from the Seraglio, the palace of the Ottoman rulers. In 1789 he acquired, among other things, the albums of the harem staff.
Despite their uniqueness, compared to his overwhelming library, Diez's albums fell into oblivion and were rediscovered only in 1956.
Link to the digital copy
The Diez Collection in the Königlichen Bibliothek in Berlin
Heinrich Friedrich von Diez stipulated in his will that his "collection of books, manuscripts and Oriental paintings" should be given to the then, Königlichen Bibliothek (Royal Library). Diez ordered a separate listing of his books as a closed collection in the order he had specified.
Together with the unique book collection, the pasting albums with Oriental "paintings" arrived at the Berlin Königliche Bibliothek in 1817. They are all digitized and can be found under the call numbers Diez A Fol. 70-74 in the Oriental Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
"Verzeichnis der morgenländischen und abendländischen Handschriften in meiner Bibliothek"
(Index of Oriental and Occidental Manuscripts in my Library)
The directories Diez wrote in his own hand reflect his personal interests and the principles of order according by which he collected.
He expanded the term "Orient" beyond geographical boundaries to include not only all of Asia with China and Japan, but also Africa with Egypt. He also included the parts of Europe that belonged to the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
In the prefaces to these catalogs, Diez justifies his line of thought:
The decisive factor was the "Oriental spirit", which differed fundamentally from the Occidental. It is characterized by a far greater permanence of culture and way of life, sciences, arts and philosophy. For generations, the people of the Orient have remained faithful to their traditions in their thoughts and actions as well as in science and the arts, and their views have remained constant. For Diez, the Orient is "a humanity that for millennia has always remained the same, both externally and internally, so that its newest is nothing other than its oldest".
to the digital copy of the directory
Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Hecht and the Elephant
The story of the house library of the Polish pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982) begins in his adopted home of Paris. He had lived there since 1904, and after World War I, the artist and graphic designer Joseph Hecht (1891-1951) also came there. Hecht, like Rubinstein, was born in Łódź, Poland, into a family of Jewish textile industrialists. That this circumstance brought them together is very likely.
Books from Rubinstein's library feature a bookplate designed by Joseph Hecht, which can be traced from the early 1930s. The print shows an elephant drawn with a few confident strokes and the name Arthur Rubinstein in block letters. A handwritten signature, which includes the respective first letter of the author and a consecutive number, completes the bookplate.
It is peculiar to Hecht's work that he cut out individual animal motifs from his printing plates and used them for new compositions.
The elephant is thus possibly not a direct commentary on Rubinstein's person. Hecht rather associated the pachyderm with Paris and depicted it almost identically in various circumstances. Hecht used his frequent visits to the Paris zoo for the artistic development of his characteristic animal studies.
From the Square de l'Avenue Foch to Udmurtia
The Elephant bookplate is an important guide to Arthur Rubinstein's library, which is now completely dispersed.
4,000 volumes and numerous musical items had comprised the collection in his house on Square de l'Avenue Foch before it was confiscated by the German occupiers. Over the decades, thanks to a title list made from memory, some books and sheet music could be identified and restituted.
Some books were transported to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) in Berlin, from where they later became part of the Öffentliche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek (Public Research Library) as "herrenloses Bibliotheksgut“ (ownerless library property).
After the end of the war other copies reached the Soviet Union through Soviet trophy brigades, among them the All-Russian Library of Foreign Literature headed by Margarita Ivanovna Rudomino.
In the course of redistribution campaigns between 1945 and 1961, organized by the Rudomino Library, foreign-language books were also given to the Udmurt Soviet Republic . According to a scholarly review of the holdings of the National Library of Izhevsk published in 2010, its catalog shows a volume of poetry by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) containing Rubinstein's bookplate. Is Poésie from 1925 one of the books that Rubinstein was particularly fond of and which he put on the list of his stolen books?
Le Bœuf sur le Toit
Alongside Jean Cocteau, the French poet, writer, painter and filmmaker, Rubinstein met many influential and fascinating personalities during the wild 1920s at the legendary Parisian Bar La Gaya, where jazz was played and Afro-Brazilian sounds inspired them. Rubinstein, too, had a distinct penchant for South American culture.
On a concert tour in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, he met the French composer Darius Milhaud. Back in Paris, memories of Brazil manifested themselves in Milhaud's compositions and in the new name for their favorite popular bar: Le Bœuf sur le Toit.
It was not unusual to hear Milhaud playing here with Rubinstein and Georges Auriac to six hands. Among other things, they also performed the piece about the Ox on the Roof, which takes up the rhythms of a Brazilian folk song and was reworked by Cocteau into a ballet.
During their stay in Rio, Milhaud and Rubinstein also made the acquaintance of Heitor Villa-Lobos, a Brazilian composer unknown in Europe at the time. He owes his first great successes in Paris, where they invited him, primarily to the intensive encouragement of these two.
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Rudepoêma 1921-1926
Composer Villa-Lobos owed no small debt of gratitude to generous and loyal patron Arthur Rubinstein: he dedicated to him one of the most influential piano pieces of the 20th century, probably the most difficult solo piano piece ever to play: Rudepoêma.
"Rude" in Brazilian stands for "wild" or "raw." Rudepoêma is both, "Rubinstein's Poem" and a "Wild Poem".
The score, with a dedication on the first page, was among the music Rubinstein was forced to leave behind at the Square de l'Avenue Foch in 1939. It was confiscated, as were his books, in 1940.
Only handwritten dedications - the elephant bookplate was not used for sheet music - made it possible to assign the musical materials confiscated in Paris to the pianist's collection. The Rudepoêma and a further five scores by Villa-Lobos lied for a long time in a pile of a total of 71 sheets of music that came from Moscow to the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin-Ost in 1958/59.
Until their restitution to Rubinstein's children in 2006, these sheet music remained unexplored among the holdings of the Music department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
The biggest Art Deal of the Nazi era
From the very beginning, the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin were involved in the Dresdner Bank's sales negotiations with the responsible ministries. The proceedings lasted almost two years, because as an institution directly subordinate to the state, they were supposed to be the custodians of the works of art. In addition, a museum had the necessary expertise that a bank official did not necessarily possess. Art experts from various fields were in demand, because this state transfer to the museums covered a wide spectrum from sculpture to painting and graphic art to furniture, oriental carpets and Persian ceramics. Actually, the museums were only interested in the top works, but the bank wanted a sale en bloc for economic reasons. In the end, the bank accommodated the Prussian State with the price, and in return the museums took over the entire collection, but were then allowed to sell on what they considered second- and third-class.
Sarah leads Abraham to Hagar
Among the paintings transferred from the Dresdner Bank holdings to the Gemäldegalerie was one by the painter Mattheus Stom, born around 1600 in Amersfoort, an important representative of the Dutch Caravaggists. This trend in Baroque painting was based on the example of the Italian artist Caravaggio. His style was characterized above all by effective light staging and a particularly expressive sign language.
"Überall, Berlin"
The transfer of this painting from the Dresdner Bank to the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin was documented on List 17. In sixth place is "Matt. Stomer / Biblische Darstellung“ (Biblical Depiction), with an estimated price of 5.000 Reichsmarks. Together with the nine other items on this sheet, it came from the previous possession of the Jewish art dealer Heinrich Ueberall. He had used the artworks as collateral for a loan he had taken out with the Dresdner Bank before 1932. The origin of his collection was known to the museums through previous correspondence with the contracting parties. Thus, one museum employee, probably while unpacking the works, wrote in pencil across the list, "Überall, Berlin." Most of the other notes on the document concern the museum-internal distribution of the artworks among the individual collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
The Art Dealer Heinrich Ueberall
Heinrich Ueberall was born in Yaroslavl, Galicia, on December 20, 1869. In 1899, he moved with his wife Rebeka and two children to Berlin and opened an art and antiques shop. The business quickly became one of Berlin's leading art firms. When the National Socialists took power in 1933, he came under increasing pressure as a Jewish merchant. Between 1936 and 1938, he was forced to give up his business. In 1939 he successfully applied for a British entry visa for himself and his wife. However, the outbreak of war prevented the trip. Thus, in September 1939, Ueberall was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He died there in the same month. His widow committed suicide in 1942 after receiving a deportation notice. The daughter had already emigrated to the USA with her family in 1938, the son to London in 1939.
Restitution and Reacquisition
In 2019, Stom's painting Sarah Leads Abraham to Hagar was restituted to the heirs of Heinrich Ueberall, along with two other paintings from the Gemäldegalerie and two sculptures from the Alte Nationalgalerie. Originally, three additional paintings, a Boule-Pendule clock, and seven gold boxes from Ueberall's estate had been taken over with the Dresdner Bank inventories. These works, however, are considered war losses or were resold in an auction at Julius Böhler in Munich in 1937, so they had not been in the museums' possession for decades. The painting by Mattheus Stom returned to the Gemäldegalerie in 2020 thanks to the Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein and with the support of the Friede Springer Foundation. After restitution, it could be reacquired.