Provenance Research And The Many Chasms:

Post-World War II – Today

Prior to the investigation of the Gurlitt Collection, and still today, Germany follows the guidelines for Implementing the Statement by the Federal Government, the Länder and the national associations of local authorities on the tracing and return of Nazi-confiscated art, especially Jewish Property of December 1999—also known as the Common Statement. These non-legally binding guidelines were revised in 2007 and offer suggestions on implementing the Washington Principles of 1998, which outline the continued efforts of Germany to search for Nazi-confiscated art in public institutions, such as museums. These guidelines offer options for decisions on restitution claims on a case-by-case basis and recommend the sharing of provenance research results on the internet-based Lost Art Database (www.lostart.de) launched in 2000. The guidelines additionally mention the Advisory Commission, which was established in 2003 by the German Federal Government to oversee the return of cultural property seized due to Nazi persecution. Germany is one of the five countries that has fulfilled the point of the Washington Principles that calls for the implementation of national bodies or panels to provide recommendations on disputed art in public collections. The extent to which this commission is used and is actionable, however, remains questionable, and it should, in fact, be used more frequently.

The Common Statement

The guidelines of the Common Statement outline options for making decisions on restitution claims, yet they do not specifically mention whether these guidelines pertain solely to public institutions. Among the different recommendations the Common Statement makes for public museums, archives, and libraries are its call for documentation of existing and new acquisitions and its push for public access to information on artworks that are suspected to have been confiscated during the Nazi persecution. Suspected acquisitions include legal transactions that were based on persecution, donations from official NS officials, and acquisitions that took place in occupied territories. In addition to the Lost Art Database, the Common Statement mentions further resources that should be utilized by institutions conducting provenance research on their collections, such as the AAM Guide to Provenance Research. Only a handful of guidelines exist that relate to provenance research, and they are used and referenced to globally. The Common Statement offers multiple annexes with case-by-case criteria that can be followed when reviewing potential Nazi-confiscated objects. These annexes, however, are only available online and are not easily accessible—one might even say impossible to find. The supposed annexes include details on Nazi-era agencies that specialized in the looting of cultural property, agencies involved in the sale or exchange of works of art, specialists on the Nazi era, and lists of some of the most well-known repositories.¹

Art dealers, sellers, and brokers who were involved with Nazi-confiscated art are further mentioned as sources to investigate. Theoretically, further annexes are offered for this, including ones on auction houses, shipping companies, and Jewish collectors, among others. These resources are relevant when researching the Gurlitt family, as Hildebrand Gurlitt is mentioned in certain documents listing NS-related individuals who dealt with artworks during the period. Among these lists is the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) List of "Red-Flag" Names, given by the AAM Guide.² Within this list of red-flag names, Hildebrand Gurlitt is identified as one of the chief official Paris agents for Linz between 1943-1945. His cousin, Wolfgang Gurlitt, is also one of the people listed, with the added description of his close contact with Hermann Voss, director of the Linz museum project, appointed by Joseph Goebbels and Hitler. Scholars and authors who have written on the Gurlitt Collection have differed in their opinions on how essential the Linz Commission is for placing Hildebrand Gurlitt based on the fact that the type of works that Hildebrand collected for the commission were not all of high value. This, however, is a value judgement that can also be challenged by establishing the fact that the act of freely joining the Linz Commission by Hildebrand was a decision that was indicative of his intentions of working within the art world regardless of the political associations.

The Bundesamt für zentrale Dienste und offene Vermögensfragen (BADV),³ the Federal Office of Central Service and Unresolved Property Issues, contains, according to the Common Statement, approximately one million restitution files. These files include documentation on the compensation proceedings in Germany immediately after World War II and should be investigated in case of questionable provenance for a work of art. It is also stated in the Common Statement, however, that the "decision in each individual case lies within the discretion of the institution concerned" regarding restitution claims.⁴ However, institutions that receive restitution claims, must first ascertain whether the artwork in question falls within the Act on the Settlement of Unresolved Property Claims (VermG), which, under administrative law, takes precedent over the Common Statement for the restitution of works of art confiscated between 1933 and 1945. This act is within the parameters of the BADV and concerns the "part of Germany that acceded to the Federal Republic in 1990."⁵ The agencies for restitution claims that were implemented after World War II by Germany offered little room for claimants to actually be able to retrieve their properties. While they acknowledged property was lost due to NS persecutions, the bureaucratic hurdles that had to be overcome, within very limited time constraints, speaks to Germany's lack of proactive effort.

The Common Statement concludes by describing model solutions for dealing with restitution claims: the buying or returning of works of art to the original Jewish owners, proposed exchange agreements with claimants, potential loan agreements, and the decision to leave works of art within public institutions on view if so desired by the rightful owners.

Indemnification Provisions in Germany after World War II

The Compensation for National Socialist Injustices, published by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, provides a history of the compensation offered in Germany after World War II, including provisions for cultural assets.⁶ The first legal provisions were made in 1945 and were meant to distinguish between restitution and compensation. This distinction was based on the likelihood of being able to find lost works of art in order for them to be returned and restituted. Financial compensation would be offered when the efforts of finding the works of art were no longer seen as worthwhile by the German agencies. The three Western zones—the United States, British and French occupation zones—passed restitution laws for the occupied zones and West Berlin in 1947 and 1949. These restitution laws dealt with objects that were confiscated between 1933 and 1945 as a result of persecution. After the Federal Republic of Germany was established, the Federal Restitution Act of 1957 was put in place for claims against Germany and other entities that were involved in Nazi confiscations.

In 1953, the Additional Federal Compensation Act was passed, which applied to the entire Federal Republic of Germany and was based on the initial compensation provisions in the occupied zones. The Federal Compensation Act of 1956 extended eligibility and forms of compensation to victims—most notably one-off payments for restitution claims, pensions for surviving dependents, and the financing of medical treatments. The original deadline of the act was 1957, but this was extended to 1958. A final revision—the Final Federal Compensation Act, established in 1965—extended once more the compensation application deadline of 1958 to 1969. These restitution laws and acts are no longer enforceable. In 1969, after the deadline passed of the Final Federal Compensation Act, a one-off compensation payment for Jewish victims of NS persecution, through the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), was supported by the German Bundestag in 1980.⁷ This agreement was revised in 2012 to include ongoing payments and medical options for Holocaust survivors and Jewish victims as defined in the Federal Compensation Act. In 1990, the Act Regulating Open Property Matters was established, which looks at individuals persecuted between 1933-1945 due to religious, political, racial, or ideological reasons. The deadline for claims was 1992 for real estate and 1993 for movable property. As stipulated in the act, the JCC is the "successor to any heirless or unclaimed Jewish lost property," with possible compensation available under the Nazi Persecution Compensation Act and the federal Compensation Fund established for these payments.⁸ It is quite clear from the above-mentioned list of acts, that there was no strong foundation set in place after the war for retrieving lost cultural property. The constant extensions of time between the federal acts had to be made due the impossibility of claimants finding all the required documentation. They often acted alone with little to no financial or legal help, when in fact the focus of these acts should have been to create a long-term department within the German government for cultural property retrieval after the war.

Ludwig Kirchner's - Berlin Street Scene

One of the most famous examples that changed and sped up Germany's handling of WWII provenance was the restitution controversy of a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Berlin Street Scene, (1913-1914). The painting was originally owned by Alfred Hess, who was one of the most important collectors of modern art in the early 20th century. The Hess family owned the Hess shoe factory, and they were well known and highly regarded within society. This included the founder Alfred Hess, his wife Tekla, and their son Hans. Alfred Hess died in 1931, shortly before the NS-Party took control in 1933, leaving the grand collection of art in the private hands of his wife and son. As more and more cities adopted a right-wing political ideology, Tekla Hess was forced to make decisions regarding the safekeeping of her modern art collection. In 1933, after settling debts of the family business following the death of his father, Hans left Germany and entered exile in Paris, where he lived in poverty. In an attempt to rescue the family collection, Tekla decided in late 1932 or early 1933 to ask if the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland would take the collection—as the degenerate art removal was imminent in Germany. This shipment of works, including the Berlin Street Scene, was possible due to the fact that the works were declared to be loans for a modern exhibition of German painters to take place at the museum in Basel. This allowed Tekla to avoid criminal punishment and customs charges on Jewish property that was leaving Germany.

When another opportunity presented itself in Switzerland, Tekla agreed to loan works to an exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zürich, with the Hess name remaining un-mentioned in the exhibition catalogue, as was done previously. Berlin Street Scene was once again featured among the works at the Zürich exhibition in 1934, which included prices for the majority of works, giving the impression that the works were for sale. Tekla arranged for the museum to hold the works in Zürich even after the exhibition ended on a loan agreement, keeping the collection out of Nazi Germany. The selling of certain artworks from the collection soon became unavoidable due to her family's economically difficult living arrangements. However, it is important to note that no receipts exist today showing that these sales were made in order to clear debts of the Hess family. This became a matter of great contention in the later restitution of Berlin Street Scene—as this fact related to the compensation laws that appeared right after World War II.

In 1936, the Cologne Art Association in Germany received a shipment containing part of the collection including Berlin Street Scene. These works were once again offered on loan by Tekla, yet Walter Klug, head of the Cologne Art Association, offered these works directly for sale. The remaining works of the Hess collection were still being held at the Kunsthaus in Zürich, with the promise that they could remain there for another year. The German authorities knew of the remaining collection in Switzerland, and in 1936 demanded the collection back. Tekla later said:

The collection soon became labeled as Jewish property that was stored abroad, breaching the foreign exchange regulations of NS Germany. In 1936, Carl Hagemann acquired Berlin Street Scene from the Cologne Art Association. Hagemann did not know the history of the painting prior to buying the work, and it is not known how much he paid for it.¹⁰

After the death of Hagemann in 1940, the director of the Städel Art Museum in Frankfurt convinced the Hagemann heirs to store the art collection at the museum, which managed to remain intact until the NS-Party was no longer in power. After World War II, many art collections, such as the Hess Collection, remained dispersed and in continuous circulation, yet out of the hands of the families and individuals who originally owned them.¹¹ As Tekla wrote to her friends, Lyonel and Julia Feininger in 1947:

Unfortunately, all of my Klee watercolors have been lost in Switzerland, where a good friend had been keeping them for me – he shot himself – bankruptcy – and all of my pictures that he had in safekeeping were auctioned by Klippstein and thrown in with his lot – and I never saw the money or the pictures. This – these are the extra experiences – that one never speaks about […]¹²

Tekla had written to the Cologne Art Association, inquiring where the works had gone after they were shipped back to Germany from Switzerland between 1936 and 1937, yet most of them could no longer be located, indicating that the Cologne Art Association either did not know themselves or did not want to disclose that information at the time. Hans Hess did not file restitution claims for his father's collection within the legal period of 12 months—per the restitution regulations in Germany shortly after the war. As Hans was not aware of the location of the works, including Berlin Street Scene, he would not have met the preconditions put in place to file a restitution claim within the set time limit.

It was as of the mid-1950s that Hans actively started working with his German attorney to compile all written accounts and gather all evidence related to the lost collection of his father. After the Federal Restitution Act passed in 1957, Hans filed for widergutmachungsansprüche, reparations claims for approximately 4,000 pieces, within the newly allotted legal time period for filling claims. Three years after his restitution claims were filed, Hans had still not received any reparations. In 1961, Hans was informed that the investigations of the government did not identify the whereabouts of the works. That same year Hans withdrew the restitution claims due to the fact that he could not produce all the necessary documents required to prove confiscation. In accordance with the Federal Compensation Act, Hans was to receive a lump sum compensation for the loss of the collection. After the Federal Compensation Act (BEG) of 1935/1956 expired, the Federal Compensation Final Act, which ended in 1969, took effect, and it had a legal limit of 75,000 deutsche mark, regardless of the actual value lost. Neither Tekla, who died in 1968, nor Hans, who died in 1975, managed in their lifetimes to find out where most of the collection had gone. The story of the Hess family and Berlin Street Scene later became known in Germany as one of the clearest examples of how the postwar restitution process hampered claimants in their efforts to retrieve their art collections.

When the director of the Städel Art Museum passed away in 1972, his wife Elisabeth Holzinger inherited Berlin Street Scene, which she continued to loan to the museum. In 1980, Berlin Street Scene was bought by the state of Berlin, brokered by Leopold Reidemeister, director of the state museums in West Berlin at the time, who knew of Alfred Hess. The painting was displayed at the Brücke Museum in Berlin. To this day it is not quite clear to what extent the museum conducted research or was aware of the provenance of Berlin Street Scene at the time. The provenance through the family Hess was not reflected in the exhibition catalogue. The daughter of Hans lodged a legal claim against the Brücke Museum in Berlin in 2004 for Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene. It had been owned by the museum since 1980, but the public was unaware that it was seized Jewish property. Restitution experts from SPK, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, determined that by German restitution policies following the Washington Principles and the Joint Declaration of Germany, Berlin Street Scene needed to be returned. In 2006, after the work was restituted, Berlin Street Scene was auctioned at Christie's in New York to the big dismay and disapproval of all those who were against the restitution to begin with. With an estimated catalog price of $18 to $25 million, the final bid was $38 million, after commissions, by the Neue Galerie in New York and its owner Ronald S. Lauder. The work remains there still today and has become an international icon for the public.

After the work was restituted to the rightful heir of Alfred Hess, and before it was sold at auction, the entire art world was dismayed by the largely unspoken controversy that art circulating in the market may or may not have been looted during the war. It was Lauder himself who said he was mystified that Germany did not make a bid at auction in order to display and keep Berlin Street Scene in Germany. The mayor of Berlin at the time, Klaus Wowereit, gave a statement to the German magazine Bild in 2006 that stated: "Berlin will not take part in the bidding. The estimated price is so horrendous that no one would have any sympathy if we did."¹³ Lauder, among other prominent Jewish art collectors and patrons, made it part of his responsibility—through his leadership as president of the World Jewish Congress—to share the stories of Nazi-plundered art by highlighting this painting and others through exhibitions. This example showcases the complicated paths that cross within and outside of the art world when claimants are seeking lost art. The act of tracing the origins of a work of art today in order to find the rightful owners is more often than not hindered by the scattered physical evidence and also impeded by the unclear German process set in place for restitutions immediately after World War II.

20-Year Anniversary of the Washington Principles and their Leading Members

The German Lost Art Foundation, along with the Stifftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, hosted a conference in 2018 in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Washington Principles.¹⁴ Known in Germany and internationally as one of the leading institutions of provenance research, SPK has access to museums, libraries, and archives, and it looks at provenance in relation to acquisitions, restitutions, and the documentation of objects. It was established in 1957 as a foundation that would initially be responsible for preserving the cultural legacy of Prussia. Upon the reunification of Germany, archival material became available to SPK that enabled the Foundation to directly deal with issues of NS-looted art in some of the cultural institutions under SPK's purview. The Foundation has examined and worked on approximately 50 cases, trying to find "just and fair solutions" for claimants, with more than 350 objects of art resituated.¹⁵ Despite the previously mentioned deadline of July 1993 for restitution claims in the GDR, SPK declared that it was willing to accept restitution applications after the deadline passed. The foundation makes a point of not only waiting for requests from claimants, but of also seeking out and approaching claimants to find solutions in line with the Washington Principles.

The conference, 20 Years of the Washington Principles: Roadmap to the Future, took place in Berlin over three days in November 2018. Two of the primary points of discussion were the challenges faced thus far in implementing the Washington Principles and the identification of tasks for the future in relation to the principles. The different speeches of the specialists noted the responsibility of nations to permanently integrate the Washington Principles into their countries and also expressed the need for future generations to understand the importance and urgency of the Principles, The conference incorporated lectures, workshops, panel discussions, talks, and other programs in both German and English. It was divided these into four sections: 20 Years After Washington: An Evaluation, Just And Fair Solutions, Prospects And Progress, and Education and Responsibility.¹⁶ Most material from the conference can be found online, including speeches by some of the speakers; however, not all of the information is available, translated, or in one place for convenience. As Monika Grütters, the cultural minister of Germany, stated: "We will use this conference to initiate further measures to facilitate fair and just solutions for the benefit of the victims and their families. Our Joint Declaration is an expression of our determination and our will to make further progress possible. We thereby acknowledge what has been achieves so far and reaffirm our resolve to continue to shed light on Nazi art theft".¹⁷

The digitization of documents on lost objects of art and the increase of online databases were acknowledged in multiple speeches, yet the implementation of these systems in certain countries remained a point of criticism. Germany has now begun to implement provenance researchers and professionals within museums and other cultural institutions. While this is an example of how the intent is in the right place, the execution is still falling behind, as many of these provenance research positions remain temporary. Among the institutions named in relation to in-house provenance research were auction houses—more specifically, Christie's and Sotheby's. As two of the world's major auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's are frequently used as examples of auction houses that are moving towards conducting more detailed provenance research. It is, however, important to note that many auction houses and other cultural institutions internationally and in Germany lack the financial resources to create permanent provenance research departments. This places the responsibility for conducting research on other departments that likely lack the experience and time needed to fully investigate the provenances of each item offered at auction. Without this much-needed change, auction houses will continue to have the unfortunate power to scatter potential looted works throughout the art market—as was done during World War II. Two significant developments in Germany, initiated by Monika Grütters, were discussed and endorsed at the 20 Years of the Washington Principles: Roadmap to the Future conference, the Limbach Commission and the federal budget increase for provenance research in Germany.

The Limbach Commission—established in 2003 and also known as the Advisory Commission—was revised in 2016.¹⁸ The Commission was originally made up of eight members, who are appointed by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The commission can now include up to ten individual experts—with professional backgrounds in ethics, law, history or art history—for a new limit of ten years, instead of the previous unlimited period. The primary responsibility of the Limbach Commission is to settle, or help recommend solutions to, potential disputes on Nazi confiscated cultural assets. The request for the help of the Limbach Commission can come from private people, public institutions, or claimants. If the object is held by a public or private institution, then the Washington Principles and the Joint Declaration are enforced by Germany's agreement and used as a template for the proceedings. If an individual wants to request the aid of the Limbach Commission, the same principles must be applied by them. In order for the commission to intervene in a dispute, both the claimant and the current owner must agree to the mediation. The written recommendations are then published on the German Lost Art Foundation website. In one of the more recent reforms to the commission, Grütters—after discussions with Ambassador Ronald Lauder—announced the addition of two Jewish members to the commission, which previously had none. In the speeches given by both Ambassador Lauder and Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, they mentioned the Limbach Commission's positive changes, yet they also noted the fact that in fifteen years the Limbach Commission has only looked at fifteen claims.

20-Year Anniversary of the Washington Principles and its Speeches

Some of the most notable speeches at the event were given by Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder (Chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery), Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, and Gilbert Lupfer (honorary executive board member of the German Lost Art Foundation). In additional to the previously mentioned larger points of discussion spoken about across the conference, Lupfer spoke about the importance of digitization in relation to the German Lost Art Foundation. He offered a self-critical assessment on behalf of Germany on the efforts made in the early 1990s in relation to the return of cultural assets after World War II.¹⁹ Lupfer was quite explicit in saying that lost cultural assets from World War II were mostly forgotten in the 1990s or were not mentioned as a serious matter for governments to rectify. He said that it was and still is because of the tenaciousness of the victims and claimants that governments, such as Germany, have implemented more actionable guidelines and committees. It was, as Lupfer said, easier to look away from the gaps in provenance and the potential dubious pasts of some of the museum directors at the end of World War II—as though waiting for the past of the NS-Party looting to go away. This, however, as Lupfer made rather clear, is no longer the case in Germany since the liberation of central and Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany. Lupfer also mentioned that individual cases such as the Kirchner Street Scene and the Gurlitt Art Trove have brought more public attention to the topic of provenance in Germany and elsewhere since 2008.

As mentioned above, the other main emphasis of Lupfer's speech was the digitization of collections and provenance research by the Lost Art Foundation, and Germany at large. He stated that—after only a few years—big and small museums in Germany can now use a centralized database like the Lost Art Database for investigating suspicious works in their institutions. In regards to private collections, which Lupfer made a point of distinguishing from public collections, he said the aim of the Lost Art Foundation was to offer more direct advice to claimants in an easily approachable format and to enable direct contact with heirs and owners of current private collections. The distinction between public collections and private collections is deeply imbedded in Germany's strict privacy laws, which may prove to be an additional challenge for future laws regarding provenance research in Germany. As an example, to showcase success and progress, Lupfer introduced the Mosse Art Research Initiative (MARI) in his speech.²⁰ MARI was founded in 2017 by the Free University of Berlin and the German-Jewish Mosse family heirs in a public-private partnership. This partnership—with Meike Hoffmann as the project director—between NS-Party-prosecuted descendants and German institutions has involved multiple museums and cultural institutions around Germany, including the SPK, which took a great deal of initiative in the research project. Serving not only as an example of how the Washington Principles can be used in relation to private collections, MARI also serves as an example of Lupfer's emphasis of the online connectedness of provenance research and findings. MARI has created an online portal, which is custom made for different aspects of provenance research, providing new visualizations of research results. According to Lupfer, Germany's goal for the future is greater transparency and public accessibility in provenance research, as fewer and fewer survivors remain from World War II, making the artworks and their documentation of increasing importance. On September 10, 2019, a painting was seized at the upstate New York Arkell Museum, which had been seized by the Nazis in 1943 from the Mosse Family.²¹

As previously mentioned, one of the two points emphasized at the conference in regards to Germany's progress was the federal budget increase for provenance research since the appointment of Grütters. Since 2003, the German federal budget allotment increased from approximately one million euros to approximately seven million euros, with some of the most substantial strides occurring only recently in 2016. Ambassador Eizenstat mentioned this fact in the speech as he thanked Germany for its commitment to "Holocaust justice and memory."²² Among the most alarming statistics given in the speech by Ambassador Eizenstat was the fact that 600,000 paintings were looted during the Nazi period, of which more than 100,000 are still missing, according to experts. This number pertains only to paintings. If one were to include decorative arts, furniture, china, and other personal property, that number would be in the millions.

Some of the biggest reprimands at the conference—particularly in the speeches by Ambassador Eizenstat and Ambassador Lauder—were aimed at those countries—including Poland, Russia, Spain, Italy, Hungary, and many countries in Latin America like Brazil and Argentina—which many Nazis escaped to after the war, as they have not implemented most, or any, of the guidelines of the Washington Principles. Speakers criticized the lack of investment into provenance research as well as actual fighting against restitution requests. The lack of investment towards research was referred to as one of—if not the—biggest obstacles to the creation of national systems for provenance and restitution. Ambassador Eizenstat mentioned that since the establishment of the Washington Principles, the U.S, has not prioritized provenance nearly enough due particularly to lack of funds and the shortage of trained provenance researchers.

Both Ambassador Eizenstat and Ambassador Lauder named Switzerland as an example of a country that has insufficient devotion to provenance—especially because Switzerland was a country where many Jewish families fled to and sold their art collections in between 1933 and 1945.²³ Ambassador Eizenstat and Ambassador Lauder, called for Switzerland to open their archives for provenance research. Seen by Ambassador Eizenstat as "perhaps the last opportunity to get new energy and momentum behind fulfilling the promise of the Washington Principles," this conference, 20 Years of the Washington Principles: Roadmap to the Future, signaled the renewed attention needed to advance provenance research and restitution of Holocaust-era cultural assets.²⁴

As founder of the Commission for Art Recovery, which was established in 1997, Ambassador Lauder has been a prime initiator, spokesperson, and representative for Holocaust-era restitutions. The Commission for Art Recovery works towards restituting Nazi-looted art, including aiding in the provenance research process and helping deal with the legal barriers involved with claims. The commission established five distinct initiatives:

1. Historical Research Initiative – which attempts to persuade governments and museums to research and publicize works in their collections that were looted from 1933-1945 by the Nazi regime;
2. Knowledge Exchange initiative – a professional training program focused on documentary materials in European archives and government institutions;
3. Legislative Initiative – which advocates for policies in support of claims—such as the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (HEAR) of 2016 that enables Holocaust survivors and their families to pursue claims of property that was stolen from them during the Holocaust in court—and for the removal of restrictions placed on the return of looted art;
4. Judicial Initiative – which uses litigation to support international practices for restitutions of Nazi-looted art;
5. Educational Initiative – which helps professionals and encourages programs that help with provenance research and that raise public awareness on the subject.

These five initiatives were among the recommendations of Eizenstat, among others, for how to move forward with the many restitution-related commitments that must be realized.²⁵

In line with the conference's recommendation for future actions, Ambassador Lauder has initiated the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP), which will aim to create a listing of all Jewish-owned cultural objects looted by the NS-Party, as a joint initiative with the Commission for Art Recovery and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. An additional provenance research project that was mentioned at the conference that looks to the future with an online database is a program funded by Germany, the German American Provenance Research Exchange Program (PREP).²⁶ As a way to bring museum experts from Germany and the U.S. together, Jane Milosch, Director of the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative, organized PREP as a three-year program with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Germany. Ten American and eleven German museum professionals have met twice a year since 2017 at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Berlin State Museum. The final year of the program was 2019, and it took place at the Dresden State Art Museum in Germany and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. PREP is focused on more multi-disciplinary provenance research for the future, as it plans to create, with the J. Paul Getty Museum, an online resource guide for German-American Provenance Research. The aim is to help experts connect and improve accessibility and transparency on a global scale.

Finally, the speeches of State Minister Grütters and Gilbert Lupfer at the 20 Years of the Washington Principles: Roadmap to the Future conference also noted the need for furthering provenance research not just address Nazi-looted art, but also to handle post-colonial artifacts. As of 2019, these will be included under the German Lost Art Foundation, with Bénédicte Savoy on the eight-member committee responsible for evaluating applications. The German government will allocate funds dedicated specifically to provenance research in the colonial context.

In the press release of the conference, the German Lost Art Foundation succinctly put together ten separate subheadings stating what still needs to be done in relation to provenance research:

1. Museums, libraries and archives: institutions should further their commitment to the Washington Principles, including the incorporation of permanent positions for provenance researchers in individual institutions;
2. Digitization/ transparency: the digitization of collections should improve transparency and create more accessible databases;
3. Process mentorship: advice should be given to claimants by institutions throughout the process up until negotiations are complete;
4. Terminology and networking: terminology should be standardized—such as NS-Raubgut, which refers to "Nazi-confiscated property" —both on national and international levels of communication;
5. Fair and just solutions: solutions should be in line with the Washington Principles and should be published once complete;
6. Mediation: methods of mediation should continuously adapt, keeping developments in the field in mind;
7. Education: provenance research, the use of sciences, conservation, and educational programs in cultural institutions should be supported;
8. Private individuals: the Washington Principles should be applied to private individuals and the art market;
9. Legislators: the Washington Principles should be added to additional legal measures
10. Progress: the implementation of the Washington Principles should be continually monitored at international conferences.²⁷

Following the Gurlitt case, more attention has been given to the subject of provenance research. It has become apparent since the story broke out that Germany has not been prioritizing restitution claims since the creation of the Washington Principles twenty-one years ago. The development of a research database on a long-term basis at both private and public institutions in Germany is far from being complete. However, there is still hope that questions of ownership will continue to be resolved on the basis of "just and fair" solutions, as stated by the Washington Principles, and in a manner more reflective of the historical responsibility required in restitution claims.

Video References

Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt – Behind the Art

PREP Public Program - NS-Dokumentationszentrum, October 10, 2018

Twenty Years of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art: Joint Mission, Common Goals, but Still No Conclusion.