Scholarly research on the provenance of all federal state of Berlin cultural assets held at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (excluding the “Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts” and the Collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch).
In April 1964, a “Loan agreement on assets acquired using funds from the German lottery and owned by the City of Berlin” was drawn up between the Land Berlin (federal state of Berlin) and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). The loans to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin comprised 109 entries, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, decorative and applied arts and ethnological objects, as well as coins spanning from antiquity to the modern age.
They had been previously acquired for eight of the foundation’s museums: the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities), the former Museum für Völkerkunde (now the Ethnologisches Museum / Museum für Asiatische Kunst [Ethnological Museum / Asian Art Museum]), Gemäldegalerie (Old Masters Gallery), Nationalgalerie, Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts), Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History).
These are all works created before 1945, and the majority were purchased on the German and international art markets in the 1950s and 1960s.
The project, conducted over two years, aims to comprehensively document and systematically investigate the provenances of artworks and cultural holdings from the federal state of Berlin held by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. A special focus is to investigate cultural assets acquired through National Socialist persecution, especially those with prior Jewish ownership, or works taken unjustly from colonial contexts.
Institution: Zentralarchiv (Central Archive), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Project head: Dr Petra Winter
Research associate: Dr Lisa Hackmann
Project funding: The federal state of Berlin
Project duration: January 2026 to December 2027