Commission for Provenance Research

The Commission for Provenance Research (Kommission für Provenienzforschung) is an institution of the Republic of Austria for provenance research, based in Vienna. Created in February 1998 at the Federal Ministry responsible for culture at the time - which is now the Federal Ministry for Art, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Its members work as provenance researchers in the various federal museums and collections.

Background and mission

After Austria merged with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss of 1938, Jews in Austria were persecuted, forced to flee or murdered. Their property was seized or appropriated with or without a verneer of legatlity under anti-Jewish race laws.^{[1] [2]} Under the Austrian Art Restitution Act of 1998, the Republic of Austria has the mandate to proactively research movable art and cultural assets that were seized from their owners during the National Socialist era (e.g. in the form of art theft, looted gold or the Aryanization of property carried out by the Nazi state) in the federally owned collection holdings and to transfer them to the former owners or their legal successors.^[3] The Commission for Provenance Research is responsible for systematically researching the collection holdings. The results are forwarded to the Art Restitution Advisory Board, which then makes recommendations to the responsible federal minister (restitution) regarding non-returns or returns.^[4][5]

If a positive restitution decision is made by the Ministry, the current owners or legal successors may be sought and contacted by the commission.

The website contains information on investigations, research opportunities and the commission's series of publications since 2008.

To celebrate its twentieth anniversary the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research initiated the publication of a digital encyclopaedia of provenance research entitled the Lexikon der österreichischen Provenienzforschung.^[6]

Restitution to the wrong family

in 2018, it was discovered that a painting by Gustav Klimt, Apple Tree II, which had belonged to Serena Lederer, had been restituted by mistake to the wrong family.^[7][8] because the Austrian Art Restitution Advisory Board mistakenly confused the Klimt with a different painting.^[9][10]

Nazi looting organisations

Austrian collections acquired art objects from Jews looted by Nazis through several looting organizations:

• Special commission Linz (the so-called Führer Museum/the so-called Linz Picture Gallery; Führer's reservation of June 18, 1938)^[11]
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was a Nazi-run organization which helped plunder Jews while forcing them to flee. It coordinated measures concerning citizenship, immigration law, foreign currency, Aryanization (transfer of property to non-Jews) and punitive property taxation targeting Jews. It was the only authority authorized to issue exit permits for Jews from Austria (1938–1941).
• Instructions from the Reich Ministry of Finance from the beginning of November 1941, so-called Action 3
• "M-Aktion", confiscations of (especially valuable) furnishings by the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, in France and the occupied Benelux countries under the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg.^[12]

External links

• Website der österr. Kommission (provenienzforschung.gv.at)

See also

• The Holocaust in Austria
• Anschluss
• Unser Wien
• Claims for restitution for restitution for Nazi-looted art

References

1. "Christie's to auction unclaimed works of art confiscated from Austrian Jews by the Nazis". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 1996-09-30. Retrieved 2024-11-24. There is Oriental and European porcelain, Dutch, Delft, Meissen and Thun, Italian maiolica, glass, silver, rare Flemish and Brussels tapestries, European and Islamic carpets, Rococo, Biedermeier and Victorian furniture, books manuscripts and pamphlets, even a collection of Austrian theatre programmes. All of this was stripped on Hitler's orders from the homes of Austria's wealthy Jews who either parted with their possessions in the hope of obtaining an exit visa or fled taking what they could carry with them.
2. "The Aryanization of Jewish Property in Austria during the Holocaust". Jewish/non-Jewish Relations. 2014-10-23. Retrieved 2024-11-24. Unlike the gradual process of Aryanization in Germany, the confiscation of Jewish property in Austria began immediately following the annexation. Already during the first weeks after this date, eager Austrians began ransacking and plundering Jewish property, despite the fact that the Nazis had issued explicit regulations against uncontrolled looting. During these unsanctioned Aryanizations, Jews were also publicly degraded and humiliated, suggesting that property confiscations were closely tied to the stripping of Jews' identity not only as Austrians, but also as human beings. During the course of these events, thousands were arrested, and other Jews were forced to wash the streets with brushes alongside cheering onlookers. Many Austrian Jews also took their own lives at this time.
3. Österreich, Außenministerium der Republik. "Restitution of looted Arts". www.bmeia.gv.at. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
4. "Art restitution in Austria". Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
5. "59f7e0d9d9". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
6. "January 2019: Lexicon of Austrian Provenance Research - Lexikon der österreichischen Provenienzforschung". Lootedart.com.
7. "Austria returns wrong Klimt to wrong family". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 2018-11-13. Retrieved 2024-11-24.
8. "Bernard Arnault in talks to offer compensation for Gustav Klimt painting looted by Nazis". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-11-24. Austria had handed over the painting to the Stiasny family in 2001 because it had been confused with another Klimt landscape, Roses Under the Trees, which Stiasny owned before the Second World War. She sold it under duress for a fraction of its value in 1938 after Germany annexed Austria. Four years later she was murdered in a Nazi death camp. Apple Tree II should have been returned to another Austrian Jewish family, the Lederers, whom the Nazis seized it from.
9. "AUSTRIA CRITICIZED FOR RESTITUTING KLIMT PAINTING TO WRONG FAMILY". Artforum. 2018-11-16. Retrieved 2024-11-24.
10. "Holocaust victim's heirs to pay Austria after mix-up over returned Klimt". reuters. VIENNA, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The family of a Jewish woman who was forced to sell a Gustav Klimt painting in 1938 to survive have agreed to pay Austria $11.3 million after a mix-up over the painting concerned meant the wrong one was returned to them, Austria said on Friday. Nora Stiasny, Viennese niece of art collector Victor Zuckerkandl, was deported by the Nazis with her mother Amalie Zuckerkandl to the Izbica ghetto in Poland for being Jewish.
11. "70 years on, the search continues for artwork looted by the Nazis". PBS NewsHour. 2016-04-30. Retrieved 2024-03-04.
12. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. "RECONSTRUCTING THE RECORD OF NAZI CULTURAL PLUNDER: A SURVEY OF THE DISPERSED ARCHIVES OF THE EINSATZSTAB REICHSLEITER ROSENBERG (ERR)" (PDF). lootedart.com. The ERR separated art objects from the M-Aktion transferred to the Jeu de Paume into a number of special type-specific "M-A" collections, from paintings and Oriental objets-d'art to weapons and rare books. Inventoried at the Jeu de Paume without revealing the name and address of the home from which they had been seized, most of the M-A collections were forwarded to special ERR art repositories in neighboring Austria, such as Kogl and Seisseneg.1