Forced sales of paintings during the Second World War: what followed for the Kunsthaus Zürich

uUnder the new director Ann Demeester, the Kunsthaus Zürich published a strategy paper on provenance research in mid-March that is highly noteworthy in terms of cultural policy. Under massive public and political pressure, Switzerland’s largest art museum has finally come to the conclusion that it needs to reassess the provenance of its works. As early as 1998, Switzerland had signed the Washington Declaration, which regulates the basic handling of works of art confiscated by the National Socialists and later not returned. This type of art theft has been considered a “crime against humanity” under international criminal law since 1945. But the Kunsthaus was in no hurry to clear up any illegal art ownership. Because it was only in 2019 that a permanent position for provenance research was set up, which serves to research the history and origin of the works.

But now a paradigm shift is taking place in Zurich, with a new strategy being presented both for the museum’s own collection and for permanent loans. There should be “professional testing standards” and efforts to find “fair and just solutions” to the victims or their heirs. Emphasizing that these projects are new, this reads like an admission that such efforts have not existed before. The ideas go in the right direction and are welcome, but some remain half-hearted and linguistically imprecise.

How is Raphael Gross supposed to check 203 controversial Bührle pictures in one year?

Two additional posts for provenance research have just been advertised to increase staff, and the cantonal council of Zurich will probably support the entire project with one million Swiss francs. However, these are not permanent, but only temporary positions. The Swiss Raphael Gross could be won over to evaluate the previous provenance research for the particularly controversial 203 permanent loans from the Bührle Foundation. He is President of the German Historical Museum Foundation in Berlin. As the first independent expert, within a year and thus inevitably on a random basis, he is to check the research into the private collection exhibited in the new extension building for “cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution”.

The Kunsthaus Zürich expressly no longer uses this term to mean art that was confiscated, robbed and forced sale directly from Jewish collectors in particular on German soil between 1933 and 1945. With the term, the museum is now also aiming at so-called flight goods, which those owners who were able to flee in time before being arrested or even murdered by the Nazis brought to Switzerland. Since most of them had lost their livelihoods due to the forced flight, they had to sell some of their art possessions in Switzerland, which dealers and buyers took advantage of. The Kunsthaus wants to find such victims or their heirs and look for a “fair and just solution”, which may also include compensation or restitution of the works, depending on the case, even if there is no right to return according to the current legal situation.