Landscape with a plough: “Spring” is the main work of the ensemble from the Villa Ullmann. The landscape on the Main near Schweinfurt still looks almost exactly as Hans Thoma painted it.
Image: Lando Hass
It is thanks to years of provenance research that Hans Thoma’s seasons cycle, which had to be sold by Jews before fleeing Nazi Germany, is complete again. It will be shown publicly for the first time in Frankfurt.
IFear is rampant in museums and private collections: Claims for return by previous owners who were unjustly deprived of their property could destroy the integrity of the holdings, exhibits could be withdrawn from the public and from research. The discussion about the return of bronzes captured by the British in the Kingdom of Benin and then sold in Europe and America is a prominent example. In Germany, restitution claims mostly relate to works of art that were extorted from their Jewish owners under National Socialism.
One case that has occupied the museum world for years is the controversy surrounding the sculptures and paintings exhibited in the Kunsthaus Zurich. These are permanent loans from the Bührle Foundation. The collection of the Swiss manufacturer Emil Georg Bührle, who died in 1956 and was one of the most important arms suppliers to the Nazis, is said to include a number of works that persecuted Jews had to sell out of necessity.
