Concealed Histories: Uncovering the Story of Nazi Looting

Fascinating online talk from the Victoria and Albert Museum on work they are doing to research the provenance of items in their collections.

Jacques Schuhmacher, provenance curator for the Gilbert Collection at the museum, talked us through a brief history of the confiscation and forced sale of Jewish property by the Nazi’s from 1933 when they came to power. He told us how even up to 1998 the Victoria and Albert Museum, like many others, kept sparse provenance records for items in their collections just recording who gave the item or who it was bought from and the names of any famous owners.

He then talked about research he had down on items in the Gilbert Collection and told us some of the stories of the objects. For example the Louis XVI gold box shown here was owned by Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, a Jewish banker, who had had to submit a catalogue of his collection for the Nazi’s which they then used as a blue print for what they wished to take. In 1938 he was forced to sell the collection and his house but was not allowed to keep the money from the sale. After the war a grandson demanded restitution and it was found that this item was returned and subsequently sold by the family. It restitution terms this means it was alright for the museum to have the item but it still important to tell the story.

There was an excellent Q&A session after the talk in which many of the questions were around the procedures of his research and what happens if a seized item is found. People asked about how to get information on items stolen by Russian troops after liberation, the mechanics of returning an item to a family and what databases and online resources were available. The speaker highlighter the work of the German Lost Art Foundation.