Government Agencies:
Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Centre for Cultural Property Losses)
The Centre's team at its new address at Humboldtstraße 12 has been announced as Dr. Andrea Baresel-Brand, Dr. Michael Franz, Sabine Kramer, Susanne Zwick, Yvonne Sommermeyer, Christin Blaeß and Torsten Declercq, all seven former employees of the Koordinierungs-stelle Magdeburg. There are also three former employees of the Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzforschung, Birgit Rombach, Nadine Bauer and Dr. Uwe Hartmann. The full-time Executive Board will be appointed later this month.
Although the key purpose of the Centre is to promote and fund provenance research throughout Germany in order to identify Nazi-looted art and enable its return to its rightful owners, it is notable that the Centre's website http://www.kulturgutverluste.de/ only appears in the German language, and there is no mention of when or if the site will provide an English language version, which is essential for the rightful owners.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Culture Minister Monika Grütters has announced the first tranche of grants of 1.15 million euros. New grantees are the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, the Landesmuseum Mainz, the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe and the Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung (Centre for Socio-Cultural Research) Lübeck. Recipients of ongoing funding for existing or new projects are the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the University Libraries of Potsdam and Rostock, the Institute for Ethnology at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (Institute for the History of German Jewry) in Hamburg, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte (State Museum for Art and Cultural History) Oldenburg, the Munich Stadtmuseum (City Museum), the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the Municipal Museums Freiburg, the Schlossmuseum Jever and the Heimatmuseum (Local History Museum) in Müllrose. The research will be assessed by the recently formed Research Council under the chairmanship of Dr Hermann Simon of the Centrum Judaicum Berlin. To read the associated press release, click here.
