Museum Georg Schäfer

The Museum Georg Schäfer is a German art museum in Schweinfurt, Bavaria. Based on the private art collection of German industrialist Georg Schäfer (1896–1975), the museum primarily collects 19th-century paintings by artists from German-speaking countries.[1]

History

Having already inherited a nucleus of 19th-century German and Austrian paintings from his father, in the 1950s Georg Schäfer began actively collecting paintings by old masters and forgotten "lesser" masters which, at that time, were being overlooked by the more conservative regional art centres of Munich, Berlin, Dresden and Vienna.[2] He bought much of the art in the 1950s from dealers in Munich, including from Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer, who was deeply involved in Nazi-looted art.[3]

As early as 1959, architect Erich Schelling drew up plans for a museum to house the collection.[4] A later design by Mies van der Rohe was rejected when the Schweinfurt city council declined to assume the cost of maintaining the museum. The plans were later adapted for the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.[5]

The city of Schweinfurt and the Schäfer family finally came to an agreement on housing the collection in a museum in 1988, but those plans were delayed due to a financial crisis in the FAG Kugelfischer company, which led Schäfer's heirs to mortgage the art collection. By the end of 1997 the family had regained control of much of the collection and established a foundation to protect it. City officials meanwhile secured resources for the museum, and in February 1997 Volker Staab won the commission to design the museum.[6]

The museum is situated next to the city hall (Rathaus) at the southern entry to downtown Schweinfurt and was opened to the public on 23 September 2000.

50°02′38″N 10°14′10″E / 50.0439°N 10.2361°E / 50.0439; 10.2361

Collection

Works in the collection

Nazi looted art

Provenance research into the ownership history of 1000 artworks in the Georg Schäfer collection was launched in 2016 after the museum received Nazi-era linked restitution claims for 23 artworks.[9] Provenance researcher Sibylle Ehringhaus investigated the collection for three years but resigned in 2020, saying that she had identified several plundered works, but that no one at the museum seemed to have any plans to return them to the heirs of the original Jewish owners.[10][11] Carl Blechen's "Klosterhof mit Kreuzgang" (Monastery Courtyard with Cloister) appeared as lost property in the Lost Art Database of the Zentrum für Kulturgutverluste and had an adhesive label on the back documenting its ownership by Jewish collectors Bertrand and Martha Nothmann.[12] In 2021, Germany proposed a law to make it easier for private foundations to restitute artworks lost due to Nazi persecution.[13]

References

  1. ↑ Museum Georg Schäfer online Archived 2014-06-24 at the Wayback Machine: The Collection
  2. ↑ The TIME-museum guide (32): Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt
  3. ↑ Hickley, Catherine (2020-03-17). "She Tracked Nazi-Looted Art. She Quit When No One Returned It". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2020-03-22. Retrieved 2021-05-13. Mr. Schäfer, the industrialist whose collection is displayed there, had bought much of the art in the 1950s in Munich, then a hub for dealers who had had relationships with the Nazis. Among those from whom he purchased works was Adolf Hitler's personal photographer.
  4. ↑ "Ein Tempel fuer die Schaefer Bilder". Main-Post.de (in German). March 2005. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  5. ↑ Lambert, Phyllis (2001). Mies in America. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture. p. 488.
  6. ↑ Museum Georg Schäfer online Archived 2014-06-24 at the Wayback Machine: The Building
  7. ↑ The TIME-museum guide (32): Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt
  8. ↑ "The Museum". The Georg Schaefer Museum. Retrieved 2020-05-17.
  9. ↑ "The Georg Schaefer Museum, Schweinfurt". www.museumgeorgschaefer.de. Archived from the original on 2021-05-13. Retrieved 2021-05-13. Professional provenance research was launched in November 2016, initially focused on examination of the 1,000 paintings constituting the collection. From 2018 onwards digitalization began to take place of the appurtenant image data. As a matter of priority, NS restitution claims involving 23 works were subjected to careful scrutiny, the expertise report afterwards being presented to the owner i.e. the Georg Schäfer Foundation.
  10. ↑ Hickley, Catherine (2020-03-17). "She Tracked Nazi-Looted Art. She Quit When No One Returned It". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2020-03-22. Retrieved 2021-05-13. After she had identified several plundered works, she said, no one seemed to have any plans to return them to the heirs of the original Jewish owners. Increasingly, she said, she began to feel her work was unwelcome. She was denied access to historical documents vital for her research, she said, and forbidden to contact colleagues at another museum with a research inquiry. So in December she rejected an offer to extend her contract for another year. "I got the impression they didn't want me there — they really made things difficult for me," Ms. Ehringhaus, 60, said at a meeting in a Berlin cafe. "They needed me for appearances. I felt as though I was being used as a fig leaf."
  11. ↑ "Rückgabe mit Hindernissen - Restitution with obstacles". www.lootedart.com. Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  12. ↑ Zeitung, Süddeutsche. "Rückgabe mit Hindernissen". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-10-17. Seit 2007 steht das bereits erwähnte Gemälde "Klosterhof mit Kreuzgang" des Landschaftsmalers Carl Blechens als Suchmeldung in der Lost-Art-Datenbank des Zentrums für Kulturgutverluste. Berthold Nothmann, Vorbesitzer, Kunstsammler jüdischer Herkunft und lange Geschäftsführer der Oberschlesischen Stahlwerksgesellschaft, hatte das Bild 1930 gekauft und - zur Freude der Provenienzforscherin - auf der Rückseite einen Klebezettel mit allen Angaben angebracht. Nothmann und seine Frau Martha wanderten 1939 nach London aus.
  13. ↑ "Germany proposes law change to ease Nazi-loot returns from private foundations". www.lootedart.com. The Art Newspaper. Archived from the original on 2021-02-28. Retrieved 2021-05-13. Some private foundations based in Bavaria have argued that state rules barring them from divesting assets prevent them from restituting Nazi-looted cultural items in their possession. The clarification to the foundation law, which must still be approved by parliament after the cabinet signed off on it on 4 February, creates more uniform conditions across Germany's 16 states, the culture ministry said in a press release. "I hope that this will contribute to the fulfilment of restitution obligations," Culture Minister Monika Grütters said in a statement. "Because this is also in the interest of the affected foundations. The restitution of cultural property lost due to Nazi persecution is a key element of our efforts to address the terror of the Nazi regime and is of outstanding importance to the government."
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