2016 - News - Detail Page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Russian museums suffered heavy losses during the Second World War due to the destruction and removal of hundreds of thousands of valuable works of art and cultural artefacts during the German war of conquest. The extent of the losses is documented in the loss catalogues published by the Russian Ministry of Culture since 1999. To this day, however, research into the history of the museums and the fate of their collections during the war leaves many questions unanswered, and the majority of the objects are still being sought. Against this background, the large-scale academic project of the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in co-operation with German and Russian academics, will attempt to close the existing gaps in research on the basis of exemplary cases. The partners are delighted that the Volkswagen Foundation has agreed to fund 75 per cent of the project. The Kulturstiftung der Länder and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz are contributing 25 per cent of their own funds to the research project, which has a volume of around 800,000 euros and is scheduled to run for two and a half years.

In terms of content and structure, the project is breaking new ground in bilateral museum research - the research team will consist of historians and art historians from both countries. Close cooperation has already been agreed with the initially selected museums - the museum cities of Novgorod and Pskov and the tsarist palaces of Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, Gatchina and Pavlovsk. The aim is to use case studies to contribute to the history of cultural assets during the war from a museum perspective. For the first time, this opens up the possibility for Russian museums to investigate the fate of their museums and collections during the war in a complementary and systematic analysis of German and Russian records, supplemented by archives of the Western Allies.

In addition to the caesura of 1945, the immediate post-war years will also be included in the period under investigation (1941 to 1950s) in order to take into account the first attempts at reconstructing the museums and their collections. The case studies are to be published in two volumes (each in Russian and German). Prof. Dr Wolfgang Eichwede (Emeritus Professor of Politics and Contemporary History and Founding Director of the Research Centre for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen) is the academic director, while Dr Britta Kaiser-Schuster, Head of Department at the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, is the project manager. The project is supported by a German-Russian advisory board.

The advisory board will include Prof. Dr Hermann Parzinger (Chair), President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Prof. Dr Michail B. Piotrowski, Director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Secretary General of the Kulturstiftung der Länder, Prof. Dr Wolfgang Eichwede, University of Bremen, as well as representatives of the state archives.

Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Secretary General of the Kulturstiftung der Länder, explained in Berlin: "Thanks to the support of the Volkswagen Foundation, we hope that the new research project will provide clarity about the whereabouts of numerous art treasures that have been lost since the end of the war. We are delighted to be able to begin new source research into the wartime losses of Russian museums together with the Russian scientists. In addition to the research we began some time ago on artworks and cultural artefacts relocated from German museums as a result of the war, it was particularly important to us to also focus on the Russian losses."

Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and spokesman for the German-Russian Museum Dialogue, said: "The network between German and Russian museum experts, which has grown over the years, will be made visible in the best possible way through this academic project on the highly sensitive topic of the consequences of the Second World War for the cultural sector for both sides. The support of the Volkswagen Foundation deserves great thanks and recognition, without this commitment this important research project could not be realised."

The curators of the Russian museums involved explained: "We have great expectations that this will not only lead to new historical insights, but also to traces of where individual works of art may have remained. Despite the registry of losses and our own research, we still have to rely on conjecture and speculation. The project is therefore a breakthrough."

More than 80 German museums that are still affected by the loss of art and cultural assets as a result of the war founded the "German-Russian Museum Dialogue" initiative in Berlin in November 2005, which represents their interests both internally and externally. The aim of the German-Russian Museum Dialogue is to intensify cooperation between scientists from both countries in joint projects. The aim is not only to shed light on the losses in Germany and Russia, but above all to create trust between German and Russian colleagues - free from the political and legal considerations that otherwise often overshadow this discussion.