Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation donates painting believed lost to Berlin Cathedral
Press release from 07/14/2011
A few days ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) returned the painting "Nazareth - the Youth of Jesus" by Albert Hertel to the Berlin Cathedral as the previous owner. The work had been in the care of the Alte Nationalgalerie since the end of the war in 1945. It is listed as a work by an unknown artist in the gallery's catalogue of foreign property published in 2008. A photograph from the Berlin Cathedral archive enabled the painting to be unequivocally identified and attributed.
The painting was created in 1904/05 by the Berlin artist Albert Hertel as part of the 13-part cycle "Christuslegende" (Legend of Christ) as a commission for the imperial staircase in the newly built cathedral. Since the end of the Second World War, it was considered lost along with four other paintings from this cycle.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said: "This case clearly shows how museums, archives and libraries themselves can help to find works that were thought to be lost, clarify their provenance and enable them to be returned to their former owners by documenting their holdings comprehensively and openly." Since 2002, the National Museums in Berlin have been documenting those works from their collections whose ownership and provenance are missing and need to be questioned in the series "Documentation of Losses" and "Documents of Foreign Ownership" as well as on the internet platform of the Magdeburg Coordination Centre.