Sculpture in the National Gallery that was thought to have been lost during the war is found again
Press release from 12/05/2011
A 19th-century sculpture that had been thought lost since the end of the war has been found on the grounds of the American Academy in Berlin-Wannsee. It is owned by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and is part of the collection of the National Gallery of the National Museums in Berlin. In 2012, it will be on loan to a Dürer exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg
The sculpture was identified by chance by art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith from the University of Texas. The Fellow of the American Academy is a Dürer expert and project partner in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg's research project on Dürer's early work. Since the end of the war, the sculpture had been unidentified on the property that is now used by the American Academy as the "Hans Arnhold Centre" and is owned by the State of Berlin. It was placed there in the garden.
The marble sculpture "Albrecht Dürer as a Boy", created in the early 1870s by Friedrich Salomon Beer (1846-1912), was acquired by the Nationalgalerie in 1887. It was subsequently on display in the permanent collection of today's Alte Nationalgalerie. In 1940, it was loaned to the Reich Ministry of Economics and installed in the official residence of the Reich Minister of Economics at Sandwerder 17-19 in Berlin-Wannsee. The sculpture had been considered lost since the end of the war in 1945, but was found in the "lostart" database of the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutdokumentation und Kulturgutverluste Magdeburg and in the "Dokumentation des Verlustes. Volume II. National Gallery. Paintings and Sculptures" of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Following extensive restoration, the sculpture will be on loan to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum from 23 May to 2 September 2012 as part of the exhibition "The Early Dürer". The sculpture will then return to Berlin.