A work by Menzel believed lost has returned to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Press release from 04/15/2014
A few days ago, the gouache "Ash Wednesday Morning" by Adolph von Menzel was returned to Berlin. The work had been considered lost since the Second World War. A few years ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation became aware of its whereabouts in the Lithuanian Art Museum in Vilnius. In the course of legal proceedings, the Vilnius District Court has now recognised the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation's ownership of the work.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, says: "I am delighted that we have been successful time and again in recovering our own war losses. The Menzel work will now first be conserved and then made accessible to the public again in the Kupferstichkabinett."
The work "Ash Wednesday Morning" (1885, watercolour and gouache on brown paper, 39.4 x 24.7 cm) by Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905) was acquired for the Berlin museums in the same year it was created. During the Second World War, like other museum holdings, it was moved out of storage to protect it from air raids. From March 1944, "Ash Wednesday Morning" was located in the basement of the Reichsbank building in Berlin (Mitte) and had been considered lost since 1945/46.
The first, still very vague clues as to the whereabouts of the work in Lithuania were already available during the GDR era. After the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin were informed again in 2004, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation entered into negotiations with the Lithuanian Art Museum, initially at specialist level and then via the German Foreign Office, in order to secure the return of the work. In 2006, the Lithuanian side initiated proceedings under the Lithuanian law on the "Protection of Movable Cultural Property", in which the SPK's claim for the return of the artefacts was granted. It remains unclear how the work ended up in the Lithuanian National Museum.
"Ash Wednesday Morning" is one of Menzel's rare city views and is one of his most important gouaches. The scene on Hildebrandstrasse near the Tiergarten, depicted in a daring perspective, is also entitled "Ash Wednesday - Street after the Carnival". Due to its unusual perspective and delicate colours, it occupies a prominent place in the artist's late work. The gouache is also significant in terms of urban history and architectural history, as it bears witness to a Berlin residential culture that was completely destroyed by the Second World War at the latest. It depicts a private street in the Tiergarten neighbourhood, Hildebrandstraße, near today's Kulturforum. The magnificent Wilhelminian-style buildings there were almost completely destroyed in the Second World War.
The work was part of the Menzel collection, which had been systematically built up by the Kupferstichkabinett and the Nationalgalerie since the 19th century. With around 7000 individual sheets, it is still the world's most important specialised collection on the artist. In 1993, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin assigned Menzel's works to the Nationalgalerie (paintings) or the Kupferstichkabinett (oil sketches, pastels, watercolours, drawings and prints), depending on their genre and conservation requirements.