Press release and invitation: 10 years of German-Russian museum dialogue - ceremony and colloquium on 16 and 17 November in Berlin
Press release from 11/06/2015
10 years of the German-Russian Museum Dialogue (DRMD): around two hundred directors and curators of Russian and German museums affected by war-related losses will meet in Berlin on 16 and 17 November to deepen their long-standing cooperation and discuss new projects. We cordially invite you to the festive event at the Bode Museum and the colloquium at the Akademie der Künste, where renowned experts will report on their latest research findings on cultural assets displaced as a result of the war (programme enclosed).
To mark the tenth anniversary of their joint initiative, the museums want to send out a clear signal for cultural dialogue between Germany and Russia with the two-day event. The central mission of the DRMD is to explore the winding paths taken by millions of artworks in Germany and the Soviet Union as a result of the Second World War. The transparency and accessibility of the collections for academic research is essential and is very much welcomed by both sides. The declared aim of the DRMD is to prepare and initiate further joint exhibition projects. "It is crucial that we can bring the objects back into the scientific discourse and present them to the public in exhibitions. It has proved successful that we leave political issues out of the equation. Transparency and clarification are the order of the day. I would like to thank my Russian colleagues for the trusting cooperation, which is more intensive than ever before," said Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and spokesperson for the DRMD on the German side.
The DRMD continues to need free access for researchers to depots and documents in museums, libraries and archives in order to further clarify the loss of cultural property in both countries and the history of the collections during and after the Second World War. A DRMD research team of up to nine experts is interviewing contemporary witnesses and has been analysing public and private archives and transport lists of the Soviet trophy brigades since 2008. These findings have made it possible to reconstruct the routes of thousands of lost and missing artworks and cultural artefacts. "Our years of provenance research have now proven what researchers have suspected for years: By no means all lost objects from German collections can be located in Russia or the other successor states of the Soviet Union. The history of the loss of German museums must be partially rewritten," said Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Secretary General of the Kulturstiftung der Länder in Berlin.
The participants will discuss new DRMD research findings in panel discussions and specialist presentations. Among those expected from Russia are Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Marina Loschak, Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Natalya Grigoryeva, Director of the Novgorod State Museum, Elena Kalnitskaya, Director of the Peterhof State Palace Museum, and Karina Dmitrieva, All-Russian State Library of Foreign Literature M. I. Rudomino Moscow. They will meet with their German colleagues: Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States, Britta Kaiser-Schuster, Director of the DRMD, Regine Dehnel, Head of the Working Group "War Losses of German Museums", Wolfgang Eichwede, former Head of the Working Group "Russian Museums during the War", Uwe Hartmann, German Centre for Cultural Property Losses, Gilbert Lupfer, Dresden State Art Collections, Martin Eberle, Director of the Friedenstein Gotha Castle Foundation, Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, as well as numerous other provenance researchers and museum directors.
Since 2008, the DRMD's research has been financed by the support of a private patron and funds from the Volkswagen Foundation. For some time now, the initiative has also been supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Minister of State Monika Grütters.
Central research fields of the DRMD
The following questions are at the centre of the DRMD's research into wartime losses: Which works of art and other cultural assets - an estimated 2.5 million objects - are known to have been removed from German collections after the end of the Second World War? What losses did the more than 170 Russian museums affected suffer during the war as a result of the state-organised looting by the National Socialists or during the evacuation? Which works were presumably destroyed during and after the Second World War or taken by members of the army and private individuals - in Germany as well as in Russia? Where are cultural artefacts taken from Russia still in private German ownership today? Where did the objects taken by Soviet trophy commissions end up in the Soviet Union and where were they possibly redistributed from there? Which works of art were returned to the GDR in the course of the Soviet Union's restitution of 1.6 million objects in the 1950s? Were these returned to the original collection within the GDR or are there still "strays" in the wrong collection today? Where are the remaining objects in Russia and in what condition are they, and can anything be done to secure their restoration? Detailed answers to these questions and insights into the results of their research will be provided by historians and art historians from the DRMD and numerous other German and Russian provenance researchers at the celebratory event and colloquium to mark 10 years of the DRMD.
Since 2008, researchers have been working on analysing archival documents that document the removal of artworks and cultural assets from Germany in 1945/47 and their acquisition by Soviet museums. The "War Losses of German Museums" project centres on the very different histories of the works that are still being sought today. In a parallel project entitled "Russian museums during the war", the history of six Russian museums during the Second World War is being analysed in cooperation with Russian partner institutions. The focus here is on the losses caused by the German occupation and the deportation of cultural assets from the Soviet Union to Germany.
The German-Russian Museum Dialogue attempts to identify and open up the sources and archives available to answer the questions. These include private archives of the so-called art protection officers of the German Wehrmacht, archive material, e.g. from the Central Archive of the Berlin State Museums, loss catalogues of the affected collections or previously unevaluated transport lists of Soviet trophy brigades:
The DRMD is pooling its knowledge of German wartime losses in a central database and in publications that meticulously trace the path of the artworks and collate all available data on the losses and repatriations. For the first time, a polyphonic memory of the loss of cultural property is being created, but also of the happy return of the artworks to Russia and - in the 1950s - to Germany. With the help of the database, provenance researchers will be able to make more precise and faster statements about the fate of the collections in Germany in the future. The aim is to extend the research to include the losses of the Ukrainian collections, for example.
The German-Russian museum dialogue
In November 2005, 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, 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 experts - free from the political and legal considerations that otherwise often overshadow this discussion.
Beyond the political debates about cultural artefacts lost during the war and their restitution, there has been an intensive professional exchange between German and Russian museums for decades. This has led and continues to lead to joint exhibition projects, among other things. More recently, it has also contributed to bringing works of art long thought lost back into the public eye and the professional discourse. The German-Russian Museum Dialogue has set itself the task of supporting this process and creating a good basis for German-Russian museum cooperation through its research.
Contact for further information
Dr Britta Kaiser-Schuster, Head of the DRMD, Kulturstiftung der Länder, Lützowplatz 9, 10785 Berlin, phone: +49 (0)30 893635-31, e-mail
Dr Stefanie Heinlein, Media and Communication Department, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Tel.: +49 (0)30 266-41-1441, e-mail
Johannes Fellmann, Head of Communications, Kulturstiftung der Länder, Lützowplatz 9, 10785 Berlin, Tel.: +49 (0)30 893635-29, e-mail
Note to editors
There will be an opportunity for interviews on 16 November from 12 noon to 1.30 pm as part of the celebratory event at the Bode Museum. In particular, the following will be available
Elena Kalnitskaya, Director of the Peterhof State Palace Museum
Marina Loschak, Director, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Hermann Parzinger, Director of the Bode Museum, St. Petersburg Petersburg
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Berlin
Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, Berlin
Britta Kaiser-Schuster, Director of the DRMD, Head of Department of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States