Agreement between the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the heirs of the Mosse family on sculpture confiscated as a result of persecution
Press release from 12/01/2016
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation today returned the sculpture "Susanna" by Reinhold Begas to the heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse. The work will initially remain on loan to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. It is currently on display in the rotunda on the second exhibition floor of the Alte Nationalgalerie.
The Mosse family owned one of the largest and most influential publishing houses in the Weimar Republic. Immediately after the National Socialists seized power at the beginning of 1933, the family was subjected to reprisals by the Nazi regime, partly because they were Jewish and partly because of their political views. Felicia Lachmann-Mosse and her husband Hans emigrated to the United States via France in the first half of 1933. After their emigration, their assets were placed under state supervision. The assets included the art collection that Felicia had inherited from her parents Rudolf and Emilie Mosse. At the instigation of the National Socialists, the art collection was auctioned off in 1934 by the Rudolf Lepke and Union auction houses, without the family receiving a share of the proceeds.
The SPK had published the "Susanna" (modelled in 1869, executed in marble in 1870-72, 127 x 91 x 67 cm, inv. no. F.V. 213) in the 2008 publication "Dokumentation des Fremdbesitzes, Bd. II: Nationalgalerie, Gemälde und Skulpturen". At that time, the provenance of the work from the Mosse Collection was not known. According to the information available at the time, the work was probably removed by a Soviet trophy commission in Berlin in 1946. It was returned from the Soviet Union in 1956 or 1958, initially to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig, before being transferred to the Nationalgalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin for further care in 1994. Since the reopening of the Alte Nationalgalerie in 2001, "Susanna" has been on display in the permanent exhibition together with other sculptures by Reinhold Begas. Until now, it has not been possible to clearly identify a previous owner. Research by the Mosse Art Restitution Project has now revealed that the work was in the Mosse Collection until 1933 and must have been taken from the family due to persecution.
Back in 2015, the SPK restituted eight works of art to the heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse that had been identified during systematic provenance research into the collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
The Mosse Art Restitution Project was established by Roger Strauch, President of the Mosse Foundation, in 2012. It is dedicated to the worldwide search for cultural artefacts from the Rudolf Mosse collection that were seized from his heirs by the National Socialists. The project is coordinated by J. Eric Bartko in close cooperation with Martin I. Zankel and John J. Bartko from the US law firm BartkoZankel. In Germany, the project is represented by Peter Raue, Jan Hegemann and Felix Stang (Raue LLP law firm). One of the Mosse Foundation's main objectives is to promote German-American and German-Jewish relations.