Online portal makes provenance research on the Rudolf Mosse Collection accessible / New acquisitions for the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Press release from 05/02/2018
The collection of the Berlin publisher and patron of the arts Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) comprised thousands of paintings, sculptures, artefacts, books and antiques. Almost one hundred years after the death of the Jewish art collector, more is now known about them than ever before and they have been published on a new online portal of the Freie Universität Berlin.
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As of today, a media station in the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin also commemorates a successful restitution and the Mosse Collection: in 2015 and 2016, the SPK was one of the first German institutions to restitute nine works to the heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse. Three of these were acquired for the collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the following years. Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK: "After we were able to purchase a Roman child sarcophagus from our own funds, thanks to the great support of the Kulturstiftung der Länder and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, we have also succeeded in securing two important works for the Alte Nationalgalerie: the Susanna by Reinhold Begas and a lion sculpture by August Gaul. A media station right next to the Susanna sculpture now recalls the history of the objects." The child sarcophagus is on display in the Neues Museum, while the reclining lioness will be on show in the James-Simon-Galerie in future.
The SPK is also a partner in the Mosse Art Research Initiative (MARI) research project launched by Freie Universität Berlin in 2017, which is funded by the community of heirs and the German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste). The data researched since spring 2017 on the structure of the collection and its significance as well as its loss will be collected and made available to the public in the MARI online portal(http://mari-portal.de) presented today. The primary aim of MARI is to reconstruct Rudolf Mosse's art collection and to research where the works seized by the National Socialists are currently located.
Dr Meike Hoffmann, project coordinator of the Mosse Art Research Initiative: "So far, we have started research on 115 works, and we have found reliable traces of 68 works. For 30 works, all the information that has been included in our research is available in the MARI online portal, which was launched today." The MARI team's provenance researchers, supported by students from Freie Universität Berlin, have already been able to clearly identify 24 works and even localise eight: These include the painting "Dichter Wald im Frühling" by Emil Jakob Schindler, which is still in the Belvedere in Vienna, but has already been recommended for restitution by the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research on the basis of MARI's research. The localised works also include the paintings "Through Night to Light" by Joseph Israels (Tel Aviv Museum, Israel), "Blonde Peasant Girl at a Window" by Anders Zorn (privately owned) and "Skaters" by Carl Melchers (Arkell Museum, Canajoharie, New York).
MARI is the first public-private partnership in provenance research (supplement 29 May 2018: with the participation of the descendants) and is considered unique. Roger Strauch, Director of the Mosse Art Restitution Project and President of the Mosse Foundation: "This collaboration is unprecedented and epitomises the benevolent attitude of the German government and the country's cultural institutions. We would also like to thank the many talented provenance researchers who are persistently searching for the artworks from the Mosse Collection."