Projects in chronological order

Unique source material on the German art trade digitally networked: Provenances, Actors and Objects in hand and protocol catalogues of auction and inventory catalogues 1860-1950 (2024-2026)

The DFG project, which will be carried out jointly by the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich and Heidelberg University Library from summer 2024, continues the work begun in the previous project on the annotated manuscript copies of the Helbing auction house and takes up the desiderata documented there: On the one hand, the need formulated by the specialist community for searchability and identification of the groupsof people involved in historical auctions, in addition to the dealers themselves, especially the consignors and clients, and on the other hand, the facilitation of in-depth research into auction and trading practices and networks and the conditions of the circulation of objects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

German Sales Primary Market. Gallery Publications in German-speaking Regions (1871-1949) (2023-2025)

The cooperation project of Heidelberg University Library and Berlinische Galerie, funded by the German Research Foundation for two years from 1 January 2023, aims to identify as completely as possible the publications of modern art galleries in the German-speaking world between 1871 and 1949. With the integration into "German Sales", a substantial improvement of the current information infrastructure on the development of modern art is intended.

Digitisation of Historical Sources on the Art Trade in German-Speaking Countries: Auction, Antiquarian and Sales Catalogues from 1871 to 1949 (2021-2022)

As part of the project funded by the BKM's „Neustart Kultur“ programme, almost 1,000 volumes from the collection of historical auction, antiquarian and sales catalogues from the years 1871 to 1949 from German-speaking countries in the holdings of Heidelberg University Library were digitised and integrated into the overall offering of German Sales.

Auction catalogues of the Auction House Hauswedell & Nolte

In cooperation with the (Central Archive for German and International Art Market Research), the auction catalogues (until 1992 = auction 297) of the Hamburg auction house Hauswedell & Nolte - founded in 1927 by Ernst Hauswedell as an antiquarian bookshop-cum-publishing house - are to be digitized and put online.
Overview of the digitized copies of the auction catalogues of the auction house Hauswedell & Nolte

"Information System on Auction Consignments" (2019 onwards)

In a cooperative project financed by the Central Archive of the National Museums in Berlin and the Heidelberg University Library, an information system on auction consignments is being developed - together with provenance researchers in Germany and Austria. One of the greatest challenges for provenance research is to identify the previous owners of objects and artworks acquired at auctions. The auction catalogue is often the only reference point for research. In lists of consignments in the prefix, the previous ownership is encoded. One encounters initials with or without location, Roman numerals, aliases, or completely abstract codings. Deciphering such a cipher can mean months of work. The result is not only of interest to one's own institution, because an auctioned collection of possessions was usually acquired by various buyers and scattered around the world. Consequently, identical research is needed in various places today. The exchange in the research process as well as the results is indispensable. For this exchange, the "Information system on auction consignments" offers provenance researchers the possibility to digitally annotate the consignment ciphers, following the tradition of historical annotations, which have always been an authoritative source for provenance research. Background information on the consignors can now be stored directly in the auction catalogue, research results can be published in a citable form linked to one's own academic name, and the decipherments of others can be researched online.
Further information can be found under "Information system on auction consignments"..

Unique Source Material on the German Art Trade: Digitization and Indexing of the Hand Copies of the Catalogues of the Munich Auction House Hugo Helbing (1887 to 1937) (2021-2022)

On January 1, 2021, the DFG-funded joint project of the Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (ZI) and UB Heidelberg in Kooperation mit der TU Berlin. The aim is, firstly, to digitize and make available online in a sustainable manner the previously known and not yet digitized hand copies of the catalogues of the Munich auction house Hugo Helbing (1895 to 1937) on the servers of Heidelberg University Library. To date, a good 1,000 such annotated manuscript copies are known, and around 400 could already be put online in the summer of 2020 - i.e. before the project began. On the other hand, the scientific description of the annotated catalogue copies, a typification and systematization of the auction annotations as well as the development and evaluation of a model for their structured recording based on the Heidelberg annotation tool heiANNO will take place within the framework of the project at the ZI in Munich.
Further information can be found under "Hand copies of the catalogues of the auction house Hugo Helbing".

"Art - Auctions - Provenances. The German Art Trade as Reflected in Auction Catalogues from 1901 to 1929" (2013-2019)

In this project, funded by the DFG from 2013-2019, around 5,900 auction catalogues published between 1901 and 1929 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland were identified, bibliographically recorded, digitized and made freely accessible online.
The bibliographic data of the auction catalogues generated in Berlin and the OCR data of the individual catalogue entries generated in Heidelberg were made available to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Around 832,000 data records from around 5,000 catalogues on paintings, drawings and sculptures sold at auction in German-speaking countries were transferred there to the sales description and sales content databases of the Getty Provenance Index®.

"German Sales 1930-1945. Art Works, Art Markets, and Cultural Policy" (2010-2013)

In the cooperative project carried out from 2010 to 2013, around 3,200 auction catalogues from the years 1930 to 1945 from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and the countries occupied by Germany during World War II were indexed, digitized, and made available online. In addition to the Heidelberg University Library and the Berlin Art Library, the project partner was the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In addition to the DFG, the project was also funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the VolkswagenStiftung