Fachportale und Datenbanken
Zusammenstellung der Kunstbibliothek Berlin zur Kunstmarktgeschichte der NS-Zeit
Compilation of the Berlin Art Library on the "History of the Art Market in the Nazi Period"
Bremerhaven, German Maritime Museum: Lost Lift
From 1933 onwards, many people persecuted as Jews under Nazi ideology emigrated from the German Reich. Their belongings were shipped to exile via various European ports. With the beginning of the Second World War, shipping came to a standstill and from spring 1940, the municipal authorities confiscated objects stored in the ports of Hamburg and Bremen and auctioned them off. Since 2018, two interlocking research projects at the German Maritime Museum | Leibniz Institute for Maritime History in Bremerhaven, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, have been investigating the processes of this particular form of expropriation of Jews. An important tool for organising the information from the preserved documents was the development of the Lost Lift database, in which the information is bundled and made searchable. The database reconstructs the path of the removed goods from the moment they leave the apartment with a mover to the moment they are confiscated in a port city and finally the auction of the property. The corresponding restitution files complete the picture. In addition, information on the individual parties involved can be found, be they the aggrieved families themselves, the movers, bailiffs or buyers of the items.
Mainz, University Library of the Johannes Gutenberg University
The Johannes Gutenberg University has an extensive collection of catalogues of the Paris auction houses Hôtel Drouot and the Galerie Georges Petit from the years 1855 to 2013. The majority of the auction catalogues, some of which are annotated, came from the library of the former Art History Research Center in Paris (1942-44), along with other German- and French-language publications. The books arrived at the Institute of Art History in Mainz in the course of the reestablishment of the university in 1946.
As part of a research project "The Provenance of the Mainz Book Collection from the Art History Research Center in Paris (1942-44)" funded by the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg from January 2017 to June 2019, the approximately 850 auction catalogues were digitized, thus facilitating access for researchers.
Munich, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte: The Art Dealership Julius Boehler in Munich, Lucerne, Berlin and New York - Indexing and Documentation of Traded Works of Art 1903-1994
Founded in 1880, the Munich art dealer Julius Böhler was one of the major art dealers in the German-speaking world in the first half of the 20th century, with an international reputation. For many years, research into his art dealership has been one of the most urgent desiderata of provenance research. In 2015, with the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Central Institute for Art History was able to acquire the object index system, the photo folders, and the customer index of the Julius Böhler company. With funds from the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, the object index system and the customer index were digitized, initial research was initiated, and thus a basis for answering incoming inquiries was created. Since 2019, the index system has been recorded in a database with funding from the German Lost Art Foundation.
Paris, Institut national d´histoire de l´art – INHA
The Bibliothèque de l‘Institut national d´histoire de l´art digitizes auction and sales catalogues from its own holdings (collections Jacques Doucet) and from the collection of the Bibliothèque Centrale des Musées Nationaux. These are catalogues of renowned auction houses and art dealers from Europe and the USA. Currently, approximately 11,000 titles are available online in Open Access for the years 1600-1946. These can be found by entering the keywords "catalogue de vente" or "catalogue de enchères". The search can then be further restricted using other parameters such as time frame, location, and place of storage.
Auction catalogues of the period 1871-1946
Sales catalogues of the period 1799-1914
Tôkyô, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties 東京文化財研究所
The National Research Institute for Cultural Properties Tokyo has created the "Digital Archive of Auction Catalogues" in cooperation with Tokyo Art Club. This database has been freely accessible since January 2021. It includes the metadata of the approximately 337,000 works photographed in the 2,565 catalogues dating from the late Meiji to the Showa era. The photographs themselves can be viewed on site on a dedicated terminal.
Access to metadata (search in Japanese recommended):
https://www.tobunken.go.jp/archives/文化財関連情報の検索/売立目録作品情報/