Inventories of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Tradition
Like so many museums, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart suffered considerable damage during the war. On the night of 24 to 25 July 1944, the Staatsgalerie was partially destroyed, and on the night of 12 to 13 September 1944, it burned down, along with the former Kronprinzenpalais. All acquisition and correspondence files that existed at the time were lost forever. The parallel records held by the superior ministry were also almost completely destroyed in 1944 due to the extensive destruction of Stuttgart's city centre. The Kronprinzenpalais was the former location of the graphic arts collection. The loss here is particularly bitter: all inventory books, image files and other documents relating to the history of the collection were irretrievably destroyed. It was not until around 1965 that the Graphic Arts Collection regained its own correspondence files. Although the inventory books and image files of the painting and sculpture department survived the war, the general acquisition and correspondence files were also lost forever. The majority of the surviving documents for the Painting and Sculpture Department from 1945 to 1980 have been held at the Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (Ludwigsburg State Archives) since the end of 2020 and are freely accessible to the public (see Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, inventory EL 227 III Bü 1-481). The inventory books for painting and sculpture now available online do not appear to date from 1843. It is assumed that copies of the inventories, which were still in their original form at the time, were made after the end of the war (exact date unknown).
