Call for Papers: Provenance Research goes East - Instytut Pileckiego

Looted Art and Provenance Research: Separate or together? The Case of Poland

Provenance Research goes East

Looted Art and Provenance Research:

Separate or together? The Case of Poland

Conference of Pilecki Institute Berlin, 19–20/03/2025 in Berlin

Deadline for Submission: 01/12/2024

The conference will use Poland as a case study to examine works of art that were illegally confiscated during the Nazi occupation (looted art) and the provenance research carried out in this context. The main objective of the conference is to address the still limited attention paid to provenance research on Polish artworks and cultural assets in Poland. In this context, the reasons for the predominantly very differentiated legal understanding of Nazi-looted art in Poland and Germany will be explored. What opportunities for international cooperation and exchange are there nevertheless?

In Germany, provenance research has been increasingly recognized as a research discipline over the last 20 years. It has also received more and more political and institutional support. In Poland, a comparable process has not taken place; the group of experts who value the importance of provenance studies remains very small. In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in knowledge about Nazi art looting and its far-reaching consequences in numerous Western European countries. However, this increase in knowledge does not apply to the history of Nazi art theft in Eastern Europe and Poland, even though this part of Europe was particularly affected by Nazi mass looting of public and private collections. This is precisely the reason why this research deficit urgently requires more attention - perhaps it could even be constructively closed through active German-Polish cooperation and the merging of different research paths?

For example, the following research aspects will be presented at the conference:

• Polish Wartime Losses: The Looting of Art in the Polish Territories by Germans, Austrians and Soviets. The focus will be on the fate of cultural heritage from the Polish territories, the losses of numerous private collectors, but also the losses of Polish Jews who survived the Nazi era and whose property was then in part unlawfully appropriated by the communist rulers in the post-war period.
• Documentation of war losses in individual countries: Importance of local databases, digitization of documentation and its accessibility to a broad public, sustainability of knowledge.
• Case studies from practice: The handling of looted art in the respective countries. What conclusions can be drawn from this for dealing with Nazi-looted art in Poland?
• Experiences with restitution issues - legal and social aspects: The aim is to define the main restitution requirements and problems between Poland and countries such as France, Austria, the UK, the USA and Germany.

The conference will analyze the specifics of the above-mentioned legal and art-heritage related aspects of provenance research as well as restitution issues concerning cultural property from the territories of present-day Poland.

The conference is aimed at Polish, German and international experts, including legal expert’s lawyers, art historians, researchers from museums, librarians, archivists and all those involved in provenance research.

The event, which is designed as a scholarly conference, will take place on March 19-20, 2025.

The conference languages are German and English.

Please send your proposals in the form of an abstract in German or English (max. 300 words) together with a short bio (max. 200 words) to events@pileckiinstitut.de by December 1, 2024 (subject line "Provenance Research").

Organizers: Dr. Elisabeth Katzy, Piotr Zygmunt Kowalski, Rafal Rucinski.

Contact for question: 

Dr. Elisabeth Katzy                                     Piotr Zygmunt Kowalski

E-Mail: e.katzy@pileckiinstitut.de              p.kowalski@pileckiinstitut.de

Tel. +49 15 780 582 230                            Tel. +49 17624883010