Transparency: A solid foundation for the Kunsthandlung
In 1995, Florian Eitle-Böhler handed over the art dealership’s stock ledgers covering the period 1880 to 1976, correspondence from 1931 to 1976, and both the stock ledgers and correspondence from the art dealership branch in Lucerne to the Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (Bavarian Economic Archive) for research purposes.
The Bavarian Economic Archive, founded just one year earlier as a communal facility for all Bavarian chambers of commerce and industry, sees it as its duty to preserve corporate archival material, primarily from the industrial and commercial sectors. Dr Richard Winkler, the archive’s deputy director responsible for the Julius Böhler Kunsthandlung’s historical archive, calls it a ‘treasure trove for provenance research’. In the following, Dr Richard Winkler explains the archive’s supreme importance in the field of research:
Provenance research that leads to the restitution of artworks seized as a result of Nazi persecution has not first been a subject of importance since the ‘Gurlitt case’ caused a sensation in 2013. Back in 1998, 44 countries signed a declaration in Washington, committing themselves to review systematically the holdings of public cultural institutions in their respective countries and to return objects identified as looted art to their rightful owners or their heirs. Since then, museums and libraries in the Federal Republic of Germany have been examining the origin (provenance) of objects in their possession acquired between 1933 and 1945 (and in some cases after this time).
The historical archives of art dealers and antiquarian bookshops are invaluable for provenance research. Museums often purchased works through the art trade during the Nazi era. This raises the question as to where the art dealer obtained his goods and whether the previous owner had been persecuted by the Nazi regime – as must always be assumed in the case of Jewish collectors. The dealer’s business records, if they have survived and have been made accessible, can provide answers to this question.
The Munich-based Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler was one of the heavyweights in the German art trade ever since the end of the 19th century. Specialising in sculptures, furniture and paintings by ‘Old Masters’ of the 14th to the 18th centuries, it maintained extensive business relationships with private collectors and public museums. Between 1933 and 1945 Böhler bought and resold some 3000 works of art. This is documented in the account books and company correspondence from this period that have survived virtually complete.
The Kunsthandlung Böhler donated these documents to the Bavarian Economic Archives in 1995 where they have been indexed and made accessible for historical research without restriction ever since. They are a sought-after reference for provenance research in particular. In the course of provenance-related investigations, hardly any cases of looted art have come to light in the documents to date. One prominent case, however, concerned a work by the portrait painter Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1788–1868) Junge Dame mit Zeichengerät (Young Lady with Drawing Instrument) of 1816. Böhler acquired the object from an art dealer in Vienna in late 1938 and sold it to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections) in 1940. Later research revealed that the painting had originally been owned by three Jewish sisters Malvine, Jenny and Bertha Rosauer. Following the Annexation of Austria in March 1938, they were forced by the Nazis to leave their apartment in Vienna and part with the painting. Later, two of the sisters were deported to Treblinka extermination camp where they were murdered in 1942. The painting was restituted to their descendants in 2011, put up for auction at Sotheby’s in London that same year and bought back by the Dresden Museum for 91,000 euros. Through the restitution and the renewed acquisition, the earlier injustice has at least been partially righted.
