Klassik Stiftung Weimar restitutes three artworks

Another case of Nazi-looted art at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar was successfully resolved, with two prints and a drawing restituted to the heiress of the Austrian-American art historian Dr Heinrich Schwarz. The artworks had been identified in the course of systematic provenance research in the holdings of today’s Klassik Stiftung Weimar. They were previously part of the Heinrich Schwarz collection, whose owner due to his Jewish descent was persecuted and forced into emigration by the National Socialist regime.

The objects are a drawing by Heinrich Reinhold (1788–1825), bought in 1941 by the former Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, and two prints from the first half of the nineteenth century, acquired by the Goethe National Museum in 1942.

Dr Heinrich Schwarz (1894–1974) initially was curator at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. As a result of Austria’s “Anschluss” to the German Reich in March 1938, he lost his employment due to his Jewish descent. He was forced to emigrate into safety abroad, losing his private collection as a consequence. Schwarz first moved to Sweden in 1939, then ultimately to the US in 1940. There, he acted i. a. as curator of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design and at the Davison Art Center of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.

In accordance with the Washington Principles of 1998, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar has been seeking just and fair solutions together with the heirs of pre-war owners. Identifying the heirs in this case was a longsome and intricate process, since Heinrich Schwarz and his wife Elisabeth had no children together. Elisabeth Schwarz was her husband’s sole heir and lived in New York until 2003.

With the help of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) in New York, a state institution which mediates between current holders of Nazi-looted cultural assets and claimants, a niece of Schwarz could be identified. The two prints and the one drawing were now committed to her as the sole living heir. The handing over was carried out by the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe, acting on behalf of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

Since 2010, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar has been investigating its holdings systematically, that is chronologically and across departments, in order to identify cultural property seized as a result of National Socialist persecution (so-called Nazi-looted cultural assets). Since 2020, research has been extended to include expropriations in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR.

Link to the blog “Tracing the Art Collector Heinrich Schwarz”.