Database
After extensive review, the complete index of “degenerate art” confiscated in 1937/38 from German art museums have been continually entered into the Internet after a step-by-step examination. The database can only be searched for artists and works that have already been entered. The complete index is based on the National Socialist inventory of seizures. The data from the National Socialists is incomplete, inaccurate and partially incorrect. The data was completed and amended as much as possible and information regarding their circumstance and current location was expanded. In addition to the works listed in the inventory other works, which were verifiably confiscated or seized according to the museum of origin but were not in the inventory, such as those works given by the museums themselves during the National Socialist era, or those which were lost in another way, are also recorded.
In any case, if the confiscated works are to be evaluated each must be additionally researched as “loss due to confiscation.”
Works from private collections are only included in exceptional cases, provided they were on loan to museums and there fell the victims of confiscation.
The complete index is edited by Andreas Hüneke and Meike Hoffmann. Further contributions came from Christoph Zuschlag, Katrin Engelhardt, Susanna Köller, Linda Philipp-Hacka, Julia Zietlow, Nadine Bauer and Marie-Elisabeth Fischer.
In addition to the funding agencies, numerous employees from museums and archives, agents of catalogs, authors of monographs and other specialists on individual artists or artists groups, who over the course of many years contributed advice and information or corrections to the index, are to be thanked.
Please feel free to contact us with any additions or corrections supported by reliable sources that you may come across in your research. (fsek@campus.fu-berlin.de)