Caspar David Friedrich's Der Watzmann is back in the collection of the Berlin National Gallery, although it never really left. The painting was recently established (or let's say the Berlin museums recently recognized this fact) as having been a "Notverkauf," a bail-out of sorts. The original owners, the Brunn family, sold the work to the National Gallery in 1937 and then used the proceeds to pay the "Reichsfluchtsteuer," the fee extracted by the Nazi bureaucracy for leaving Germany. In compliance with a 1999 declaration of the foundation in charge of Berlin's museums, the museum returned the work to the heirs of the original owners (this is the second case in which they've done so) and the work was then promptly purchased by the Deka-Bank, who turned the painting back over to the National Gallery in the form of a permanent loan. Here's the government's coverage of the presentation of the painting to the Gallery, complete with smiling politicians. The implication in some of the coverage of this process is that in the future, it's going to be up to sources other than the state to preserve Germany's "cultural history;" in this particular case, the SMPK, the organization of Berlin museums, could never have afforded the multiple millions of Euros needed to buy the painting from its new/old owners.
[Coverage at the Tagesspiegel and the Morgenpost.]
Posted by Heather at March 24, 2004 10:14 AM
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