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Presented, transferred, surrendered: Provenance research relating to the Soviet zone of occupation and the GDR in the German Historical Museum

In the course of German reunification, the holdings of the East Berlin Museum for German History (MfDG), founded in 1952, were transferred in 1990 to the German Historical Museum (DHM). Consequently, research into provenance relating to the period of the Soviet zone of occupation (SBZ) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has particular relevance for the DHM.
In a two-­year »representative study« from October 2018 to November 2020, the DHM cooperated with the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK) in researching the issue of state-­controlled cultural property transfer from state institutions and organisations to the GDR Museum for German History. Apart from basic research conducted in the course of the project, systematic research into the collection holdings is a focus, which could be permanently established in October 2019. As a result, individual case studies building on the general study can be continued, but also independent, systematic research, for example relating to purchases from the state art trade or the Kunst und Antiquitäten GmbH (KuA).
In the course of the project, the acquisition practices of the MfDG were analysed, especially with regard to those objects which passed into the central historical museum of the GDR under the general term »presented«. Often, this covered state institutions and organisations of the GDR like ministries, mass organisations, or the police. Another focus was on the networks of actors in  politics, authorities, and museums in the GDR, which were responsible for transfers to the museum. 
Of particular interest both in the basic study and in the systematic research into the holdings of the DHM is the investigation of objects which came from various contexts of expropriation in the SBZ and the GDR. These include the dispossession of owners of castles and manor houses in the course of the land reform (»castle salvaging«), and the seizure of property in the context of so-­called flight from the republic.