Provenance Research:

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The Goethe and Schiller Archive is part of the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, a Foundation which encompasses the National Goethe Museum (including the Goethe house), the Schiller and Liszt houses, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, the Nietzsche Archives, sixteen historic houses, palaces, memorials, and five gardens and parks. On 1 January 2003, the Foundation merged with the Weimar art collections. The new body is known as Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen.

Research into Nazi-confiscated cultural property in the archive's collection
The archive has undertaken research into its collection in order to identify looted cultural property. It has identified three sets of Goethe correspondence confiscated by the Gestapo from Josephine Lechner in Vienna in 1939 and which entered the archive's collection in 1941. The archive holds original correspondence documenting this acquisition. Copies can be consulted at the Central Registry upon request. The objects are awaiting restitution.

The objects are now also listed on the Lost Art Internet Database, the German website on looted art.

Research into cultural property missing from the archive
In a joint effort with the German Schiller Foundation (Deutsche Schillerstiftung ), the archive has been searching for sets of writers' correspondence looted from their collections and/or earmarked for destruction by the Nazis in the 1930s. The German Schiller Foundation was able to re-acquire some of these items at sales and its records regarding this are deposited at the Goethe and Schiller Archive. The Goethe and Schiller Archive intends to publish information on missing records on its website in 2003.

Contact Information
Dr. Jochen Golz
Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv
Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen,
Postfach 20 12
99401 Weimar
Tel.: +49 (0)3643 545240.
Fax: +49 (0)3643 545241
Email: gsa@weimar-klassik.de
http://www.weimar-klassik.de/english.html (in German and English)

Sources
Central Registry Archives, Correspondence, 11 October 2002.

Weimar Classics Foundation and Art Collections <http://www.weimar-klassik.de/english.html >, accessed 16 July 2003.

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