arthistoricum.net

The modern art market is attracting more and more attention within art historical research. Whereas until a few years ago the focus of interest was primarily on collectors and dealers whose activities were examined in monographs, essays, and exhibitions, systematic basic research on the art trade and its mechanisms in art and cultural history has long since come into focus. This shortcoming is particularly regrettable for provenance research, whose work is made especially difficult by the disparate source situation. However, research on the modern art market is not only of interest from an art historical perspective, but above all for provenance research. For example, the history of many works can be traced back even further through evidence of their existence in 19th century collections.

With the topics of art theft, expropriation, confiscation, or forced sale, it moves above all to the center of the art policy of the 1930s and early 1940s. At the 1998 Washington Conference, museums made a broad international commitment to examine their collections for works of art that had been confiscated by the Nazis and not yet restituted to their rightful owners. In order to comply with these requirements, provenance researchers in individual museums examine the origin of these artworks object by object. Very often, the same literature and sources have to be researched and consulted. Auction catalogues are a central source. In them, the artworks are often described in detail and past provenances are recorded. Before the start of digitization activities and thus also before the establishment of "German Sales", there was no possibility of viewing these catalogues centrally: Worldwide, not a single institution systematically collected these important sources. In the major libraries and museums, moreover, the cataloguing of the holdings was carried out according to quite different standards of documentation. Provenance researchers, librarians and archivists, as well as scholars from various disciplines dealing with the art and cultural policies of National Socialism therefore urgently needed an authoritative, publicly accessible and conveniently searchable database that would process all auction catalogues and the information generated from them according to a consistent system.

The digital offerings brought together under "German Sales" now look back on a longer history. The starting point was a cooperation project between Heidelberg University Library, the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin, and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, which began in 2010. Further sub-projects have followed up to the present day.

On the one hand, the period covered (originally only the years 1930-1945) has been expanded to include all catalogues published until 1949 (in some exceptions even beyond, as far as the copyright situation allows). On the other hand, the digitization of auction catalogues is no longer limited to the secondary market, but the online provision of gallery, stock, and antiquarian catalogues also makes information from the primary market available for provenance research as well as for other art, cultural, and economic history research contexts.

The focus on catalogues published in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland has been maintained so far, but enriched by German-language copies published in other countries, and by those published during the German occupation in France and the Netherlands. But even otherwise, "Geman Sales" is actually on the way to "European Sales", as digitized catalogues from other European countries are also repeatedly integrated into the research.

• "German Sales 1930-1945. Art Works, Art Markets, and Cultural Policy" (2010-2013)
  In the cooperative project carried out from 2010 to 2013, around 3,200 auction catalogues from the years 1930 to 1945 from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and the countries occupied by Germany during World War II were indexed, digitized, and made available online. In addition to the Heidelberg University Library and the Berlin Art Library, the project partner was the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In addition to the DFG, the project was also funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Volkswagen Foundation.
• "Art - Auctions - Provenances. The German Art Trade as Reflected in Auction Catalogues from 1901 to 1929" (2013-2019)
  In this project, funded by the DFG from 2013-2019, around 5,900 auction catalogues published between 1901 and 1929 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland were identified, bibliographically recorded, digitized and made freely accessible online.
  The bibliographic data of the auction catalogues generated in Berlin and the OCR data of the individual catalogue entries generated in Heidelberg were made available to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Around 832,000 data records from around 5,000 catalogues on paintings, drawings and sculptures sold at auction in German-speaking countries were transferred there to the sales description and sales content databases of the Getty Provenance Index®.
• Unique Source Material on the German Art Trade: Digitization and Indexing of the Hand Copies of the Catalogues of the Munich Auction House Hugo Helbing (1887 to 1937) (2021-2022)
  On January 1, 2021, the DFG-funded joint project of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (ZI) and Heidelberg University Library started in cooperation with the TU Berlin. The aim is, firstly, to digitize and make available online in a sustainable manner the previously known and not yet digitized hand copies of the catalogues of the Munich auction house Hugo Helbing (1895 to 1937) on the servers of Heidelberg University Library. To date, a good 1,000 such annotated manuscript copies are known, and around 400 could already be put online in the summer of 2020 - i.e. before the project began. On the other hand, the scientific description of the annotated catalogue copies, a typification and systematization of the auction annotations as well as the development and evaluation of a model for their structured recording based on the Heidelberg annotation tool heiANNO will take place within the framework of the project at the ZI in Munich.
  Further information can be found under "Hand copies of the catalogues of the auction house Hugo Helbing".
• "Information System on Auction Consignments" (2019 onwards)
  In a cooperative project financed by the Central Archive of the National Museums in Berlin and the Heidelberg University Library, an information system on auction consignments is being developed - together with provenance researchers in Germany and Austria. One of the greatest challenges for provenance research is to identify the previous owners of objects and artworks acquired at auctions. The auction catalogue is often the only reference point for research. In lists of consignments in the prefix, the previous ownership is encoded. One encounters initials with or without location, Roman numerals, aliases, or completely abstract codings. Deciphering such a cipher can mean months of work. The result is not only of interest to one's own institution, because an auctioned collection of possessions was usually acquired by various buyers and scattered around the world. Consequently, identical research is needed in various places today. The exchange in the research process as well as the results is indispensable. For this exchange, the "Information system on auction consignments" offers provenance researchers the possibility to digitally annotate the consignment ciphers, following the tradition of historical annotations, which have always been an authoritative source for provenance research. Background information on the consignors can now be stored directly in the auction catalogue, research results can be published in a citable form linked to one's own academic name, and the decipherments of others can be researched online.
  Further information can be found under "Information system on auction consignments".
• Auction Catalogues of the Auction House Hauswedell & Nolte
  In cooperation with the Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung ZADIK (Central Archive for German and International Art Market Research), the auction catalogues (until 1992 = auction 297) of the Hamburg auction house Hauswedell & Nolte - founded in 1927 by Ernst Hauswedell as an antiquarian bookshop-cum-publishing house - are to be digitized and put online.
  Overview of the digitized copies of the auction catalogues of the auction house Hauswedell & Nolte.
• Digitisation of Historical Sources on the Art Trade in German-Speaking Countries: Auction, Antiquarian and Sales Catalogues from 1871 to 1949 (2021-2022)
  As part of the project funded by the BKM's "Neustart Kultur" programme, almost 1,000 volumes from the collection of historical auction, antiquarian and sales catalogues from the years 1871 to 1949 from German-speaking countries in the holdings of Heidelberg University Library were digitised and integrated into the overall offering of German Sales.
• German Sales Primary Market. Gallery Publications in German-speaking Regions (1871-1949) (2023-2024)
  The cooperation project of Heidelberg University Library and Berlinische Galerie, funded by the German Research Foundation for two years from 1 January 2023, aims to identify as completely as possible the publications of modern art galleries in the German-speaking world between 1871 and 1949. With the integration into "German Sales", a substantial improvement of the current information infrastructure on the development of modern art is intended.