Auction house Hauswedell & Nolte
With the Hauswedell & Nolte archive – most of which was handed over by Gabriele Braun-Nolte and Ernst Nolte to ZADIK – Central Archive for German and International Art Market Studies in May 2016 – the first time that the company archive of an important auction house for books, autographs and art, which was founded before the Second World War and existed until 2016, came into the possession of a publicly accessible German archive. Between 1930 and 2015, books and autographs, non-European art and cultural artefacts and ‘Western’ modern art and Old Masters were auctioned and sold there. Catalogues were published for the 466 auctions held, and the extensive research and expert evaluation of the works in these catalogues repeatedly received acclaim. The auction catalogues up to 1945 have already been made available online as part of the German Research Foundation (DFG) project ‘German Sales 1930-1945. Art Works, Art Markets, and Cultural Policy’ (2010-2013). Now, as part of the cooperation between ZADIK and Heidelberg, the catalogues up to 1992 will gradually be added.
Digitised auction catalogues from ‘Der Deutsche Buch-Club GmbH’ and ‘Hauswedell & Nolte’
1.1930 - 6.1935
13.1933 - 28.1935 (Antiquarian Bookshop Catalogue)
7.1935 - 189.1972
190.1973 - 224.1977
225.1978 - 297.1992
In 2019, the German Lost Art Foundation launched the project Digitisation, Transcription and Indexing of Data Relevant for Provenance Research (including data on cultural property from colonial contexts) from the catalogues, consignor books, protocols and other documents relating to auctions 23 (1940) to 297 (1992) of Hauswedell & Nolte to support provenance research. The aim of the project is to digitise and index the ‘core data’ relevant for provenance research on the auctions of Dr. Ernst Hauswedell & Co., or Hauswedell & Nolte from 1978. The term ‘core data’ refers to the auction data. The aim is to transfer the information from the 277 auction catalogues (1940-92), 238 delivery lists (1951-92) and 263 auction protocols (1940-92) to the ZADIK database so that the information can be retrieved in a bundled form: What was auctioned? Who consigned it? Who bought it? And what were the estimated, limit and hammer prices? By the end of the project in 2024, information on over 342,000 auction lots will be made accessible in the database of ZADIK, in compliance with the legal framework. The names of the artists and authors, as well as the consignors and buyers, will be standardised in the database and, if possible, linked to the personal file (GND) of the German National Library.
