ABSTRACT
Three outstanding exercises in provenance research have been published by Sophie Lillie, Birgit Schwarz, and Ilse von zur Muhlen. Furthermore, provenance research requires the difficult task of making connections between collectors, dealers, museums, and government agencies. In Was einmal War, Sophie has reconstructed the collections of 148 Viennese Jewish families. Indeed, Sophie rejects the suggestion that these collections were specifically “Jewish” and notes that this was a fabrication used by the Nazis to help justify the expropriations. She traces the provenance of 126 artworks not only to Goring and the preceding owners, but in most cases back centuries to earlier collectors. The selection of paintings constituted a polemical intervention regarding the history of art. The Office of Strategic Services Art Looting Investigation Unit Report from 1945 estimated that the Reichsmarschall had some 1,375 paintings. According to Anne Webber at the European Commission for Looted Art, only twenty-three German museums have published information about the works in their collections.
