An ongoing controversy over the holdings of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the organization that oversees masterworks shown by Munich museums such as the Alte Pinakothek and the Museum Brandhorst, reached new heights this week after a bombshell report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
That German publication reported earlier this week that the Bavarian State Painting Collections currently holds nearly 200 works that were looted by the Nazis—and that it had never revealed this to the general public or to heirs seeking the return of certain pieces. The Süddeutsche Zeitung report has raised concern among German politicians, even though representatives for the Bavarian State Painting Collections disputed aspects of it.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung article was based on an internal document from 2020. That document reportedly listed eight works once owned by Alfred Flechtheim, a Jewish dealer based in Germany who was persecuted by the Nazis.
In response to the report, Claudia Roth, the German culture minister, told the press agency dpa that the Bavarian State Painting Collections had displayed a “lack of transparency” and accused the organization of the “deliberate concealment and prevention of fair and just solutions.”
Roth added: “It would be a scandal if findings about Nazi-looted art were and are being deliberately withheld.”
It’s not the first time the Bavarian State Painting Collections have come under the microscope. In 2022, the Bavarian State Painting Collections released a database that offered the public access to data about some 1,000 artworks acquired during the Nazi era. But that has not prevented flare-ups over provenances in the years since.
In 2023, for example, the Pinakothek der Moderne removed the 1903 Picasso painting Madame Soler from view. The painting was once owned by collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who transferred it to the dealer Justin Thannhauser while the Nazis were ascendant. The museum claimed that the Bavarian State Painting Collections’s purchase of the painting from Thannhauser was legitimate, but some art historians have cast doubt on whether the Pinakothek der Moderne should be able to exhibit it.
