The Kunstgewerbemuseum's acquisitions at the Second German Architecture and Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Munich

Most of the acquisitions that entered the Kunstgewerbemuseum's collection under the general management of Adolf Feulner (1938-1945) were products from past eras. In the case of furniture and ceramics, for example, works from the 18th century were acquired in preference. One exception is a group of acquisitions in the accounting year 1938 (April 1938-March 1939). The acquisition documents in the MAKK archive, a central source for provenance research on the holdings, note the summary description “Modern Porcelain - Decorative Arts from the Munich Exhibition 1939” for a large number of new acquisitions. However, it was not possible to determine which 27 objects, which were recorded here with the accession numbers 1938.0089 to 1938.0115, were involved in detail on the basis of the accession lists and the museum's inventory books, which were only compiled after 1945. The research was therefore extended and led to the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

The House of German Art was built as an early prestige project of the National Socialists. Adolf Hitler personally laid the foundation stone in 1933, and in July 1937 the exhibition building designed by architect Paul Ludwig Troost on Prinzregentenstraße was inaugurated with the first “Great German Art Exhibition” and a ceremony. The following day, the propaganda exhibition “Degenerate Art” opened in the gallery building as a vituperative confrontation with the National Socialist conception of art. In addition to the subsequent annual exhibitions of fine art, which were conceived as sales shows and attracted large crowds of visitors, presentations of architecture and decorative arts were also held from 1938 onwards. Artists, workshops, manufactories and trade schools exhibited their products here and offered them for sale.

Various documents relating to the purchase transactions have been preserved in the Haus der Kunst archive. Research into these sources has yielded completely new and extensive information on the acquisitions made by the Museum of Decorative Arts. For example, the accounts receivable ledger from 1939 records purchases worth 2,631.82 Reichsmarks by the Cologne museum on March 22 (Haus der Kunst, Historisches Archiv, HdDK 24). In addition to this proof of the origin of the acquisitions, a list of purchases from the “Second German Architecture and Arts and Crafts Exhibition” for the period February 25 to April 9, 1939 was also found (HdDK 39). The list also includes a compilation of the objects that Adolf Feulner personally purchased for the Kunstgewerbemuseum on March 21, 1939.

Other Cologne sources were able to confirm this information. The purchase sum recorded in Munich corresponds exactly to the information on one of the Cologne acquisition lists preserved in the museum archive. In addition, correspondence within the city between Feulner and the Cultural Office shows that he had undertaken an official trip to Munich in March 1939 to select objects for the Museum of Decorative Arts at the exhibition in the Haus der Kunst that he considered exemplary (HAStK, Acc. 1746, A 49).

The Munich source discovery was particularly productive with regard to the type of works purchased: the list contains the names of the artists who executed the objects as well as references to entries in the exhibition catalog. According to this, Feulner purchased ceramic works by Hans Eska, Wim Mühendyck and Uhlemeyer & Hobein, an ivory box by Albin Schreiber, a lace work by Heinrich Franke, glass art from the state technical schools in Zwiesel and Steinschönau (Kamenický Šenov) and by Ilse Scharge-Nebel as well as silver objects by Elisabeth Wiens, Georg Czauderna and Karl Weishaupt.

Unfortunately, the search for these objects within the MAKK's holdings has so far been unsuccessful, despite the detailed information provided. The purchases made at the “Second German Architecture and Arts and Crafts Exhibition” at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich were never entered in the museum's inventory books. However, their arrival in Cologne is confirmed by press reports according to which these new acquisitions were shown in the so-called war exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Shortly before the start of the war, in the late summer of 1939, the valuable collection items were initially removed from storage and the museum closed. In December of that year, it reopened a few rooms in the basement. A selection of objects from the Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Schnütgen-Museum were presented there, including new acquisitions for the collections, including purchases from Munich. After that, their trail is lost. The war exhibition was closed in the spring of 1941 due to the increasing danger of air raids. It has not yet been possible to determine whether the works of art on display there were taken out of the city or, like other objects, stored in the basement of the museum. On June 29, 1943, the Kunstgewerbemuseum was severely damaged by aerial bombs.

In any case, the modern works of art did not return to the Kunstgewerbemuseum with the objects that had been removed from storage and gradually returned after the end of the war. Their mention in the reconstructed acquisition lists remained the only reference to their purchase at the museum in March 1939.

Dr. Iris Metje, February 2022