Catherine Hickley reports for the Art Newspaper that a new study has shown that serious state-sanctioned seizures of privately-held artworks continued long after the conclusion of World War II, particularly in east Germany. The study examined acquisitions between 1945 and 1989 by four museums: the Viadrina Museum, and museums in Strausberg, Eberswalde, and Neuruppin. The study was conducted by the German Lost Art Foundation, and was intended as a pilot project to guide further research.
Catherine Hickley, Mass theft of art from East German citizens revealed in new report, The Art Newspaper (Jun. 12, 2019), http://theartnewspaper.com/news/mass-theft-of-art-from-east-german-citizens-revealed.
One of the most common ways that art confiscated from individuals wound up in East German museum collections was through the clearance of the residences of people who had fled the country, especially in the second half of the 1950s, Sachse says.
At the end of 1961, just a few months after the Berlin Wall was erected, East German Minister for State Security Erich Mielke gave orders for a secret operation to force open and empty unused, privately rented bank vaults, safety deposit boxes and safes at around 4,000 locations across the country and empty them of their contents.
The stealth operation, known as Aktion Licht (Operation Light), amounted to an orchestrated, state-sanctioned mass theft from people who had left the country. The treasures belonged to East Germans who had escaped to the West, but also to Jewish people forced to flee or who were taken to concentration camps during the Third Reich. The Stasi valued its findings at 4.1m deutschmarks (around $10m at the time).
After 1970, the preferred method of theft by the East German authorities was to invent astronomical tax bills and then seize art when the victims could not pay.
