Digital database. Publication of the Archival Collection from the trinational research project "Confiscations of East German Cultural Property in the Soviet Union, 1944–1948"

Completed Database project

Funded under the "Trinational Partnerships" programme of the Volkswagen Foundation


Head of Project: Prof. Dr. Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast (European University Viadrina)
Project members of the ZZF: PD Dr. Annette Vowinckel, Lieven Ebeling

The previous research project with the participation of Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast (Frankfurt/Oder) provided a representative basis of historical sources for future research on the confiscation of cultural assets by the Soviet occupying power in Germany. More than 1.200 archival documents from Russian, German and Ukrainian archives, some of them previously unknown, were collected, scanned and stored in a database with metadata. They document decisions, instructions, correspondence and the practice of the removal of cultural property. They also provide information on the actors and institutions involved. In addition, 80 key documents were translated into German, which had previously been selected according to certain criteria (selection, confiscation, removal from East Germany or distribution of art objects to Soviet cultural institutions).

The aim of the follow-up project was to store the collected research data in a valid database hosted at the ZZF and to make it available for research. The database can be used for further archive research. It is also possible to expand the database.

The archival collection can serve both research projects on Soviet occupation policy and cultural policy and future provenance research.