Provenance Research

The Deutsches Technikmuseum collects all manner of items relating to the cultural history of technology. This includes not only large vehicles like locomotives, airplanes, and ships, but also many everyday devices such as radios, typewriters, bicycles, and cameras.

But how did these objects end up in the Museum? And more importantly, who did they belong to before they got here?

In 2017, the Museum began scouring its collection for objects that had been confiscated by the Nazi regime, mostly from Jewish owners. The collection of historic automobiles was the first to have its provenance investigated.

From May 2019 to May 2020, the pilot project "Identification of Nazi-looted goods in collections of technical history", funded by the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg, has developed a strategy for systematically reviewing its collections.

Afterwards, the deep-going investigation of the collections began. The two-year project "Identification of Nazi-looted goods in the collection of the Deutsches Technikmuseum inventoried between 1982 and 1989" is again being funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.