Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin to return Nazi-looted Sculpture to Heirs of Holocaust Victim
After a years-long legal battle, the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin has announced it will return a Nazi looted sculpture to the heirs of Jewish businessman Heinrich Stahl.
The work, Tänzerinnen-Brünnen 1922, one of the prominent pieces by renowned German sculptor Georg Kolbe, stood for nearly 50 years in the sculpture garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin and became one of its main attractions. It will now be removed and transferred to Stahl’s family.
Stahl, a wealthy insurance executive and art collector who later served as head of Berlin’s Jewish community, commissioned the fountain in 1922, and it adorned the garden of his villa in the Dahlem district. In 1941, under Nazi racial laws, he was forced to sell his home and the sculpture at a price far below their true value. Shortly afterward, he and his wife were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he was murdered. His widow survived and emigrated to the United States in 1950.
Museum director Kathrin Reinhardt said the institution now regards the sculpture as “cultural property looted as a result of Nazi persecution.” She said the sale of the house and fountain was not voluntary and that the price paid was well below their actual worth. “What was done to Stahl — not only the expropriation itself — is an unforgivable and immeasurable injustice,” she said, adding that finding a just and moral solution for the heirs had been a top priority.
Main Image: Georg Kolbe, Brunnen mit Brunnentänzerin, 1922, Bronze, 310 cm, Villa Heinrich Stahl, Berlin-Dahlem