Restitution of Paul Adolf Seehaus "Blick in die Ebene" to the Heirs of Louise Koppel-Stadler

The work was illegally confiscated from the Jewish collector Louise Koppel-Stadler during the Nazi era and ended up in the collection of the Bonn Art Museum in 1951. As part of a comprehensive provenance research project at the museum in 2021, its history was clarified, and the work entered into the Lost Art database.

In 2023, the heirs of Louise Koppel-Stadler identified the work in the database and contacted the Bonn Art Museum. The gouache will be returned to the descendants of the rightful owners on January 31, 2025.

According to provenance research, the gouache "Blick in die Ebene (1918)" by Paul Adolf Seehaus had been in the collection of Louise Koppel-Stadler since at least 1919, from which she loaned it to the Berlin National Gallery in 1926 for exhibition purposes. In 1929, she moved from Cologne to Berlin, but was forced to flee via Switzerland to Paris, where she lived with a relative. Her furnishings, including art objects, which were left partly with her mother in Cologne and partly in her Berlin apartment, were confiscated and sold and have since been considered missing. Louise Koppel managed to take only a few works of art with her to Paris. In 1942 these works were also confiscated and sold by the National Socialists.

The aquarel "Blick in die Ebene" by Paul Adolf Seehaus subsequently made its way, via an unclear route, to the Düsseldorf gallery Alex Vömel, which sold it to the Bonn Municipal Art Collections in 1951. Paul Adolf Seehaus (1891–1919) was August Macke's only student and is considered one of the most important artists of the Rhenish Expressionists.

During the extensive provenance research project at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, completed in 2021, the gouache entered the Lost Art database along with two other works from the collection. The research revealed a clear gap in the provenance, strongly suggested the work had beeng confiscated between 1933 and 1945 due to Nazi persecution.

The restitution will be carried out in accordance with the principles of the Washington Conference of 1998 and the joint declaration of the federal government, the states and the municipal umbrella associations from 1999. 

Main Image:cPaul Adolf Seehaus, Blick in Ebene, 1918