Silver Formerly Owned by Jews
Unusual Objects from Our Core Exhibition Tell Stories of Jewish Life
Silver jewelry dishes, pitchers, lamps, soup ladles—from magnificent silverware to simple everyday utensils: These all once belonged to Jewish families in Hamburg.
Silver formerly owned by Jews, provenance: up to 1939 unknown Jewish owners, 1939 Hamburg Tax Authority, 1960 allotted to the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts (MKG) by the City of Hamburg; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession L-2018/475/0, photo: Roman März
As part of the bureaucratic process of persecution and dispossession throughout all of the German Reich, an ordinance passed in February 1939 that all “silver owned by non-Aryans” had to be handed in. Twenty tons of silver were confiscated in Hamburg alone. Most of it was melted down and a small portion ended up in public collections.
Dr. Silke Reuther, provenance researcher at the Museum for Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, on how to deal with this legacy today, Interview 2019; audio track from our JMB app, photo: Michaela Hille
Read along: Interview with Dr. Silke Reuther
Silke Reuther works at the Museum for Arts and Crafts in Hamburg and is researching provenance in the silverware collection.
Silke Reuther:
“Well, no one wants or wanted to deal with the silverware. You can see that in the simple fact that more than 3000 objects have been locked away in storage. First of all it’s a huge collection and one that we’re working through right now. What we did first was we got it all out of storage and displayed it. It was just very moving to see how much people – visitors and colleagues – were interested in tackling this subject again. And we’re now planning to archive the silver collection digitally as well, in order to make it available online, because I think that it should still be possible to return things even now. That’s something we think is important. It will never be a normal collection: it can be exhibited, but the story has to be told as well.”
Core Exhibition: 13 Objects – 13 Stories (13)
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13 Objects – 13 Stories
A Torah shield, a sculpture, a cushion: 13 unusual objects of our core exhibition tell 13 stories of Jewish life. What would a museum be without its many objects, some small, some big, each rich in meaning? You can get a sneak peek of the objects here on our website.
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Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels) by Anselm Kiefer
This installation can be found in our core exhibition in the Libeskind Building, on level 2
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L’amitié au coeur (Friendship of the Heart)
by Étienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–1791), Paris, 1765, marble
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Finds from the Memmelsdorf Genizah
Memmelsdorf (find site), ca. 1725–1830, paper, ink, fabric, leather, porcelain
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Torah Shield
donated by Isaak Jakob Gans (1723–1798), Hamburg, 1760–1765, silver
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Manheimer Family Portrait
by Julius Moser (1805–1879), Berlin, 1850, oil on canvas
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Puppet Show
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Käte Baer-Freyer (1885–1988), Berlin, ca. 1924, plywood, metals
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Decorated Cushion
“ISRAELI, JEW, and now SEVERELY DISABLED ...,” Daniel Josefsohn (1961–2016), Berlin, 2014/15, textile
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Silver Formerly Owned by Jews
Provenance: up to 1939 unknown Jewish owners, 1939 Hamburg Tax Authority
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Going-away Present
Bruno Heidenheim, Album to bid farewell to Margot (1913–2010) and Ernst (1898–1971) Rosenthal, Chemnitz, 1936
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Hand Washbasin
Manufacturer: S. & D. Loewenthal, Frankfurt am Main, 1895/96, silver
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No Longer in the Country
Unclaimed membership cards for the Jewish community Frankfurt am Main, 1949
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Composition
by Otto Freundlich (1878–1943), 1938, tempera on cardboard
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Yellow Star
of the Lehmann family, Berlin, 1941–1945
