Forgotten
Life Stories

  • Full Photo
    Artwork from the Fuld Collection

    Harry Fuld

    TheTelephone King

    Dispossessed, expelled, forgotten

    Dispossessed, expelled, forgotten

  • Photo of Klemperer
    Artwork from the von Klemperer collection

    The von Klemperer family

    An unrivalled collection

    Ostracised, dispossessed, expelled

    Ostracised, dispossessed, expelled

With their love of art, they shaped European cultural life. Then they were persecuted, robbed, expelled and murdered by the National Socialists as Jews. We tell some of their life stories here.

  • Wolf Photo
    Artwork from the Wollf Collection

    Julius and Johanna Wollf

    The cosmopolitan married couple

    Displaced, dispossessed, erased

    Displaced, dispossessed, erased

All biographies →
  • Photo Schmidl
    Artwork from the Schmidl collection

    Marianne Schmidl

    A Fascination for Africa

    Rejected, extorted, murdered

    Rejected, extorted, murdered

  • Photo Dorville
    Artwork from the Dorville collection

    Armand Dorville

    Impressionist Art in a Paris Town House.

    Expulsion, compulsory administration, theft

    Expulsion, compulsory administration, theft

All biographies →
Illustration education and mediation

Off to the museum

With new offers, we invite you to actively engage with biographies and stories of injustice from the Nazi era, memory, and reappraisal through looted art. In museums in Berlin and Saxony, we are piloting formats that combine art and culture, history, and political education, and aim to encourage you to stand up for human dignity, empathy, and democracy.

  • Looted Property - Provenance - Restitution. A family collects

    Porcelain Collection, Dresden State Art Collections

    Bookable from May 2026

  • Is this real? Facts, fakes and questions

    Dresden State Art Collections

    Bookable from May 2026

A commemorative project

When museums research the provenance of their artworks, it is not only ownership that comes to light, but also fates. With „Art, Looting and Restitution - Forgotten Life Stories“, the partners involved are remembering the victims of persecution and expropriation. Who were these people, what happened to their artworks? And what does it mean to their descendants when a looted work of art is returned?