Handicrafts and paintings |
Collection of Siegfried Fuchs
Authors:
Kathrin Pallestrang,
Magdalena Puchberger,
Claudia Spring
Kathrin Pallestrang,
Magdalena Puchberger,
Claudia Spring
The restitution of Siegfried Fuchs’s objects from the Volkskundemuseum Wien
The Fuchs dossier contained seventeen objects. Ten of them were restituted on 13 December 2016. The other seven were untraceable. In the meantime, five have been identified in the depots and will be returned as soon as the new succession has been clarified. The whereabouts of the other two objects is still unexplained. According to the inventory book they are a majolica figure of Saint Johannes Nepomuk (inv. no. ÖMV/44082) and a farrier’s seal (inv. no. ÖMV/44290). Although the majolica figure is listed in the inventory book, it cannot be established for certain whether it was actually the one owned by Fuchs. The museum archive has a carbon copy of a letter from museum director Arthur Haberlandt in March 1939 to Siegfried Fuchs requesting the exchange of the figure for some jewellery. There is no record of the exchange having taken place.
The two currently untraceable objects are included in the recommendation by the Art Restitution Advisory Board along with the fifteen objects identified since 2016 and will be returned as soon as possible if they are traced and the succession has been clarified. It is not unusual in a museum as old as ours for objects listed in the inventory books to be untraceable. Our depots have moved many times in the past hundred years, but no lists were made. The inventory numbers were often loosely attached to the objects and fell off, or else they were written illegibly or smeared and can no longer be deciphered. Many objects in our depot are therefore listed as objects without a number.
Our long-term aim is to compare all untraceable objects listed in the inventory books with objects without numbers. Moreover, the numbers are now fixed permanently without damaging the objects. The digital inventory also indicates where the objects are, so they will not be mislaid in the future.
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The Fuchs dossier contained seventeen objects. Ten of them were restituted on 13 December 2016. The other seven were untraceable. In the meantime, five have been identified in the depots and will be returned as soon as the new succession has been clarified. The whereabouts of the other two objects is still unexplained. According to the inventory book they are a majolica figure of Saint Johannes Nepomuk (inv. no. ÖMV/44082) and a farrier’s seal (inv. no. ÖMV/44290). Although the majolica figure is listed in the inventory book, it cannot be established for certain whether it was actually the one owned by Fuchs. The museum archive has a carbon copy of a letter from museum director Arthur Haberlandt in March 1939 to Siegfried Fuchs requesting the exchange of the figure for some jewellery. There is no record of the exchange having taken place.
The two currently untraceable objects are included in the recommendation by the Art Restitution Advisory Board along with the fifteen objects identified since 2016 and will be returned as soon as possible if they are traced and the succession has been clarified. It is not unusual in a museum as old as ours for objects listed in the inventory books to be untraceable. Our depots have moved many times in the past hundred years, but no lists were made. The inventory numbers were often loosely attached to the objects and fell off, or else they were written illegibly or smeared and can no longer be deciphered. Many objects in our depot are therefore listed as objects without a number.
Our long-term aim is to compare all untraceable objects listed in the inventory books with objects without numbers. Moreover, the numbers are now fixed permanently without damaging the objects. The digital inventory also indicates where the objects are, so they will not be mislaid in the future.
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