Last summer, the museum in Gotha, Germany, celebrated a significant victory when it recovered Rubens’s oil sketch, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, after it resurfaced at Christie’s auction house. Now, the institution is on a new quest to locate a 15th-century print of the Annunciation by the enigmatic German engraver known as “Master ES” and a pair of rare “table automata”, proto-robots crafted by a goldsmith in the early 17th century.
For Timo Trümper, the museum’s research director and curator of paintings, this mission is about more than just art recovery. It is an effort to restore the cultural soul of Gotha, a central German city with a rich historical legacy. “This gallery of shadows is a reminder of our mission to fight for these objects and bring them back into this historical collection,” Trümper stated.
The Historical Significance of Gotha
Gotha, a city with a population of 46,000, was once the seat of the Protestant Ernestine dynasty. It boasted one of the most advanced administrative states in Europe and a robust education system during the Holy Roman Empire. “There used to be a saying that the farmers in Saxe-Gotha were cleverer than the nobles in the other principalities,” Trümper noted, highlighting the city’s intellectual prominence.
The dukes of Gotha, although lacking territorial power, compensated with cultural and scientific achievements. They amassed a collection of 1.2 million objects, including works by Cranach the Elder and Hans Holbein, ancient Egyptian mummies, and meticulously crafted cork sculptures of Roman ruins.
The Royal Connection and Cultural Loss
In 1840, the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha gained a prestigious connection through the marriage of Albert, the duke’s second son, to Queen Victoria. The royal family bore the principality’s name until they changed it to Windsor during World War I due to anti-German sentiment.
Despite Gotha’s transformation into a manufacturing hub for German bombers during World War I, its art collection remained intact until the Weimar Republic era. The duchy was abolished, and the museum became public property. Financial strains led to the sale of items, but the real troubles began post-World War II.
The Impact of War and Political Change
In 1945, as American forces prepared to hand over the region to Soviet control, Viktoria Adelheid, the last duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, transported a significant portion of the treasures to her estate in Bavaria. This included a Rembrandt self-portrait, now in Munich, and the Echternach Gospels, a 7th-century manuscript.
According to Tobias Pfeifer-Helke, director of the Friedenstein Foundation, the duchess and her family selectively sold these works internationally in the 1940s and 50s. “They systematically sold them off through the international art trade,” Pfeifer-Helke explained.
“About 80 percent of these objects were returned in the 1950s, but the rest remained unaccounted for.”
The Largest Art Heist in East German History
The final blow to Gotha’s collection came in 1979, when a disgruntled train driver executed East Germany’s largest art heist, stealing five Old Masters, including Van Dyck’s Self-Portrait with a Sunflower and Brueghel the Elder’s Country Road with Wagons and Cows. The stolen artworks and prints are believed to number over 2,000.
The loss of these cultural treasures has deeply affected Gotha’s residents. “You have to remember that this little city was until 1918 a seat of aristocratic power,” Trümper said, emphasizing the city’s historical significance.
The Ongoing Recovery Efforts
Following German reunification in 1990, the Friedenstein Foundation launched a campaign to recover the lost art, despite facing a 30-year statute of limitations on art theft. The foundation has since become adept at negotiating the return of these pieces, retrieving about a dozen annually from locations as distant as Uruguay and the United States.
Some returns are prompted by owners’ conscience, such as a Parisian surgeon who discovered his antique jade teapot was listed as missing. In 2019, a Munich lawyer facilitated the return of the five stolen Old Masters, which a family had kept in their flat for decades.
“The Gothans, above all the older people, were standing there with tears in their eyes when the paintings came back,” Pfeifer-Helke recounted.
Challenges and Legal Battles
Not all cases are straightforward. In the 1990s, the foundation traced a painting by Joachim Wtewael to a wealthy collector via Moscow and Berlin. With the German government’s assistance, they pursued the case to the British High Court, which ruled in favor of Germany.
The ongoing efforts to reclaim Gotha’s stolen masterpieces are not just about restoring art but also about reviving a cultural heritage that once defined the city. The journey continues as the museum and its allies work tirelessly to bring these treasured pieces home.
