Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume in Paris
At the outset, the database covered art and other cultural objects that were deposited at the Jeu de Paume and the Louvre from fall of 1940 through July 1944 and processed by the ERR. To that end, it brings together historical data extracted and culled from ERR documents and images primarily located in major archival repositories in the United States, France, and Germany.
In anticipation of the larger, more all-encompassing Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (see http://jdcrp.org/), the database now includes objects confiscated from Jewish owners in German-occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands which did not transit through the Jeu de Paume and/or the Louvre. Many of these objects were displaced and misappropriated by French and German agencies and services other than the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR).
Data selection and entry covered four distinct phases as follows:
Phase One. The unique collection of 19,124 original ERR registration cards containing descriptive information about confiscated objects was digitized. The cards were produced by the ERR staff in the main ERR depots located in Brussels (Belgium), Paris (France), Fussen (Bavaria) and Kogl (Austria). All of the objects described on these cards, with the exception of the so-called “Neuwied” Collection and two collections of objects removed from Lithuania, transited through the Jeu de Paume and/or “the Séquestre du Louvre” in Paris. These cards are stored at the National Archives in College Park, MD (NACP), among U.S. postwar restitution processing files within the records of the United States Office of Military Government—OMGUS (RG 260), available to readers as part of NARA Microfilm Publication M 1943, rolls 1–27. Moreover, the database includes art objects seized in the South of France which can be found on the so-called “Nizzaliste.”
Also during Phase One, ERR original photographs of the art objects carded by ERR personnel were uploaded to their corresponding datasets within the database. Most of these photographs were furnished by the BArch Koblenz. Additional photographs were provided by the Central Institute for Art History (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, ZI) in Munich.
Phase Two. Information culled from the ERR registration cards was amplified with data from the ERR JdP inventories and shipping lists held in BArch Koblenz (Bestand B 323). These sources provided data about an additional 5,000 objects confiscated from Jewish owners in France and Belgium that had transited through the Jeu de Paume and sent to ERR art repositories in Bavaria and near-by Austria between late 1940 and mid-1944. (All of these inventories and shipping lists are now online, hyperlinked to references to individual ERR JdP collections, in the latest updated Appendix 1 of the ERR Archival Guide on this website (see the lower left corner of the JdP DB home page.)
Phase Three. Information pertaining to the repatriation of these stolen art objects to the countries from which they were seized and to their restitution comes from various series of postwar files produced by U.S., German, French, and Belgian agencies responsible for overseeing and coordinating the location, identification and restitution of art objects removed from France and Belgium during German wartime occupation. The vast majority of the French documents come from a major collection of repatriation and restitution files generated by the Commission for Recovery of Art (Commission pour la Récupération artistique, CRA) and the Office of Private Property and Assets (Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés, OBIP), now held in the Centre for Diplomatic Archives of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères et européeennes, MAEE) in a collection reprocessed since 2009 in the new facility in La Courneuve outside of Paris as 209SUP (earlier often erroneously referred to as “Fonds Rose Valland).”
Phase Four. An even much greater expansion is expected, since the data in the current Database will be serving as the basis for the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP). See more details at http://jdcrp.org/.
For additional information on the archival sources used, see the relevant country chapters in the Grimsted ERR Archival Guide, especially the BArch Koblenz section of the separate German chapter, along with the AMAE La Courneuve section of the French chapter, the Belgian chapter, as well as the NACP coverage in the U.S. chapter, all online at this same website at: https://www.errproject.org/guide.php.
See also Appendix 1 to the ERR Archival Guide, “French and Belgian Jewish Art Collections Processed by the ERR in the Jeu de Paume, 1940–1944: Correlation Tables for Archival Sources (November 2019).” Both the original ERR JdP inventories and shipping lists, among 75 other ERR and related files from Bestand B 323, are now available online, hyperlinked to the German chapter (2019) and Appendix 1 of the ERR Archival Guide.
This page last updated 2020-03-18