History

The need for a central database for cultural objects stolen in large part from Jewish owners during the Nazi era has been widely acknowledged since the end of WWII. However, the concept of a comprehensive object-level database was not concretely addressed until the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust- Era Assets, which established ethical standards on restitution and spurred provenance research.

Initial attempts to compile more comprehensive archival platforms to aid provenance research were undertaken by various countries, including Germany, Austria, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and the U.S. However, the databases primarily reflected the existing collections of each country’s museums.

Against this background, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), recognized the need for international cooperation in creating a central platform for the worldwide dispersion of looted cultural objects and related archives.

A first step toward such a registry was taken by the Claims Conference and the WJRO through their support of a database of the records of objects looted in France, the Netherlands and Belgium by the main German looting agency, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). This became the first archivally based registry to include information on what was taken, from whom, and the fate of the objects if known. In 2010, the Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (known as the ERR Database), supervised by Marc Masurovsky (see https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/), was issued by the Claims Conference, in cooperation with the German Federal Archives, the Diplomatic Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, the United States National Archives and Records Administration, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and the Commission for Art Recovery (CAR).

The success of that database resulted in a meeting in Paris on May 4, 2016, organized by Dr. Wesley Fisher of the Claims Conference/WJRO and Dr. Agnes Peresztegi of the Commission for Art Recovery (CAR). Participants represented central government agencies, archives and art history organizations of France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the United States. There was consensus that a larger entity could be forged by combining the experience gained in creating the ERR Database, technological advancements, newfound archival sources, and increasing numbers of relevant databases and provenance research projects.

Key to the success would be the participation of a greater international network.

Following additional meetings in Paris in 2018 and 2019, the Claims Conference and CAR recognized the importance of launching a European-based initiative to accept funding from a variety of sources. Accordingly, in 2019, Claims and CAR established the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Foundation (JDCRP Stiftung) in Berlin, Germany, with an international team, guided from the beginning by an outstanding group of representatives from partner organizations, including archives, art history institutes, and museums, as well as provenance and technology experts. The foundation continues to benefit from the ongoing exchange amongst the organizations on research and documentation challenges. The JDCRP platform will link archival documents from various sources, promote the digitization of archives, and create searchability across various sources, contributing to the improvement and refinement of research and educational tools.

Please see Network of Partner Organizations for a list of current partner organizations of the JDCRP Foundation.