Pilot Project Part II | Introducing the JDCRP Data Platform

The second part of the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Foundation (JDCRP)’s pilot project to link archival repositories on Nazi-looted cultural property focuses on populating its emerging cross-searchable digital data platform. The European Union co-funds the two-year project together with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (the Claims Conference), sponsored by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ) and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF).

The first European Union co-funded JDCRP project, “The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection,” created a linked data website that details the circumstances, perpetrators, and accomplices in the looting of 333 Old Master paintings owned by a prominent French Jewish family. Phase II will build on the pilot project by compiling source material with direct digital linkages, including archival documents currently referenced without links in existing databases such as the Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume.

This project will consolidate a selected group of digitized archival data on plundered cultural property to enable keyword searches at the document level. Archival material from the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point of the American Allied Forces, as well as from the records of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) Nazi looting agency will be included.

Additional project components will demonstrate the potential of linking data in multiple archives for research and educational purposes and show how such data can be accessed by broader groups of users. An in-depth exploration of the seizure of artworks from Belgian collectors Hugo Daniel and Elisabeth Andriesse, as well as Polish/German/French/American artist Eugen Spiro, will demonstrate ways in which digitized linked data can help trace the fate of stolen objects and highlight the contributions made by persecuted Jewish collectors to European cultural heritage. Research is being supported by member institutions in the JDCRP international partner network of archives and cultural institutions.

As part of the pilot project, university students are exploring ways in which provenance research on Nazi-looted cultural property can open paths to a greater understanding of the role of cultural plunder in enabling the genocide of European Jewry. In addition, exhibitions and a brochure will provide a closer look at the role of provenance research and technology in the creation of the JDCRP central archival platform.

For staff working on part II of the pilot project, see Foundation Structure.