Restitution des Tänzerinnen-Brunnens von Georg Kolbe
Since 2024, as part of the research, outreach and exhibition project ‘Der Brunnen/The Fountain’, the museum has been working in an interdisciplinary and iterative manner on the research, historical classification and contextualisation of Georg Kolbe’s ‘Dancers’ Fountain’ (1922). In early 2025, the museum proactively initiated a dialogue with the descendants of the fountain’s original owner, Heinrich Stahl. The aim was to clarify the issue of restitution and, building on this, to develop new forms of remembrance.
Against this background, and following the legal clarifications made in recent months, it has been established that Werner Stahl, the grandson of Heinrich Stahl, did not declare in 2001 that the family was waiving its claim to the ‘Dancing Girls’ Fountain’ on behalf of the entire Stahl family. The fountain is indisputably a cultural asset confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. For this reason, the Georg Kolbe Museum and the Board of Trustees of the Georg Kolbe Foundation offered in February to fully restitute the work to the community of heirs of Heinrich Stahl. As a public museum in Germany, the Georg Kolbe Museum commits itself to the Washington Principles, which in 1998 established guidelines for dealing with cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. The museum’s primary aim was to reach a fair and just solution in collaboration with the descendants of the original owner. This has been achieved, and the community of heirs of Heinrich Stahl accepted the offer of restitution.
The museum and the foundation are aware that restitution does not undo the inexcusable injustice suffered, but it is a natural gesture of acknowledging the wrongdoing towards the descendants. Following the acceptance of the restitution offer in February of this year, it is solely up to the heirs to determine what to do with the fountain. They have decided to have the fountain auctioned off through the Villa Grisebach auction house. The details of the procedure have been agreed upon with the heirs, their legal representatives, as well as Villa Grisebach and its representatives. Given the financial resources of the Georg Kolbe Museum, which has no budget for acquisitions, successful participation in the auction seems unlikely for the museum, which had previously unsuccessfully explored the known options for third-party financing of a purchase offer.
As part of the project “Der Brunnen/The Fountain”, the museum, in collaboration with partners such as the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Institute for Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts, explored the history of the Dancers’ Fountain and how it is presented to the public. The history of the object and its motif raise questions about the interconnections between art and systems of political injustice. The object combines two historical dimensions: on the one hand, the fate of the patron points to the anti-Semitic policies of National Socialism. On the other hand, the supporting figures of the fountain – three Black men supporting a white dancer – reveal Kolbe’s reliance on colonial representational conventions and the associated hierarchies. Individual events, such as the in-depth discussion with the Lichtenberg Professor of Provenance Studies, Prof. Dr Lynn Rother (Leuphana University of Lüneburg), curator Dr Elisa Tamaschke and director Dr Kathleen Reinhardt in July 2025, are available online here. The publication “Der Brunnen / The Fountain” was published in summer 2025 by Distanz Verlag. The research exhibition on the history of the fountain, which opened in April 2025, can still be viewed in the museum’s basement. The museum will continue to commemorate the Stahl family and the Dancers’ Fountain associated with their fate.