Warsaw. More works lost during World War II are returning to Polish collections

The recovery of the objects was announced by Hanna Wróblewska, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, during a conference attended by Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As she explained, the Department for the Restitution of Cultural Property operates within the structure of the Department of Cultural Heritage and conducts all activities related to provenance, documentation, searches and restitution of lost cultural property.

– We are currently conducting 178 restitution cases worldwide, including 51 in Poland – Wróblewska noted. She added: – Today we are presenting two recovered objects – one from abroad, the other found in Poland. Restitution activities were and will be conducted in the ministry, but I also encourage everyone to be particularly attentive, because lost works can also be found in the country – at auction, put up for sale or – as in the case of Mehoffer's painting – in your own attic – she added.

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Minister Bartoszewski, thanking for the discovery of the book from the pre-war collections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, emphasized the importance of the over 1,000-year-old history connecting Poles and Jews. – The first Jews lived in Poland already in the 10th century. The magnificent POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw is a testament to this heritage. I am very glad that another work recovered thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage is a book about the culture and art of the Jewish people in Poland. This is a volume that was in the collections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which were extremely devastated and looted during the war – emphasized Bartoszewski.

The National Museum in Warsaw received information about the discovery of the “Portrait of Marshal Józef Piłsudski” (256.5 x 165 cm) in the spring of this year. The rolled-up painting, without a frame or stretcher bar, was found by a married couple – Katarzyna Ziemkiewicz and Mirosław Krupski – in the attic of an old single-storey house in Warsaw. Based on the information obtained, employees of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage began work on archival research. It was necessary to establish the provenance of the discovered work and to conduct its inspection. Extensive historical material preserved in the archives turned out to be indispensable.

“The discovered documentation and photographs indicate that the painting was ordered from Józef Mehoffer in 1921 by the then Ministry of Art and Culture and the Civil Chancellery of the Chief of State. It was then included in the State Art Collections – an institution dealing with the management of works of art, monuments and furniture owned by the state,” the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage explained.

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Originally, “Portrait of Marshal Józef Piłsudski” was presented in the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the Second Polish Republic, where the Presidential Palace is currently located. The large-format canvas was also loaned for exhibitions, including the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts and the Baryczek House in the Old Town Market Square. A few years before the outbreak of World War II, “Portrait of Marshal Józef Piłsudski” was moved to the building of the Warsaw City Command at Piłsudski Square. It was from there that Mehoffer's painting was probably evacuated and hidden from possible plunder or destruction by German troops, who had already occupied the building of the City Command in September.

“The very poor state of preservation of the painting indicates that its hiding place has not changed for the last 85 years. Inappropriate conditions, lack of a frame and other unfavourable factors caused numerous deformations and damages to the substrate as well as cracks and gaps in the paint layer. Therefore, in the coming days the work will be transferred to the Polish History Museum, where it will undergo extremely demanding and long-term conservation works,” the Ministry of Culture announced.

The book “Culture and Art of the Jewish People in Polish Lands” by Maksymilian Goldstein and Karol Dresdner was published in Lviv in 1935. It comes from the pre-war collections of the Library of the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. It has a property stamp with the designation: “Library of the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs No. 1569” and the handwritten designation “1569” in pencil.

During World War II, all collections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, both the main collection and the reference libraries belonging to offices and departments, were largely destroyed, dispersed or stolen by the occupying forces. It was no different in the case of the book “Culture and art of the Jewish people in the Polish lands”, which was stolen from its original place of storage and then taken away from Warsaw.

The book was found and identified as coming from Polish collections by employees of the Zentral und Landesbibliothek in Berlin. The Polish Ministry of Culture verified and then confirmed the Polish provenance of the work. After issuing a positive recommendation, the Berlin Central Library forwarded the book to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, in agreement with the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, decided to return it to Poland.