project duration: July 2019 - April 2022

project extension: from June 2022

In the “Hauswedell & Nolte” archive from Gabriele Braun and Ernst Nolte, ZADIK has come into possession of the archives of an important auction house that was founded before the Second World War and continued operating until 2016, specializing in books, autographs, and art. The subject of the project being funded by the German Lost Art Foundation is the digitization and archival description of “core data” relevant to provenance research (also involving cultural property from the colonial era) on the auctions by the Dr. Hauswedell, and from January 1, 1969 Hauswedell & Nolte company. Books and autographs, East Asian, African, Oriental and pre-Columbian art and cultural assets, as well as “Western” modern art and Old Masters were auctioned and sold there. The “core data” relate specifically to the auction data. The data at Hauswedell (& Nolte) can be researched from the auction catalogues, the almost completely extant consignor books (from 1951 onwards) and auction records. From a total of around 342,000 auction lots, from auction 23 (1940) to 297 (1992), 100,000 lots with their corresponding core data had already been included in the ZADIK database during the 2019-2022 funding period. The data for the remaining auction lots are now to follow during the extension to the project that has been running since June 2022. Since the record is incomplete, it is not possible to research the entire data concerning all the lots that were put up in the auctions mentioned, but in the majority of cases it is possible. The data obtained are to be published on the ZADIK database, insofar as there are no legal restraints, so that all the art and cultural assets bought and sold there will appear on the internet and therefore be available for further provenance research. The digitized versions of the auction catalogues – some of which were created with the support of University and City Library of Cologne – will be published, copyright permitting, by the University Library, Heidelberg.