“Lost / Recovered. Gdansk collections” is the ninth exhibition in a series of annual presentations of the most valuable artefacts belonging to Polish wartime losses recovered in recent years thanks to the restitution activities of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. This time we are showing objects from the pre-war Gdansk collections. In previous years, the Kordegarda Gallery showcased recovered objects from the Wroclaw, Goluchow and Warsaw collections.
War losses are movable cultural property from public, church and private collections lost as a result of World War II from Polish territories within its borders after 1945. Of all the European countries, it was Poland that lost most of its tangible heritage as a result of the war. Shortly after the war number of Polish war losses was estimated at over half a million movable monuments worth tens of billions of dollars at that time.
After the end of World War II, by virtue of decisions made at the conferences in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, the former German territories consisting of Silesia, Pomerania, part of East Prussia and the former Free City of Danzig were transferred to Poland. According to international law, works of art lost from the territories known as the “Recovered Territories” just after the war are subject to return to their places of origin.
The objects of art presented in the exhibition are mostly war losses that have returned to the National Museum in Gdansk. A significant part of them come from the collection of Jacob Kabrun.
Jacob Kabrun (1759–1814), a wealthy merchant, considered the greatest Danzig collector of his time, bequeathed a rich collection of paintings, prints and drawings as well as a valuable book collection to the city of Danzig in his will of 1808. The City Museum (Stadtmuseum), established in 1872, became the guardian of Jacob Kabrun’s will. His father’s footsteps were followed by August Kabrun (1807–1878), who also donated his collection to the citizens of Danzig. The works collected by the Kabruns were still on display in the rooms of the City Museum during the World War II.
The successor to the City Museum is the National Museum in Gdansk. Unfortunately, the World War II caused enormous damage to the museum’s collections. Only 40–60 percent of the objects collected in the museum by the end of 1945 were saved from destruction and looting. The rest were lost irretrievably or taken away.
As the situation on the eastern front became worse for the Germans, the creation of evacuation lists of Gdansk’s movable monuments and their gradual removal to depots in Pomerania and then into the Reich began in 1942. Most transports of works of art left Gdansk in the first half of 1943. The objects in the German depots were then seized by the Russians and taken to the Soviet Union as war trophies. Even after the formal end of the war in May 1945, looting and transport of works of art from the Gdansk area to the USSR took place.
The wartime fate of works of art from the Gdansk collections meant that these objects are still found in the storerooms of other museums, galleries and private collections. The memory of works lost as a result of World War II, the dissemination of their images and knowledge about them, and the story of successful restitution cases contribute to the discovery of more objects of cultural heritage.
