During these days, the museum director Luisa Töpel and her colleagues will have a temporary addition: An art historian from Freiburg / Breisgau will devote six months to provenance research in the Aschersleben museum – she will specifically deal with the holdings from Freemasons.
The Aschersleben Freemason Lodge “To the Three Clover Leaves” was dissolved by the National Socialists in 1935. Around 90 objects, including jewelery badges, glasses, books, clothing and ritual objects, are in the museum, most of which belong to the lodge.
Masonic lodge “To the Three Clover Leaves” was disbanded by the Nazis in 1935
The lodge was re-established in 1992, the original owners of the inventoried objects no longer existed. The museum bought some things, but they would still legally belong to the lodge.
Luisa Töpel shows the membership directory “To the three clover leaves”.
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“The museum is interestedto find a just and fair solution, ”explains Luisa Töpel. It is important to her to be able to continue showing the exhibits. That is why it is not always a question of return, but often a loan agreement.
“I think that can be very exciting,” she says, the files are in any case pretty good. There is an inventory, and some files can be found in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage. Among other things, there is the question of what is recorded in the lists and what is no longer there.
German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property gives money for provenance research
The ones from German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property Funded location for provenance research in Aschersleben is the continuation of a so-called first check from the year 2016/17, which was suggested by the State Museum Association.
It was explored in five museums whether there are any exhibits for which further research would be indicated. In Aschersleben, the focus was on cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution and on the colonial era.
Where did these badges come from?
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“We didn’t find much on the subject of persecuted former Jewish citizens,” says Luisa Töpel. But the museum contains around 300 exhibits from the colonial era, mainly from Africa.
One of the findings of the first check: contrary to what is often claimed, the museum was probably also open during the Nazi era. For example, from 1939 there was a large colonial exhibition. “For propaganda purposes, of course,” says the museum director.
Many exhibits from the colonial era come from Wilhelm Lederbogen
The museum has been keeping an eye on the exhibits from the colonial era for a long time. Many come from the collection of Rector Wilhelm Lederbogen, which was donated to the museum in the 1930s. Lederbogen was previously a teacher in the former colonies of Cameroon and Togo.
The interest in it resulted in a project with the participation of the Stephaneum high school and the Oikos Eine Welt eV. The museum serves here as an extracurricular place of learning and “we try to find a context for the things,” explains Luisa Töpel.
Are the exhibits a kind of souvenir that were made for the tourist market back then or were they illegally withdrawn from their original owners? The museum has been in contact with Wilhelm Lederbogen’s grandson, who lives in Bremen, since 2017. “He made correspondence available to us, perhaps we can draw new knowledge from it,” hopes Luisa Töpel.
The head of the museum is pleased that the Aschersleben museum is a small house involved in provenance research. “We don’t see ourselves as our home, we work professionally,” she says confidently.
The project would correspond to the tasks that a museum has: collecting, researching, preserving, conveying and exhibiting. “We serve all of this with our work.” (Mz)
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