The (r)emigration of Jewish art dealers and the shape of the German art market scene. Approaching a difficult topic

In the summer of 1935, more than 40 Jewish art dealers in Munich were forced to liquidate or "aryanize" their companies. The closure of a large number of private galleries, the mass liquidation of stockpiles and finally the emigration of Jewish dealers, have been partially examined, particularly at the quantitative level, e.g. within the contexts of provenance research.

However, the question of to which extent the forced emigration process also qualitatively transformed the art market has not yet been pursued. With the disappearance of influential Jewish gallery owners the range and shape of the art markets gradually changed, a fact that has been forgotten, as have the emigrated merchants. Did marketplaces for modern art migrate with its collectors and dealers?

At the same time, the question of the remigration of art dealers after World War II is still a major research desideratum. So far there have been no reliable studies on how many of the once emigrated dealers returned to Germany after 1945, nor on how many of them resumed their former professions. But only a tiny percentage of the persecuted art dealers returned from the exile countries.

How did the migration processes of the 1930s shape the image of the then predominantly conservative art market scenes in Germany? And to what extent was this development intended by the cultural policy and ideological propaganda of the National Socialist Party? Which digital market data should be available to approach and analyze this complex topic, and how can these data be processed?