Looted Artworks

I collaborate with experts from the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II, o.p.s., who have long been dedicated to searching for confiscated art objects that belonged to Jewish families.

I coordinate their LECTURES, WHICH ARE FREE TO THE PUBLIC. If you are interested, please contact me.

Offer of thematic lectures:

Lecturers: Jana Jirásková and Jiří Blažek from the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II, o. p. s.

Lecture No. 1

What happened to confiscated Jewish property during and after the war?

Historian Jana Jirásková and Jewish history expert Jiří Blažek will explain how the systematic confiscation of Jewish property worked during World War II. The lecture will explain how the most valuable works of art were determined and how some paintings and graphics were saved from the Nazis. The lecturer will also talk about the research work involved in searching for confiscated art objects.

60 minutes

Lecture No. 2

Stories of Jewish owners of art collections and searching for their confiscated property

The lecture will include the stories of three prominent Jewish businessmen who had art collections in pre-war Czechoslovakia. One of them was Richard Morawetz, a personal friend of the Čapek brothers' family and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who owned a jute processing factory in Úpice and the Světlá nad Sázavou chateau. Richard Morawetz's collection included, for example, a Rembrandt painting or a painting by Lucas Cranach. Judaist Jiří Blažek and historian Jana Jirásková will explain how difficult it is to search for confiscated art objects in the Czech Republic and abroad.

60 minutes

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Jana Jirásková studied history and religious studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. She has been working at the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II, o. p. s., since 2013, focusing on the mechanisms of confiscation and restitution of property of victims of World War II. She has been the director of this institution since 2023.

Jiří Blažek studied Judaic studies at Charles University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since 2008, he has been working as a translator, editor and publisher of Jewish religious literature, and as a guide and lecturer at the Jewish Museum in Prague. Since 2023, she has been working as a researcher at the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II, o.p.s.

Lucie Němečková is a graduate of the Theory and History of Fine Arts at Palacký University in Olomouc. As an art historian, she worked in the Lobkowicz Collections, as well as in the Collection of Old Art of the National Gallery in Prague. Since 2021, she has been working as a specialist at the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II, o. p. s.

Johana Prouzová graduated in German from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the Czech University. She has long been involved in researching Jewish deposits in the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague and researching wartime thefts of cultural property in foreign, especially German, archives. She works at the Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Property of Victims of World War II.