Tivoli and the Waterfalls with Shepherd Families, 1821

[1] In 1938 Georg Hirschland, a patron of the Museum Folkwang, Essen, emigrated to the United States with his family, but was not permitted by the Nazi government to bring his art collection with him. In 1939 the Museum Folkwang and the city of Essen raised the funds to purchase the collection to keep it together; the funds were paid to an estate administrator. The collection consisted of 27 paintings and drawings including this by Koch, described as a pencil and India ink drawing of Tivoli.

Eleven Hirschland paintings were evacuated, with other paintings from the Folkwang, to a mine near Siegen, where they were recovered by Allied forces and taken in June 1946 to the Collecting Point at Marburg, in the American zone of Occupied Germany. Other Hirschland objects were discovered in a convent in the French zone, and several drawings, including the Koch, were identified as being in a palace Hugenpost bei Kettwig, near Essen, in the British zone, in 1947. (List of location of objects from the Hirschland estate enclosed in letter from Riegelman, Strasser, Schwarz & Spiegelberg to the US Secretary of State dated 22 March 1947, National Archives RG260/Records of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point/Restitution Claim Records/ External Claims Case Files and Internal Claims Case Files, Boxes 116-123, M1947 reels 45 and 48)

Georg Hirschland died in New York in 1942. After the war his heirs, represented by a New York law firm, made claims for the collection. The 11 paintings in Marburg were transferred by September 1946 to the Collecting Point in Wiesbaden, and in October 1948 were transferred to the British zone (Receipt for Interzonal Exchange dated 19 October 1938, NARA M1941/reel 45). The objects in the French zone could not be transferred as there was no interzonal agreement in place. By 1951 it appears that all but one of the Hirschland objects in the British zone had been released to the estate in the United States. The sole holdout was an El Greco for which there was difficulty in obtaining an export permit. (Letter dated 20 August 1951 from the Senior Finance Officer, British Control Council for Germany, National Archives, Kew, FO 1014/668.)