Website relaunch German Lost Cultural Property Foundation

The German Lost Cultural Property Center in Magdeburg is the national and international central point of contact for questions about the unlawful confiscation of cultural property in the 19th and 20th centuries – during the Nazi era, the colonial period, in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR, as well as for cultural property losses during the Second World War. The foundation supports provenance research projects in cultural property preservation institutions such as museums, libraries and archives.

The digital team at CBE DIGIDEN has redeveloped the website kulturgutverluste.de based on Drupal. A user-centered design enables experts, researchers or descendants of stolen cultural property to conduct extensive research in this complex subject area and to apply for funding for provenance research projects. The restitution of cultural property can then be reported in a separate area in a fully digitalized process.

A special feature of the website is the project statistics and the project finder. These provide an overview of all the projects that the German Lost Cultural Property Center and its predecessor institution have supported or are still supporting. A map and list view with extensive filter functions allows projects to be searched for and displayed, for example, according to specific historical contexts or federal states. The data is imported via an interface from the research database “Proveana”, which is also operated by the German Lost Cultural Property Center.

CBE DIGIDEN closely advised the Lost Cultural Property Center on all aspects of the website development in terms of concept, content and technology, implemented the design, implemented the programming with Drupal as a CMS and closely supported the CMS change from Government Site Builder (GSB) to Drupal.