A fountain by German sculptor Georg Kolbe, titled *Tänzerinnen-Brunnen* (Dancer’s Fountain), sold for a record €4 million (with fees) at Villa Grisebach’s summer auction in Berlin on June 4. The work had been in the collection of the Georg Kolbe Museum since the 1970s, but after a research project initiated in 2024, the museum deaccessioned and restituted it to the descendants of its original commissioner, Heinrich Stahl, a prominent Jewish community member murdered in the Theresienstadt ghetto. The fountain, commissioned in 1922, features a bronze dancer and limestone figures of Somali men, reflecting colonial representational conventions. The sale broke Kolbe’s previous auction record of €1.4 million, also set at Grisebach last year.
This sale matters because it highlights the ongoing complexities of Nazi-looted art restitution, even decades after the fact. The Georg Kolbe Museum’s proactive research and voluntary restitution—despite a 2001 waiver of rights by the Stahl family—sets a precedent for museums confronting their own collections' problematic histories. The record auction price also underscores the strong market demand for restituted works with provenance stories, while the fountain’s colonial imagery raises broader questions about how institutions address historical representations of race and power. The case illustrates that restitution is not merely a legal process but a moral gesture of acknowledging historical injustice.