A bronze and travertine fountain by German sculptor Georg Kolbe, titled 'Brunnen mit der zierlichen Tänzerin' (1922), was auctioned at Grisebach in Berlin for €4 million, far exceeding its estimate of €1–1.5 million. The fountain, which had been in the garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin since 1979, was recently restituted to the heirs of its original owner, Heinrich Stahl, a Jewish insurance director who perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The winning bid came from a private collection in the United States, and the buyer's future plans for the work are unknown.
The sale marks the culmination of a decades-long restitution process for a piece of Nazi-looted art. The fountain was originally commissioned for Stahl's villa; after the family was forced to sell the property under duress, the work disappeared for decades before resurfacing at the Kolbe Museum. A 2001 waiver of claim by one heir was later found not to bind the entire family, prompting the museum to fully restitute the work. The auction's outcome highlights ongoing complexities in provenance research and the ethical obligations of German institutions to return looted cultural property, even when the works have been publicly displayed for decades.