The Münchner Stadtmuseum’s Munich Roots Encounters
In 2024 and 2025, the Münchner Stadtmuseum held two "Munich Roots" remembrance gatherings to commemorate the restitution of silverware confiscated under the "silver levy" of 1939 to its rightful owners. They were attended by guests from all over the world. In November 2024, hosted eight families with a total of 18 descendants of various ages from Argentina, Germany, the UK, Israel, Italy and the United States. The second event was held in October 2025 and attended by a further eight families with 20 members from Israel, Germany, the UK, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States.
The Silverware Project
In spring 2023, Dr. Regina Prinz, provenance researcher at the Münchner Stadtmuseum, embarked on a research project to trace the heirs and rightful owners of 140 silver objects from the Applied Arts Collection confiscated under the 1939 "silver levy", with a view to returning their property to them. This project was built on extensive research carried out in conjunction with the Bavarian National Museum. For the first time, 140 silver objects could now be linked to a total of 46 family names. Since that time, the museum has worked to trace the descendants of these families and return the objects to their legitimate owners.
Our extensive, international search for the heirs was made possible thanks to funding from the German Lost Art Foundation and the kind support of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office in New York. In February 2026, 130 silver objects have already been returned to 39 families, and a further six cases are pending. Dr. Regina Prinz, Dr. Marius Wittke, and Maja Jakubeit ably assisted by Rebecca Friedman (Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State of Department Financial Services), contacted over 40 families around the world in the course of this project. The families were intrigued and had a whole host of questions, wanting to know where their ancestors had lived, what they had done for a living and where they were buried. This was the inspiration for the decision to invite the families to the city of Munich itself to answer their questions and give them an individual, firsthand insight into their "Munich roots". It was the first time that some of our guests had ever visited their ancestors’ erstwhile homeland of Germany and the city of Munich.
A week of Encounters and Remembrance Work
The Münchner Stadtmuseum collaborated with eleven partners to put together a diverse, five-day program of workshops, talks and guided tours. It offered their invitees a deeply moving opportunity to engage with their past.
It kicked off with an evening reception at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, where guests had the opportunity to make each other's acquaintance for the first time and meet our cooperation partners in person.
One very emotional moment at the opening reception 2024 was when two branches of the family who had never met, one from the United States and the other from Argentina, were introduced for the first time. The 2025 gathering also brought together for the first time two branches of the same family, one from the United States and the other from Mexico. "Munich Roots" had offered them this opportunity.
"That a silver sugar spoon, made by Louis Wollenweber in 1823, stolen from my father’s aunt, Hedwig Metzger in 1939, brought me together with cousins of my father’s aunt, Hedwig Metzger, who I did not know and would never have met had it not been for Munich Roots, is nothing short of astonishing and deeply meaningful." (a participant)
Tracing the Past in the Archives
Workshops at Bavarian Main State Archive, Bavarian State Archive Munich, and Munich City Archive formed the centerpiece of the week’s activities and allowed participants to gain new insights into their family histories.
After an introductory overview of how the archive was organized, the types of material it held, and their relevance to family research, the families then had the opportunity to handle, browse and even study their ancestors’ personal documents. They received individual assistance in reading and translating them and in grasping their significance in context.
At Bavarian Main State Archive and Bavarian State Archive Munich, participants were able to work with documents from the Nazi era and the post-war years, including lists of assets and compensation and restitution documents. These records paint a vivid picture of the property that was lost and the protracted, bureaucratic restitution processes that often hampered its return.
The Munich City Archive holds documents such as registration forms and registry office records and these allowed the families to piece together their ancestors’ daily lives. Some invitees were excited to discover photos of unknown family members. This made for particularly memorable moments.
The Archives were also a treasure trove of material that bore witness to the persecution individuals suffered at the hands of the Nazis. This included documents relating to the “silver levy”, for example a notebook with the addresses of all Jews subject to it. Several families also managed to find duplicates of the police identification cards issued to German Jews, with portrait photos of their ancestors.
The participants were also invited to bring their own documents to the workshop at the Munich City Archive.
Feelings of Connectedness
The visits to the family graves at the Old and New Jewish Cemetery and to the Ohel Jakob Synagogue were also a catalyst for some highly emotional moments. Our guests visited the synagogue’s “corridor of remembrance”, to search for their ancestors’ names in Georg Soanca-Pollak’s installation. Its backlit glass panels bear the names of over 4,500 Munich Jews who were deported or murdered during the Nazi era.
The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site was kind enough to open its archive and allow our guests to view their ancestors’ individual entries. Several participants had the opportunity to see the original documents attesting to their family members’ internment in Dachau.
Learning About the City's History and Visiting its Museums
Our guests were introduced to the history of the Nazi era during their visits to the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Central Institute for Art History), and during a special themed tour of the city.
The 2024 participants visited the "Picture Stories. Portraits of Munich Jews" exhibition at the Jewish Museum Munich, while the 2025 group visited "The Third Generation. The Holocaust in Family Memory". This exhibition includes a section that explicitly deals with the topic of restitution, using the example of silver objects from the Münchner Stadtmuseum and the "Munich Roots" format. One participant, whose family had donated a silverware to the Jewish Museum Munich, was able to see for the first time the original item that had belonged to his ancestor.
From Past to Future
A final workshop with five short presentations offered our guests pointers about the directions that their family research and remembrance work could take after their return from “Munich Roots”. They could, for example, apply for an Erinnerungszeichen – a special memorial plaque to commemorate individual victims of Nazi persecution (Barbara Hutzelmann / Dr. Maximilian Strnad, Public History Munich) or keep track of other interesting projects about Jewish life and cultural heritage in Bavaria (Dr. Meyrav Levy, Landesstelle für die nichtstaatlichen Museen in Bayern – Bavarian Office for Non-State Museums). Rebecca Friedman from the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State of Department Financial Services, who had accompanied the group throughout the entire week, was pleased to offer guidance on further research assistance available. Dr. Christian Fuhrmeister provided insights into project funding for families at the German Lost Art Foundation.
Two talks were particularly inspirational, helping guests discover ways to preserve their family history and suggesting potential joint initiatives for future projects. Jamie Hall spoke about the genesis and establishment of "The Wallach Project", a non-profit organization founded by descendants of the owners of the famous Munich folk costume store. In 2024, Antonia Cox presented her recently published book about the letters that her father, Edgar Feuchtwanger, wrote from exile in 1939.
Dr. Ludwig Spaenle, Commissioner of the Bavarian State Government for Jewish Life and Against Anti-Semitism, for Remembrance Work and Historical Heritage, gave a warm personal welcome to all the participants in the 2024 workshop.
Closing Reception
Some families had kindly decided to donate restituted items to the Jewish Museum Munich and the Münchner Stadtmuseum. They were especially keen for the history of the items and the fates of their individual families to be made available to the public.
In 2024, when presenting the silverware, family members gave personal speeches at an evening reception at the Jewish Museum.
In 2025, a closing reception was held at the Filmmuseum. A review of the week and personal speeches by family members were followed by a screening of “A Deal with the Devil”, the German premiere of a movie based on research by one of the participants.
New Format
The silver objects – some of them modest in size – have set something larger in motion within families. They serve as catalysts for an intensive engagement with the past. As personal belongings once owned by family members, they carry emotional weight, directing attention back to individual histories while enabling an exploration of Munich’s urban past through the lens of family experience. At the same time, they gesture toward the future, allowing new relationships and forging connections that reach far beyond the city, across the world.
"It is not simple to put into words everything that I experimented during this process because it involved not only learning new facts and finding out about events that I had not heard of before, but also the sharing of feelings and impressions with other members of the group, many of which helped clarify my own. I was struck by the pride with which one of the participants, who was born and lives in Israel, expressed that she feels Bavarian. Another of the participants, a young person accompanying their mother, reflected on the parallels of some of the current events with what transpired during the rise of Hitler and his first years in power. In fact, this theme kept on recurring among many of us. One of the other participants, a psychologist, is in the process of writing a memoir. He is certainly more competent than I am to transmit many of the ideas that would be essential to pass on to future generations.
A final reflection is that the experience has been extraordinarily enriching from a personal perspective, but also, I have the desire to explore the manner in which all the information we have now gained can somehow be of more widespread benefit, especially given current events and the difficulty of preserving and disseminating facts, as opposed to erroneous opinions and disinformation campaigns." (a participant)
The Münchner Stadtmuseum would like to extend its special thanks to its eleven cooperation partners for their support:
- Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv
- Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria
- Jewish Museum Munich
- Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
- Landesstelle für die nichtstaatlichen Museen in Bayern
- Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
- Public History München
- Staatsarchiv München
- Stadtarchiv München
- Lenbachhaus Munich
- Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
Read more about the workshop at Hauptstaatsarchiv
Plan Your Visit
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Interim exhibition What the City. Perspectives of Munich in the former armory
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