Nationalized and “Socialized”: The Provenance and Identity of the Baron Wambolt Portrait Collection and its Reception in Post-1945 Slovenia

This article is about the history of Philipp Hugo Baron Wambolt von Umstadt’s collection of family portraits. The collection, currently kept at the National Museum of Slovenia and the Dolenjska Museum in Novo mesto, was stolen from Hmeljnik Castle in Dolenjska in the spring of 1942. As Wambolt was of German nationality, all his property was nationalized in 1945. Yet the portraits were kept in a safe place until the end of the Second World War when centres for the collection of seized cultural heritage were established in Slovenia. Then they were taken over by the National Museum in 1951. The study of the archival and pictorial material, as well as extant literature, has revealed that the portraits originated from three aristocratic residences located in present-day Germany, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Indeed, they serve as an exceptional testament to the political, social, and cultural history of Europe from the 17th to the 20th centuries. This article argues that factors that may have hindered research into this valuable art heritage for almost 80 years include post-war museum policies; the overloading of museums with nationalized heritage; and the resulting lack of storage and exhibition space, as well as a lack of interest in the art and culture of the former aristocratic elites. However, the main, and decades-long inhibiting factor, was probably the fact that until recently the Wambolt family, who settled in Slovenia only in 1876, and their collections, were not fully accepted as part of Slovenian national history.