The story of a Bavarian-Swabian Torah shield from the 18th century
How does an object end up in a museum? Who owned it before and what stories does the provenance of an object tell us? Finding answers to these questions is the task of provenance research. Since 2021, the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia has been researching the provenance of its silver and textile objects as part of a project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation („Deutsche Zentrum Kulturgutverluste“) and the Bavarian Museum Service („Landesstelle für die nichtstaatlichen Museen in Bayern“).
Using a silver Torah shield from the museum’s collection as an example, we show how this is done and the astonishing results that only a few clues can produce.
In the Ashkenazi (Central and Eastern European) tradition, the Torah shield is part of an ensemble that adorns the Torah scroll when it is not in use. A field in the center is used to insert an inscribed plaque that displays the current weekly Torah portion. In addition, Torah shields usually also have a decorative purpose and are therefore often made of valuable materials and are richly decorated.
An Augsburg Torah shield
One of the first steps in researching the origin of an object is the so-called object autopsy. This involves examining the object for clues that provide information about its manufacturer and previous owners. Information on the maker and the period of origin is provided by so-called silver hallmarks – stamps that are applied to silverware to identify the origin, quality and workshop or producer. This often makes it possible to identify the manufacturer and also to date the objects. In the present case, the makers marks on the front proves that the Torah shield was made in the workshop of the silversmith Hieronymus Mittnacht (1708-1769). Based on another hallmark with a pine nut and the letter P (letters were assigned for each year), the production can be narrowed down to the years 1761 to 1763 in Augsburg. This dating is consistent with the design of the shield, which can be stylistically assigned to the Rococo period.
A donation from the community head Abraham Levi and his wife Breindel
A Hebrew inscription provides further clues to the history of the Torah shield. The dedication engraved names the “community head […] Mr. Avraham, son of Ch(aim) S(egal) and his wife, Mrs. Breindel, daughter of Aharon” as the donors.
Research in the Augsburg State Archives revealed that this was the merchant Abraham Levi (ca. 1720-1804) and his wife Breindel (died after 1804) from Ichenhausen. Abraham Levi supplied troops to the Austrian army during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and became wealthy in this way. The family’s prominent social position is evidenced not least by the stately home they lived in at Oberer Markt in Ichenhausen (today: Heinrich-Sinz-Str. 28). Abraham Levi also held important offices within the Jewish community: from 1783 at the latest, he was one of the four community heads. These findings suggest that the Levi family had the Torah shield made for the synagogue in Ichenhausen.
Early research interest
Accompanying research in the scientific literature confirmed this assumption. The elaborately designed Torah shield aroused the interest of researchers at an early stage. Heinrich Frauberger (1845-1920), director of the Düsseldorf Museum of Decorative Arts, was the first to describe it in his 1903 publication “Über alte Kultusgegenstände in Synagoge und Haus”. Frauberger’s work was one of the earliest to deal with this topic from an art historical perspective. His explanations were supplemented by a drawing by Albert Hochreiter, who was teaching at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Düsseldorf at the time. As Frauberger’s work shows, the sign was owned by the Jewish community in Ichenhausen at the beginning of the 20th century. This is also confirmed by the documents of the art historian Theodor Harburger (1887-1949), who carried out an inventory of Jewish cultural assets in Bavaria in the 1920s on behalf of the Association of Bavarian Jewish Communities.
Theft and restitution
A number on the back of the Torah shield provides information about its following fate. The inventory number 9111 on the back proves that the object was temporarily in the holdings of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen (Municipal Art Collections) in Augsburg. With the help of this inventory number, it was possible to carry out more specific research in the archives. There it was discovered that the Städtische Kunstsammlungen acquired the Torah shield together with other Jewish ritual objects from the Augsburg Städtischen Leihamt (Municipal Loan Office) in December 1939. The Loan Office confiscated the valuables, which had to be forcibly handed over by Jewish owners as part of the so-called “Silver Compulsory Levy” („Silberzwangsabgabe“). The Secret State Police (Gestapo) also handed over art and religious objects that they had confiscated to the Loan Office. This shows that the Ichenhausen Torah shield – like many other ritual objects from Bavarian Swabia – had previously been looted by the National Socialists during the November pogroms. When they destroyed the interior of the Ichenhausen synagogue on November 10, 1938, they also systematically confiscated the ritual objects there.
The Torah shield remained in the possession of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen until the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. Only a few months after the end of the war, the Torah shield was returned to the newly founded Jewish Community in Augsburg in the fall of 1945 along with other ritual objects. This is documented by the object’s inventory card in the Städtische Kunstsammlungen. When the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia opened in 1985, the Torah shield from Ichenhausen was transferred to the collection and can now be admired in the permanent exhibition alongside other silver ritual objects from Augsburg. For the digital collection “The Jewish Heritage of Bavarian Swabia. Culture and everyday life of rural Jewry from 1560-1945”, it was recently documented in detail and is available online on the bavarikon platform.
Christian Porzelt, April 9, 2025
