The estate of gallery-owner Ferdinand Möller (1882–1956) contains extensive material on the development of the art trade in the first half of the 20th century. As from 1917 in Breslau, later in Berlin and Potsdam, and finally in Cologne from 1951–1956, Möller was an important patron of the BRÜCKE artists and of modern art in Germany. Due to his far-reaching contacts with collectors and art dealers at home and abroad, after 1937 he was involved in the NS-defined “valuation” of the artworks that had been confiscated from museums and public collections in Germany as “degenerate”.

As from 2006, experts have been studying and registering the archive in order to identify artworks about which the estate of almost 40 years of gallery activity provides information, and to help establish the fate of these works in connection with Ferdinand Möller. The purpose is to make an essential contribution to research into their provenance with a view to implementing the declaration of the Washington Conference dating from 1998.
After completion of the research project, the results of the appraisal will be publicised using the database system MuseumPlus. Unfortunately, the customary free access to the collection for scholars will be impossible until then.

Financed as an initiative by the Ferdinand Möller Foundation, since 2008 the extensive scholarly appraisal of the Ferdinand Möller Archive is one of the first projects to receive long-term financial support from the Office for Provenance Research at the Institute for Museum Research belonging to the State Museums of Berlin – Foundation Prussian Cultural Heritage.