Berlin's Gemäldegalerie digitizes glass negatives of lost masterpieces

The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin's Gemäldegalerie has finalized the digitization process of historic glass negatives that capture artworks missing since the Second World War. In May 1945, a fire at the Friedrichshain flak bunker led to the destruction of numerous paintings from the Berlin collection. This initiative concentrated on approximately 430 large-format glass negatives found in the museum's photo archive. Now available online, these high-resolution digital images serve as a unique visual documentation of masterpieces once believed to be irretrievably lost. This digitization effort reintroduces these artworks, allowing both scholars and the public to examine these previously unseen pieces.