Overview

• During her master’s thesis, Jana Schäfer identified maritime mounting fixtures and archival photographs linking two chairs and a wastebasket to the North German steamship Bremen IV.
• Archivist Susanne Kiel discovered a wartime inventory list at the Bremen State Archive that definitively matched the furniture to the ship’s decommissioned fittings.
• Records show the pieces were removed from the Bremen IV, stored in Saxony during World War II, and then legally transferred to the Finance Department, with some distributed to wartime bomb victims.
• A spokesman says officials are now considering whether to reinstall the confirmed ship fixtures in the senator’s office or display them as a museum loan.
• The Finance Department plans a broader provenance review to identify other items in its holdings that may still be of contested origin.