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In 1945, when curator Robert Oertel returned to the Dresden gallery from captivity as a prisoner of war, he found works of art collected by the “Linz Special Commission”. Among other things, they included what Oertel called “Violinist in the Moonlight” by Carl Spitzweg. This picture was entered in the inventory of Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie in 1952 and given a gallery number. Since 1960 it has been entitled “Serenade”.

Provenance research showed that it had actually been purchased for Linz. The historical documents provide information about the circumstances surrounding its acquisition. They show that Hermann Voss acquired the painting on 9 November 1944 for the substantial sum of 70,000 reichsmarks from Bremer Werkschau, the art dealership department of Kaffee HAG. As it is not known whose property it was prior to that, it has been reported as a found object in the Lost Art database: http://www.lostart.de/EN/Fund/415546