A German foundation that tracks down cultural assets stolen by the Nazis is starting a new project – investigating items taken in the post-war Soviet occupation zone – and in communist East Germany.

The German Lost Art Foundation says two pilot projects will be launched – with the help of researchers at the Dresden University of Technology and the agency overseeing the former East German Stasi secret police records.

There’ll be a two-year project focussing on the Stasi’s clandestine 1962 operation Aktion Licht – where safes, safety deposit boxes, vaults and cellars locked since the end of the Second World War – were opened and their contents taken.

A second project seeks to inventory Stasi documents on expropriations of art and cultural property – and produce a searchable electronic catalogue.