World Famous Comics: The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art
The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art
By: Hector Feliciano Publisher: Basic Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Basic Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: April 24, 1998
Product Description: During the occupation of Paris, the Nazis confiscated nearly 100,000 artworks frommore than 200 collectors, transporting most of the spoils to Germany, where Hitlerand Goering enjoyed first pick. The Lost Museum dramatizes the pillage of the mostextensive and valuable of these collections, which belonged to five renownedJewish families: Rosenberg, Rothschild, Schloss, David-Weill and Bernheim-Jeune.After the war, many works that were found were returned to their owners. But a largenumber had disappeared, been destroyed or spirited out of Europe into theunderground art market.
Drawing on recently declassified government archives and information providedexclusively to him by the heirs of these great collections, Feliciano traces the fate ofthe artworks as they passed from the hands of top German officials to unscrupulousFrench and Swiss collaborators and dealers, then on to prestigious U.S. andEuropean auction houses. Two thousand of these stolen artworks have beenidentified by Feliciano in the Louvre and other French national museums, fomentinga scandal that has received front-page coverage throughout Europe and spurred aseries of new claims and suits by heirs. In this updated and enlarged Americanedition, he reveals the location of stolen works hanging in major U.S. museums aswell.
Illustrated with more than 70 photographs, most depicting paintings that havevanished forever, The Lost Museum is the thrilling story of one man's persistentinvestigation of a 50-year-old mystery and revelation of a shameful internationalconspiracy.
Amazon.com Review: Pillage is one of the traditional perks of warfare. But it took Adolf Hitler to systematize the decimation and despoiling of cultures, and it took Hector Feliciano seven years to track five famous art collections stolen by the Nazis. He uncovered not only Nazi schemes but also a well-oiled machine of collaborators, informants, moving companies, and neighbors, all with their fingers in the pie. The Lost Museum reads like a good detective story. Inspired by a fascination with the theft of five prominent Parisian Jewish families' art collections, it focuses on the beneficiaries of the thefts and justice for its victims. Filled with family photos of the art, some never before seen by the public, The Lost Museum tracks the pieces as they passed through the hands of German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, and unsuspecting auction houses. That the network was so deviously intricate illustrates the enormous challenge of restitution.
The relationship between Nazi higher-ups, keen to advance their own collections, and non-Jewish dealers bodes well for the Parisian art scene. A Picasso for a Titian; two classics for eleven late-19th-/early-20th-century moderns? Such wheeling and dealing reduces art to tug-of-war commodities, and Feliciano's The Lost Museum at times seems to question nothing less than what art serves, and who profits from it. If you like a good detective story and can tolerate the frustration of justice impaired by greed, then this thoroughly documented dark tale is for you.
A Big Hit in France? Go Figure... This was a big hit in France when it came out, but as an English-language book it suffers by comparison to Lynn Nicholas's magisterial 'Rape of Europa,' a vastly better book on the same topic--better written and better researched. Feliciano takes what is, in and of itself, a fascinating, profound story and cheapens it with his overheated writing style. Also, he claims to have made a lot of new documentary discoveries--the Schenker papers, documenting the shipment of looted works within France--which aren't so new, as anyone who reads Nicholas's book knows. Those documents have been publicly accessible since the late 1970s. On the whole I would not recommend this book, but would recommend the Rape of Europa instead.
a narrow perspective The title of this work should have been something like "Knaves of Art: The complicity of the Paris art market in Nazi theft of Jewish art in World War II.". As such it is well enough told in an episodic way, highlighting through description the moral and ethical positions taken by many people who surely knew what was happening. The pictures of the art galleries disposed of and the pieces of art still missing bring forth both sadness and indignation. This book is not anything like a comprehensive study of the overall Nazi plunder of art which needs to be sought elsewhere. With a more honest title this book might have deserved four stars. Fault the publisher more than the writer.
A groundbreaking study of a murky world This book, published some 9 years ago, has quickly become a classic and an indispensable study of the European (if not French) art market during WWII and of the Nazis' plundering of the artistic riches in the various countries they overran in the course of the war. Murky figures such as the French dealer Fabiani, German "experts" working for Goering, Rosenberg and, of course, Hitler, museum directors, Jewish dealers or collectors and the fate of their galleries and collections (most of them "aryanized"), the role of French government officials, of Swiss auction houses, everything is tackled in an efficient and informative book. Pictures of disappeared works whose locations are still unknown, and a rich checklist of all the sources used by the author make this book a valuable addition to the literature on WWII.
The most important art book in a decade Other books may relate how the Nazis plundered art, but this book actually led the world to do something about it. You know how you read in the paper all the time that some heir of a Holocaust victim is in a lawsuit to get back valuable paintings? It's directly a result of The Lost Museum. For fifty years, nothing happened in terms of restitution. Feliciano's groundbreaking investigative research is what led museums to examine the provenance of their artwork, caused governments to change their statutes of limitations, and urged heirs to pursue artworks they assumed had long ago vanished.
I wish I could give it more than five stars.
A fascinating story poorly told Those of you who read Lynn Nicholas' astonishing The Rape of Europa will be disappointed by this book, which is in many ways a necessary supplement to Nicholas' spine-tingling work. The record of greed, fear, coercion and barbarism visible behind the glittering surface of the Parisian art world in the 1940's is a truly moving human story. The photographs, all of now-vanished works of modern art, provide a valuable record for the historian, as many of the lost works have never been published. Unfortunately, the book is nearly ruined by a flat and pedestrian writing style. The author may have taken years to write this book, and conducted hundreds of interviews, but one would never know that. Feliciano writes as if he were a USA Today reporter - utterly superficial treatments of serious issues and no sign whatsoever of any personal investment in the story. The art and personalities of the period deserved a better historian than Mr. Feliciano, I am sorry to say. Useful for the documentary information only.
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