The Lost Masters: Looting of Europe's Treasurehouses

by PeterHarclerode (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $3.26

  Adolf Hitler was not content with merely the seizure of Europe's territory but desired its treasure as well. Fired by his ambition to establish the world's finest museums and galleries in his former home town in Austria, he systematically looted Europe's treasure houses to accumulate a hoard of important and priceless art collections. Some of the prizes seized by special Nazi loot organizations and battalions came from museums and galleries; others were from private collections of prominent and wealthy families, many of whose members later perished in German concentration camps. Much loot was recovered at the war's end, but vast quantities disappeared once again with the arrival in Germany of Josef Stalin's Red Army, which indulged in wholesale pillage while the other Allies picked over the ruins of the Third Reich for their own enrichment. To this day, any of those who suffered the loss of their collections remain impoverished and empty-handed. This work is an account of the looting of Europe and the history of the attempts by those who lost so much to reclaim their art heritage in the face of indifference from governments and the international art trade, and which has since continued to make huge profits from looted works of art, which frustrating attempts by the rightful owners to seek restitution. It also contains a tale of how courage probably saved the world's most enigmatic smile from destruction.