The Lost Masters: WW II and the Looting of Europe's Treasurehouses - Hardcover

This chronicle of the Nazi plunder of Europe's art treasuresAand the subsequent fate of those treasures in the hands of the victorious AlliesAis a vast, impressive catalogue of the greed, anger and heroism inspired by those works. Harclerode (Arnhem: A Tragedy of Errors) and Pittaway (a BBC journalist) do not shrink from the complexity of their subject. With an almost overwhelming attention to detail, they trace the elusive web of collaborators, opportunists and dealers who exploited the Third Reich's lust for prestigious trophies. Gripping vignettes and revelatory anecdotes illuminate the fates of specific works of art, including the outstanding story of four paratroopers who contrived to rescue the largest cache of stolen art sequestered by the Nazis; the ironic tale of how Reichsmarschall Hermann G?ring, perpetrator of countless war crimes, discovered that he had been the victim of a Vermeer forger; and the disturbing fact that the Nazis considered artists like Picasso and Van Gogh to be "degenerate," even as the German army was laying waste to a continent. According to Harclerode and Pittaway's analysis, hope for the recovery of the tens of thousands of plundered art treasures depends primarily on their current possessors' generosity and candor, qualities for which this book constitutes a persuasive plea. But they concede that the victims' quest for full restitution may remain unfulfilled. A thorough assessment of the pernicious actions of the Nazis, this book makes an important contribution to the effort to reverse the Third Reich's criminal legacy. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Writer/historian Harclerode and investigative journalist Pittaway have written an account of various aspects of the illegal seizure and sale of artworks from Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Although then book as a whole is not a fluid narrative treatment, the individual chapters provide important detail about the restitution efforts and difficulties of surviving owners, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The authors summarize the activities of the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg), the Nazi agency responsible for appropriating these artworks, and the efforts of the Allies' MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives) organization to recapture and redistribute them to their rightful owners. Also included are chapters dealing with the Russian seizure of German treasures, the pilfering of artwork by U.S. Army personnel, the culpability of neutrals such as Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal, and the recent Egon Schiele case involving the Museum of Modern Art. Some of this is already covered in Hector Feliciano's Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art (Basic Bks., 1998) and by Lynn Nicholas in her superb The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (LJ 5/1/94). Recommended for public libraries, and academic art libraries.DJames Tasato Mellone, Queens Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.