The lost museum : the Nazi conspiracy to steal the world's greatest works of art

Summary: Between 1939 and 1944, as the Nazis overran Europe, they were also quietly conducting another type of pillage. The Lost Museum tells the story of the Jewish art collectors and gallery owners in France who were stripped of rare works by artists such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Cezanne, and Picasso. Week after week, thousands of crates of this art streamed from Paris into Germany, many stamped with a swastika and the words "Property of the Third Reich.".

Item details

ISBN: 0465041949
ISBN: 9780465041947
ISBN: 0465041914 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9780465041916 (pbk.)
Physical Description: print
ix, 278 p. : ill ; 25 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : BasicBooks, c1997.

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-265) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

pt. 1. A certain love of art. Vermeer's Astronomer, or, Hitler's blind spot -- The Kümmel Report, or, The Nazis' reply to Napoleon -- Hermann Goering, "friend of the arts" -- pt. 2. Anatomy of a pillage. The exemplary looting of the Rothschild Collections -- The Paul Rosenberg Gallery : modern and "degenerate" art for sale -- The Bernheim-Jeune Collection, or, The burning of The Jas de Bouffan -- David David-Weill, or, The patron stripped bare -- The Schloss Collection, or, Dutch painters for Hitler -- pt. 3. Art for sale. Visitors to the Jeu de Paume -- Business as usual : the Paris art market during the war -- Switzerland : the importance of being neutral -- pt. 4. Revenants. The found and the lost -- A short Swiss epilogue : purchased skeletons in the Kunstkammern -- Something new on the eastern front -- The purgatory of the MNRs -- Appendix A. The Schenker papers -- Appendix B. An interview with Alain Vernay.