Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought- provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

Category: Art and Paintings during WW2  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Art by Hitler', 'Culture', 'WW2 Photos', 'Nazi Memorabilia', 'Collectors'.

National Gallery painting once part of Adolf Hitler's private collection
The National Gallery has found out that its painting, "Cupid Complaining To Venus" by Lucas Cranach the Elder, was once part of Adolf Hitler's private collection. The Gallery is seeking more info about the painting. The true history of the painting emerged when Dr Birgit Schwartz, researching Hitler's art collecting, identified the painting in a photo of the Fuehrer's private gallery. The photograph is in an album that is part of Hitler's former library of 1200 volumes, now in the Library of Congress in Washington. Cranach made many versions of his compositions, but they were seldom exact replicas.     [ telegraph :: 2008-03-28 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Artist sets fire to the life-size replica of a Japanese WWII torpedo
Katsushige Nakahashi set his project into flames, with the San Francisco skyline providing a backdrop as fire destroyed the replica of a Japanese torpedo. The ritual burning closed a chapter in his piece "Zero Project Kaiten", which had been on display as part of his exhibit "Katsushige Nakahashi: The Depth of Memory." He had photographed a model of a kaiten, a kamikaze submarine used during World War II to down U.S. ships. Like the kamikaze planes, a lone pilot guided the torpedo to the target and to his death. Nakahashi said his aim is to create conversations about WWII.     [ sfgate :: 2008-03-23 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Georges Seurat sketch thought to be stolen by Nazis seized from Paris art dealer
A long-lost sketch for one of the most famous French paintings of the late 19th century has been captured by police from an art dealer in Paris. The preliminary study by the pointillist artist Georges Seurat, was reported to have been looted by the Nazis. Investigators searching for looted art want to know why the painting, worth 5m euros, has turned up in the hands of a French art dealer. It belonged to the painter Paul Signac, and in 1940 his widow Berthe Signac gave it to an art dealer André Metthey for guarding after Nazi Germany invaded France. In 1945 the Signac family attempted to recover the painting, but M. Metthey said it had been taken by the Nazis.     [ independent :: 2008-02-21 ]

Russia revealed details of 46,000 artworks missing after Nazi looting
A new online database will help scholars and the art market locate cultural treasures. A site, www.lostart.ru , is in Russian with printed editions in English. 13 volumes have the 46,000 artworks from 13 museums, and another volume lists 3,541 rare books, manuscripts and letters. Also, there are almost 1.1 million archive files missing. The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. By the war's end in May 1945, much of the western part of USSR was in ruins. 423 Soviet museums were damaged by the Nazis. The Nazis had art brigades to systematically loot museums and ship the works to Nazi Germany.     [ bloomberg :: 2008-02-07 ]

Rescuing Nazi-looted art: Monuments Men saved countless treasures
The looting by Nazis was possibly the great pillage in history, as much a part of Nazi war planning as was military conquest. A small band (Monuments Men) of American men and women was tasked to find looted art. But they weren't always successful. Documentary "The Rape of Europa" shows how villagers hijacked a train carrying art that Herman Goering had attempted to collect. But the monuments men came upon a castle full of property stolen from the Rothchilds, and discovered Adolf Hitler's art hoard in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps. "If you like extraordinary treasure hunts... There's no way you can't be interested in this story," said author Robert Edsel.     [ cbsnews :: 2008-01-28 :: Nazi gold & Hidden WWII treasures ]

Charles Wheeler follows the trail of World War II's looted art - Podcast
With the assistance of Anne Webber, from the Commission for Looted Art, Charles Wheeler traces the theft by the Nazis of millions of paintings, book and tapestries - and the removal of that same treasure to Russia by Stalin's trophy brigades at the end of the war. Many of these works are still thought hidden inside secret repositories - but as he finds out in Moscow and St Petersburg, a fierce and hysterical defence of the past and an anti-German rhetoric seldom heard these days, still keeps the truth from being told. Will these valuable items remain as Europe's last prisoners of war.     [ bbc :: 2008-01-19 ]

With Nazi Germany in ruins, the Red Army seized millions art objects
From 1933 Nazi Germany systematically looted millions of works of art from individuals and the nations. The largest mass theft in history. But at the end of WWII, with Third Reich in ruins, expert teams from the Red Army seized two and a half million art objects, 12 million books and miles of archives. Trophies of war but the Red Army, in its haste to seize so much, also brought back thousands of works of art belonging to the victims of Nazism. All of it was locked away in secrecy for 50 years, until two Soviet researchers disclosed all. [Listen to BBC podcast]     [ bbc :: 2008-01-11 ]

U.S. judgment on forced Nazi era sales help in recovery of artworks
A recent U.S. court ruling is giving a boost to the attempts of those trying reclaim lost Jewish-owned heirlooms that were forcibly sold in Nazi Germany. U.S. District Court judge Mary Lisi ordered a German baroness to hand over the painting as it belongs to the estate of Jewish-Canadian art dealer Max Stern who was pressured to auction it off before he fled Third Reich in the late 1930s. The decision is the first in U.S. history to liken the forced sale of Jewish-owned art in Nazi Germany to theft. "A verdict ... is incredibly important ... for all individuals who are in the process of understanding what they lost to the Nazis in the war," said Clarence Epstein.     [ canoe :: 2008-01-06 ]

Museum to display art looted during World War II
In a landmark exhibition, over 50 paintings stolen from France by the Nazis during World War II will go on display at the Israel Museum, in a campaign to trace the works' owners. The exhibition, by the French Foreign Affairs and Culture and Communications Ministries, has the work of major artists. Approximately 60,000 pieces of art taken from France and brought to Nazi Germany, either looted or sold, were repatriated to France after the war. Of these, 2,000 objects that could not be restituted due to a lack of clear ownership history were handed over to French national museums and are stored or displayed in museums across France.     [ jpost :: 2007-12-31 ]

Nazi-looted art collection fetches 1.8 million dollars
The last part of a collection of art once owned by Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker but looted by the Nazis, brought in 1.8 million dollars. He was a well known art dealer who died in an accident while fleeing the Nazis in 1940. At the time he owned 1,100 art works, listed in a notebook. But during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, his collection was looted. After World War II, 300 works were brought back to the Netherlands and handed over to the state. In 2005, after a long legal battle, Goudstikker's daughter-in-law Marei von Saher reclaimed 202 works from the Dutch state, worth 30-40 million. Some of those were sold.     [ afp :: 2007-11-15 ]

Court lets Elizabeth Taylor keep Van Gogh - Seized by the Nazis?
The US Supreme Court has preserved the decision to let Elizabeth Taylor keep a Van Gogh painting "The View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy" that may have been seized by the Nazis in World War II. An appeal was made by descendants of the late Margarete Mauthner who said she was forced to sell it before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. The painting may be among the 600,000 works of art that belonged to Jews and wound up in Nazi hands 1933-1945.     [ bbc :: 2007-10-31 ]

Artists Bring Light Into Dark of Former World War II Bunker
While most of Bonn's residents have forgotten the WWII bunker intended to protect the population, a group of 10 artists has turned it into an art exposition space. "We had World War II and we had the Nazi Regime which ended in a bunker. We wanted to use a space ... which provides a very special atmosphere. I really went into the Nazi story because this bunker, although it was changed and maintained, is really a World War II bunker," said Gabriele Lutterbeck. Her series of blue sketches are a reaction to the Lebensborn Project - a Nazi SS program for women of "pure blood" bear children who fitted the Nazi's preferred racial profile.     [ dw-world :: 2007-10-15 :: Bunkers - Underground military fortifications ]

Russia to return looted medieval stained glass windows to Germany
Russia will return to Germany the last 6 of 117 stained glass window panels taken by the Red Army in 1945 from the church of Marienkirche in Frankfurt an der Oder. The decision to return the windows, held in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, was made in a Cabinet session. In 2002, Russia returned 111 of the 117 stained glass windows under a program on the exchange of looted art. After the draft federal law specifying the procedure of exchange is approved by the State Duma, the remaining windows will be returned to the church in eastern Germany. Russia has claimed a number of German works of art as compensation for the damage the Soviet Union suffered.     [ rian :: 2007-10-06 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Site lists stolen artworks without owner at former Bezalel National Museum
The Israel Museum, which houses hundreds works that either have no record of prior ownership or came from institutions that did not survive the war, has launched an online catalogue of artworks and Judaica looted during the Second World War. The property was originally given to the Bezalel National Museum, the Israel Museum's predecessor. The on-line catalogue, entitled World War II Provenance Research On-line, is accessible on the Museum's Web site http://www.imj.org.il/ and provides instructions for requesting property restitution.     [ jpost :: 2007-08-27 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

German museums worried about art looted by the Soviets
Germany has been trying for years to repatriate art looted by the Soviets. Its museums are now worried that a new directive from Russia's culture ministry will make it tougher to track down the priceless works, some 180000 works. The Hague Convention requires art treasures seized by occupying forces to be returned. In 1990, Germany and the Soviet Union committed themselves to returning art objects that had been looted during the war. But just a few years later, Russia declared that artworks taken from Germany were Russian property. "The Russian government is rewriting inventories because it wants to incorporate these items permanently in its own collections."     [ dw-world :: 2007-08-17 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Stolen by Stalin - Soviet and Allied art looting during World War II
A new chapter is about to begin in the history of art looting during World War II. Up until now, focus has been on the Nazis' pitiless theft of art treasures. Less well-known is that, at the close of the war, Germany's art treasures were plundered just as ruthlessly and systematically. On the part of the western allies, this consisted of individual thievery, such as the American army lieutenant who stole $200 million worth of treasures. On the part of the Soviet Union art plunder was conducted as a matter of state policy, and viewed as the spoils of war. 180,000 items were lost, chiefly to the Soviet Union, and now Germany has at last begun to ask for the return of that art.     [ commentarymagazine :: 2007-08-15 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Germany Posts List of Looted Nazi Art, Antique on net
A Web page run by Germany's Finance Ministry attempts to find the owners of looted Nazi art by photos and descriptions of paintings and other pieces of art confiscated during the Third Reich. A catalog of 100 art objects looted by the Nazis was posted online by the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues (BADV). The agency was formed to handle claims for looted art, antique furniture, the restitution of real estate and property seized by the Nazis. Although most legal claims were settled in the post-war years in the West Germany, the origins of the art unearthed in the eastern states has only begun being documented.     [ dw-world :: 2007-08-02 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

A Brush with Destiny exhibition featuring work by artists in uniform
"A Brush with Destiny" art show featuring work by artists who served in uniform is at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum - the Pooler museum. The exhibit features 23 pieces in a variety of media, depicting a wide range of events and World War II experiences. 3 of the featured artists served in the 8th Air Force and were POWs in Nazi Germany. 17 of the artists are WW2 veterans, and 15 were members of the Eighth Air Force. Four served in the 303rd Bomb Group stationed at Molesworth, England. An acrylic on canvas titled "The Witch and Friend" by nose-gunner J.C. Perryman showing the B-24 Liberator Witchcraft with a fighter escort.     [ savannahnow :: 2007-05-29 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Documentary details Third Reich art plundering
Hermann Goering stacked his mansion with stolen art to show off his importance. Adolf Hitler had no such art-adorned manse, but would carry a few drawings by his favorite artists and put them up at headquarters. The contrast between the two as shown in The Rape of Europa, a documentary about the looting of the art by the Nazis during their reign of terror. It's inspired by the 1994 book "The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War" by historian Lynn H. Nicholas. The Nazis stole 20% of all the known artworks in Europe. "I think that a lot of it was ideological. But greed is totally entwined with that," said Richard Berge.     [ telegram :: 2007-05-11 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

His mission: to save art looted by Nazis - Here's how he did it
Bernard Taper dreamed about "Portrait of a Young Man" by Raphael - the most prized painting looted by the Nazis that has never been found. He spent 2 years searching for the Raphael in post-WWII Germany as an art-intelligence officer with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the U.S. military. He tracked down many artworks 1946-1947, including objects German peasants had looted from train carrying booty pilfered by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring. A connoisseur of luxury, he had amassed thousands of paintings and others works during his tenure as the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany.     [ sfgate :: 2007-05-05 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Thousands of Nazi-Looted Works held by Museums
Museums are hoarding thousands of artworks seized by the Nazis and doing too little, especially in Germany, to trace the prewar owners or their heirs, the authors of a handbook on art restitution say. During Adolf Hitler's 12-year rule, 650,000 works were plundered in the biggest art heist ever. Before World War II, Jewish art lovers were behind some of the greatest private collections. Hitler appointed a commission to hunt down old masters for a planned museum in his home town of Linz, while Hermann Goering scoured Europe to expand the private collection he kept at his country estate. The Gestapo ransacked places for "degenerate" modern artworks.     [ bloomberg :: 2007-04-28 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Looted by the Nazis and Allied: National Gallery may lose paintings
The National Gallery could be forced to surrender one of its most popular paintings after claims that it was looted by the Nazis and then grabbed by Patricia Lochridge Hartwell, a war correspondent for Women's Home Companion magazine in 1945. Miss Hartwell, who was with the Screaming Eagles in Third Reich after the Omaha Beach landing, is believed to have taken the painting when she was given control of Hitler's residence at Berchtesgaden for a day by a colonel. She was told that she could help herself from a warehouse which contained art plundered by Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and a chief member of the Nazi party.     [ timesonline :: 2007-03-29 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Computer archive used to find stolen art
The Art Loss Register is a small private company whose computer archive lists 180,000 items ranging from sculpture and silver to textiles, books, stamps and vehicles - and many of the great art works stolen or missing around the world. In 2002, an art dealer's routine search of the archive for a 1922 Picasso, "Woman in White," led to the discovery that it had been looted by the Nazi occupiers of Paris. The register is also a source for those seeking to recover art confiscated by the Nazis. "We're the only comprehensive searching service in the world for stolen art," said Julian Radcliffe.     [ usatoday :: 2007-03-07 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Looted by Nazis, once owned by Hermann Göring, now on sale
A collection of paintings once owned by the Nazi leader Hermann Göring is to go on auction, just a year after it was returned to the heirs of its original owner. The sale of around 170 paintings is the latest case of art looted by the Nazis being returned to its original owners and quickly being put up for sale. The collection of Jacques Goudstikker will go on sale in the spring at Christie's. The works, including a notable landscape by Salomon van Ruysdael, are expected to raise $22m-$35m.     [ guardian :: 2007-02-24 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

The task of painting Britain while bombs by luftwaffe fell
Malvina Cheek, part of artist group Recoding Britain, was given the task of painting Britain in case the Nazis invaded, to ensure the heritage preservation. They are to be reunited at the Imperial War Museum, where their works will be on display. "We were asked to go to various places and paint them. We were allowed to paint any buildings we chose to paint. You couldn't be sure what would be bombed next so we were free to paint anything at all." ... "The most dramatic thing about the German invasion was the atmosphere, it was really black. No-one had any hope. But suddenly, Churchill came in and gave this marvellous speech -it changed the whole atmosphere."     [ hamhigh :: 2007-02-10 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

New Handbook Helps Descendents Reclaim Nazi Loot
The Nazis were masters at stealing art from collectors and dealers. Recently many works have been returned, but the path can be tricky. And an important new contribution to that project was revealed in Berlin: a book called "Nazi Looted Art: A Handbook to Art Restitution Worldwide." Over 500 pages long, the tome is filled with case studies of valuable artworks either being taken from their owners by the Nazis, or sold at below-market prices. "There have already been hundreds of pictures returned in recent years. But there are likely hundreds more in the basements of museums in Germany, Austria, the US and elsewhere."     [ spiegel :: 2007-02-03 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

UK gallery to return looted Artwork looted by the Nazis
The 3 drawings from the 17th and 18th Centuries were part of a bequest to the Courtauld Institute of Art. An adjudication panel (formed to consider claims over disputed art held in British collections) accepted a claim by the heirs of Dr Arthur Feldmann that the drawings he owned were seized by the Gestapo. Two drawings will be returned, while the family will let the third stay on display at the Courtauld. "It is of the utmost importance that questions of ownership arising from the terrible events of the Second World War are resolved."     [ bbc :: 2007-01-25 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Nazi painting in London's Maritime Museum looted by British
A painting in the National Maritime Museum in London was looted by British troops from the Mürwik Naval Academy, in Nazi Germany, and later presented to the Greenwich museum. Mürwik became the temporary seat of the German government, following Adolf Hitler's suicide. Hitler shot himself on 30 April, and in his will he appointed Fleet Admiral Karl Dönitz as president. Dönitz moved to Mürwik. Around one week later, in early May, Mürwik was occupied by British troops. Initially Dönitz's rule was tolerated by the British forces, but on 23 May they arrested him, turning the head of state into a PoW, and ending the Third Reich.     [ theartnewspaper :: 2007-01-04 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Court Refuses to Return Seized Art to heirs of Nazi Doctor
The Leipzig Court said there were no grounds for the restitution of art which has been confiscated by Soviets after World War 2 because the doctor had been a promoter of Adolf Hitler's ideology. "The aim of this function was to spread national socialist ideology." Hundreds of oil paintings were confiscated from Gustav Schuster, who was Director of the Chemitz Women's Clinic, during the WWII. The artworks are worth at least 500,000 euros. The decision, had it have been different, could have opened the doors to thousands of other claims about goods confiscated 1945-1949 by the Soviet forces.     [ dw-world :: 2006-12-15 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Nazi-era looted art but from whom? Exhibit seeks rightful owners
Looted, but from whom? This is the theme of a joint exhibition by the Dutch state and the JHM of art plundered by the Nazis during World War II. "It would be great if before then end of the show we could place an extra card next to some of the objects that says: now claimed." During World War II, tens of thousands of art works ended up in Nazi Germany through looting, confiscation or because the owners were forced to sell. After 1945 some 4,700 works of Dutch provenance found there were returned to the Netherlands and put in the custody of the Dutch state.     [ nationmultimedia :: 2006-12-01 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Looted art or not? British Communist leader nets £20 million
A leading British communist is £20 million richer after the sale of an important painting given to her under Germany's Nazi restitution laws. Anita Halpin, chairman of the Communist Party of Britain, was given Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1913 Berliner Strassenszene (Berlin street scene) by the Berlin state senate. The move followed two years of secret negotiations after claims that it was stolen from her grandparents by the Gestapo in 1936. Some art professionals have claimed that the painting may not have been Nazi-looted art. They say it was sold willingly by the Hess family to an Frankfurt collector Carl Hagemann.     [ telegraph :: 2006-11-13 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Artworks Looted by Nazis Contribute to Record-Breaking Auction
It was a night of record-breaking prices, restituted Nazi-looted artworks and controversial removals at Christie's fall sale. Generating a total of $491.5 million, the auction was dominated by four Nazi-looted works by Gustav Klimt restored to their rightful heirs that raked in nearly $200 million, and one restituted Ernst Ludwig Kirchner which sold for almost double the asking price. Maria Altmann, the niece of the Austrian couple Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer who lost the Klimts to the Nazis in World War 2, raised a total of $192.7 million from the sale of the four paintings, a staggering sum.     [ dw-world :: 2006-11-10 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

How Hard Are They Looking To Find Nazi-Looted Art?
U.S. Museum Group defend efforts to find Nazi-Looted Art. In the years after World War II, part of the massive art treasure that Nazi looters stripped from museums and private collections filtered through to the U.S. The question is: How many pieces of that stolen art are still here? Edward H. Able Jr. says: "We can state that the general answer is not many - probably on the order of scores rather than hundreds or thousands in the entire U.S." --- Testimony follows a conference, which found 140,000 objects that "need provenance research," far more than the 18,000 objects posted on the Nazi-Era Provenance website.     [ courant :: 2006-07-31 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

U.S. museums lag in Nazi research of looted art
Many American art museums missed a deadline to report whether their collections contain works that might have been stolen during the World War Two according to a survey. 118 out of 332 museums, or 35%, have not reported on their progress. 33% provided incomplete information. Conference the museums to research items that were created before 1946 and acquired by the museum after 1932, that underwent a change of ownership between 1932 and 1946, and that were thought to have been in continental Europe between those dates.     [ forward :: 2006-07-26 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Exhibit of Adolf Hitler's favourite sculpture shocks Germans
Enormous statues that Adolf Hitler once adored are to be put on display in Germany for the first time since World War II. The monolithic statues by sculptor Arno Breker are part of the artist's works at a museum in Schwerin. The artist never denied that he was a frequent guest of Hitler, having later said: "Hitler liked to surround himself with artists since he fancied himself an artist as well." "Hitler took me aback during the tour [of Paris] by telling me straight out that he had come close to sending me to a concentration camp in 1934 because of anti-Nazi sentiments, but that he had decided to be magnanimous in the interests of Germanic art."     [ taipeitimes :: 2006-07-15 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Nazi ghosts haunting - Germany's tangled history in a painting
Painting, Tante Marianne, is expected to reach £2 million in auction, partially because it encapsulates Germany's tangled history. Gerhard Richter painted his aunt in 1965, knowing that she had died terribly but without being aware of the details. He learned she was locked up in a psychiatric ward, forcibly sterilised and by 1945 starved to death by Nazi doctors, and -- His father-in-law was the SS doctor responsible for implementing the nazi euthanasia programme. Painter had been in Dresden when it was bombed by the Allies in 1945 and war themes had always been part of his repertoire: a picture of Hitler, of Stuka bombers, of his uncle in uniform.     [ timesonline :: 2006-06-18 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Nazi loot web site launches - displaying art stolen by the Nazis
An Internet site displaying art stolen by the Nazis was launched, aimed at reuniting some 100,000 stolen works with their owners. The Swift-Find Looted Art Project displays a vast database of art works that can be consulted free of charge by auction houses and museums. The site already carries details of 25,000 stolen paintings, sculptures and precious objects stolen by the Nazis and still not returned to their owners. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allies sent most of the stolen goods back to their countries of origin. Many unclaimed items were handed to museums.     [ cbc :: 2006-06-10 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Third Reich era Aryan statues fuel controversy in Berlin
Article no longer available from the original source.
Nazi-era statues depicting muscular, Aryan supermen at a stadium in Berlin, where the World Cup final will be played, fuelled a bitter controversy less than two weeks before the games open. Lea Rosh said the six-metre-high stone statues had "to at least be covered up. Breker was a big Nazi - it's bad enough that the sculptures are on any sort of public display." The sculptures by Third Reich artists, including Arno Breker, are still on display at the Olympic Stadium used by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games. Writer Ralph Giordano said merely covering up the Nazi statues was not enough: "They should be removed and destroyed."     [ expatica :: 2006-05-31 :: Art and Paintings during WW2 ]

Rarely-seen art from Auschwitz on show - incl. portraits of Hitler
Paintings made by concentration camp prisoners are being shown for the first time in the UK on Tyneside. The hidden wall murals were created by artists imprisoned in the Auschwitz camp in Poland. The paintings, which range from pictures of a ballerina to stencil portraits of Hitler and Mussolini, are kept in areas of the camp which are not open to the public, and have been seen by few people. "People under extreme circumstances will often turn to popular culture and, as an art form, this deserves wider recognition and discussion."     [ icnetwork :: 2006-05-16 :: Auschwitz Birkenau ]

Art treasures and the Gestapo - The casket and the Nazis
For 25 years, this exquisitely enamelled medieval casket had been on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The casket was designed to hold the relics of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury famously murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. Until one day Metropolitan police from the art and antiques squad arrived at the V&A Museum and seized it. This police action was prompted by a claim submitted by an aristocratic Polish family, the Czartoryskis, to the British Spoliation Advisory Panel, which is an independent body set up to help resolve cases involving cultural property lost - stolen or seized - during the Nazi era and later acquired by British museums.     [ independent :: 2006-04-06 ]

Austria: 6,292 artworks looted by Nazis may be returned to owners
An Austrian advisory panel handling claims for paintings, sculptures and other items looted by the Nazis during the Second World War has recommended that 6,292 artworks be returned to their original owners, the culture minister said. Only about a dozen of the requests received through March 31 have been rejected. A website would be set up by the end of the year to help owners track down works they claim were confiscated by the Nazis. Austria's first postwar government also effectively confiscated hundreds of paintings from Jewish owners and their heirs, using a 1923 law preventing the export of artworks.     [ bbc :: 2006-04-06 :: Austria: WWII Nazi History ]

FBI Returns German Paintings US troops Stole in WWII
They were casualties of war-three nineteenth-century oil paintings that went missing from a German air-raid shelter during the waning days of WWII. September 19, 1945: The Pirmasens Museum reports that "about 50 paintings which had been stored in the air-raid shelter at Husterhoh School during the war have been lost during the arrival of the American troops on March 22, 1945." The works were later smuggled to the U.S. by unknown individuals.     [ nyjtimes :: 2006-03-15 ]

Dutch return 267 artworks stolen by Nazis
The Dutch cabinet has shocked museum directors by agreeing to hand over a multi-million-pound art collection stolen by the Nazis in 1940 to the family of its original owners. Some 267 paintings will be returned to the family of the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. They include works by the Dutch masters Rembrandt, Steen, Van Goyen, Ruysdael and Van Dyck. Goudstikker was the biggest art dealer in the Netherlands. He fled with his wife and son at the start of the WW2, leaving behind an estimated 1,300 works. About 800 were seized by Field Marshal Hermann Goering and 300 were returned to the government after the war.     [ telegraph :: 2006-02-07 :: Holland during World War II ]

Austria to return looted art worth at least $150 million to heir
Maria Altmann was still in bed when she got the news she's waited to hear for 7 long years: Five precious Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis will likely be returned to her. The Klimt paintings have been estimated to be worth at least $150 million and are considered national treasures by Austria, which considers them part of its national heritage. Their return would represent the costliest concession since Austria began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis. One of the disputed paintings - the oil and gold-encrusted portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" - is priceless.     [ ap :: 2006-01-17 ]

The Mystery of Hitler's Lost Art Collection
Art experts have long been fascinated with the story of Adolf Hitler's dream of creating a huge museum in the Austrian city of Linz. Book "The Brown House of Art" by historian Hanns Christian Löhr looks at where the Nazi leader's collection came from - and where it went.     [ Deutsche Welle :: 2005-08-26 :: Adolf Hitler: Dictator, Fuhrer, Biography ]

Red Army, not the Nazis, destroyed tsar's Amber Room
The Amber Room, the fabulous tsarist chamber looted from Russia by the Nazis during the WW2 and which subsequently disappeared, was destroyed by the Red Army, a book has revealed. Previously unseen documents, suppressed for decades by Moscow, show that in 1945 Russian soldiers burned down the hall where the treasure was stored in a castle in Germany founded by the Teutonic knights. Historians have always hoped that the "eighth wonder of the world" had escaped damage and was safely hidden, waiting to be found. The jewel encrusted room was created for Peter the Great in 1717 and was considered one of the world's greatest art treasures.     [ telegraph :: 2004-05-23 ]

See also

'Art by Hitler'

'Culture'

'WW2 Photos'

'Nazi Memorabilia'

'Collectors'.

What's new - recent & interesting categories.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2008. All rights reserved.