The Guardian ran an interesting story today about German cultural losses during World War Two. At the war’s end Russian soldiers, called Trophy Brigades, removed thousands of artistic objects from Germany. They were directed by the highest Soviet military authorities to bring it back to the Soviet Union as well deserved booty.
German cultural institutions have recently itemized their missing treasures in an effort to push their claim forward for restitution.
According to Kate Connolly “The detailed inventory, which one critic said read like a "book of mourning" for lost German artefacts, contains a staggering array of treasures, most of which are believed to have been seized by foreign soldiers in 1945”.
Seemingly obvious is the argument that had the National Socialist German government not started the war in the first place, we would not be having this discussion.
So although not pro claimant in this particular case, I wonder why the Russians do not rise to the occasion of sharing the richness of the art that they brought out of Germany. What a loss to world culture. What a loss of opportunity for the world to behold works of this ilk: “sculptures by Nicola Pisano, a delicate relief by Donatello, late Gothic Madonnas and an exquisite array of Baroque works rendered in stone and wood. Other star pieces include paintings by Botticelli and Van Dyck.”
The secretiveness and denials lead me and others to wonder what else do the Russians hoard in their ‘secret depots in Russia and Poland” besides the newly publicized list of German museum trophy art.
We do know, for example, that the Russians also hold a secret lost library, stolen from the Jewish Synagogue in Rome, first by the Nazis and then, at war’s end, stuffed into the bellies of the Soviet planes waiting to transport the precious books back to the Soviet homeland. See my earlier blog ‘Hunt For Trophy Books’ or click here.
How much more went into those planes than what the Germans are now demanding back? We will never really know but rest assured that the storage depots and repositories all over Germany stored not just the fine art of the German museums being protected from the air raids.
Those repositories were also was the point of no return for the artworks stolen from thousands of Jewish families most of who met a fate unimaginable by us all. These are the artworks that the Russians should acknowledge exist in their depots and these are the objects that should be returned to the rightful owners.
