The Nazi Treasure Trove

[godotwaits]

Have only glimpsed some the story here. It seems like it will unravel slowly. Munich, an apartment loaded with modern art worth 1B! Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Kandinsky and more. Yikes. All confiscated by the Nazi regime and remanded for being too degenerate. And hidden for 70-80 years!
Kind of an explosive story.

I can't wait to see some kind of catalogue of the findings. There's been a few 'teasers' on the internet. German officials have known about this 'find' for two years and have played it close to the vest. Trying to determine proper ownership. Museums of the world must be slathering at the mouth to at last exhibit these things.

Also note, if the above wasn't amazing above, George Clooney has a movie "The Monuments Men" which was slated for opening middle of Dec this year and had to be postponed due to "Special Effects" delay, and is now slated for early 2014 opening. I think Sony grabbed that property. Great cast by the way.

"On Point Radio" NPR is doing a hour on this topic today and I'm taking time out of my day to listen to this. "The plot doth thicken."

Thought I'd just throw this hambone out for your consideration. Something to knaw on. I suspect you guys will have fun with it. And also, some of you whiz kids can draw up the examples that are currently extent.

[Marshall]

What I have read/heard about is truly bizarre. This guy is a non-person. He has never had a job. Never had health insurance. He has never paid taxes. He has a passport. That's about it. He's live his life selling off works from this "collection."

[theevan]

I look forward to some knawing.

[godotwaits]

Yeah. The dudes father was the Nazi caretaker of the, shall we call it motherlode, and the son, I guess inherited it. He's probably been selling this stuff for a living, or god knows what. That's really conjecture on my part, at the moment. The way the Germans got wind of it was they intercepted this guy at the border of Switzerland and discovered he had $9000 Euros in his pocket ad initially they thought maybe they had a tax evasion case on their hands. The guy is currently missing, I think. But German officials executed a search warrant on his apartment and Lo and Behold, the joint was thoroughly stuffed with a load of nicely preserved artwork.

I know. I know. It's sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel or something.

Just do a lookup for OnpointRadio.com and see todays schedule for 11am. You might have a local that carries it.

[jdd2]

An interesting tale, the telling of which may never be teased out without a lot of gray, fuzziness, what if's, and so on.

[jdd2]

And, it was recovered, and not lost/destroyed.

[godotwaits]

If nothing else we got the makings of one hell of an innerestin' coffee table book. I'd really like to see what the cat dragged in.

Evidently the works were miraculously preserved.

[jdd2]

Sometimes neglect is the best path to preservation.

[godotwaits]

benign neglect, let's hope...

it'd be a nightmare if he was also a keeper of cats...


sorry sek

[Deleted]

Nov 8, 2013 6:57:59 GMT -5 godotwaits said:

Yeah. The dudes father was the Nazi caretaker of the, shall we call it motherlode, and the son, I guess inherited it. He's probably been selling this stuff for a living, or god knows what. That's really conjecture on my part, at the moment. The way the Germans got wind of it was they intercepted this guy at the border of Switzerland and discovered he had $9000 Euros in his pocket ad initially they thought maybe they had a tax evasion case on their hands. The guy is currently missing, I think. But German officials executed a search warrant on his apartment and Lo and Behold, the joint was thoroughly stuffed with a load of nicely preserved artwork.

I know. I know. It's sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel or something.

Just do a lookup for OnpointRadio.com and see todays schedule for 11am. You might have a local that carries it.

The really odd thing was that he was also Jewish. He must have been so good at his job that the Nazi's were willing to overlook that fact.

[TKennedy]

I'm reading "Monuments Men". It was a little dry and I bogged down about a third of the way through. I'll have to go find it and finish it before the movie.

[patrick]

The NY Times has a slightly different story.

They were thought to have been found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, 79 or 80, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was stripped of two museum posts by the Nazis after it was determined that he had a Jewish grandparent. Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Gurlitt later became one of the few art dealers selected by Joseph Goebbels to sell to buyers abroad the Modernist works banned by the Nazis.

[Supertramp78]

I'm still amazed at the amount of "art" that survives, sometimes for thousands of years. I don't quote art to demean it, I think art holds a special place in our psyche or so much of it would be gone.
Whenever I go to a museum and I see a painting that is hundreds of years old I'm astounded we still have it as it wasn't lost due to neglect over the years. The Mona Lisa is 500 years old. There was a figurine at an exhibition of Egyptian art that dated back three to four thousand years and we can still see them. I find that amazing.

[RickW]

There is some discussion that he's not the only one, that there are other non-pesons ot there with similar troves, swapping them between collectors. Very interesting.