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Title: The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art
ISBN: 0465041949
Author:
Hector Feliciano
Publicate Date: 1997-05-12
Publish: 1997-05-12
List Price: $27.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $17.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.88
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A Big Hit in France? Go Figure...
This was a big hit in France when it came out, but as an English-language book it suffers by comparison to Lynn Nicholas's magisterial 'Rape of Europa,' a vastly better book on the same topic--better written and better researched. Feliciano takes what is, in and of itself, a fascinating, profound story and cheapens it with his overheated writing style. Also, he claims to have made a lot of new documentary discoveries--the Schenker papers, documenting the shipment of looted works within France--which aren't so new, as anyone who reads Nicholas's book knows. Those documents have been publicly accessible since the late 1970s. On the whole I would not recommend this book, but would recommend the Rape of Europa instead.
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2: a narrow perspective
The title of this work should have been something like "Knaves of Art: The complicity of the Paris art market in Nazi theft of Jewish art in World War II.". As such it is well enough told in an episodic way, highlighting through description the moral and ethical positions taken by many people who surely knew what was happening. The pictures of the art galleries disposed of and the pieces of art still missing bring forth both sadness and indignation. This book is not anything like a comprehensive study of the overall Nazi plunder of art which needs to be sought elsewhere. With a more honest title this book might have deserved four stars. Fault the publisher more than the writer.
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3: A groundbreaking study of a murky world
This book, published some 9 years ago, has quickly become a classic and an indispensable study of the European (if not French) art market during WWII and of the Nazis' plundering of the artistic riches in the various countries they overran in the course of the war. Murky figures such as the French dealer Fabiani, German "experts" working for Goering, Rosenberg and, of course, Hitler, museum directors, Jewish dealers or collectors and the fate of their galleries and collections (most of them "aryanized"), the role of French government officials, of Swiss auction houses, everything is tackled in an efficient and informative book. Pictures of disappeared works whose locations are still unknown, and a rich checklist of all the sources used by the author make this book a valuable addition to the literature on WWII.
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4: The most important art book in a decade
Other books may relate how the Nazis plundered art, but this book actually led the world to do something about it. You know how you read in the paper all the time that some heir of a Holocaust victim is in a lawsuit to get back valuable paintings? It's directly a result of The Lost Museum. For fifty years, nothing happened in terms of restitution. Feliciano's groundbreaking investigative research is what led museums to examine the provenance of their artwork, caused governments to change their statutes of limitations, and urged heirs to pursue artworks they assumed had long ago vanished.
I wish I could give it more than five stars.
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5: A fascinating story poorly told
Those of you who read Lynn Nicholas' astonishing The Rape of Europa will be disappointed by this book, which is in many ways a necessary supplement to Nicholas' spine-tingling work. The record of greed, fear, coercion and barbarism visible behind the glittering surface of the Parisian art world in the 1940's is a truly moving human story. The photographs, all of now-vanished works of modern art, provide a valuable record for the historian, as many of the lost works have never been published. Unfortunately, the book is nearly ruined by a flat and pedestrian writing style. The author may have taken years to write this book, and conducted hundreds of interviews, but one would never know that. Feliciano writes as if he were a USA Today reporter - utterly superficial treatments of serious issues and no sign whatsoever of any personal investment in the story. The art and personalities of the period deserved a better historian than Mr. Feliciano, I am sorry to say. Useful for the documentary information only.
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