Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It
by Robert M. Edsel
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert M. EdselForeword: Lynn H. Nicholas
Foreword: Edmund P. Pillsbury
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-15
ISBN: 0977434907
Number of pages: 302
Publisher: Laurel Publishing, LLC
Book Reviews of Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It
Book Review: Review from Art Book News at Blogspot
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Edsel's book "Rescuing Da Vinci" chronicles one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in Art History. During World War II the Nazi state engaged in a massive and systemic plunder of art treasures, stripping objets d'art from public galleries, churches, libraries and private owners. This is a dramatic story of how the custodians and officials in a variety of European countries sought to protect their collections from discovery, theft or damage from aerial bombardment. And the tale reveals how the ruthless machinery of a totalitarian state was deployed to steal, or acquire `gifts' and `loans' through thuggery and threat.
In this relatively short episode in history a vast proportion of the greatest art treasurers of Western Civilisation were confiscated (one estimate is 1.5 million objects with 100,000 of museum quality still missing). Many of the works passed into private ownership or control of avaricious Nazi officials, with Herman Goring particularly notorious as an instigator and beneficiary of the mass theft. Adolf Hitler himself was the principal director of this whole affair, personally involving himself in planning of exhibitions of the trophies and sketching plans for a `Fuhrer Museum' in his home town of Linz where he ultimately planned to house much of the plunder.
This story has been told before in other books in greater detail, but Edsel brings the drama to life in a very well illustrated and decent format book. This book was an independent publishing effort and yet Edsel has made few economies in producing a very beautiful tome. The writing is not conventional history treatment, it's much more zippy, with Edsel weaving the tale together through a concourse of captioned photographs, illustrations of artworks and reproductions of wartime documents. While this is mainly a story of European tragedy, the author has a patriotic concern to highlight the part played by the United States in seeking to find, identify and repatriate stolen art to their proper owners (the Allied Armies formed a military unit that became better known as the "Monuments Men" or "Venus Fixers" among the troops). Allied Commanders including General Eisenhower issued a number of orders barring the traffic or export of artworks, directing resources o support the return of works to their rightful owners and asking that great buildings and architectural monuments be spared where possible from the collateral damage of war.
By the war's end the Allied treasurer hunters had found over 1,000 repositories for the stolen works of art, including the Alt Aussee salt mines containing more than 6,500 paintings and Neuschwanstein castle which housed over 6,000 articles including jewellery and fine furniture. Where the Soviet forces discovered horded Nazi loot, many of the rescued goods were brazenly stolen a second time.
To this day the consequences of the Nazi art binge are still with us, as new claimants come forward every year seeking return of artworks stolen from their families, or as museums and galleries discover that the patrimony of certain objects in their collections is tainted.
As art books go this is an unusual one. It is not the definitive history of these events (much more could be said of some of the great collectors who were victims of theft, or of works that remain missing or in dispute), but it is the best illustrated history of this epic tale of greed, audacity and devastation. The satisfying epilogue to this story is that Mr Edsel is fortunately a dedicated/obsessive fellow and has been pressing on with a range of projects to tell other aspects of this quite significant story. (review by Dan Clode at[...])
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Summary of Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It
During and following WWII, a special multinational group of more than 350 men and women served behind enemy lines and joined frontline military units to ensure the preservation, protection, liberation and restitution of the world's greatest artistic and cultural treasures. This "band of unsung heroes," formally referred to as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) section, or commonly referred to as the "Monuments Men," worked tirelessly to track down, identify and catalogue millions of priceless works of art and irreplaceable cultural artifacts, including masterpieces by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Vermeer, that had been stolen by Hitler and the Nazis.The story of the Monuments Men, including their heroics and exploits in rescuing and safeguarding many of the world's greatest artworks for the benefit of mankind, has never before been fully revealed until now, with the publication of Rescuing Da Vinci, an exhaustively researched historical account written by Robert M. Edsel. Mr. Edsel can best be described as a successful athlete and business entrepreneur turned modern day "Indiana Jones." Mr. Edsel has dedicated the last five years of his life to painstaking and far-reaching research to unravel the secrets of the Monuments Men and, in so doing, to make the world aware of their unprecedented contributions, both during and after WWII, and to ensure that these unsung heroes receive appropriate recognition from the United States government, as well as the broad public.
The detailed documentation, inventories and photographs developed and catalogued by the Monuments Men during and following World War II, have made possible, and continue to make possible, the restitution of stolen artworks of to rightful owners and their descendents. Long after WWII, many Monuments Men went on to become renowned directors and curators of preeminent international cultural institutions, including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Toledo Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among many others, as well as professors at esteemed universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, New York University, Williams College and Columbia University. Others became founders, presidents, and members of associations such as the New York City Ballet, the American Museum Association, the American Association of Museum Directors, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Society of Architectural Historians, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as respected architects, archivists, artists and musicians.
"Mr. Edsel's book is captivating in several respects, from the graphic, garish reminders of the faces of the great plunderers, to the singular beauty of the art they sought to steal. And it is a high and overdue memorial to the "Monuments Men," who did the herculean job of tracking down and repatriating the great art." -- William F. Buckley Jr.
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