The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art

The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art
by Hector Feliciano

The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art
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Book Summary Information

Author: Hector Feliciano
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-04-24
ISBN: 0465041914
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Basic Books

Book Reviews of The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art

Book Review: A Big Hit in France? Go Figure...
Summary: 2 Stars

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.

Summary of The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works Of Art

During the occupation of Paris, the Nazis confiscated nearly 100,000 artworks frommore than 200 collectors, transporting most of the spoils to Germany, where Hitlerand Goering enjoyed first pick. The Lost Museum dramatizes the pillage of the mostextensive and valuable of these collections, which belonged to five renownedJewish families: Rosenberg, Rothschild, Schloss, David-Weill and Bernheim-Jeune.After the war, many works that were found were returned to their owners. But a largenumber had disappeared, been destroyed or spirited out of Europe into theunderground art market.

Drawing on recently declassified government archives and information providedexclusively to him by the heirs of these great collections, Feliciano traces the fate ofthe artworks as they passed from the hands of top German officials to unscrupulousFrench and Swiss collaborators and dealers, then on to prestigious U.S. andEuropean auction houses. Two thousand of these stolen artworks have beenidentified by Feliciano in the Louvre and other French national museums, fomentinga scandal that has received front-page coverage throughout Europe and spurred aseries of new claims and suits by heirs. In this updated and enlarged Americanedition, he reveals the location of stolen works hanging in major U.S. museums aswell.

Illustrated with more than 70 photographs, most depicting paintings that havevanished forever, The Lost Museum is the thrilling story of one man's persistentinvestigation of a 50-year-old mystery and revelation of a shameful internationalconspiracy.


Pillage is one of the traditional perks of warfare. But it took Adolf Hitler to systematize the decimation and despoiling of cultures, and it took Hector Feliciano seven years to track five famous art collections stolen by the Nazis. He uncovered not only Nazi schemes but also a well-oiled machine of collaborators, informants, moving companies, and neighbors, all with their fingers in the pie. The Lost Museum reads like a good detective story. Inspired by a fascination with the theft of five prominent Parisian Jewish families' art collections, it focuses on the beneficiaries of the thefts and justice for its victims. Filled with family photos of the art, some never before seen by the public, The Lost Museum tracks the pieces as they passed through the hands of German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, and unsuspecting auction houses. That the network was so deviously intricate illustrates the enormous challenge of restitution.

The relationship between Nazi higher-ups, keen to advance their own collections, and non-Jewish dealers bodes well for the Parisian art scene. A Picasso for a Titian; two classics for eleven late-19th-/early-20th-century moderns? Such wheeling and dealing reduces art to tug-of-war commodities, and Feliciano's The Lost Museum at times seems to question nothing less than what art serves, and who profits from it. If you like a good detective story and can tolerate the frustration of justice impaired by greed, then this thoroughly documented dark tale is for you.

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