The Fate of the Masterpiece: How the Monuments Men Rescued the Mystic Lamb from the Nazis
Noah Charney
Language: English
Pages: 124
ISBN: B00I2FY88U
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
As the Nazis stormed across Europe during the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of artworks disappeared in their wake. A group of Allied officers set off on the trail of Europe’s vanished art treasures—they were known as the Monuments Men. The investigations of the Monuments Men combined old-fashioned detective work, personal bravery, ingenuity, and a dose of good fortune. This is perhaps best exemplified in the story of the race to save the 12,000 stolen masterpieces that were kept in a secret art warehouse hidden deep inside a converted salt mine in the Austrian Alps. There awaited the treasures destined for Hitler’s planned “super museum,” which would contain every important artwork in the world. The prize of the collection, and the painting most desired by the Nazis, was Jan van Eyck’s 1432 masterwork, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as The Ghent Altarpiece. This massive masterpiece is considered the most influential painting ever made, and it is also the most-frequently stolen.
This e-book single is adapted from Noah Charney’s acclaimed book Stealing the Mystic Lamb: the True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece. It contains all of the material from that book on the Monuments Men and Nazi art theft during the Second World War, as told through the story of two Monuments Men, Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein, as they raced to save the Mystic Lamb and the other works in the salt mine from an SS officer who was determined to destroy all 12,000 masterpieces.
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Actually occurred centuries ago—the entire site was a ruin. What was left had been looted by the Italians themselves, and the Italians had added graffiti, all in a setup to frame the Allies as vandals and thieves. Posey and Kirstein asked about major works they knew had disappeared, focusing on The Ghent Altarpiece. Ewing had heard rumors that it was in Germany, in a bunker at the Rhine fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, near Coblenz. Another rumor suggested that it had been taken by Göring to.
Things, of private property. Bunjes states, however, that the Compiègne armistice of 1940 was a pact made by Germany with the French state and the French people, but not with Jews and Freemasons; that the Reich, accordingly, was not bound to respect the rights of Jewish property owners; and further, that the Jews, in company with Communists, had made innumerable attempts since the signing of the armistice on the lives and persons of Wehrmacht personnel and German civilians, so that even sterner.
Transport, adding facing to the areas where the paint had peeled away from the panel as a result of changes in humidity. When The Lamb was found in the mine, it still had wax paper bandages on certain sections. The Saint John the Baptist panel that had been stolen from the Cathedral of Saint Bavo and recovered in 1934 was still in Sieber’s workshop for treatment. It was then that Posey and Kirstein received unfortunate news. The man who had helped them to save all this, Hermann Bunjes, had shot.
Midst. His wife and children are here as well. He, who once captured the city with 200 men, will now use every means to galvanize the defense of the capital. The battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle. But the battle for Berlin went nowhere. On April 30, with Soviet troops less than a mile away from the Berlin bunker in which Hitler was entrenched, Goebbels was one of only four eyewitnesses to the dictation of the führer’s last will and testament.
Göring’s personal hoard of stolen art? The Allied 101st “Screaming Eagles” Airborne Division found more than 1,000 paintings and sculptures that had composed part of Göring’s collection. They had been evacuated from Carinhall on April 20, 1945, and moved to a series of other residences, in a continued attempt to keep them out of the hands of the Russian army, whose art looting rivaled that of the Germans. Göring left eight days later, ordering Carinhall blown up after his departure. He escaped.