Saturday, March 5, 2011

Lost Lives, Lost Art


I picked it off the New Books shelf in the Library. I was initially attracted by the cover. It included the famous painting, Gustav Klimt’s picture, “Woman in Gold”.


Lost Lives, Lost Art; by Melissa Muller and Monika Tatzkow.


Now, there is something I know little about. I aspire to be a collector. It has been different things at different times. My endeavors have always been proscribed by the limits of my purse.


There was the BUTTONS phase. Mostly I looked for antique buttons, in sets of at least six. In 1980, before Antiques Road Show there were a lot of buttons to choose from in New England. I used them in my knitting and sewing.


Next came the HAND CROCHETED lace, knitted lace, tatting, islet trim, and antimacassars. Again there used to be a lot of this stuff around before it caught fire. I used it to make linens. Decorate my quilts. I thought about all the women sitting in the evening, before Television, the light coming over their shoulders, fine cotton and crochet needles in their hands churning out yards of this beautiful stuff.


I found someone’s little cloth pattern book for crochet in an Antique shop. Each “page” had samples of the pattern, to be repeated, stitched to the pages.


I carefully examined the collection of lace displayed in the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. If Isabella were to appear we would have something to talk about.


I became enamored with beads. If you are traveling it helps ones focus to have something you are looking for. On a trip to Montreal, with my husband, I hit every antique shop in Antique Alley. I did find some treasures, though I didn’t know it at the time.


I found and bought Red Amber, Moonstone trade beads. Then I had to learn how to string beads. I took a four session class in the evening Adult Education.


Lately my tastes have gotten more pricey. Ceramics and oriental rugs. Clearly I have progressed. Time to read about serious collectors.


Hence the book about “Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice.”


Is this a cautionary tale?


The book details the experience of sixteen collecting Jewish families in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia.


The stories take on a painful similarity.


There is the initiating person, an artist or someone fascinated by art. Sometimes it is a couple.


They gather a collection brilliant enough to attract public attention. The collections often contain old masters, but most noticeably they begin to build on new styles. Impressionists, Cubists, beautiful wonderful new art.


Enter the Nazis. They denounce this “degenerate” art. However they lust after the collections.


There are a whole host of “co-conspirators”, “friends”, Art Appraisers, Art Dealers, Museum Directors. It becomes a feeding frenzy. It is the functioning of a Criminal State. Laws are passed that result in expropriation. The owners who can escape with their lives do so. Some wait too long, are too old to move and are ruthlessly sent to Concentration camps.


The Stories continue with the heirs attempts to recover the lost art of their Grandparents, Great Uncles, collections.


They are stone walled, forced into court, stymied in every way known to beaurocracys. Some of these stories continue to this day.


Their stories document what Germany and the World lost from WWII, not only the wonderful art but the wonderful people who appreciated and gathered it.

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