A compelling exploration of the many issues surrounding the restoration and restitution of Nazi-stolen art at the end of World War II At the end of World War II, the US Office of Military Government for Germany and Bavaria, through its Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives division, was responsible for the repatriation of most of the tens of thousands of artwork looted by the Nazis in the countries they had occupied. With the help of the US Army’s Monuments Men—the name given to a hand-picked group of art historians and museum professionals commissioned for this important duty—massive numbers of objects were retrieved from their wartime hiding places and inventoried for repatriation. Iris Lauterbach’s fascinating history documents the story of the Allies’ Central Collecting Point (CCP), set up in the former Nazi Party headquarters at Königsplatz in Munich, where the confiscated works were transported to be identified and sorted for restitution. This book presents her archival research on the events, people, new facts, and intrigue, with meticulous attention to the official systems, frameworks, and logistical and bureaucratic enterprise of the Munich CCP in the years from 1945 to 1949. She uncovers the stories of the people who worked there at a time of lingering political suspicions; narrates the research, conservation, and restitution process; and investigates how the works of art were managed and returned to their owners.

Adolf Hitler's obsession with art not only fueled his vision of a purified Nazi state--it was the core of his fascist ideology. Its aftermath lives on to this day. Nazism ascended by brute force and by cultural tyranny. Weimar Germany was a society in turmoil, and Hitler's rise was achieved not only by harnessing the military but also by restricting artistic expression. Hitler, an artist himself, promised the dejected citizens of postwar Germany a purified Reich, purged of "degenerate" influences. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he removed so-called "degenerate" art from German society and promoted artists whom he considered the embodiment of the "Aryan ideal." Artists who had produced challenging and provocative work fled the country. Curators and art dealers organized their stock. Thousands of great artworks disappeared--and only a fraction of them were rediscovered after World War II. In 2013, the German government confiscated roughly 1,300 works by Henri Matisse, George Grosz, Claude Monet, and other masters from the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of one of Hitler's primary art dealers. For two years, the government kept the discovery a secret. In Hitler's Last Hostages, Mary M. Lane reveals the fate of those works and tells the definitive story of art in the Third Reich and Germany's ongoing struggle to right the wrongs of the past.

Der größte Teil der aus vielen Ländern Europas stammenden nationalsozialistischen Raubkunst befand sich bei Kriegsende 1945 in Depots in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone. Die Sicherstellung und Rückführung dieser Kunstwerke sowie ausgelagerter deutscher Museumsbestände lag in Händen der 'Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives Section' der amerikanischen Militärregierung. Das reich bebilderte Buch behandelt die Geschichte der größten amerikanischen Kunstsammelstelle, des in den ehemaligen NSDAP-Gebäuden am Königsplatz in München eingerichteten Central Collecting Point. Ausländische Raubkunst wurde hauptsächlich von hier aus restituiert. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Standort, Einrichtung, Mitarbeiter und Arbeit der Institution in den Jahren 1945 bis 1949. Einzelne Restitutionsvorgänge werden exemplarisch untersucht. Die Geschichte des aus dem Collecting Point hervorgegangenen Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte und die Ausstellungspolitik des Amerika-Hauses werden im Rahmen der 'Re-Education' und des Wiederaufbaus der Münchner und westdeutschen Kunst- und Kulturszene nach 1945 beleuchtet.

The Munich Kunstkammer was conceived as a central repository of knowledge about the world, and the territory of its founder Albrecht V. Katharina Pilaski Kaliardos focuses on the collection's functions in the larger context of the centralization of princely power and the territory's confessionalization in the wake of the Council of Trent.