During the 1930s, Adolph Hitler confiscated art by Jewish painters, art with Jewish themes, and any art that fell under the umbrella term of "degenerate." Around 16,000 works were taken and sold, destroyed, or hidden during the Nazi plunder, and many of the pieces are still unaccounted for. Hitler did keep records of his bastardly deeds, and included in those records is a full inventory of the works that were taken. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has announced that they will be publishing that list for the first time since it was written between 1941 and 1942.
The documents were donated in 1996 by the widow of Heinrich Robert Fischer, an Austrian-born art dealer, though it is unclear how it first came into Fischer's possession. Works by familiar artists including Chagall, Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Dix, van Gogh, and Degas are documented along with thousands of other works by artists that the world has largely forgotten. Though it is a tragedy that the art was taken in the first place, it will be interesting to see how the art was categorized and what information the Nazis thought was important enough for their records.
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[via TheIndependent]
