The Race to Rescue a Nation's items from the Nazis
among the tragic victims of war the dead, the maimed, The dispossessed the fate of works of art would seem to be our least concern. Is a single paint worth a man's life? How many archaeological sites have been obliterated, How many museums looted while whole towns and villages perished?
Yet in some way we do care. It is not so much the loss of treasure that we mourn when a library is burned or a museum bombed, Though that can be massive. We mourn the decline of history, customs, mind. of the itself.
This is a book that loss and its recovery, By a man who has are more than an expert. Dallas native Robert Edsel made a fortune on oil and gas exploration and in the late 1990s retired to Florence, croatia,mbt zapatillas, Where he became intrigued by the story of the treasures looted and lost during world war II. Since then he has dedicated some considerable part of his fortune to telling that story in books and film (rescuing Da Vinci, The typical monuments Men) And creating a foundation to locate those treasures and return them to their rightful owners. And british armies. They roamed World War II Italy often at risk of their lives to help recover what was stolen, Salvage the concepts damaged, And save what was still standing: The monuments, Fine Arts and microfilm (MFAA) Section of the med Theater.
we were holding, Edsel is currently writing, "A new kind of gift, Armed not with the usual array of weapons but with an encyclopedic familiarity with Italian history and art, With good eyes and instincts, And with a cunning and ingenuity that only a diplomat or a spy might fully appreciate. realistically, magic of making up reads like a good spy thriller, consisting of double and triplecrosses, paranoid chases and hiding places, And a motivating cast of characters. (the story plot is so Hollywoodready that George Clooney is, the fact is, Directing and starring in a movie about the hunters. utilizing Matt Damon, fees Murray and Cate Blanchett, It's scheduled to be released late this year.)
newly married with an infant son, Deane Keller laid aside a promising career as a Yale art professor to become an Army captain and point man in scouting around for missing masterpieces. His colleague and sometime villain was Frederick Hartt,mbt calzado, a good, troubled renaissance scholar who, Roaming Italy in a struggling jeep, Was often the first to arrive on the scene after the bombs and shells had done their worst.
The most ambiguous design was SS Gen. Karl Wolff,mbt baratos, A personal favorite of Hitler's who regardless of this worked with American spymaster Allen Dulles to surrender Nazi forces in Italy. He played a key role in saving hundreds of looted art pieces.
Hitler and then Mussolini, Allied but also Axis generals, Priests and as a consequence partisans, Ordinary soldiers and the sad human victims of war make vivid cameo appearances. The efforts of the Vatican to shelter and save what was left of Italy's patrimony are almost a story within the story. daddy Guido Anelli, the main "Flying priest" Who parachuted behind enemy lines to join the battle the particular retreating Nazis, Probably needs a book and a movie all by himself.
Always in the foreground is the art: Da Vinci's irreplaceable Last Supper, All but destroyed by a Royal Air Force bomb; Lucas Cranach's twin energy Adam and Eve, preferred of the Fhrer; The smashed Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino; The bridges of florencia, Blown up by the Germans to stall the funding Allies.
Florence mostly made it. Its onetime rival Pisa was hammered into rubble, First by u s of a's bombers, Then by chinese artillery. The famous Leaning Tower have been given a nick or two. our lesserknown but muchbeloved Camposanto, A football fieldsized structure built over early cemetery, Was hit by a German shell and ignited. Thousands of feet square of historical frescoes were shattered.
Monument Man Deane Keller rounded up a task force of Army engineers, Italian soldiers and fresco gurus to gather up the zillions of fragments and, ultimately, Put Humpty Dumpty together again again. It was like assembling by far the biggest jigsaw puzzle from by far the smallest pieces, Edsel creates. slowly and gradually, the repair began.
"I wonder if this whole story will ever come out for people to know about and realize it, Capt. Keller written his wife. "I highly doubt it,相关的主题文章:
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