Before World War II’s start, Hitler was driven to create his dream museum containing all his favorite Aryan-approved art. Noah Charney on how the Monuments Men had to unravel the thousands of objects plundered by the Fuhrer’s minions—and what they learned from Napoleon. 

When Monuments Men Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein walked into the white-washed cottage in the German forest that housed Hermann Bunjes, the Harvard-educated one-time SS officer and art advisor to Herman Goring, they learned of an elaborate plan involving the wholesale looting of Europe’s art treasures. Bunjes, hiding in fear of reprisals against SS officers by angry German citizens, told these fellow art historians about the ERR—the Nazi art theft unit—and about Hitler’s plan to create a city-wide museum in his boyhood town of Linz, Austria: a “super museum” that would contain every important artwork in the world, including a wing of “degenerate art,” a sort of chamber of horrors to demonstrate from what monstrosities the Nazis had saved the world. It was news to Posey and Kirstein, who had to restrain their shock. The Monuments Men had heard rumors of art theft and looting throughout the war, but had no idea of the scale (some estimate that around 5 million cultural objects were looted, lost, or mishandled during the war), the advanced level of organization (scores of Nazi officers and hundreds of soldiers were assigned exclusively to the confiscation, transport, and maintenance of looted art and archival material), and the ultimate destination of the choicest pieces—the Führermuseum. It was years into the war, when this encounter took place, and only then did the Monuments Men finally realized what they were up against. Bunjes further detailed a number of hiding places for looted art, including the famous salt mine at Altaussee, in the Austrian Alps, which contained some twelve-thousand stolen artworks, the mother-load destined for the Linz museum. Posey and Kirstein were on the hunt for The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, the most influential painting ever made and the most-frequently stolen, but could hardly believe what they were hearing. Yes,The Ghent Altarpiece was the number one target that Hitler wanted as the centerpiece for his museum, both because of its beauty, fame, and importance but also because it had been forcibly repatriated to Belgium from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, and seizing it back would right this perceived wrong against the German people. But here was the chance to save not just this painting, but tens of thousands of artworks.

“This is just one more unbelievable chapter in that violin’s life,” said Frank Almond, the concertmaster, expressing gratitude for the work of law enforcement officials.

[...] 

In an interview Thursday evening, Mr. Almond, who was out of town when the police located the Stradivarius, said he thought he would never see it again and was shocked when he heard it was not damaged. He expected to use it at a concert in Milwaukee early next week.

Stefan Hersh, a violin expert who appraised the instrument in 2012, said he had been contacted by the F.B.I. and went to Milwaukee on Thursday to authenticate the instrument. Seeing no damage, he performed a piece by Bach on the 300-year-old Stradivarius, a private concert for the police.

The 300-year-old Stradivarius violin that was taken in an armed robbery last month has been found, law enforcement sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Milwaukee Police Department is scheduled to hold a news conference on the investigation at noon Thursday but had not publicly confirmed that the violin was recovered.

WTMJ-TV reported Thursday morning that the violin was recovered overnight on Milwaukee's east side and is said to be in good condition.

During a Wednesday news conference, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said there was a "good chance" the violin was still in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee police have arrested three suspects in connection with the theft and have referred the case to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office. Charges are expected to be filed Friday, according to the district attorney's office.

The three suspects — two men, ages 42 and 36, and a woman, 32 — were arrested Monday morning at their respective Milwaukee residences and remained in police custody Wednesday. One of the suspects has been linked to a prior art theft.

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/stolen-stradivarius-violin-reportedly-recovered-in-good-condition-b99199772z1-243934631.html#ixzz2sYfbyhyC 

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The Monuments Men were a multinational group of 350 men and women who volunteered for military service in order to protect monuments and other cultural treasures from destruction during World War II. In civilian life, many of them were museum directors, curators, artists, architects, and educators. These dedicated men and women tracked, located, and ultimately returned to their rightful owners more than five million artworks and cultural items stolen by Hitler and the Nazis. Their role in preserving Europe’s cultural treasures was without precedent. 

The Frick Art Reference Library in Wartime 

The story of the Monuments Men in Europe has become increasingly well known, but few are aware that another group of dedicated art historians were engaged in “the fight for art” on American shores. In 1943, William B. Dinsmoor, a Harvard professor and Chairman of the American Council of Learned Societies, established the Committee on the Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas. Made up of thirty volunteer American and European scholars, the committee was charged with creating (and distributing to the Allied armed forces) maps and lists of important monuments to be spared during bombing raids. Headquartered principally at the Frick Art Reference Library, which had been involved in the preservation effort as early as 1941, Dinsmoor’s committee was responsible for coordinating information gathered from myriad sources and compiling it into a master index that listed the historic buildings and important works of art in each occupied country. In 1943 the library closed its doors for six months — the only time in its ninety-three-year history that it has done so — in order to support the committee’s research and generate the photography required to prepare more than 700 maps. Even before the end of hostilities, the Frick staff and its resources also played a vital role in the research needed for the recovery of stolen and looted art, which became a top priority of Dinsmoor’s committee and its parent Washington-based Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe. Indeed, even today, researchers — with the help of the Frick Art Reference Library’s vast resources — continue to piece together information to help reunite works of art and their rightful owners.

Milwaukee Police twitter: "Chief Edward Flynn announces arrests of 3 suspects in Stradivarius violin robbery."

At this event I wanted to notify everyone that the Milwaukee Police Department will be seeking charges against three individuals for the January 27th theft and robbery from the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra of his priceless Stradivarius violin. The suspects are a 36-year-old man, a 41-year-old man, and a 32-year-old woman -- all from the city of Milwaukee. They were arrested February 3 and all three remain in our custody. Now the Milwaukee Police Department will continue to work closely with our colleagues in the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the District Attorney's Office. We emphasize that at this time, that although we have made arrests, we have not yet recovered the violin... This case came together rapidly in the city of Milwaukee and the leads were followed up with by our detectives who had invaluable help from the FBI, from their art unit as obviously they have a broad perspective. As we continue to search for this violin, I suspect that their assistance will continue to be invaluable. The important thing to stress is that within a week of this case our detectives made an arrest which we believe will result in these individuals being succesfully charged and convicted. Now, as I said, we do not have the violin. As is known, there is a substantial reward out for that violin and we urge the community to do what it can to develop information that can help us identify and locate and recover this priceless instrument.

The “Monuments Men” belonged to the U.S. Army’s Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section. Their ranks included Lincoln Kirstein ’30, the founder of the New York City Ballet; Paul Sachs, Class of 1900, a member of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, which recruited many of the team’s members; and Stout. Born in 1897, Stout was a tall, dashing man with a pencil-thin mustache ­— not unlike actor George Clooney, who in the film plays the Stout-like team leader, Frank Stokes. Clooney also produced and directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay. Stout helped pioneer the field of art conservation while a graduate assistant at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. Long before World War II, he had the vision to see the risk aerial bombing and firebombing posed to art, Edsel said. Stout had spent the early ’40s pushing for a national art conservation plan. The Allies and Stout knew that bombs were hardly the only danger to art. The Nazis engaged in “premeditated, organized looting never before seen in war,” Edsel said. The hunger their leaders displayed for European art put Western treasures at risk.