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America's heroic ART COLLECTORS: Rag tag bag of experts who turned WW2 soldiers and inspired George Clooney's latest movie

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America's heroic ART COLLECTORS: Rag tag bag of experts who turned WW2 soldiers and inspired George Clooney's latest movie Empty America's heroic ART COLLECTORS: Rag tag bag of experts who turned WW2 soldiers and inspired George Clooney's latest movie

Post by Nicky80 Sun 18 Aug 2013, 23:12

Just found that one. If it's shouldn't have it's own thread maybe someone can merge it.
 
Didn't know that the group Monument's Men consist of 345 men and women from 13 countries  .....
 
Lot's of pics in the Link below
 
 
 
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America's heroic ART COLLECTORS: Rag tag bag of experts who turned WW2 soldiers and inspired George Clooney's latest movie
 
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As the Nazi's razed their way across Europe they looted the world's greatest works of art so that they could realize Adolf Hitler's twisted vision for his eponymous 'Fühermuseum' - which would be built in his hometown of Linz, Austria.
 
With much of the artwork hostage behind enemy lines, a tiny British-American taskforce made up of museum directors, art historians and curators was created and charged with saving over 1,000 years of culture from the maniacal grasp of Hitler and his cronies.
 
Dubbed the Monuments Men, the rag-tag group was co-opted into the armed forces and sent into Europe following D-Day in 1944 on the greatest treasure hunt of all time, to recover and return the pieces of art to their rightful owners and reverse the cultural attack of an entire continent.
 
Indeed, the fascinating tale of the roughly 345 men and women from 13 countries who were part of the Monument's Men has been given the Hollywood treatment in the shape of a George Clooney film which has already managed to create Oscar buzz.
 
Written, directed by and starring Clooney, 'The Monuments Men' will tell the story of a hand-picked group of art experts chosen by the U.S. government to retrieve the artwork stolen by the Nazi's.
 
Based on the book, 'The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History' by Robert M. Edsel, Clooney plays Lieutenant Commande George Stout - who has to train his rag-tag bunch of aesthetes in the art of war as they risk their lives to protect the cultural wealth of the world from Adolf Hitler.
 
Indeed, the story of the Monuments Men only came to light when Edel, rich from the sale of his Dallas oil and gas company, found himself standing in the art-drenched Italian city of Florence.
 
Standing on the city's famous medieval covered bridge — the Ponte Vecchio — he began to contemplate how so many famous sites and works of art in Europe survived the destruction of World War II.
 
With the answer, Edsel, the businessman who had developed a love for art, found a mission: Honoring and continuing the work the Monuments Men, a group from Western Allied countries made up mostly of those with an art expertise who worked with the military to protect cultural treasures as battles were waged and, in the years after the war, returned works of art to their rightful owners.
 
His work over the years — from founding the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art in 2007 after his return to Dallas to writing three books, including, "Saving Italy," released this week — has helped bring their story out of scholarly circles and to the public's attention.
 
That recognition is set to skyrocket in December with the premiere of a movie based on Edsel's book, 'The Monuments Men,' directed by and starring George Clooney.
 
'I think what they were involved in was pretty epic: Every work of art somewhere on the road during World War II, then finding these things and getting them back. I think they've earned the right to be recognized by name,' said Edsel, 56.
 
Clarissa Post, a Sotheby's art expert, said Edsel's vision always included bringing the story to a wider audience.
 
'It was always: Let's think big here. What are we going to do to bring this message forward? Because if we can bring this message forward to a wider audience, we can then really do something to honor these people who were involved,' said Post, who started her career at the auction house researching the provenance of works, especially those that might have been involved in the art theft by the Nazis
 
After his move to Europe in 1996, Edsel's musings started to put things in motion. By 2001, he had returned to the U.S. and focused more on the story of the roughly 345 men and women from 13 countries who were part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section.
 
The group was proposed by a commission established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 to promote the preservation of cultural properties during war.
 
'I had friends asking me what I was working on and I'd say, 'The only thing I'm really interested in is this whole story about World War II and what happened to all of the art.' And lunch after lunch and dinner after dinner, I never had anybody stop me and said they that they knew about it," Edsel said.
 
He tracked down Lynn Nicholas, author of 'The Rape of Europa,' which details the Nazi plunder of art and the efforts by the Western Allies to save it, telling her he wanted to make a documentary on her book.
 
Learning filmmakers already were working on it, he became a co-producer. He started compiling photographs to tell the story of the Monuments Men, which eventually became his first book:' Rescuing Da Vinci.'
 
He interviewed Monuments Men and got access to letters written by those who had died.
 
'I felt that the beating heart of the story was these letters that the Monuments Men wrote home during the war,' he said.
 
The resulting book, 'The Monuments Men'" chronicles the experiences of members in northern Europe, including Harry Ettlinger, now 87.
 
Ettlinger, who lives in New Jersey, fled Nazi Germany with his family the day after his bar mitzvah in 1938 and returned to Europe in 1945 with the U.S. Army. Ettlinger, fluent in German, volunteered to be a Monuments Man.
 
His first assignment was to help interview Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and later went on to help return works of art tucked away in salt mines.
 
He said that the group's work earned respect from the German people.
 
'They didn't quite understand how you could come along and give things back,' he said, adding, 'It gave you a good feeling.'
 
Over the years, Edsel's foundation also has worked to continue the mission of the Monuments Men, which had members overseeing the restitution of stolen works of art for up to six years after the war ended.
 
His foundation, for instance, has been contacted by those who realized something taken as a souvenir during WWII is a historical artifact and has helped with the repatriation of items, including the return to Germany of an album of photographs of artwork Hitler planned for his 'Fuhrermuseum.'
 
Following their service as Monuments Men, members returned to their careers, including as architects, artists, curators and museum directors.
 
Lola Scarpitta-Knapple, of Los Angeles, is grateful Edsel's work has brought attention to the group that included her late father, Salvatore Scarpitta Jr., an artist.
 
'It's amazing how so many people can know about something that's so interesting but nobody takes the bull by the horns,' she said.
 
'And Robert has the energy, the intellect and the heart to have done that.'
 
And for that all Monuments Men are happy. Because I think they all wanted to talk about it in the way that was in the public arena because it was so important."
 
Edsel started his foundation in 2007 to honor and continue the work of the original Monuments Men.
 
After the war, they began trying to find the rightful owners of pieces of art looted by the Nazis, hundreds of thousands of which are still missing.
 
'It's my desire to see the works of the Monuments Men completed,' said Edsel, who wrote two books detailing the group's work.
 
Among the items U.S. soldiers seized from Adolf Hitler's Bavarian Alps hideaway in the closing days of World War II were albums meticulously documenting an often forgotten Nazi crime — the massive pillaging of artwork and other cultural items as German troops marched through Europe.
 
Two of those albums — one filled with photographs of works of art, the other with snapshots of furniture — were donated Tuesday to the U.S. National Archives, which now has custody of 43 albums in a set of what historians believe could be as high as 100.
 
Edsel, founder and president of the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, which announced the discovery of the two new albums at a news conference, called them 'key pieces of evidence taken from a crime scene that were prized possessions of Adolf Hitler.'
 
The Nazi agency Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, created the series of albums to document the items taken from across Europe. Of the 43 albums identified so far, 39 were discovered in May 1945 at Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
 
They were then used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials to document the Nazi looting before eventually going to the National Archives.
 
In 2007, the Monuments Men donated two additional albums after they were found in the attic of the family of a U.S. soldier, though the foundation has retained possession of one of those for the last few years as a teaching tool.
'I think there's a lot more of them out there,' said Edsel, who noted that the albums were used as 'shopping catalogs' for Hitler to select works of art for various museums.
 
Of the newly discovered albums, one contains photographs of 69 paintings that were taken as early as 1940. Most of those paintings appear to have been properly restituted, but an ERR database indicates four were not.
 
The other newly found album contains photographs of 41 pieces of furniture, mostly taken from the Rothschild family.
 
Edsel said that by 1951, the Monuments Men had processed and returned more than 5 million stolen objects.
 
'It was the greatest treasure hunt in history — one that continues to this day,' Edsel said.
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Post by Mazy Mon 19 Aug 2013, 00:27

Thanks Nicky for the updated article, I save them all. Thanks again
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Post by it's me Mon 19 Aug 2013, 00:28

Really interesting!
So were they really more than 300? Wow affraid 
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Post by silly girl Mon 19 Aug 2013, 00:30

I know so incredible....a very powerful piece of history.

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Post by it's me Mon 19 Aug 2013, 00:36

Absolutely
And soon lot of ppl will know !!!!
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