Think how much safer the 20th century might have been if only Adolph Hitler had been accepted into a Viennese art institute.
As it was, millions of innocent people were murdered. Less well- known, however, is that Der Fuehrer played out his unrealized artistic expression by engineering one of the most extensive art heists in history.
By some estimates, between the years 1933 and 1945, the Nazis stole or extorted more than 600,000 pieces of art, including paintings by Rembrandt, Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso. Many of the works were looted from museums in occupied countries, but much of it was also confiscated from Jewish art dealers and collectors, many of whom perished in the Holocaust.
After World War II, hundreds of thousands of pieces found their way into museums and collections throughout the world, including the United States.
This month, 55 years after the war's end, some American art museums are taking the first steps toward possibly reuniting those stolen goods with their rightful owners, or at least with their heirs. In recent weeks, at least four major museums -- the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago -- began posting on their Web sites a list of paintings whose ownership during the Nazi years was in doubt. The intention is that people with information about the paintings or actual claims will come forward.
While some Jewish groups say they are encouraged by the development, they also say it has come only after much pressure and a general reluctance on the part of museums.
"Until the Swiss Bank scandal, frankly, museums were indifferent on this issue," says Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress in New York. "They had their own version of 'Don't ask, don't tell.' " Even now, Steinberg insists, museums are showing varied levels of commitment toward clearing up ownership and returning works of art.
Still, the action of the American museums and their European counterparts represents a striking departure from the complete absence of activity during the decades after the war. Then, the restitution of art was hardly on anyone's agenda, including the Jewish survivors of Hitler's Europe.
