Rembrandt and the Nazis : How the Nazis Sought to Turn the Dutch Old Master into a Germanic Genius and Their Rabid Hunt for His Work

During the persecution and murder of Jewish people in Germany and occupied Europe, the Nazis stole countless artworks in what remains one of the largest art thefts in history. That the Nazis stole art is no secret; however, we know little about Hitler and Göring’s particular obsession with turning Rembrandt from a Dutch Old Master into a German one. In occupied Europe, the Nazi party used the cult of Rembrandt as a political means of establishing and uniting a Germanic brotherhood – and as a justification for seizing the works of Old Masters at all costs.

Rembrandt and the Nazis is the first comprehensive book to address the Nazis’ fixation with Rembrandt and will enthrall readers interested in the painter, the Old Masters, the Second World War, Judaism, cultural history, and cultural appropriation.

To evoke life under the Nazis, Muller and Jorink revisit numerous sites, including Berlin; Linz; the Führerbau (‘the Führer’s Building’) in Munich, one of few Nazi-associated buildings left standing today; and the salt mines of Altaussee, where many stolen artworks were eventually recovered by the U.S. Army’s ‘Monuments Men’. The authors combine intimate insight into Nazi ideology with compact family histories detailing the pressures, moral dilemmas, and fates of the legal owners, which are both poignant and painful. They illustrate how the figure of Rembrandt represented different things to different people – from a must-have for the Nazis, to the embodiment of Judaism for Jewish art connoisseurs fleeing Germany, to an occasional life-saving bartering chip for Dutch families.

Rembrandt and the Nazis is for readers of Edmund de Waal’s Hare with the Amber Eyes, James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things, Robert Edsel’s Monuments Men, Melissa Müller’s Lost Lives, Lost Art and similar titles.