"Heinous crimes, art thefts, escapes, intrigues, and family secrets are the elements that make up the dark picture that was the life of Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien. A simple advertisement for a house sale in Argentina revealed the plot that, for more than 80 years, obscured the legacy of the so-called financial wizard of Nazism, characterized as a snake by the Allied officers who tried to arrest him in 1945."
"When last month one of his daughters published photos in order to sell the family home in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, 250 miles south of the Argentine capital, she unwittingly revealed, dominating the living room, a painting that had long been sought by the Netherlands. That image untied the knot that Kadgien had tied around his past."
Friedrich Kadgien was a Nazi official and close collaborator of Hermann Goring who later lived as a wealthy businessman in Argentina and died in Buenos Aires in 1978. A photograph posted by his daughter while selling the family home in Mar del Plata revealed Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi, a work lost from Jacques Goudstikker's collection after WWII. Argentine authorities recovered the painting; U.S. heirs claim it and Argentine courts will decide its fate. Kadgien's daughter Patricia and her husband were detained and charged with aggravated accessory after the fact amid allegations of robbery in the context of genocide, and the recovery raises further provenance and accountability questions.
Read at english.elpais.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]