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Fires in Berlin Destroyed Hundreds of Paintings During World War II. Now, a Museum Will Publish Photo Archives of the Lost Artworks Online
Key takeaways
- Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent
- Many of the museum’s most valuable paintings were too large to move to the safety of underground mines miles away in the state of Thuringia.
- Today, the details of these lost masterpieces—including works by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Caravaggio—survive on Schwarz’s glass negatives, which for decades were kept in good condition in museum archives.
Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent
Add as preferred source. A photograph taken in 1926 depicting paintings by Peter Paul Rubens that likely burned in a fire in 1945 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv In 1925, following the destruction of artworks and cultural artifacts across Europe during World War I, a photographer named Gustav Schwarz took an assignment in Berlin systematically documenting precious museum holdings in case another catastrophe threatened them in the future.
Schwarz’s efforts to photograph the collection of the Gemäldegalerie—an art museum in the German capital recognized for its European paintings from the 13th century through the 18th century—proved prescient just a few decades later, when World War II reached its climax in 1945. Many of the museum’s most valuable paintings were too large to move to the safety of underground mines miles away in the state of Thuringia. Instead, they remained in the control tower of an air-raid shelter in Berlin, where two subsequent fires—their causes unknown—destroyed roughly 430 paintings.