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The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis by Simon Goodman
benfast's review against another edition
3.0
This was an interesting story of looted art from the Second World War and how a family has tried to get it back (or get some restitution) in the early 2000s. It is similar to The Woman in Gold story that was made into a film, but maybe a bit less dramatic and the results more ended up with sales of the art. I think because of that film, I was expecting one major piece to take centre stage, or that they would have the ability to keep these major pieces, but more often they ran into issues where little could be done to get the pieces "back" and they didn't have the money to continue legal proceedings or keep the pieces correctly anyways so ended up selling them to cover costs. I found that somewhat disappointing. The Orpheus clock is seemingly one of the more minor and later pieces covered, so was confusing as to why it was the title of the book. Without the constant reminders that this collection was stolen by Nazis from a Jewish family during the Holocaust, I sometimes found myself not caring what happened to one rich family fighting another rich family (though Goodman keeps reminding the readers that his family is no longer rich - even if later he says the family actually had a lot of resources still after the war).
kristianspring's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting and well told story. It brings another dimension of the holocaust to life. This family lost many family members, but also damaged those that were left in ways that would follow them the rest of their lives, and their children after them, as well as destroying their legacy. I also enjoyed the historical and artistic dimension and the mystery and as they searched out their lost art and what happened to it.
scribepub's review against another edition
Simon Goodman has forensically pieced together what happened to his grandparents and their art collection after they were forced to sign it away to Hitler and Goering’s art poachers … The Orpheus Clock is not only a meticulously researched history of the Gutmann family, but a compelling detective story.
Daily Mail
The Orpheus Clock, Simon Goodman’s fascinating account of [his family's] quest for restitution, is at once a family history, a memoir, a mini-social history of Germany pre-1914, a Holocaust story, and a revealing look at the inner workings of the art world, of the museums and auction houses that control billions of dollars worth of art, often with no idea how much of it might have been stolen … Gripping and horrifying.
Christian Science Monitor
An extraordinary tale of the rise and fall of a German Jewish banking family … Anyone who has seen the film Woman in Gold, about Maria Altmann’s similar struggle to find looted family art, will have a good idea of where this book is heading from chapter one. Still, this story of how a stubborn man took on the cultural bureaucrats and their culture of amnesia has its own twists and deserves to be told.
Marcus Tanner, The Independent
Goodman’s book focuses on the terrible consequences of the 20th century’s racial and political beliefs on both human beings and their possessions … Ultimately, however, it is the story of human triumph over obstinate bureaucracy and the illicit greed for beautiful objects.
David Herkt, Dominion Post Weekend
Part world history, part real-life detective novel, [The Orpheus Clock] is a sad reminder of greed and cruelty, as well as a fascinating insight into the murky world of international art dealing.
Queensland Time
[D]etails [Goodman’s] exhaustive detective work, the rigid standards of proof demanded of the victims and the determination of many well-known institutions, auction houses and collectors to hang onto their stolen treasures. Not the most comfortable reading, and the guilty will resent being identified, but let justice prevail.
Listener
Goodman's dramatic story, told with great heart, reveals a rich family history almost obliterated by the Nazis. It is not only the account of a 20-year detective hunt for family treasure, but a remarkable tale of redemption and restoration.
Australian Jewish News
[A] fitting testament to an extraordinary legacy.
Launceston Examiner
Art lovers will revel in Goodman’s finds and research. Other readers will simply be fascinated by his incredible personal story.
Good Reading Magazine
Part detective story, part family history, wholly engaging … one you are likely to read in one sitting, such is the passion with which the story is told.
John Graham, Toowomba Chronicle
This is a magnificent book, both poignant, and chilling. Ultimately it stands as a testimony to how family stories can grip across generations, and how fierce the impulse to right wrongs. It is very moving indeed.
Edmund de Waal, Author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
Daily Mail
The Orpheus Clock, Simon Goodman’s fascinating account of [his family's] quest for restitution, is at once a family history, a memoir, a mini-social history of Germany pre-1914, a Holocaust story, and a revealing look at the inner workings of the art world, of the museums and auction houses that control billions of dollars worth of art, often with no idea how much of it might have been stolen … Gripping and horrifying.
Christian Science Monitor
An extraordinary tale of the rise and fall of a German Jewish banking family … Anyone who has seen the film Woman in Gold, about Maria Altmann’s similar struggle to find looted family art, will have a good idea of where this book is heading from chapter one. Still, this story of how a stubborn man took on the cultural bureaucrats and their culture of amnesia has its own twists and deserves to be told.
Marcus Tanner, The Independent
Goodman’s book focuses on the terrible consequences of the 20th century’s racial and political beliefs on both human beings and their possessions … Ultimately, however, it is the story of human triumph over obstinate bureaucracy and the illicit greed for beautiful objects.
David Herkt, Dominion Post Weekend
Part world history, part real-life detective novel, [The Orpheus Clock] is a sad reminder of greed and cruelty, as well as a fascinating insight into the murky world of international art dealing.
Queensland Time
[D]etails [Goodman’s] exhaustive detective work, the rigid standards of proof demanded of the victims and the determination of many well-known institutions, auction houses and collectors to hang onto their stolen treasures. Not the most comfortable reading, and the guilty will resent being identified, but let justice prevail.
Listener
Goodman's dramatic story, told with great heart, reveals a rich family history almost obliterated by the Nazis. It is not only the account of a 20-year detective hunt for family treasure, but a remarkable tale of redemption and restoration.
Australian Jewish News
[A] fitting testament to an extraordinary legacy.
Launceston Examiner
Art lovers will revel in Goodman’s finds and research. Other readers will simply be fascinated by his incredible personal story.
Good Reading Magazine
Part detective story, part family history, wholly engaging … one you are likely to read in one sitting, such is the passion with which the story is told.
John Graham, Toowomba Chronicle
This is a magnificent book, both poignant, and chilling. Ultimately it stands as a testimony to how family stories can grip across generations, and how fierce the impulse to right wrongs. It is very moving indeed.
Edmund de Waal, Author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
chelsea_not_chels's review against another edition
3.0
More reviews available at my blog, Beauty and the Bookworm.
So, I have a thing about history and stolen art, mainly because during this class in college I read a book called The Rape of Europa which was about the rampant art pillaging that went on during World War II. Then I read The Monuments Men, about the group of Allied soldiers who were supposed to find and protect things during WWII, including but not limited to art. And then I read another book about going undercover to recover art stolen from museums. Basically, art is valuable, relatively easy to move, and relatively hard to track, which means it ends up getting used as currency in all kinds of transactions and then surfacing at some point with its provenance not really being on the firmest ground. This is basically what The Orpheus Clock (or the last 120 pages of it) is about.
After Simon Goodman's father died, Simon and his brother Nick got all of these boxes containing documents about what their father had covertly been doing for the past half century: running around trying to recover the art and belonging that had been stolen from his family by the Nazis during WWII. After realizing exactly what the scale of it was, Simon (and to some extent Nick, though he features much less prominently in this book) took up his father's search. The Goodman family, then spelled "Gutmann," were Jewish in heritage though not really practice and were living in the Netherlands when the war started. Generations of being banking magnates meant the family, in all its branches, was pretty wealthy, and Simon's grandfather was keeper of the family trust, which was massive. There was a big house and lots of silver and fancy paintings. And then, of course, because the Gutmanns were Jewish, the Nazis took it all and sent Simon's grandparents to a concentration camp, from which they didn't return alive. Simon's father and aunt survived because they were living in England and Italy, respectively.
Now, reparations from the Holocaust are a really tricky subject because there's not a firm good way to handle them. Here's the thing. A lot of these belongings have popped up over the years with seemingly good providence, and so someone buys one of the things thinking it's okay. And then, BANG! It turns out it's not okay, that it's actually loot. But the person who has it now still likes the thing, for the thing itself and not the history attached to it, and paid a lot of money for the thing, so obviously they're not so keen to give it up. But the family that originally owned the thing wants it back because it shouldn't have been taken away from them in the first place. Is there a good way to deal with this? No, not really. It's much easier when it's the government that still has the thing, because then at least it's not private individuals tangled up in it.
What this book does well is lays out the complexities of how hard it actually is to get back items that were taken during the Holocaust, because many of them have been scattered to the winds and then surfaced all over the place with seemingly clean backgrounds. Did people look too hard at these backgrounds? No, not really. But then, if you look at the backgrounds of a lot of art, they're not really as clean as we'd like, which makes art trading in its entirety a very dirty and complicated business. But I couldn't help but wonder why Goodman was doing this the whole time, and yes, I confess, he came off as a bit greedy, because his family didn't even want most of the stuff and ended up selling it immediately after they got it. I know, I know; it's more complicated than that, because the money is rightfully theirs anyway, and so on and so forth. That's fine; they're entitled to it. But I feel like there could have been a better way to convey that than how Goodman did it. It was the language he used about it, being so smug about items selling for much more than their appraisal values and such, and how he seemingly wasn't willing to work with people who thought they were buying (or receiving, in the cases of donated pieces) "clean" art. It was...I dunno. It just had a dirty feel about the whole process, when really it shouldn't have. Them getting the stuff back from the Dutch government was much "cleaner" feeling to me, because it was really freakin' wrong of the government to keep all that stuff for all that time when they had a pretty good idea of who it had belonged to. It's when people who didn't know and didn't have reason to got involved that it all had a sort of icky feel to it.
Also, more than half of this book isn't about getting art treasures back at all. It's a multi-generational history of Goodman's family which wasn't entirely necessary for the book. I think all of that could have been condensed to a chapter or two, at most, and then the rest of the book focused on the retrieval process, because that's what the book purports to be about. I get that Goodman has discovered this incredibly lush and complex family history and wants to include it, but if that's the case the publisher should have looked into titling the book more accurately, because it was pretty misleading reading about bankers for 180+ pages (out of a 320-page book) when I thought I was going to be reading about art recovery.
3 stars out of 5.
So, I have a thing about history and stolen art, mainly because during this class in college I read a book called The Rape of Europa which was about the rampant art pillaging that went on during World War II. Then I read The Monuments Men, about the group of Allied soldiers who were supposed to find and protect things during WWII, including but not limited to art. And then I read another book about going undercover to recover art stolen from museums. Basically, art is valuable, relatively easy to move, and relatively hard to track, which means it ends up getting used as currency in all kinds of transactions and then surfacing at some point with its provenance not really being on the firmest ground. This is basically what The Orpheus Clock (or the last 120 pages of it) is about.
After Simon Goodman's father died, Simon and his brother Nick got all of these boxes containing documents about what their father had covertly been doing for the past half century: running around trying to recover the art and belonging that had been stolen from his family by the Nazis during WWII. After realizing exactly what the scale of it was, Simon (and to some extent Nick, though he features much less prominently in this book) took up his father's search. The Goodman family, then spelled "Gutmann," were Jewish in heritage though not really practice and were living in the Netherlands when the war started. Generations of being banking magnates meant the family, in all its branches, was pretty wealthy, and Simon's grandfather was keeper of the family trust, which was massive. There was a big house and lots of silver and fancy paintings. And then, of course, because the Gutmanns were Jewish, the Nazis took it all and sent Simon's grandparents to a concentration camp, from which they didn't return alive. Simon's father and aunt survived because they were living in England and Italy, respectively.
Now, reparations from the Holocaust are a really tricky subject because there's not a firm good way to handle them. Here's the thing. A lot of these belongings have popped up over the years with seemingly good providence, and so someone buys one of the things thinking it's okay. And then, BANG! It turns out it's not okay, that it's actually loot. But the person who has it now still likes the thing, for the thing itself and not the history attached to it, and paid a lot of money for the thing, so obviously they're not so keen to give it up. But the family that originally owned the thing wants it back because it shouldn't have been taken away from them in the first place. Is there a good way to deal with this? No, not really. It's much easier when it's the government that still has the thing, because then at least it's not private individuals tangled up in it.
What this book does well is lays out the complexities of how hard it actually is to get back items that were taken during the Holocaust, because many of them have been scattered to the winds and then surfaced all over the place with seemingly clean backgrounds. Did people look too hard at these backgrounds? No, not really. But then, if you look at the backgrounds of a lot of art, they're not really as clean as we'd like, which makes art trading in its entirety a very dirty and complicated business. But I couldn't help but wonder why Goodman was doing this the whole time, and yes, I confess, he came off as a bit greedy, because his family didn't even want most of the stuff and ended up selling it immediately after they got it. I know, I know; it's more complicated than that, because the money is rightfully theirs anyway, and so on and so forth. That's fine; they're entitled to it. But I feel like there could have been a better way to convey that than how Goodman did it. It was the language he used about it, being so smug about items selling for much more than their appraisal values and such, and how he seemingly wasn't willing to work with people who thought they were buying (or receiving, in the cases of donated pieces) "clean" art. It was...I dunno. It just had a dirty feel about the whole process, when really it shouldn't have. Them getting the stuff back from the Dutch government was much "cleaner" feeling to me, because it was really freakin' wrong of the government to keep all that stuff for all that time when they had a pretty good idea of who it had belonged to. It's when people who didn't know and didn't have reason to got involved that it all had a sort of icky feel to it.
Also, more than half of this book isn't about getting art treasures back at all. It's a multi-generational history of Goodman's family which wasn't entirely necessary for the book. I think all of that could have been condensed to a chapter or two, at most, and then the rest of the book focused on the retrieval process, because that's what the book purports to be about. I get that Goodman has discovered this incredibly lush and complex family history and wants to include it, but if that's the case the publisher should have looked into titling the book more accurately, because it was pretty misleading reading about bankers for 180+ pages (out of a 320-page book) when I thought I was going to be reading about art recovery.
3 stars out of 5.
zzzrevel's review against another edition
3.0
I have a morbid interest in the events of World War II and this was a pretty good read. First half is mostly about the author's Jewish ancestry and what his great grandfather, grandfather, and father endured.
Second half is about restitution for all of their possessions stolen by the Nazis. Some thrilling history for some of their artwork. Makes me want to visit some of these museums and see the pieces now that I know their stories.
Second half is about restitution for all of their possessions stolen by the Nazis. Some thrilling history for some of their artwork. Makes me want to visit some of these museums and see the pieces now that I know their stories.
ggritzo's review
5.0
I loved this book. More importantly, I loved how the author tracked down the precious artifacts stolen from his family by the Nazi's. It will never ever make up for what was done to them, but they can rest the tiniest bit easier knowing that much of their collection was restored in one fashion or another.
cinfhen's review against another edition
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
qiaosilin's review
3.0
The best part of the book is the third section, where Goodman is on the hunt for his family's stolen art and sculptures, etc. The first part is a family history, which is mainly interesting to the family and if you are into the financial history of Germany in the early 20th century. The second section is about the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, where Goodman's grandparents lived, and the fates of his grandparents—I most certainly cried—and the fate of his grandfather's collection.
I didn't know much about restitution before reading this book, but it's both a complex topic and very straight-forward. Goodman makes me want to read more about it.
I wasn't as taken with this book as I wanted to be, and that's partly because, as I mentioned above, the first section is not that engrossing if this family isn't directly connected to you, and the prose is rife with unnecessary adverbs and frankly a bit too much bias (but, hey, it's essentially a memoir). The adverbs are there to express how shocking certain things were or to express sarcasm about the way things were handled, and both are annoying. It's not shocking that Nazis had a respect for artworks from old masters but not all human life. Goodman doesn't become endearing for making snide remarks about museums, even if he thinks they're justified.
Basically, the prose is alright; it's the hunt for the Gutmann collection that's at turns heartbreaking and hopeful, and truly the best part.
I didn't know much about restitution before reading this book, but it's both a complex topic and very straight-forward. Goodman makes me want to read more about it.
I wasn't as taken with this book as I wanted to be, and that's partly because, as I mentioned above, the first section is not that engrossing if this family isn't directly connected to you, and the prose is rife with unnecessary adverbs and frankly a bit too much bias (but, hey, it's essentially a memoir). The adverbs are there to express how shocking certain things were or to express sarcasm about the way things were handled, and both are annoying. It's not shocking that Nazis had a respect for artworks from old masters but not all human life. Goodman doesn't become endearing for making snide remarks about museums, even if he thinks they're justified.
Basically, the prose is alright; it's the hunt for the Gutmann collection that's at turns heartbreaking and hopeful, and truly the best part.