Hitler’s Horses: the true tale of Dutch ‘art detective’ Arthur Brand’s hunt for the führer’s favourite sculptures
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand’s account of tracking down two giant bronze statues by Hitler’s favourite sculptor is an enjoyable romp through the underbelly of the international art world
Hitler’s Horses by Arthur Brand, translated from the Dutch by Jane Hedley-Prole, Ebury Press
“After all,” says a go-between in Arthur Brand’s Hitler’s Horses, “this isn’t a second-hand car deal. If we mess this up, we’ll either end up in jail or at the bottom of a lake.”
The deal in question is the purchase of the Schreitende Pferde (Striding Horses), two monumental bronze statues several metres high by Adolf Hitler’s favourite sculptor, Josef Thorak, and chosen to stand outside the führer’s palatial Chancellery headquarters. To surviving Nazi sympathisers, these have quasi-religious status.
Those on offer are assumed to be fakes, since the originals were destroyed along with much of the building in the bombing that preceded the fall of Berlin, or in the subsequent demolition of the ruins by Russian occupying forces. Someone has scanned one of the tabletop-sized miniatures given to top Nazis to produce accurate full-sized replicas.
Any story of a hunt for vanished Nazi valuables is likely to attract a large readership, and even more so one involving Nazi-supporting organisations with names like Stille Hilfe (Silent Assistance) and the Order of Alexander.