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    The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis
    Unavailable
    The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis
    Unavailable
    The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis

    Written by Simon Goodman

    Narrated by Derek Perkins

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Simon Goodman's grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps. His father rarely spoke of their family history or heritage. But when he passed away, and Simon received his father's old papers, a story began to emerge. The Gutmanns, as they were known then, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany's most powerful banking families. They also amassed a magnificent, world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, Guardi, and many, many others. But the Nazi regime snatched from them everything they had worked to build: their remarkable art, their immense wealth, their prominent social standing, and their very lives. With the help of his family, Simon initiated the first Nazi looting case to be settled in the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateAug 25, 2015
    ISBN9781681415086
    Author

    Simon Goodman

    Born in London shortly after WWII and educated at the French Lycée in London, then at Munich University, Simon Goodman entered the music business in the late 1960s, specializing in breaking new British artists abroad. Goodman is married to the actress and teacher May Quigley and has one son and three daughters. He lives in Los Angeles where his search for his family’s treasures continues.

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    Reviews for The Orpheus Clock

    4/5

    25 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Each time I learn a different component of World War II, a little bit of my heart is chipped away. I’m always horrified at what the Nazis did to the Jewish community. My brain just can’t comprehend the decimation of 90% of European Jews. I just don’t understand how people can have so much hate to do the things they did to neighbors and friends. With the current election happening and the hate spewing from he who shall not be named, it makes me think of all the lives that were lost during World War II.

      This time in The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family’s Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis, Simon Goodman and his brother Nick take up the search to find their family heritage that their father Bernard spent many, many years searching for until his sudden death while swimming.

      I watched the movie Monuments Men and was shocked at the way the Nazis just went in and took what they wanted from private collections, museums and churches. They were literally breaking off mantels from fireplaces then throwing the items on trains or hiding them in caves dripping of water.

      In The Orpheus Clock, Simon receives several boxes after his father dies, which holds many detailed documents about all the artwork, silver and other valuable that were in his family’s collection and have been missing for years. His father immediately started looking for the artwork right after the war ended.

      Simon does a great job telling his grandparent’s story. How they established the bank, built their immense wealth and how they died in a work camp. He also did a great job of detailing what transpired as the Nazis started to gain strength and continuously took from the Jews. It’s so appalling how the Nazis just kept pecking and pecking, slowing stripping the Jews of their livelihood and their humanity.

      There is still so much artwork that has not been claimed. I wonder if it’s because the families are no longer around, whether they don’t have the documentation to get their belongings back, don’t have the resources to fight or they have given up because too many people fight them along the way. It’s appalling the people who don’t want to give items back like Daniel Searle even though Simon and Nick had solid proof they were the owners of a painting he had in his possession.

      Sometimes it takes years to get items back. When Simon finds the Orpheus Clock, which is at the Landesmuseum Wurttemberg in Stuttgart, I thought the museum workers were very kind. Several of the items Simon recovered are still being displayed in museums. Some the family sold to help with the search and some are still lost. While reading what Simon and Nick went through to prove an item was part of the Gutmann collection, I wanted to yell “just give them the item!”

      This is a fascinating book about a part of World War II most people don’t know about. It makes me wonder while I was walking through the Berlin museums in 2012, were any of the artwork I was admiring stolen by the Nazis and still not claimed by the correct owners?
    • 4/5
      This book fascinated me from beginning to end. It was so well researched; no surprise, considering that the subject was the author's own family history. I appreciated the lengths that all the Gutmanns/Goodmans went to in order to reclaim stolen family heirlooms. I felt anger on behalf of all the victims of the Nazi Party. I will continue to watch for stories of rediscovered art and hope that more people are able to make connections with treasures their ancestors were forced to part with.
    • 4/5
      A true story of one man's quest to reclaim what the Nazi's stole from his family, their beloved art collection, and restore their legacy.

      I listened to this book on audio.
    • 3/5
      An interesting but sad accounting of priceless art stolen from Jewish families during WWII and one family's effort to recover as much as possible. Mr. Goodman's search became, understandably, an obsession that continues to this day. I found it very significant to learn of the amount of antisemitism encountered immediately after the Holocaust and continuing today.