War, Academia and Law
Memories of Napoleon’s Pillaging of Art, 1915
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The current debate over pillaged and looted art is characterised by an acrimony unknown in the years immediately after 1945. Instead of mitigating ill will, time hardened and embittered the parties to the dispute. In the 19th and early 20th century, another debate over pillaged art took place in Germany, one that applies to the present: Napoleon’s campaign of looting. The reappraisal of the Napoleonic era that took place during the First World War led to a hopeless entanglement of traumatic memories, national myths and academic expectations.
(Osteuropa 1-2/2006, pp. 205–222)