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Dáma Ve Zlatém (2012)

by Anne-Marie O'Connor(Favorite Author)
3.92 of 5 Votes: 5
languge
English
publisher
Metafora
review 1: Suspenseful, riveting, complicated, fascinating, horrific, wonderfully written and meticulously researched! This is the story of the Jewish community of Vienna and its fate before and during the Nazi take-over, of Gustav Klimt and other artists of the time, of the theft by the Nazis of thousands of works of art and of the heroic efforts to find and return one of them - Klimt's famous "Portrait of Adele-Bloch Bauer."
review 2: To Tell The Truth Is To Glow And Burn It is not the trauma that makes us sick but the inability to express the trauma through poetry, music and art. Marie Altman expressed the trauma of the loss of her family in Nazii occupied Austria. She did this by writing a book about reclaiming her families lost art and the picture of her Aunt
... more Adele Bloch Bauer "The Lady In Gold" Adele Bloch Bauer and her niece Maria Altman are smiling in Heaven now. Their fascinating tale of beauty, loss, and remembrance reveals a deeper truth beneath the golden surface of the stolen art. Adelle felt that art was an essential prism for understanding the world and forced people to see differently. I began to see WWII and its degenerate art for the first time after reading this book. Why didn't I learn this in college history class? Marie Altman reflected that former Nazi governor Baldur von Schirarch had served only twenty years and lived long enough to be interviewed by David Frost. In the interview , Frost asked Shirach what was the most profound lesson he had learned from his experience? Baldur than asked if he could quote "Alice In Wonderland"? Is this the definition of degenerate art? Also, her Gestapo minder Felix Landau was barely punished and lived for years in Bavaria an an interior designer. He loved fairytales and had a famous Hungarian painter paint fairytales on the walls of his personal residence. Is this degnerate art? I interpret degenerate Art as art used to justify evil actions. Anne Marie O' Connors Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer reads like a mosaic of many twice told tales. Forgive me if I free associate as I write this review. In some parts I was singing along with "The Sound Of Music" amidst abominable experiments with body parts performed in the death camps. Some readers commented that there were too many characters without geneologies and without histories to keep track of. One member of my book club also began to sing too. She toured Austria with her choir group back in 2000 singing songs with lost lyrics forgotten along with the stolen art. She also brought up the character of Gustav Mahler whom I had lost somewhere in all of the characters. Gustav Mahler was the director of the Vienna State Opera. How could a cultured talented man such as Gustav share the love of Opera with Hitler? How could these decent cultured people allow or think it was okay for the Nazii war machine to do what they did? Allied bombs came crashing into the opera house. Isn't this the true lesson of the Holocaust and the stolen art the extraordinary tale of Gustav Klimt's masterpice, Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer? It was a secret that Americans were working with former Naziis. Dr. Wagner and a Werner von Braun another member of the SS were.later used to help jump start NASA in the United States..though they had overseen slave labor operations where thousands have died?? (P. 256-257) I feel like Maria Altman who herself said she felt like Maria in the Sound of Music...What are they doing...don't you see the soldiers outside? It is not the trauma that makes us sick, but the inability to express the trauma through art..and reclaiming lost art. Well done!! less
Reviews (see all)
zanderg007
Compelling story that should be made into mandatory reading for our young generation.
Candy
Read it for book club a year ago and just saw that I never entered it.
Ngocpie27
Breathtaking account of Viennese history, couldn't put it down.
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