Lost Amsterdam: The Hidden Histories of Looted Art

In the first decades of the 20th century, Amsterdam was a thriving hub of the international art trade until the German invasion of 1940 changed everything. Many of the art dealers and collectors in and around Amsterdam were Jewish, and their collections were quickly identified and seized to enrich the holdings of the Third Reich and its leaders, including Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler himself.

Lost Amsterdam: Portraits of a Vanished World, presented by Christie’s Restitution team, tells the stories of eight Jewish collectors and dealers, from Dutch natives such as the Lierens family to German refugees like the Semmels and Hirschlands, who arrived in Amsterdam after the Nazis rose to power. They lost not only their works of art, but in many cases, their lives.

These narratives trace the looting and forced sales of Jewish-owned collections under occupation, and the long, difficult path of recovery and restitution that followed. By revisiting these histories, Lost Amsterdam: Portraits of Vanished World shines a light on a devastating chapter in the art world and the lives it touched.

More information on this project can be found here Main image is part of Photo Collection NIOD

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