The Challenges of Tracking Down a Stradivarius Lost During the Nazi Era

In Sunday’s (7/6) New York Times, Javier C. Hernández writes, “As Germany devolved into chaos at the end of World War II, a rare violin from the famed shop of the Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari was plundered from a bank safe in Berlin. The instrument, crafted in 1709 during the golden age of violin-making, had been deposited there years earlier by the Mendelssohn-Bohnke family as Nazi persecution put assets owned by Jews in jeopardy. For decades after the war, the family searched to no avail for the violin, known as the Mendelssohn, placing ads in magazines and filing reports with the German authorities. The violin, valued at millions of dollars, was presumed lost or destroyed. Now, the Mendelssohn may have resurfaced. An eagle-eyed cultural property scholar, Carla Shapreau, recently came across photos from a 2018 exhibition of Stradivarius instruments in Tokyo. She spotted a violin that bore striking similarities to the Mendelssohn, though it has a different name—Stella—and creation date—1707 instead of 1709…. The living members of the Mendelssohn-Bohnke family … hope to reach a settlement with [current owner Eijin] Nimura, though they say he has not acknowledged that they have any claim…. Shapreau oversees the Lost Music Project, which traces instruments, manuscripts, books and other cultural objects looted, confiscated and displaced in Nazi-era Germany.”