Inhalt: | Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Maps -- Genealogies -- Introduction: A Letter -- 1 Portraits of a Milieu: A Jewish Elite in Crisis -- 2 Dreyfus and Drumont: Towards a Material Antisemitism -- 3 Apogee of the Israélite: Jewish Collectors and the First World War -- 4 Moise de Camondo: Chaos and Control -- 5 Théodore Reinach: Jewish Past, French Future -- 6 Béatrice Éphrussi de Rothschild: A Woman Collects -- 7 Museums of Memory: From Private Collections to National Bequests -- 8 To the End of the Line: Drancy and Auschwitz -- 9 La Petite Irène: Th e Afterlife of a Portrait -- Conclusion: A Death Certificate -- Notes -- Index A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jewspillars of an embattled communityinvested their fortunes in Frances cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the countrys army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourtthe Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'AnversMcAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of invading Frances cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behindmany ultimately donated to the French statewere their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them |
