4,263 Art Objects

Views of the rooms inhabited by Hermann Goering at the height of his power, helping to run the Nazis. Contemporary photographs from the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, released as part of a newly created site documenting each of the 4,263 stolen art objects in Goering's personal collection.

It can hardly help striking the informed viewer that these chambers stuffed with high-class booty in Berlin are visually indistinguishable from the treasure-heavy interiors created by American capitalists like Frick and Rockefeller and Morgan and Phillips and Getty (art works stripped of context and subordinated to trivializing schemes of interior decoration). In terms of ethics, the Nazis legalized the use of direct force to steal their expensive tchotchkes, while the capitalists more-or-less legally stole unlimited quantities of cash – before converting it into prestigious plunder.