Focusing on Colour. Hitler's Photo Campaign of Monumental Paintings
From 1943 to 1945, Adolf Hitler gave order for a photographic campaign to document endangered paintings and the interior decoration of historical and artistic value. This resulted in a unique archive of approximately 40,000 preserved colour slides taken of around 480 buildings in Germany, Austria, East and West Prussia, Bohemia and North Moravia. They record the last - and often the only - coloured images of important artworks before they were destroyed or damaged during the Second World War. Digitised images of the colour slides, which are archived in the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München and in the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, are now available on the Internet. The tremendous value of this documentation with respect to the preservation of monuments and restoration work will be explained in a presentation of selected frescos.
This project of the Zentralinstitut fuer Kunstgeschichte and Bildarchiv Foto Marburg received the EUROPA NOSTRA top prize 2006. Since 2002 the EUROPA NOSTRA prizes are given by the European Commission and by EUROPA NOSTRA, the pan-European Federation for Cultural Heritage. It is the representative platform of over 220 heritage NGOs active throughout Europe and is dedicated to putting heritage and its benefits in the mainstream of public consciousness and to making heritage a priority for public policies both at European and national levels. Europa Nostra supports national and international campaigns for the preservation and rescue of Europe’s heritage at risk.
28.08. - 01.09.06 | Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Meiserstraße 10, 80333 München, see site map 24
