Focus on this artwork and analyze the Retribution, theft, return, and restoration.
In retribution (and not only as reparation) for the immense losses suffered by the people of the Soviet Union at the hands of Germany in the Second World War, occupying Soviet authorities carefully removed a large number of works from Reinhardsbrunn Palace (some 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) from Gotha) in 1945 and sent them to Russia. They included the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat, which was in storage at Reinhardsbrunn for safekeeping. The plan was to build a new museum in Moscow exhibiting art from the West. However, following a change of policy after the GDR had become established as an ally of the Soviet Union, the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat was returned to Gotha in 1958.Twenty-one years later, the painting was stolen. In the early hours of 14 December 1979, one or more burglars broke into Friedenstein Palace and stole the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat as well as works by (or after) Ferdinand Bol, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Anthony van Dyck, and Hans Holbein the Elder in an evidently carefully planned and targeted operation. The police feared at the time that the paintings were damaged, because they found a trail of broken picture-frame parts along the escape route through the palace gardens. But despite extensive investigations by both the VoPo and the Stasi into what was the most significant art theft ever in the GDR, the trail went cold. In 2008, the mayor of Gotha, Knut Kreuch, launched a media campaign in an effort to find and recover the stolen works, to no avail.Then in June 2018, Kreuch was approached by a lawyer known to facilitate the return of stolen works of art. After long and sensitive negotiations conducted by Kreuch in person, the five pictures were given back "in fairly good shape" on 12 September 2019. Conservator Fuhyi Kuo restored the Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat in Gotha, and the five returned works were exhibited together at the Herzogliches Museum in 2021–2022.
GDR Gotha Germany Anthony van Dyck Hans Holbein the Elder Jan Brueghel the Elder Knut Kreuch Ferdinand Bol Reinhardsbrunn Palace Soviet Union Reinhardsbrunn Second World War Stasi Conservator Friedenstein Palace VoPo