May 25, 2008

the night of the Klimt conflagration

I don't usually latch onto ideas for tradebooks or novels... but a story in this week's Guardian Weekly struck me as irresistible for a book idea. (And not only me I reckon.)
It is a story about the Klimt exhibition at the Liverpool Tate by Jonathan Jones. Jones says (which I did not know), that a large Klimt collection was destroyed by the SS in Austria on the last day of the second world war in Austria. The SS were billeted in the Immendorf Castle, and were ordered to leave once the surrender was signed. Before moving on, they held an orgy in the Castle and then burnt it to the ground. 
This was more than innocent destruction, since the castle housed a large and important collection of Klimts. These had been collected by the Jewish industrialist, August Lederer. (Klimt was, apparently, mainly collected by Jews). This collection included the large Nietzschean allegorical paintings Klimt painted for the University of Vienna: Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, which the University decided were not for them.
Some sort of book, probably fiction, around the night the Klimts burnt would seem a winner. Not least because of Klimt's own Nietzscheanism, his appeal to Jewish collectors (including the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder).