Argenterie Ancienne Et Moderne . Diverse MéTal Argenté . Baron Cassel

Écrit en français et non en anglais. In French, not in English. This is a paperback edition. Provenant des Collections réunies par le Baron Cassel, 11 mars 1954. Printed in France. 11.5 x 9.5 inches [29 x 24 cm]. Plain beige wrappers, lightly soiled, with black lettering to the front wrapper. Staple-bound. 28 unnumbered pages, with VIII full-page plates illustrating items of silversmithing at auction. A very clean interior. A Good Plus copy. 5 oz. weight. Baron Jean-Germain Cassel van Doorn [1882-1953], was a knowledgeable French collector of art. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Special Task Force headed by Adolf Hitler's leading ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, was one of the main Nazi agencies engaged in the plunder of cultural valuables in Nazi-occupied countries during the Second World War. A particularly notorious operation by the ERR was the plunder of art from French Jewish and a number of Belgian Jewish collections from 1940 to 1944. Much of Baron Cassel's collection in Cannes and Ruoms, France, was seized by the ERR following the German occupation in 1944, Aktion Berta, and transferred by the ERR via Paris to various Austrian repositories. Some of the Cassel collection was repatriated to the French State on January 21st, 1948 and restituted by the French Government to Baron Cassel later that year. Various items from the restituted collection were auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in March and April 1954.