Pauline Baer de Perignon, in search of lost works
Writer Pauline Baer de Perignon in studio at RFI (November 2020) © RFI / Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint
By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint
2 min
Literary director in the audiovisual sector for ten years, reader and co-author of scripts, Pauline Baer de Perignon has led numerous writing workshops.
“La collection disparue”, published by Éditions Stock, is his first book.
Publicity
Cover of the book by Pauline Baer de Perignon © Stock
“It all started with a list of paintings scribbled down by a cousin I barely knew. On this piece of paper, Impressionist masterpieces, Renoir, Monet, Degas, exhibited today in the greatest museums in the world, all of which once belonged to my great-grandfather, Jules Strauss.
I didn't know anything about its history, or about its missing collection. These few hastily written words would change my life, leading me from the Louvre to the Dresden Museum, from the Gestapo archives to the Ministry of Culture.
For three years, with my curiosity and a taste for enigmas for all baggage, I set out on the trail of my ancestors, in search of Jules Strauss, and of a story that has not been passed on to me. What happened in 1942? What was left of his collection when the family apartment was raided by the Nazis?
I am not an art historian, I simply wanted to conduct an investigation, police and sentimental, in the footsteps of my family, Jewish, despoiled. »
Pauline Baer de Perignon for the Stock editions.
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Second World War
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