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The Thyssen Art Macabre
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The Thyssen Art Macabre (edit title/settings)

by David R. L. Litchfield (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description

"The Thyssen Art Macabre" is a biography of the Thyssen family of German industrialists, bankers and art collectors (available in English, German and Spanish).

Summary

'Old' August Thyssen created one of the world's greatest industrial fortunes. But his heirs would become better known for their extravagance, their divorce and inheritance battles, and both the creation and sale of their art collection. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Thyssen... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

'Old' August Thyssen created one of the world's greatest industrial fortunes. But his heirs would become better known for their extravagance, their divorce and inheritance battles, and both the creation and sale of their art collection. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Thyssen dynasty. It is a story that contains few of the cardinal virtues, and almost all of the deadly sins.

Having profited from the First World War, they supported the rise of the Nazis, before reaping the rewards of financing and arming the Third Reich. The Thyssens avoided financial and moral retribution by renouncing their German identity and adopting Hungarian nationality and questionable aristocratic status, before seeking the additional protection of Swiss residency.

Villa Favorita became the centre for Baron Heini Thyssen-Bornemisza's art collection and the revolving door through which five wives passed, while his family became better known for tax avoidance, alcohol and drug abuse, infidelity, promiscuity, theft and suicide than for industrial achievement.

Having previously hidden the family's appaling past behind the cultural veneer of his art collection, the Baron's final admissions proved considerably richer than the red wine he shared with David Litchfield. This book is a vivid account of some very complex and murky dealings, full of startling anecdotes and astonishing revelations considering the bizarre world of the super-rich.

Memorable Quotes

  • “Money can have a very destructive effect. Especially for people who don't have any.”
    Heini Thyssen
  • “I need a holiday. From what?”
    Tita and Heini Thyssen
  • “During the Germans' period of hyper-inflation, the Thyssens printed their own corporate money for their workers. Due to its stability, it was also traded by people with no connection to the Thyssen works. As a result, Old August Thyssen was summoned to Deutsche Bank where Director Schlitter asked the old man: 'Herr Thyssen. We have so much of your scrip in our tills, what is to become of it?'. For a few moments, August appeared deep in thought, before standing up to leave, he replied: 'You are quite right, Herr Schlitter. What is to become of it?'”
    August Thyssen and his bank manager
  • “I never made any promises. I've nothing to thank you for. What you did for my movement, you did for your own benefit and wrote it off as an insurance premium.”
    Adolf Hitler to Fritz Thyssen after closing his Institute for Corporate Affairs
  • “Art is art, isn't it? And water is water and east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like apple sauce, they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does.”
    Groucho Marx
  • “Stories never really start or end, they are just observed for a while, as they pass by.”
    Count Maximilian Schosberger

Setting & Important Places

List the places mentioned in this book.

First Sentence

Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon was attracted by the process of commissioning biographies, which was presumably why, to my knowledge, he repeated the process six times.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Prologue: 1996: Heini and Tita...Lunch on the Costa Brava
Chapter I: 1685-1900: 'Old' August Thyssen...The myth of the self-made man
Chapter II: 1900-1915: The arrival of the Bornemiszas...Buying into the aristocracy
Chapter III: 1915-1926: Blood and iron...The profits of war
Chapter IV: 1926-1939: Financing Hitler...Rearming the Reich
Chapter V: 1939-1945: Banking for the Nazis...Massacring the Jews
Chapter VI: 1945-1954: Heini seizes power...Uncle Fritz escapes to South America
Chapter VII: 1954-1967: The playboy years...One divorce, two weddings and a panther
Chapter VIII: 1967-1981: The murder of his wive's lover...The creation of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Chapter IX: 1981-1988: Enter Tita...The Spanish Connection
Chapter X: 1983-1993: By royal appointment...The $600 million art sale
Chapter XI: 1993-2001: Thyssen v Thyssen...The $150 million court case
Chapter XII: 2001-2006: The fall of the House of Thyssen-Bornemisza
(Epilogue: in German edition only)
Sources
Index

Series

This book is in .

Authors & Contributors

  1. David R. L. Litchfield (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Caroline Schmitz (Compiler)

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