It reads like a thriller. A fascinating story unravels from Berlin, via Amsterdam to the United States. The protagonists: a collector of Nazi memorabilia, a German inspector and perhaps the world’s best-known art crime investigator. The story involves the Soviet Army and the Stasi, also caught up in the web of intrigue surrounding the disappearance of the statues. Josef Thorak, one of Adolf Hitler's favorite artists, created the two larger-than-life bronze horses in the late 1930s for the garden of the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

 

Hitler had the two statues transported to the Oderbruch region during bombing raids in 1943. After the end of the war, they were last seen in Soviet barracks north of Berlin, after which their trail goes cold and the mystery begins. Suddenly, in 2013, they reappear on the shadow market. Detective and director of the Berlin police department’s art crimes division, René Allonge, takes on the case.

 

Dutch art crime investigator Arthur Brand begins his search at the same time. The two team up and in a spectacular raid, discover the horses in 2015.

 

Today, the horses are back in Berlin, in the Spandau Citadel. But the question remains: How should Nazi art be dealt with? Should it be banished or exhibited in a historical context?