This paper presents a new knowledge opportunity regarding Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man" taken by the Third Reich during WWII and lost during that period.The Silesian Bridge Foundation owns an original five-page letter completed just after the end of the Second War from a farm near Dresden. The aged handwritten letter is assessed to be the grandson of Georg Michaelis (1857-1936), who was once a short term Chancellor of the German Empire in 1917. The grandson was part of a uniformed group that loaded a train containing “the hopes and dreams” of Hitler and Goering, and shortly after, recognized the same train in Dresden. The Wermacht, due to the onslaught of the Russian army, had directions to move assets from Breslau in Silesia on the eastern front away from the Russians
towards the center of Germany. In Dresden with an aged Nazi, 3 marked crates were taken away in secrecy to a nearby farm, where upon opening foe the crates, the Raphael was discovered. The Raphael had been left by Hans Frank in Muhrau (Morova) on the 25th of January, but was not there when the provincial conservator Dr. Gunther Grundmann arrived on the 29th with orders to remove the paintings, the Wermacht was present however, and due to the revised Third Reich directive, plausibly relocated the Raphael and other paintings to Breslau for shipment.
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