The German art market during WW II

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates quantitatively the evolution of the German art market between 1937 and 1944. During the war, the boom observed in occupied countries offers a sharp contrast with the price evolution in the United Kingdom. Did the German art market show more similarities with the countries it was occupying or was its evolution closer to the British one? Our results show that the German art market underwent a boom during the war. Beyond the historical interest in the art market, this analysis also speaks to the larger debates on wartime economies and of artworks as wartime investments.