Sacco di Budapest"... is the titre juste for this book and its intentions. For Sacco di Roma is how historians describe the infamous plundering of Rome in 1527, when Charles V, later Holy Roman Emperor, wished to punish the Pope, then in alliance with the king of France, by sending an army mainly composed of German mercenaries against the Eternal City. Although Clement VII took refuge in the Castle of St Angelo to avoid falling into their hands, the city was thoroughly looted. Under the conventions of the day, a victorious army was entitled to plunder a town it had taken by storm and Charles' troops were merely exercizing this right. This they did all the more zealously, since most of them professed the new faith promulgated by Luther; they derived special satisfaction from the capture and sack of the city of the Anti-Christ himself. This explains their lack of restraint, their deliberate desecration of the holy places, the horses tethered to the marble pillars of churches and bedded down on parchment codices, the dicing next to the confessio above the tomb of St Peter-games spiced with crude language and riotous drinking from communion chalices the soldiers shared with prostitutes were remembered for centuries.

The sack of Rome appalled contemporaries, who considered it to be the desecration not only of the papal seat, but of a centre of fabulous monuments and artistic treasures. Undoubtedly, the looting had a great part in the development and spread of the new style known as Mannerism, which conveyed the tart and, sometimes, the bitter. It is also clear that some of the longing expressed in this was nostalgia for a golden age in which continuity and a flourishing of the arts were ensured. So, to return to the title of the book, the situation before the sacco at the end of the Second World War really did seem, in Hungarian eyes, a state of affairs that would never again come back, if only because of the sheer quantity of art treasures in Budapest.

In addition to the public collections in Budapest and elsewhere in the country, there were numerous rich private collections-many times the present number; these contained far more valuable works than private collections do today. Among the owners of these works were members of the aristocracy, or at least of the nobility, and of the well-to-do upper middle classes. Of this latter, many were Jews, since Hungary's essentially liberal life at the end of the nineteenth century opened all careers to Jewry: they were present in the officer corps, as members of Parliament, and even in the aristocracy, as some were created barons. Those who collected, exhibited an interest in all areas of art. Some collected paintings and sculptures, while others favoured the decorative arts, famous tapestries and Near Eastern carpets or old porcelain. Others still built up collections whose historical importance complemented, or even exceeded, their artistic value.

The great value of some of the works in their hands can be most simply attested to by listing a few of the artists whose works-in some cases seminal, school- inspiring-were to be found in their possession. Amerling, Bonnard, Boucher, Brueghel, Chassériau, Constable, Courbet, the Cranachs, Daumier, Delacroix, Füger, Gauguin, Géricault, Goya, Ingres, Kriehuber, Lawrence, Longhi, Makart, Manet, Millet, Pascin, Proudhon, Renoir, Rodin, Ruisdael, Schiele, Tintoretto, Turner, Waldmüller, and Winterhalter-and this is without mentioning any Hungarian names. The value of the collections of ivory carvings, silverware, carpets, and porcelain cannot be conveyed so simply, although we can be sure that it was not less than that of the fine art collections. The total value of art works removed from Hungary can be estimated only roughly; in what follows the difficulties of doing this will be discussed, along with the uncertainty with regard to the actual number of the objects taken.

As the Second World War proceeded, life for Hungary's Jews-long envied by their co-religionists in Germany's other satellite states-grew increasingly difficult. In spring 1944, when Hitler's mistrust of his ally reached the point where he occupied Hungary and foisted a puppet government on it, the rounding up and deportation of Hungary's Jews to Nazi death camps was set in motion. They had to leave behind everything they had, including their art collections, which passed into the hands of a government commission set up especially for this purpose. As the fighting came closer, this government commission tried to hide away some of these collections and to move others westwards, to Germany. (A few collections were simply appropriated by individuals working for the confiscating authorities.)

In addition to this, there was also a German unit operating under the direction of Adolf Eichmann (who was posted to Hungary at this time) which was busy tracing Jewish property-in some cases art treasures, too. This functioned completely independently of the Hungarian authorities and the Hungarian government, which by then was pro-German to the fullest possible degree. The plunder thus seized by the Germans-filling several goods trains -was sent direct to Berlin, where it disappeared without trace. László Mravik has every reason to suppose that this booty was not destroyed during transportation: he believes that it fell into the hands of the Red Army, and is today somewhere in Russia. We also know that some Jewish-owned pieces, which could not be taken through the Soviet ring around Budapest, were destroyed in the garden of a Buda villa taken possession of by the German army.

At the same time, on the orders of the fascist Hungarian government, many Hungarian public collections, including treasures from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, were despatched to the Third Reich; it was only thanks to poor organization and the wartime shortage of transport that so much of this failed to cross the border. Those that did came to no harm, since they ended up in Southern Germany, which was to be within the American occupation zone. Accordingly, they arrived sooner or later at the Central Collecting Point in Munich, from where they were returned to Hungary within a year or two.

In addition to the shipments to the West organized by the Hungarian and German authorities, another cause of the losses may well have been simple war destruction, but the scale of this appears to have been relatively modest. Much greater danger lay in store for those art works that remained within Hungary. In the areas affected by the fighting, law and order broke down; it was easy to gain entry into damaged buildings and remove valuables, including art treasures, especially easy for armed military personnel. Many soldiers-Germans and Russians alike-made use of their opportunities. An even greater source of losses-perhaps one which could be considered as part of the inevitable destruction that accompanies war-was what happened in country houses requisitioned for military purposes, usually as rest centres or hospitals. (This was customary for the Soviet troops, they were advancing, and country houses already captured and well behind the line were suitable for medical and recreational pur- poses.) These buildings were rarely spared: most were stripped to the walls, with their contents taken away, pilfered or burnt. The soldiers frequently bartered with local peasants, paying for farm produce and fresh fruit with valuables taken from such buildings. Fertőd, the former Eszterháza, boasted the magnificent Late Baroque palace known as the Hungarian Versailles, which was Haydn's home for twenty-seven years. Long after the war it emerged that some were locals doing their milking on Rococo stools.

Most importantly, there was deliberate, organized looting. Here, perhaps, it will be sufficient to mention the looting in the capital. Soviet troops systematically emptied the safes of major banks, using explosives and cutting equipment to open them. They were probably looking for cash, precious metals and jewelry containing precious stones; if paintings, porcelain or other objects of artistic as well as monetary value came their way, they were not displeased. Their strategy was logical, since people fearful of the bombing and shelling were happy to entrust their valuables to these large underground storerooms constructed of steel and concrete. What was especially appealing was the availability of what were called "locked deposits", without any inventory or other document clarifying their contents. In other words, some of the banks had not investigated what was in the cases and trunks placed in the strongrooms.

The units dealing with this-"Economic Officers' Commissions" in the official documents of the time-did not shrink from the systematic search of a foreign mission and the removal of the valuables found there. The legation in question was that of Sweden. It gave sanctuary to many persecuted persons by exploiting the immunity enjoyed by neutral states, and allowed many others to deposit their valuables there. When its looting took place, the Third Secretary, Raoul Wallenberg, had already been kidnapped by the Soviets.

The perpetrators of the sack of Budapest differed from those of the Sacco di Roma in that they did not carry it out with brazen assurance, but usually made an effort not to be seen; they sealed off areas and sometimes operated during the night curfew. Unlike the Lutheran mercenaires, they steered clear of churches, public buildings and ecclesiastical collections, although they did remove the 1400-volume library (which also contained codices and incunabula) of the Calvinist College at Sárospatak.

Clearly, the explanation for this decidedly discreet approach was that those who organized it knew that what they were doing was contrary to international law. The 1907 Hague Convention forbade the removal of cultural assets as booty; there is a heightened poignancy in the fact that this particular clause was included at the insistence of the Russian delegation. The Potsdam Agreement of the summer of 1945, and the peace treaties which ended the war all stipulated the obligation to return any property that had been taken. By this time the looting had already ended, and presumably so had the transportation of the booty to the Soviet Union. From there, by the way, it could have been returned, as happened with the works taken to the West. But there has been no great willingness on the part of the Russians to do so, although the need for such action was recognized in the "basic treaty" concluded between Hungary and Russia on December 6, 1991. Russian public opinion, often capable of ultranationalism, since-rely believes that these objects were acquired through the undying merits of warriors who had spilled their blood in a war of liberation, and are, in any case, the Motherland's compensation for the horrors it suffered. What is more worrying, however, is that the successor of one of the powers in the anti-Hitler coalition does not-or dares not-regard art works taken from Jews threatened with annihilation by the Nazis as illegitimate war booty.

This substantial book publishes the findings of its compiler's many years of research, a task which, clearly, will never come to a complete end. As such, the book belongs to a gloomy strand in the literature on art history, the strand which registers the losses encurred during the Second World War, and which consists mostly of works published around 1950. In the many years that have since passed, additions to this have been rare indeed, until now that is. An obvious reason is that over forty years or so, in Hungary certain details of the Soviet army's activities could not be mentioned, or only in private conversation. No-one dared broach the subject in writing. Interestingly enough, at the end of 1998, another book came out containing research of a similar nature: A magyar jóvátétel és ami mögötte van (Hungarian Restitution and What Lies Behind It, ed. Sándor Balogh and Margit Földesi. Budapest, Napvilág, 1998).

László Mravik,* a specialist on the Renaissance and the Baroque, dealt with the history of Hungarian art collecting earlier, but only after the 1989 opening of "confidential" dossiers could he devote his attention to the direct causes of the 1944–45 losses of art works. This became his principal work, and, however strange it may seem, he engaged in it alone, although for some time now he has been helped by two young colleagues.

This involved slow and patient work, since the entire documentation had to be built up from scratch. Furthermore, the methodology had to be worked out as he went along; decisions had to be made as to where it was worth looking, where information on the former collections could be found, and so on. These, after all, were private collections, for most of which there were no printed catalogues, and even the existence of an inventory was by no means certain; in many cases there may have been just a list recording the names of the artists and the titles of the works, plus their sizes, at best. If works featured in scholarly studies or in connection with an exhibition (photographs may even have been published, too-and this happened repeatedly with the more important pieces), this was fortunate-but for most of them this was not the case. In this very difficult situation, the losses could hardly be documented in their entirety.

No written records were kept at the time of sequestration, still fewer at the time of forced acquisition, and even the banks-as mentioned above-held the great majority of the objects as locked deposits; into their well-kept records crept statements declaring that "the Soviet military authorities forcibly opened all the strongroom compartments, including the [...] compartments rented by you, and took away their contents". On other occasions they were more cautious, informing owners of deposits that "owing to wartime action" their property had "passed out of the bank's custody". Some owners later submitted complaints to the Hungarian authorities. This produced no results, but the lists made at the time survived to assist researchers later.

In some cases, a work unexpectedly lost at the end of the war can be tracked down only in photographs that show the interior of the building where the collection was kept, enabling us to get at least some idea of what some items looked like. Fortunately for the most important collections, these photographs are of fairly good quality, clearly showing paintings hanging on walls and sculptures standing on baize, although, of course, these are only aids to making recognition and identification possible. Truly reliable were inventories of objects lent for exhibitions, and those which the collectors compiled, or had compiled, for themselves.

It can easily be imagined how wearying it is to compare lists of art works using such methods, and how scant are the data that do not need to be confirmed through comparison with other data, and how many comparisons are needed, when the aim is to reach an acceptable level of certainty with regard to an object which is very uncertainly documented. Clearly the compiler is right in acknowledging the incompleteness of his work, but he took the view that it was time to publish the list, albeit as "preliminary and provisional".

After a brief discussion of the history of events, the introductory part of the volume contains documents-among them the text of a law; articles from extreme right-wing newspapers of the time on the confiscation of Jewish art treasures; an eye-witness account of the removal of such treasures; memoranda testifying to the looting of banks and the Swedish legation; an account of a ministry official concerning the condition of historic country houses in western Transdanubia in the summer of 1945; letters from the Hungarian prime minister and the minister of religious and educational affairs of that time to Marshal Voroshilov, the chairman of the Allied Control Commission, in the interests of recovering art treasures; an inventory dealing with a few paintings returned by the Soviet Union in 1971 and Party headquarters memoranda; and finally, the text of the 1991 Hungarian–Russian "basic treaty" and the protocol appended to it, which deal with the mutual return of art works that had been removed.

The most apposite part comprises the lists of lost art works (sculptures, paintings, drawings and various applied art artifacts and, in exceptional cases, books) which immediately follow this. The missing objects are numbered in ascending order throughout the book. The last number is 44,156, which does not represent the number of items, since again and again there are gaps in the numbering-for example, the first number is 121. Since the material is presented as a succession of collections in alphabetical order according to the names of the collectors, and since the numbering continues from one collection to the next, we must assume that where the numbering is interrupted individual collections were left out at the last moment; clearly, these collections omitted are not yet at the same stage of processing as the others. The alphabetical order has whimsically placed next to each other persons who collected Jewish liturgical objects, and those who collected Hungarian paintings or old porcelain; this seems appropriate in a book which attempts to give an account of all the losses.

The lists try to mention all the objects belonging to these collections briefly, disregarding their value, and presenting only the objects that have been firmly identified. This involves giving the name of the piece (for a fine art piece, this means the master and the title of the work), its size, the material or materials used, the literature dealing with it, and a short account of its provernance and fate. Descriptions are frequently accompanied by a photograph, although sometimes this is just a blown-up detail of a photograph showing a room. The inclusion of illustrations is a little uneven, since not every collector considered it necessary to have photographs of his treasures, and even when there were photographs it is not certain that they are still available now. In the case of works by better-known artists, the proportion of photographs is higher, but still does not exceed 20–25 per cent of the objects included. Naturally, the literature covers only the more important works, hence applied arts objects are at a conspicuous disadvantage.

Works are always indicated as being by the authors whose names appear in collectors' inventories, or in catalogues of exhibitions in which the objects featured. We know, however, that a great number of owners were inclined to upgrade their own pieces somewhat. In the case of a few objects, which are currently owned by museums in the West, new identifications have been made (some owners of objects recovered from Nazi hands later smuggled them to the West in contravention of Hungarian laws on exporting art works). However, the number of these was not great, less than 10 per cent of those taken to the East according to Mravik's estimate. As those qualified to modify attributions have not been able to study the works stored in repositories in the former Soviet Union, the old identifications for these works have naturally been retained.

This publication, fifty-three years after the end of the Second World War, may be deemed a little overdue. If we bear in mind that for decades silence had to be preserved, and that until recently only one individual was working on this subject-an individual greatly esteemed by his colleagues, but to whose efforts even the Hungarian authorities more than once reacted with incomprehension and defensiveness -then we must acknowledge all the more the sheer magnitude of what this volume achieves. In a certain sense, through the fate of works that were taken away, László Mravik has been doing work for every Hungarian art historian. With the publication of his findings so far, others will perhaps be able to join him in his efforts.

This volume is not on public sale, but was printed "For the Joint Restitution Committee at the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education". It is intended for, and will be made available to, museums and institutions.