Has the Mendelssohn Stradivarius, stolen by the Nazis, been found?
A black-and-white photograph on one side. A series of color snapshots on the other. One story was cut short in 1945, in a broken safe deposit box at the Deutsche Bank in Berlin. The other seemed to begin only in 1995, in the shop of a Parisian violin maker on Rue de Rome. One instrument dates from 1709, at the heart of the "golden years" of Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). The other left the workshop of the Cremona master in 1707. The two exceptional violins are both listed as such in the catalog of Tarisio, the world's leading auction house for stringed instruments, which has inventoried the approximately 650 instruments by the Italian luthier still in circulation.
"Except it is one and the same violin," said David Rosenthal, the great-grandson of Franz von Mendelssohn, the German banker who believed he had secured the instrument. "The same dimensions, the same wood grain, dozens of tiny scratches that are exactly identical. Show these photos to any reputable luthier and they will tell you the same."
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