What is this tapestry in Hitler's background?

by pm-me-ur-window-view

http://i.imgur.com/M77AdIY.jpg

What does it depict? Does anyone know the circumstances of how it was chosen or acquired? Is it still around?

(I saw this photo in the collection of WWII Leaders in Color thread)

commiespaceinvader

According to Despina Stratigakos' book Hitler at Home about the architectural features of the spaces Hitler designed, this is one of the Gobelin tapestries he liked and hung in his Berghof office, where this photo is taken. Gobelin is one of the most famous tapestry manufacturers world-wide hailing from France and having previously been the royal tapestry manufacture for the French royal court of Louis XIV. Since 1792 it has been owned by the French state and produced tapestries depicting a variety of scenes.

Hitler apparently like their narrative quality and preferred their tapestries depicting historical and mythical scenes. In case of this one, it was also used to hide a film projection booth while one on the opposite wall hid a projection canvas that was used when Hitler wanted to watch movies in his office. While I have not been able to find a description of what this particular one depicts, Stratigakos cites an article from Life in her book that states that "Hitler like other Nazi leaders liked pictures of nudes and ruins".

Here is a post card depicting the tapestry more clearly but also being of somewhat poor quality. In typical Nazi fashion, these Goebelin tapestries were not acquired the legal way but stolen from Vienna. They had originally belonged to the Habsburg royal family and then transferred into the possession of Vienna's Museum of Art. It's also possible that the one depicted here is a fake. Apparently, while covering the his Reich chancellery office with the real ones stolen from Vienna, according to Stratigakos only one in the Berghof was real, while the others were fake but it's impossible to tell if it was the one pictured here.

It seems to have been the general consensus among contemporary observers, including Life Magazine, that Hitler was a garish interior designer and had little taste since he cluttered his rooms not only in stolen real and some fake Gobelin Tapestry but also frequently hung pictures of himself in his wall next to rather badly done and tasteless busts of Richard Wagner.

As for what happened after the war with the tapestries, I have not been able to ascertain though the possibilities range from them being taken by someone in last days of the war, whether it was an Allied soldier or a Nazi, to them somehow being part of a private collection (in 2007 German police raided a private art collection containing a lot of stolen art including one such tapestry that had hung in Goebbels' office) to them being in some museum today.