THE ORPHEUS CLOCK

In the bestselling tradition of Monuments Men and The Hare with Amber Eyes comes the passionate account of a man reclaiming his family art collection, stolen by the Nazis in World War II.

Simon Goodman's grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and died in concentration camps. Originally he knew little about them--his father never spoke of their history or heritage. But when Goodman received his late father's old papers, a story began to emerge.

From a Bohemian hamlet the Gutmanns had risen to become one of Germany’s most powerful banking families. They also had built a magnificent art collection. When Hitler took power in September 1919, they became prime targets and eventually everything they had worked to build was taken from them: their art, their wealth, their standing, and their lives.

While their son secretly worked to find and recover their prized possessions, their grandson, Simon Goodman, was living in London without any knowledge of it. Once Goodman, through the papers sent to him upon his father's death, learned about his family's stolen legacy, he began to track the art across two continents. He learned much of the collection had gone to top Nazis, including Hitler; other works had been smuggled through Switzerland and some were now in famous museums.

The first of Goodman family paintings found was by Edgar Degas. It was in the collection of a Chicago billionaire. The ensuing legal case became the first of its kind in the U.S., and its impact on the art world was profound. Since then the Goodman family has uncovered not only artworks by Renoir, Botticelli, Guardi; a 15th century statue taken by Goering; a unique gold Renaissance clock, and hundreds of other lost pieces, but also an invaluable sense of their ancestry.

This is a story of redemption and reclamation. As their grandson tracks down their magnificent collection, he also recovers his own family history.

In order to locate the missing art, Goodman went through a myriad of original sources. The wealth of original material he discovered is astonishing.

The Orpheus Clock: There are fewer than a dozen of these priceless, exquisitely engraved gilt table clocks left in existence. Crafted during the Renaissance, the Gutmanns’ clock contained a mysterious dial that had been crafted by the master of sixteenth century German goldsmiths, Wenzel Jamnitzer. The clock is incredibly ornate with astronomically perfect components, rendered in iron, covered in a case of gold and bronze, and topped with intricate high-relief depictions of scenes from the legend of Orpheus and the Underworld. The few Orpheus clocks that survive are works of mechanical mastery and artistic genius.

This is about a collection that would make any person remotely interested or educated in art stand up at attention and will have art enthusiasts salivating.

This is an extremely personal story to Goodman, who still continues his fight to fully recover his family's original collection

Born in London shortly after WWII and educated at the French Lycee in London, then at Munich University, Simon Goodman entered the music business in the late 1960s. After specializing in breaking new British artists abroad, Goodman then established an alternative distribution network in the U.S. in the early 1980s. It was Goodman's father who began secretly searching for his father's lost treasures and looted art, taken by the Nazis, a legacy that his son, Simon, later inherited. Goodman is married to actress May Quiley and has one son and three daughters. He lives in Los Angeles where his search for his family's treasures continues.