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Gerald Roberts Reitlinger (born 1900 in London, United Kingdom – died 1978 in St Leonards-on-Sea, United Kingdom) was an art historian, especially of Asian ceramics, and a scholar of historical changes in taste in art and their reflection in art prices. After World War II he wrote three large books about Nazi Germany. He was also a painter and collector, mainly of pottery. Reitlinger's major works were ''The Final Solution'' (1953), ''The SS: Alibi of a Nation'' (1956), and between 1961–1970 he published ''The Economics of Taste'' in three volumes. == Career == Born in London to the banker Albert Reitlinger and his wife Emma Brunner, Reitlinger was educated at Westminster School in London before a short service with the Middlesex Regiment at the end of World War I. He then studied history, concentrating on art history, at Christ Church, University of Oxford and later at the Slade School and Westminster School of Art, during which time he also edited ''Drawing and Design'', a journal "devoted to art as a national asset" from 1927–29, and exhibited his own paintings in London. He appears under the name of "Reinecker" in Robert Byron's early travel book ''The Station'' (1928). In the 1930s he took part in two archaeological excavations in the Near East, one in 1930–31 financed by the Field Museum of Chicago to Kish, now in Iraq, and the second in 1932 to Al-Hirah, financed by Oxford, where he was co-director with David Talbot Rice. These inspired not only his book ''A Tower of Skulls: a Journey through Persia and Turkish Armenia'' published in 1932, but also his collecting interest in Islamic pottery.〔(Dictionary of Art Historians )〕 He travelled extensively and wrote non-fiction works on his trips to China and the Near East. During World War II, he served again as a British soldier, in an anti-aircraft battery and then lectured to troops, before being discharged because of ill-health. Postwar, he wrote articles about art for newspapers and art journals, and with his second wife Eileen Anne Graham Bell he became known for hosting parties for members of London society.〔(Dictionary of Art Historians )〕 During the 1950s he wrote two books about the Holocaust: ''The SS: Alibi of a Nation'' and ''The Final Solution'', both of which achieved large sales. In the latter book, he alleged that Soviet claims of the Auschwitz death toll being 4 million were "ridiculous", and he suggested an alternative figure of 800,000 to 900,000 dead; about 4.2 to 4.5 million was his estimate for the total number of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust.〔''The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945'' by Gerald Reitlinger, review by Philip Friedman, p. 189, ''Jewish Social Studies'', Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr. 1954), pp. 186–189, Indiana University Press, (JSTOR ) ;see also a review by Albert M. Hyamson, ''International Affairs'', Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct. 1953), pp. 494–495, published by Wiley on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, (JSTOR )〕 Subsequent scholarship has generally increased Reitlinger's conservative figures for death tolls, though his book was still described as being "widely regarded as a definitive account" in 1979.〔Luck, David, "Use and Abuse of Holocaust Documents: Reitlinger and "How Many?", ''Jewish Social Studies'', Vol. 41, No. 2, Articles Devoted to the Holocaust (Spring, 1979), pp. 95–122, Indiana University Press, (JSTOR )〕 In 1961, he published the first of three volumes of ''The Economics of Taste'', a work on the art market from the eighteenth century onwards, mostly in Britain and France, with much detailed information on historic prices,〔(Dictionary of Art Historians )〕 and a very lively commentary, though the reviewer for ''The Burlington Magazine'' of Volume III criticised "a tone of provocative flippancy".〔''The Economics of Taste: Volume III: The Art Market in the 1960s'' by Gerald Reitlinger, review by: Keith Roberts, ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 113, No. 822 (Sep. 1971), pp. 555–556, (JSTOR )〕〔(Dictionary of Art Historians )〕 The tone of the ''Economics of Taste'' aroused mixed feelings among reviewers, but they and those reviewing the books on the Nazis found large numbers of points of detail that were incorrect.〔See all those cited above, Denys Sutton on Volume I of ''Economics'', ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 104, No. 715 (Oct. 1962), pp. 437–438, (JSTOR ), and David Loshak on the same in ''Victorian Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jun. 1962), pp. 348–349, Indiana University Press, (JSTOR )〕 Reitlinger was a great fan of the work of London artist Austin Osman Spare, and purchased the sole copy of Spare's 1924 sketchbook of "automatic drawings", ''The Book of Ugly Ectasy'', which contained a series of grotesque creatures.〔Baker 2011. pp. 144–145.〕 He would later tell Frank Letchford that while he would happily sell his prints by Henri Matisse, he would never part with his Spare drawings.〔Baker 2011. p. 146.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gerald Reitlinger」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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