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Gerald Roberts Reitlinger (1900 – 1978) was a British art historian, especially of Asian ceramics, and a scholar of historical changes in taste in art and their reflection in art prices. AfterWorld War II he wrote three large books aboutNazi Germany. He was also a painter and collector, mainly of pottery. Reitlinger's major works wereThe Final Solution (1953),The SS: Alibi of a Nation (1956), and between 1961–1970 he publishedThe Economics of Taste in three volumes.
Born in London to the banker Albert Reitlinger and his wife Emma Brunner, Reitlinger was educated atWestminster School in London before a short service with theMiddlesex Regiment at the end ofWorld War I. He then studied history, concentrating on art history, atChrist Church,University of Oxford and later at theSlade School andWestminster School of Art, during which time he also editedDrawing and Design, a journal "devoted to art as a national asset" from 1927 to 1929, and exhibited his own paintings in London. He appears under the name of "Reinecker" inRobert Byron's early travel bookThe Station (1928). In the 1930s he took part in two archaeological excavations in theNear East, one in 1930–31 financed by theField Museum of Chicago toKish, now inIraq, and the second in 1932 toAl-Hirah, financed by Oxford, where he was co-director withDavid Talbot Rice. These inspired not only his bookA Tower of Skulls: a Journey through Persia and Turkish Armenia published in 1932, but also his collecting interest inIslamic pottery.[1][2]
He travelled extensively and wrote non-fiction works on his trips toChina and the Near East. DuringWorld War II, he served again as a British soldier, in ananti-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.[1]
During the 1950s he wrote two books about the Holocaust:The SS: Alibi of a Nation andThe Final Solution, both of which achieved large sales. In the latter book, he alleged that Soviet claims of theAuschwitz death toll being 4 million were "ridiculous", and he suggested an alternative figure of800,000 to 900,000 dead; about 4.2 to 4.5 million was his estimate for the total number of Jewish deaths in theHolocaust.[3] Subsequent scholarship has generally increased Reitlinger's conservative figures for death tolls, though his book was still described in 1979 as being "widely regarded as a definitive account".[4] In January 2020, the BBC gave the Auschwitz death toll as 'at least 1.1 million', of which 'almost one million were Jews'.[5]
In 1961, he published the first of three volumes ofThe Economics of Taste, a work on theart market from the eighteenth century onwards, mostly in Britain and France, with much detailed information on historic prices,[1] and a very lively commentary, though the reviewer forThe Burlington Magazine of Volume III criticised "a tone of provocative flippancy".[6][1] The tone of theEconomics 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.[7]
Reitlinger was a great fan of the work of London artistAustin 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.[8] He would later tellFrank Letchford that while he would happily sell his prints byHenri Matisse, he would never part with his Spare drawings.[9]
Reitlinger died of acerebral hemorrhage at his home, "Woodgate", Beckley in EastSussex. His collection of Islamic pottery, Japanese and Chineseporcelain was donated in 1972 to theAshmolean Museum at Oxford, where a gallery is named in his honour. The carefully recorded collection had been kept in his house atBeckley, East Sussex, which he also gave to the museum, intending it to be displayed there, and with the condition he lived there for the rest of his life. However the house was severely damaged by fire in February 1978, a few months before his death, though most of the collection was saved.[10]
