Ludwig Pollak (14 September 1868, Prague – circa October 23, 1943,

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

) was an Austro-Czech classical archaeologist, antiquities dealer, and director of the

Museo Barracco di Scultura Antica Museo Barracco di Scultura Antica (Italian, ''Barracco Museum of Antique Sculpture'') is a museum in Rome, Italy, featuring a collection of works acquired by the collector Giovanni Barracco, who donated his collection to the City of Rome in 1902. ...

in Rome.

Biography

He is perhaps best known for discovering in 1906 the missing right arm of Laocoön in the famous ancient Roman sculpture '' Laocoön and His Sons''. The rest of the statue had been discovered in 1506, with the arm as well as several other pieces, including the arms of the sons and parts of the snake, missing. The Renaissance sculptor

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

had correctly suggested that the missing right arms were originally bent back over the shoulder; however, most others disagreed, opting for a reconstructed arm in an heroic extended fashion. This incorrectly reconstructed arm was added to the statue. In 1906, Pollak discovered a fragment of a marble arm in a builder's yard in Rome, close to the findspot of the rest of the statue. Noting a stylistic similarity to the Laocoön group he presented it to the Vatican Museums: it remained in their storerooms for half a century. In 1957 (after Pollak's murder at Auschwitz) the museum decided that this arm—bent, as Michelangelo had suggested—had originally belonged to this Laocoön, and replaced it. According to Paolo Liverani: "Remarkably, despite the lack of a critical section, the join between the torso and the arm was guaranteed by a drill hole on one piece which aligned perfectly with a corresponding hole on the other". Ludwig Pollak's story forms the basis of the 2021 German novel, ''Pollaks Arm'' by (English translation by Elizabeth Lauffer ). Pollak's genealogy (including his being a descendant of Rabbi Yehuda Löw (the "MAHARAL" of Prague) and family history forms the basis of a chapter of the non-fiction book ''The Wedding Photo'' (2018) by Dan A. Oren.

References

External links

The Barracco-Pollak Library
(Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali Roma site)

in the Deutschen Nationalbibliothek {{DEFAULTSORT:Pollak 1868 births 1943 deaths Classical archaeologists Czech art dealers People from Prague Czech people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust People from Austria-Hungary