Great Masters and Unicorns

According to legend, the horn of the unicorn could counteract poison and purify water. The collector Lehmann Bernheimer used to cite this myth regarding an item in his collection, which for centuries had been treasured as an actual horn of a unicorn. In 1954, when Konrad O. Bernheimer was four years old, Lehmann, his grandfather, brought him back from Venezuela, where the family had fled from Nazi persecution, to Munich. The Bernheimers had been renowned art antique dealers in this city, and the time had come to start all over again. In the grandfather's salon there was a narwhale tusk, a family talisman, which had accompanied them through highs and lows. In this vivid and fascinating narrative, Konrad O. Bernheimer tells the history of his family, a German-Jewish dynasty of art dealers, and gives insights into the exciting and unusual life of an art dealer.