The case that started it all... This case began with an oil painting rescued from an antique store that was going out of business. The owner spoke mostly German, but he did say that the artist Willy Tiedjen was special. ​At first, that claim seemed hard to prove. Online, Willy Tiedjen’s paintings were selling for way less than he was asking, often with less provenance than his had (there were some labels and handwriting on the back of his). 
 

But the deeper I looked, the stranger the story became.

Dozens of old German newspaper articles. Exhibition records. He opens a school welcoming women at a time when women weren't allowed to attend traditional art academy. He falls in love with Francezka Bieber, one of his students. She keeps her last name - so modern! She's an entreprenuer, too, with a store in downtown Munich! He serves in WW1. WW2 comes around and their Munich studio is destroyed and they flee south. We uncovered so much about these lives! I soon found, in my hands, the surviving fragments of a much larger story about a German artist.