There Used to be a Lot of Museums …

There used to be a lot of museums
And art galleries,
One could see many paintings,
One saw flowers blooming

And how putti carried fruit
And how fat cows grazed,
Yes, in those peaceful days,
There were wonderful joys

And one indulged in artistic pleasures,
By the great old masters
One was often enchanted
And one could be inspired

And one could be uplifted,
During sacred hours in a museum
Many have found enrichment
For their lives

Many magnificent paintings were seen
Hung on museum walls
Rembrandt, Cuyp, and Van der Velde
And one saw them in huge numbers

Titian, Raphael, and Dürer
And many other paintings,
But then Germany’s leader came
And behaved like a savage

And war broke out
And the masterpieces were all
Taken from the walls,
Adolf showed his strength,

The enemy did the same,
German cities became targets,
Projectiles fell daily
And the paintings had to give way.

And even paintings by Rubens
By Hans Holbein and Brouwer
Have disappeared, they buried them
Behind an air-raid shelter wall.

They hid them from the eyes of admirers
And hid them well
And life became poorer
And one got other worries.

All those noble artistic interests
Now lie in the background,
Are buried and forgotten,
One had many anxious hours

And it has been nearly six years
Many are already tired of war,
Hitler wasn’t the real thing,
May peace finally come.

Yes, the war will end one day
Hitler will be expelled,
But the museum walls
Will remain bare and barren

What Hitler’s army destroyed,
You will have to pay for,
Many paintings that belonged to you,
You will miss in the future.

Many little paintings are confiscated,
And you mourn the damage,
Hang a sign on the wall
Here hung Rembrandt and Ostade

Jan van Eyck and van der Weyden
And a painting by Canaletto,
Watteau and Lucas van Leyden
Jan Vermeer and Tintoretto

But a painter instead of painting
Became a prophet among us
And we had to pay for it
And the paintings went to the sharks.