Bernard Taper (1921–2016)

Bernard Taper served in the infantry during World War II and then became one of the "Monuments Men": art intelligence officers for the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) section of the U.S. Military Government in Germany charged with recovering works of art stolen by the Nazis. One of his most challenging assignments was the search for Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man," which Nazis stole from the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, Poland -- unfortunately, it was never found. During his MFAA years, he wrote freelance articles on Germany for magazines such as the New Yorker, The Nation, and Harper's. From 1949 to 1955, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. From 1956 to 1995, he was a writer for the New Yorker and from 1970 to 1998, he was a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. Among other books, he has written the authoritative biography of George Balanchine.