so the collection could be handled more securely, but none were available, and his request was denied. As a result, it is generally agreed that Baldin's efforts rescued priceless masterpieces from outright destruction. In addition, because of his specialized art knowledge, what would become known as the "Baldin Collection" became the most important part of the Kunsthalle collection remaining from Schloss Karnzow. In contrast to Baldin's efforts, works looted by Baldin's comrades from Karnzow have been found as far afield as Azerbaijan and in varying states of decay. In the late 1990s, eight disputed drawings, including the world-famous Frauenbad ("Women's Bathhouse") by Albrecht Dürer, were seized by United States Customs in an incident of black market trading. Today over 1,500 items from the Kunsthalle collection that were stored at Karnzow remain missing. Postwar period, 1946–1990 After their return home, some of the officers who had participated in the looting at Karnzow donated their pieces to museums around the Soviet Union. In 1948 Baldin deposited his at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, where the masterpieces became a Soviet state secret. Baldin worked as an art restorer at the museum and eventually became its general director in 1963, a post he held for 25 years. Baldin then tried for decades to give the stolen art back to Germany. He took the courageous steps of writing to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1973, to the chief ideologist of the Communist Party Yegor Ligachev in 1987, and many other Soviet political and cultural officials including Mikhail Suslov, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Raisa Gorbachev – all to no avail. In 1989, during the period of increased transparency in the Soviet Union known as perestroika, Baldin took another unprecedented step. He traveled to Bremen, West Germany, and met with the director of the Kunsthalle, Dr Siegfried Salzmann. The director was shocked to learn that important parts of the long lost collection had survived. With hands shaking, he read the list of the missing masterpieces that Baldin had prepared years before. Baldin had put pencil marks next to those works he had personally rescued. He has since been called the "hero of the story." Post-Soviet period, 1991–2000 In 1991, Baldin wrote to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and finally received his first reply, in which the president agreed it would be politically correct to return the works to Germany. However, that same year nationalist elements in the