The Baldin Collection is a group of 364 masterpieces removed from Germany to the Soviet Union by Russian Army officer Victor Baldin at the end of World War II. The ensemble consists of 362 drawings and 2 paintings by Dürer, van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian and other famous artists. Historically part of the collection at the Kunsthalle Bremen, the Baldin group came from a much larger cache of artworks stored by the Germans in a Brandenburg castle to protect it from air raids. In 1945 the castle was occupied by the Red Army and the storage vaults were looted, mainly by Russian soldiers but also by the local German population. The works Baldin took were then hidden at a Soviet Research Institute for many years. In 1991 the collection was moved to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Peters