SALT MINES AND CASTLES




[Illustration: The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak, Moore
and Howe, who removed the Göring Collection from Berchtesgaden to Munich,
were photographed in the Luftwaffe Rest House at Unterstein.]

[Illustration: Hermann Göring, his daughter Edda, Frau Göring and Adolf
Hitler. This photograph was taken at Karinhall, the Reichmarschall’s
estate near Berlin.]




                                Salt Mines
                                   AND
                                 Castles

                    The Discovery and Restitution of
                           Looted European Art

                                  _By_
                          THOMAS CARR HOWE, JR.

                        THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
                              _PUBLISHERS_
                       _INDIANAPOLIS_ · _NEW YORK_

              COPYRIGHT, 1946, BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

                             _First Edition_




TO MY MOTHER




NOTE


From May 1945 until February 1946, I served as a Monuments, Fine Arts
and Archives Officer in Germany. During the first four months of this
assignment, I was engaged in field work which included the recovery of
looted works of art from such out-of-the-way places as a monastery in
Czechoslovakia, a salt mine in Austria, and a castle in Bavaria. Later,
as Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, Office
of Military Government, U. S. Zone, I participated in the restitution of
recovered art treasures to the countries of rightful ownership.

This book is primarily an account of my own experiences in connection
with these absorbing tasks; but I have also chronicled the activities of
a number of my fellow officers, hoping thereby to provide the reader with
a more comprehensive estimate of the work as a whole than the _resumé_ of
my own duties could have afforded.

For many helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Captain Edith A. Standen,
Lieutenant Lamont Moore and Mr. David Bramble; and for invaluable
photographic material, I am particularly grateful to Captain Stephen
Kovalyak, Captain P. J. Kelleher, Captain Edward E. Adams and Lieutenant
Craig Smyth, USNR.

For permission to reproduce three _International News Service_
photographs, I wish to thank Mr. Clarence Lindner of the San Francisco
_Examiner_.

                                                    THOMAS CARR HOWE, JR.

    San Francisco
    July 1946.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                              PAGE

     1 PARIS—LONDON—VERSAILLES                           13

     2 ASSIGNED TO FRANKFURT                             35

     3 MUNICH AND THE BEGINNING OF FIELD WORK            54

     4 MASTERPIECES IN A MONASTERY                       80

     5 SECOND TRIP TO HOHENFURTH                        104

     6 LOOT UNDERGROUND: THE SALT MINE AT ALT AUSSEE    130

     7 THE ROTHSCHILD JEWELS; THE GÖRING COLLECTION     171

     8 LOOTERS’ CASTLE: SCHLOSS NEUSCHWANSTEIN          219

     9 HIDDEN TREASURES AT NÜRNBERG                     243

    10 MISSION TO AMSTERDAM; THE WIESBADEN MANIFESTO    259

       APPENDIX                                         297

       INDEX                                            321




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak,
        Moore and Howe                                       _Frontispiece_

    Hermann Göring, his daughter, Frau Göring and Hitler     _Frontispiece_

                                                                    FACING
                                                                      PAGE

    The Residenz at Würzburg                                            30

    Ruined Frankfurt. The Cathedral                                     30

    The Central Collecting Point at Munich                              31

    A typical storage room in the Central Collecting Point              31

    The bronze coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia                   40

    Canova’s life-size statue of Napoleon’s sister                      40

    The administration buildings at the Alt Aussee salt mine            41

    Truck at the mine being loaded with paintings                       41

    Sieber and Kern view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child               56

    The Madonna being packed for return to Bruges                       56

    The famous Ghent altarpiece                                         57

    Sieber, Kern and Eder examine the altarpiece                        57

    Vermeer’s _Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_                    64

    One of the picture storage rooms at Alt Aussee                      64

    Panel from the Louvain altarpiece, _Feast of the Passover_          65

    The Czernin Vermeer                                                 65

    Major Anderson supervising removal of the Göring Collection         96

    One of the forty rooms in the Rest House                            96

    The GI Work Party which assisted the Evacuation Team                97

    Truck loaded with sculpture from the Göring Collection              97

    German altarpiece from the Louvre Museum                           128

    The panel, _Mary Magdalene_, by van Scorel                         128

    Wing of an Italian Renaissance altarpiece by del Garbo             129

    _The Magdalene_, by Erhardt                                        129

    _Mary Magdalene_, by Cranach                                       160

    _The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine_ by David                  160

    _Diana_, by Boucher, from the Rothschild Collection                161

    _Atalanta and Meleager_, by Rubens                                 161

    _Portrait of a Young Girl_ by Chardin and _Young Girl with
        Chinese Figure_ by Fragonard                                   192

    _Christ and the Adulteress_, the fraudulent Vermeer                193

    _Portrait of the Artist’s Sister_ by Rembrandt                     193

    Removal of treasures from Neuschwanstein                           224

    Neuschwanstein—Ludwig II’s fantastic castle                        224

    Packing looted furniture at Neuschwanstein                         225

    Typical storage room in the castle                                 225

    The Albrecht Dürer house—before and after the German collapse      256

    The Veit Stoss altarpiece from the Church of Our Lady at Cracow    257

    The Hungarian Crown Jewels                                         288

    Treasure Room at the Central Collecting Point, Wiesbaden           289

    The celebrated sculpture, Queen Nefertete                          289




SALT MINES AND CASTLES




(1)

_PARIS—LONDON—VERSAILLES_


“Your name’s not on the passenger list,” said Craig when I walked into
the waiting room of the Patuxent airport. “You’d better see what you can
do about it.” It was a hot spring night and I had just flown down from
Washington, expecting to board a transatlantic plane which was scheduled
to take off at midnight.

“There must be some mistake,” I said. “I checked on that just before I
left Washington.” Craig went with me to the counter where I asked the
pretty WAVE on duty to look up my name. It wasn’t on her list.

“Let’s see what they know about this at the main office,” she said with
an encouraging smile as she dialed Naval Air Transport in Washington.
The next ten minutes were grim. The officer at the other end of the
line wanted to know with whom I had checked. Had it been someone in his
office? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to get on that plane.
I had important papers which had to be delivered to our Paris office
without delay. Was I a courier? Yes, I was—well, that is, almost, I
faltered to the WAVE ensign who had been transmitting my replies. “Here,
you talk to him,” she said, adding, as she handed me the receiver, “I
think he can fix it up.”

After going through the same questions and getting the same answers a
second time, the officer in Washington asked to speak to the yeoman who
was supervising the loading of the plane. He was called in and I waited
on tenterhooks until I heard him say, “Yes, sir, I can make room for the
lieutenant and his gear.” Turning the phone over to the WAVE, he asked
with a reassuring grin, “Feel better, Lieutenant?”

I was so limp with relief that I scarcely noticed the tall spare man in
civilian clothes who had just come up to the counter. “That’s Lindbergh,”
said Craig in a low voice. “Do you suppose he’s going over too?”

Half an hour later we trooped out across the faintly lighted field to
the C-54 which stood waiting. Lindbergh, dressed now in the olive-drab
uniform of a Naval Technician, preceded us up the steps. There were ten
of us in all. With the exception of three leather-cushioned chairs, there
were only bucket seats. Craig and I settled ourselves in two of these
uninviting hollows and began fumbling clumsily with the seat belts.
Seeing that we were having trouble, Lindbergh came over and with a
friendly smile asked if he could give us a hand. After deftly adjusting
our belts, he returned to one of the cushioned seats across the way.

Doors slammed, the engines began to roar and, a few seconds later, we
were off. We mounted swiftly into the star-filled sky and, peering
out, watched the dark Maryland hills drop away. We dozed despite the
discomfort of our bent-over positions and didn’t come to again until
the steward roused us several hours later with coffee and sandwiches.
Afterward he brought out army cots and motioned to us to set them up if
we wanted to stretch out. As soon as we got the cots unfolded and the
pegs set in place, he turned out the lights.

Craig was dead to the world in a few minutes but I couldn’t get back to
sleep. To the accompaniment of the humming motors, the events of the past
weeks began to pass in review: that quiet April afternoon at Western Sea
Frontier Headquarters in San Francisco when my overseas orders had come
through—those orders I had been waiting for so long, more than a year. It
was in March of 1944 that I first learned there was a chance of getting
a European assignment, to join the group of officers working with our
armies in the “protection and salvaging of artistic monuments in war
areas.” That was the cumbersome way it was described. The President had
appointed a commission with a long name, but it came to be known simply
as the Roberts Commission. Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court was the
head of it. It was the first time in history that a country had taken
such precautions to safeguard cultural monuments lying in the paths of
its invading armies.

It was the commission’s job to recommend to the War Department servicemen
whose professional qualifications fitted them for this work. I had
been in the Navy for two years. Before that I had been director of the
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco’s two
municipal museums of the fine arts. The commission had recommended me,
but it was up to me to obtain my own release. I had been in luck on that
score. My commanding officer had agreed to let me go. And more important,
my wife had too. Only Francesca had wanted to know why Americans should
be meddling with Europe’s art treasures. Weren’t there enough museum
directors over there to take care of things? Of course there were in
normal times. But now they needed men in uniform—to go in with the armies.

And after all that planning nothing had happened, until three weeks ago.
Then everything had happened at once. The orders directed me to report to
SHAEF for duty with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, G-5,
and additional duty with the Allied Control Council for Germany.

The papers had been full of stories about German salt mines—the big one
at Merkers where our troops had found the Nazi gold and the treasures
from the Berlin museums. I was going to Germany. Would I find anything
like that?

I had flown to Washington to receive last-minute instructions. I was
to make the trip across by air and was given an extra allowance of
twenty-five pounds to enable me to take along a dozen Baedekers and a
quantity of photographic paper for distribution among our officers in the
field. I had been introduced to Craig Smyth while in the midst of these
final preparations. Like me, he was a naval lieutenant and his orders
were identical with mine. He was a grave young Princetonian, formerly on
the staff of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

It was raining when we reached Stevensville, Newfoundland, early the
next morning. After an hour’s stop we were on our way again. Shortly
before noon we struck good weather and all day long sea and sky remained
unvaryingly blue. Late in the afternoon we landed on the island of
Terceira in the Azores. We had set our watches ahead two hours at
Stevensville. Now we set them ahead again. We took off promptly at seven.
This was the last lap of the journey—we’d be in Paris in the morning.
Presently our fellow passengers settled down for the night. Two of the
cushioned chairs were empty, so Craig and I took possession. They were
more comfortable than the cots, and as soon as the steward turned out the
lights I dropped off to sleep.

It was still dark when I awoke hours later, but there was enough light
for me to distinguish two black masses of land rising from the sea. On
one, the beacon of a lighthouse revolved with monotonous regularity. We
had just passed over two of the Channel Islands. The dawn came rapidly
and a pink light edged the eastern horizon. It was not long before we
sighted the coast of France. We flew into rosy clouds and, as they
billowed about the plane, we caught tantalizing glimpses of the shore
line below. The steward pointed out one promontory and told us it was
Brest. Soon we had a spectacular view of Mont St. Michel and the long
causeway over which I had driven years before on a sketching tour in
Normandy. I wondered what had become of Mère Poulard and her wonderful
omelettes and lobster. Some people said they had brought more visitors to
Mont St. Michel than the architecture. Very likely she was dead and the
Germans had probably disposed of her fabulous cuisine.

We had lost two more hours in the course of the night, so it was only
seven-thirty when we swooped down at Orly field, half an hour from
Paris. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was so bright that it
took us a few minutes to get accustomed to the glare. As we walked over
to the airport office, we had our first glimpse of war damage at close
range—bombed-out hangars and, scattered about the field, the wreckage
of German planes. But the airport was being repaired rapidly. Trim new
offices had been built and additional barracks were nearing completion.
Craig and I booked places on the afternoon plane for London and then
climbed onto the bus waiting to take us into Paris.

Thanks to various delays in getting out of Washington, we had missed
the Paris celebration of VE-Day by a margin of three days. So we were
about to see the wonderful old city at the beginning of a period of
readjustment. But a peaceful Sunday morning is no time to judge any
city—least of all Paris. Everything looked the same. The arcades along
the right side of the Rue de Rivoli and the gardens at the left were
empty, as one would expect them to be. We turned into the Rue Castiglione
and came to a halt by the column in the Place Vendôme.

After we had checked our bags at the ATC office, we walked over to the
Red Cross Club on the Place de la Concorde. We shaved, washed and then
had doughnuts and coffee in the canteen.

Our next move was to call Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Webb, the British
officer who was head of the MFA&A Section at SHAEF headquarters in
Versailles. Before the war, Colonel Webb had been Slade Professor of
Art at Cambridge. I explained to him that Smyth and I had arrived but
that our orders directed us to report first to Naval Headquarters in
London—ComNavEu—and that as soon as we had complied with them we would
be back. That was all right with the colonel. He said that Lieutenant
Kuhn, USNR, his deputy, was away on a three-day field trip and wouldn’t
be returning before the middle of the week. And we were primarily Charlie
Kuhn’s problem.

With that formality out of the way, we retrieved our luggage and
wheedled the ATC into giving us transportation to the Royal Monceau,
the Navy hotel out near the Étoile. It was time to relax and luxuriate
in the thought that it was May and that we were in Paris—that climatic
and geographic combination so long a favorite theme of song-writers. I
thought about this as we drove along the Champs Élysées. The song writers
had something, all right—Paris in May was a wonderful sight. But they
had been mooning about a gala capital filled with carefree people, and
the Paris of May 1945 wasn’t like that. Architecturally, the city was
as elegant as ever, but the few people one saw along the streets looked
anything but carefree. And there were no taxis. Taxis have always seemed
to me as much a part of Paris as the buildings themselves. In spite of a
superficial sameness, Paris had an air of empty magnificence that made
one think of a beautiful woman struck dumb by shock. I wondered if my
thoughts were running away with me, but found that Craig’s impressions
were much the same.

These musings were cut short by our arrival at the hotel. The Navy had
done all right for itself. The same efficient French staff that had
presided over this de luxe establishment in prewar days was still in
charge. I left the Baedekers and photographic paper for Charlie Kuhn, and
then Craig and I walked to Naval Headquarters in the Rue Presbourg. There
we attended to routine matters in connection with our orders. It was
almost noon by the time we got squared away, so we retraced our steps to
the Monceau. Lunch there was a demonstration of what a French chef could
do with GI food.

Midafternoon found us headed back to Orly in a Navy jeep. Our plane was
scheduled to leave at four. This was no bucket-seat job, but a luxurious
C-47 equipped with chairs of the Pullman-car variety, complete with
antimacassars. We landed at Bovingdon less than two hours later and
from there took a bus up to London. Naval Headquarters was in Grosvenor
Square. With the American Embassy on one side of it, the Navy on another,
and the park in the center used by the Navy motor pool, the dignified old
square was pretty thoroughly Americanized.

London was still crowded with our armed forces. The hotels were full, so
we were assigned to lodgings in Wimpole Street. These were on the third
floor of a pleasant, eighteenth century house, within a stone’s throw
of No. 50, where Elizabeth Barrett had been wooed and won by Robert
Browning. An inspection of our quarters revealed that the plumbing was
of the Barrett-Browning period; but the place was clean and, anyway, it
wasn’t likely that we’d be spending much time there. It had been a long
day and we were too tired to think of anything beyond getting a bite to
eat and hitting the sack.

For our two days in London we had “Queen’s weather”—brilliant sunshine
and cloudless skies. Our first port of call early the next morning
was the Medical Office, where we were given various inoculations. From
there Craig and I went across the square to the American Embassy for
a long session with Sumner Crosby, at that time acting as the liaison
between the Roberts Commission and its British counterpart, the Macmillan
Committee. Sumner provided us with a great deal of useful information.
The latest reports from Germany indicated that caches of looted art
were being uncovered from day to day. The number of these hiding places
ran into the hundreds. The value of their contents was, of course,
incalculable. Only a fraction of the finds had as yet been released to
the press.

Craig and I began licking our chops at the prospect of what lay ahead.
Had we made a mistake in planning to stay two days in London? Perhaps
we could get a plane back to Paris that evening. Sumner thought not.
There were several things for us to do on the spot, things that would be
of use to us in our future activities. One was to call on Colonel Sir
Leonard Woolley, the British archaeologist who, with his wife, was doing
important work for the Macmillan Committee. Another was to see Jim Plaut,
a naval lieutenant at the London office of OSS. He would probably have
valuable information about German museum personnel. It would be helpful
to know the whereabouts of certain German scholars, specifically those
whose records were, from our point of view, “clean.”

Sumner made several appointments for us and then hurried off to keep one
of his own. Craig and I stayed on at the office to study the reports.
Sumner had already given us the glittering highlights. By noon our heads
were filled with facts and figures that made E. Phillips Oppenheim seem
positively unimaginative. And _The Arabian Nights_—that was just old
stuff.

It was late afternoon when we finished calling on the various people
Sumner had advised us to see, but plenty of time remained to do a little
sightseeing before dinner. The cabbie took us past Buckingham Palace,
along the Embankment, Birdcage Walk, the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament
and finally to St. Paul’s. What we saw was enough to give a cruel picture
of the damage the Germans had inflicted on the fine old monuments of
London.

Craig and I flew back to Orly the following evening, arriving too late
to obtain transportation into Paris. We spent an uncomfortable night in
the barracks at the airport and drove to the Royal Monceau early the
next morning. It was stiflingly hot and I was in a bad humor in spite of
the soothing effect of a short haircut—the kind Francesca said needed a
couple of saber scars to make it look right. My spirits fell still lower
when Craig and I were told that we could stay only two nights at the
hotel. Since we were assigned to SHAEF, it was up to the Army to billet
us. It seemed rather unfriendly of the Navy, but that’s the way it was
and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

After lunch we set out for Versailles in a Navy jeep. It was a glorious
day despite the heat, and the lovely drive through the Bois and on
past Longchamps made us forget our irritation at the Navy’s lack of
hospitality. The office of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section
was in two tiny “between-floor” rooms in the Grandes Écuries—the big
stables which, together with their matching twin, the Petites Écuries,
face the main palace.

When we arrived Colonel Webb was deep in conference with a lady war
correspondent. The tall, rangy colonel, who reminded me of a humorous
and grizzled giraffe, came out to welcome Craig and me. His cordiality
was overwhelming at first, but we soon learned the reason. Miss Bonney,
the correspondent, was giving the colonel a bad time and he needed moral
support. She was firing a rapid barrage of searching questions, and in
some cases the colonel didn’t want to answer. I was fascinated by his
technique. He obviously didn’t wish to offend his inquisitor, but on the
other hand he wasn’t going to be pressed for an expression of opinion
on certain subjects. At times he would parry her query with one of his
own. At others he would snort some vague reply which got lost in a
hearty laugh. Before the interview was over, it was Miss Bonney who was
answering the questions—often her own—not the colonel.

Neither Craig nor I could make much of what we heard, but after Miss
Bonney’s departure the colonel took us into his confidence. Somewhere
this indomitable lady had got hold of stray bits of information which,
properly pieced together, made one of the most absorbing stories of the
war, as far as Nazi looting of art treasures was concerned. The time was
not yet ripe to break the story, according to the colonel, so it had been
up to him to avoid giving answers which would have filled in the missing
pieces of the puzzle.

Then the colonel proceeded to tell us about the _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_,
the infamous “task force”—to translate the word literally—organized
under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg, the “ideological and spiritual
leader” of the Reich, for the methodical plundering of the great Jewish
collections and the accumulated artistic wealth of other recognized
“enemies of the state.” Rosenberg was officially responsible for cultural
treasures confiscated in the occupied countries. He had virtually
unlimited resources at his command. In the fall of 1940, not long after
his appointment, Rosenberg received a congratulatory letter from Göring
in which the Reichsmarschall promised to support energetically the work
of his staff and to place at its disposal “means of transportation and
guard personnel,” and specifically assured him the “utmost assistance”
of the Luftwaffe. Even before the war, German agents had accumulated
exhaustive information concerning collections which were later to be
confiscated. The whereabouts of every object of artistic importance was
known. Paintings, sculpture, tapestries, furniture, porcelain, enamels,
jewels, gold and silver—all were a matter of record. When the Nazis
occupied Paris, the Rosenberg Task Force was able to go into operation
with clocklike precision. And so accurate was their information that
in many instances they even knew the hiding places in which their more
foresighted victims had concealed their valuables.

The headquarters of the E.R.R.[1] had been set up in the Musée du Jeu
de Paume, the little museum in the corner of the Tuileries Gardens
overlooking the Place de la Concorde. The large staff was composed mainly
of Germans, but some of the members were French. Looted treasures poured
into the building, to be checked, labeled and shipped off to Germany.
But it was more than a clearing house. The choicest things were placed
on exhibition and to these displays the top-flight Nazis were invited—to
select whatever caught their fancy. Hitler had first choice, Göring
second.

It did not occur to the members of the E.R.R. staff that their every move
was watched. A courageous Frenchwoman named Rose Valland had ingratiated
herself with the “right people” and had become a trusted member of the
staff. During the months she worked at the museum, she had two main
objectives. One was to sabotage the daily work as much as possible by
making intentionally stupid mistakes and by encouraging the French
laborers, engaged by the Germans, to do likewise. The other, and far and
away the more important, was the compilation of a file, complete with
biographical data and photographs, of the German personnel at the Jeu
de Paume. How she ever accomplished this is a mystery. The colonel said
that Mlle. Valland, now a captain in the French Army, was working with
the official French committee for Fine Arts. She had already provided
our Versailles office with a copy of her E.R.R. file. Later in the
summer I met Captain Valland, a robust woman with gray hair and the most
penetrating brown eyes I have ever seen. I asked her how she had ever
had the courage to do what she had done. She said with a laugh, “I could
never do it again. The Gestapo followed me home every night.”

After regaling us with this account of the E.R.R., Colonel Webb whetted
our appetites still further with an outline of what his deputy, Charlie
Kuhn, was up to. As the result of a “signal,” he had taken off by plane
for Germany, and at the moment was either in the eastern part of Bavaria
or over the Austrian border, trying to trace two truckloads of paintings
and tapestries which two high-ranking Nazis had spirited away from the
Laufen salt mine at the eleventh hour. Latest information indicated
that the finest things from the Vienna Museum had been stored at
Laufen, which was in the mountains east of Salzburg; and it was further
believed that the “top cream” of the stuff—the Breughels, Titians and
Velásquezes—was in those two trucks. These pictures were world-famous
and consequently not marketable, so there was the appalling possibility
that the highjackers had carried them off with the idea of destroying
them—Hitler’s mad Götterdämmerung idea. There was also the possibility
that they intended to hold the pictures as a bribe against their own
safety.

Back at the hotel that night, Craig and I reviewed the events of the day.
What we had learned from Colonel Webb was only an affirmation of the
exciting things we had gleaned from the reports in the London office.
We were desperately anxious to get into Germany where we could be a
part of all these unbelievable adventures instead of hearing about them
secondhand. Strict censorship was still in force, so we weren’t able to
share our exuberance with our respective families in letters home. But we
could at least exult together over the fantastic future shaping up before
us.

We found Charlie Kuhn at the office the next morning. He was a tall
quiet fellow with a keen sense of humor, whom I had first known when
we had been fellow students at Harvard back in the twenties. During
the intervening years we had met only at infrequent intervals. He had
remained to teach and had become an outstanding member of the Fine Arts
faculty in Cambridge, while I had gone to a museum. His special field
of scholarship was German painting and it was this attribute which had
led the Roberts Commission to nominate him for his present assignment as
Deputy Chief of the MFA&A Section. He had already been in the Navy for
two years when this billet was offered him. Notwithstanding his obvious
qualifications for his present job, he had so distinguished himself in
the earlier work upon which he had been engaged—special interrogation
of German prisoners—that it had required White House intervention to
“liberate” him for his new duties. No closeted scholar, Charlie chafed
under the irritations of administrative and personnel problems which
occupied most of his time.

That morning at Versailles he was fresh from his adventures in the field,
and we buttonholed him for a firsthand account. Yes, the trucks had been
located. They had been abandoned by the roadside, but everything had
been found intact. The reports had not been exaggerated: the trucks had
contained some of the finest of the Vienna pictures and also some of
the best tapestries. They were now in a warehouse at Salzburg and would
probably remain there until they could be returned to Vienna. As to
their condition, the pictures were all right; the tapestries had mildewed
a bit, but the damage wasn’t serious.

It was hard to settle down to the humdrum of office routine after his
recital of these adventures. Charlie said he wanted to ship us off to
Germany as soon as possible because there was so much to be done and so
few officers were available.

It turned out that we weren’t destined for nearly so swift an invasion of
Germany as we had hoped. Later that afternoon Charlie received a letter
from the Medical Officer at Naval Headquarters in Paris informing him
that Lieutenants Howe and Smyth had not completed their course of typhus
shots, and that he would not recommend their being sent into Germany
until thirty days after the second and final shot. Charlie wanted to know
what this was all about, and we had to admit that we had not been given
typhus injections before leaving the States, and had only received the
first one in London. After deliberating about it most of the following
morning, Colonel Webb and Charlie decided that, if we were willing to
take the chance, they’d cut the waiting period to ten days. We were only
too willing.

Craig and I made good use of the waiting period. We were put to work on
the reports submitted at regular intervals by our officers in the field.
These reports contained information concerning art repositories. It was
our job to keep the card file on them up to date; to make a card for each
new one; to sort out and place in a separate file those which had become
obsolete; to check duplications. Each card bore the name of the place, a
brief description of the contents, and a map reference consisting of two
co-ordinates. In Germany there was much duplication in the names of small
towns and villages, so these map references were of great importance.

There was also a file on outstanding works of art which were known to
have been carried off by the Germans or hidden away for safekeeping, but
the whereabouts of which were as yet unknown—such things, for example, as
the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, the Michelangelo _Madonna and
Child_ from Bruges, the Ghent altarpiece, the treasure from the Cathedral
of Metz, the stained glass from Strasbourg Cathedral, and the Veit Stoss
altarpiece. The list read like an Almanach de Gotha of the art world.

So far as our creature comforts were concerned, they suffered a great
decline when we moved out to Versailles. Our lodging there was a barren,
four-story house at No. 1 Rue Berthier. Craig had a room on the ground
floor, while I shared one under the eaves with Charlie Kuhn. Judging from
the signs still tacked up in various parts of the house, it had been
used as a German billet during the occupation; and judging by its meager
comforts, only the humblest ranks had been quartered there. No spruce
Prussian would have put up with such austerity. A couple of British
soldiers also were living there. They were batmen for two officers
quartered in a near-by hotel and, for a hundred francs a week, they
agreed to do for us as well. They brought us hot water in the morning,
polished our shoes each day and pressed our uniforms.

Outwardly our life was rather magnificent, for we usually had our meals
at the Trianon Palace Hotel just inside the park grounds. It was a
pleasant walk from the Rue Berthier, and an even pleasanter one from
the office, involving a short cut behind the main palace and across the
lovely gardens. On the whole the gardens had been well kept up and a
stroll about the terraces or through the long _allées_ was something to
look forward to when the weather was fine. Craig and I got into the habit
of retiring to a quiet corner of the gardens after work with our German
books. There we would quiz each other for an hour or two a day. We made
occasional trips into Paris but, more often than not, we followed a
routine in which the bright lights—what few there were—played little part.

At the end of our ten-day “incubation” period, Charlie gave us our
instructions. We were to go to Frankfurt by air and from there to Bad
Homburg by car. At Bad Homburg we were to report to ECAD headquarters,
that is, the European Civil Affairs Division, where we would be issued
further orders. As members of a pool of officers attached to ECAD, we
could be shifted about from one part of Germany to another.

Charlie told us that he and Colonel Webb would be moving to Frankfurt in
a few days as SHAEF Headquarters was soon to be set up there. The MFA&A
office would continue to function with a joint British and American
staff until the dissolution of SHAEF later in the summer. But that would
not take place, he said, until the four zones of occupation had been
established.

We left for the airport at six-thirty in the morning. Our French driver
asked us which airport we wanted. Craig and I looked at each other in
surprise. What field was there besides Orly? The answer was Villacoublay.
We had never heard of it, so we said Orly. We couldn’t have been more
wrong. When we finally reached Villacoublay we found great confusion. We
couldn’t even find out whether our plane had taken off.

After making three attempts to get a coherent answer from the second
lieutenant who appeared to be quietly going mad behind the information
counter, I gave up.

“This is where you take over, Craig,” I said. I had suddenly developed an
evil headache and had lost all interest in going any place. I walked over
to my luggage, which I had dumped in front of the building, and plunked
myself down on top of it, put on dark glasses and went to sleep. An hour
later, Craig shook me.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ve found a B-17 that’s going to Frankfurt.” We
piled our gear onto a truck and rumbled out over the bumpy field for a
distance of half a mile. One of the B-17’s crew was sitting unconcernedly
in the grass.

“We’d like to go to Frankfurt,” said Craig.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll be going along pretty soon.” He was
disconcertingly casual. But the trip wasn’t. We ran into heavy fog
and got lost, so it took us nearly three hours to make the run which
shouldn’t have taken more than two.

We finally landed in a green meadow near Hanau. Craig said he’d look for
transportation if I’d stand guard over our luggage. It was an agreeable
assignment. The day was warm, the meadow soft and inviting. I took out my
German book and a chocolate bar, curled up in the grass and hoped he’d be
gone a long time.

Craig came back an hour and a half later with a jeep. We were about
twenty miles outside Frankfurt. On the way in the driver said that the
city had been eighty percent destroyed. He hadn’t exaggerated. As we
turned into the Mainzer Landstrasse, we saw nothing but gutted buildings
on either side. We continued up the Taunus Anlage and I recognized the
Opera House ahead. At first I thought it was undamaged. Then I saw
that the roof was gone, and only the outer walls remained. Most of the
buildings were like that. This was just the shell of a city.

Our first stop was SHAEF headquarters, newly established in the vast I.
G. Farben building which, either by accident or design, was completely
undamaged. There we got another car to take us to Bad Homburg.

The little resort town where the fashionable world of Edward VII’s day
had gone to drink the waters and enjoy the mineral baths consisted
mostly of hotels. Some of them were occupied by our troops. Others were
being used as hospitals for wounded German soldiers. The big Kurhaus
had received a direct hit, but the rest of the buildings appeared to be
undamaged.

At ECAD headquarters we were assigned a billet in the Grand Hotel Parc.
That sounded pretty snappy to us—another Royal Monceau, maybe. The
billeting officer must have guessed our thoughts, because he shook his
head glumly and said, “’Tain’t anything special. Don’t get your hopes up.”

It was nice of him to have prepared us for the rat hole which was the
Grand Hotel Parc. This shabby structure, built around three sides of
a narrow courtyard, had an air of vanished refinement about it, but
it could hardly have rated a star in Baedeker. Yet it must have had a
certain cachet fifty years ago, for in the entrance hallway hung a white
marble plaque. Its dim gold letters told us that Bismarck’s widow had
spent her declining years “in peaceful happiness beneath this hospitable
roof.”

Our room was on the fourth floor. The stairs, reminiscent of a
lighthouse, might have been designed for a mountain goat. We thought we
had struck the ultimate in drabness at the Rue Berthier, but this was
worse. The room itself was worthy of its approach. When I opened the
big wardrobe I half expected a body to fall out. Two sofas masquerading
as beds occupied corners by the window. The window gave onto the dingy
courtyard. We silently made up our beds with Army blankets and sprinkled
them lavishly with DDT powder.

“Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a bathroom?” Craig asked.

“I’d sooner expect to find one in an igloo,” I said. “Maybe there’s a
pump or a trough somewhere out in back. Why don’t you go and see?”

[Illustration: The Residenz at Würzburg. The palace of the Prince-Bishops
was gutted by fire in March 1945. The magnificent ceiling by Tiepolo
miraculously escaped serious damage.]

[Illustration: Ruined Frankfurt. In the center, the cathedral. Only the
tower and the walls of the nave remain standing. _International News
Photo_]

[Illustration: The Central Collecting Point at Munich, formerly the
Administration Building of the Nazi Party. The director of the Central
Collecting Point was Lieutenant Craig Smyth, USNR.]

[Illustration: A typical storage room in the Central Collecting Point at
Munich. The racks for pictures were built by civilian carpenters under
the direction of American Monuments officers.]

When he returned fifteen minutes later he was in high spirits. “There’s
a bathroom all right and it’s got hot water,” he said, “but you have to
be a combination of Theseus and Daniel Boone to find it. Come along, I’ll
show you the way.”

It was clever of him to find it a second time. I took a piece of red
crayon with me and marked little arrows on the walls to show which turns
to make. They were a timesaver to us during the next couple days.

After breakfast the next morning, we telephoned 12th Army Group
Headquarters in Wiesbaden and talked with Lieutenant George Stout, USNR,
who, with Captain Bancel La Farge, was in charge of the advance office
of MFA&A in Germany. Stout suggested that we come on over. It was a
pleasant drive along the Autobahn, with the blue Taunus mountains in the
distance. Parts of Wiesbaden had been badly mauled, but the destruction
was negligible compared with Frankfurt. Although many buildings along the
main streets had been hit, the colonnaded Kurhaus, now a Red Cross Club,
was intact. So was the Opera House.

We found George on the top floor of a dingy building in the center of
the town. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years but he hadn’t changed.
His face was a healthy brown, his eyes were as keen and his teeth as
dazzlingly white as ever. George was in his middle forties. His oldest
boy was in the Navy but George didn’t look a day over thirty. The Roberts
Commission had played in luck when they had got him. Of course he was an
obvious choice—tops in his field, the technical care and preservation
of pictures. He was known and respected throughout the world for his
brilliant research work at Harvard, where he presided over the laboratory
of the Fogg Museum.

“Bancel’s got jobs lined up for you fellows, but I think he’d like to
tell you about them himself,” George said. “He ought to be back tonight.”

“Can’t you tell us in a general way what they are?” I asked.

“I think one of them is going to be in Frankfurt and the other will
probably be in Munich. You see, all the stuff from the Merkers mine is in
the vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfurt and it ought to be moved to a
place where it can be permanently stored.”

The “stuff” he referred to was the enormous collection of paintings and
sculpture—comprising the principal treasures of the Berlin museums—which
George himself had brought out of the Merkers mine in Thuringia. He had
carried out the operation virtually singlehanded and in the face of
extraordinary difficulties just before the end of hostilities.

“As for Munich,” he continued, “repositories are springing up like
mushrooms all through Bavaria. Most of it is loot and we’re going to have
to set up some kind of depot where we can put the things until they can
be returned to the countries from which the Nazis stole them.”

“What are your plans?” I asked.

“Well, if the trucks show up,” he said, “I want to get started for Siegen
this afternoon. That’s in Westphalia. It’s another mine—copper, not
salt—and it’s full of things from the Rhineland museums. I’ve got to take
them up to Marburg. We have two good depots there.”

We lunched with George and then returned to Bad Homburg. There wasn’t
anything for us to do but wait around until we heard from Captain La
Farge. To fill in the time we took our German books and spent the
afternoon studying in the Kurpark.

The telephone was ringing in the entrance lobby as we walked in at five.
It was Captain La Farge. He had just returned and wanted to see us at
once. I said I didn’t know whether we could get transportation. He
chuckled and said, “Tell them a general wants to see you.” Craig and I
dashed over to the Transportation Office and tried it out. It worked.
So, for the second time that day, we found ourselves on the road to
Wiesbaden.

Captain La Farge was waiting for us in the office where we had seen
George that morning. He was a tall, slender man in his early forties.
With a high-domed head and a long, rather narrow face, he was the classic
New Englander. His eyes were hazel and, at that first meeting, very
weary. But he had one of the most ingratiating smiles and one of the
most pleasant voices I had ever heard. He reminded me of an early Copley
portrait.

Without much preamble he launched into a detailed explanation of the
plans he had for us.

“I want you to take over the Frankfurt job,” he said to me, “and I am
sending you down to Munich, Smyth. As George probably told you, we’ve
got to set up two big depots. The one in Frankfurt will be mainly for
German-owned art which is now coming in from repositories all over this
part of Germany. The one in Munich will be chiefly for loot, though there
will be German-owned things down in Bavaria too. Both jobs are equally
interesting, equally important and, above all, equally urgent.”

We were to get started without delay. Craig would be attached to the
Regional Military Government office in Munich, I to the Military
Government Detachment in Frankfurt. Captain La Farge suggested that I
investigate the possibility of requisitioning the university buildings
for a depot, and advised Craig to consider one of the large Nazi party
buildings in Munich which he had been told was available.

On the way home that night Craig and I compared notes on our new
assignments. I was frankly envious of Craig, not only because there was
something alluring about all that loot, but because I loved Munich and
the picturesque country around it. In turn, Craig thought I had drawn
a fascinating job—one that involved handling the wonderful riches of
Berlin’s “Kaiser Friedrich,” admittedly one of the world’s greatest
museums.

The following morning we parted on the steps of the Grand Parc Hotel.
Craig took off first, in a jeep with trailer attached, a crusty major for
his companion. Half an hour later a jeep appeared for me. On the way over
to Frankfurt I thought about the experiences of the past three weeks.
It had been fun sharing them with Craig and I wished that we might have
continued this odyssey together. I didn’t realize how soon our paths were
to cross again.




(2)

_ASSIGNED TO FRANKFURT_


The Military Government Detachment had its headquarters in a gray stone
building behind the Opera House. It was one of the few in the city that
had suffered relatively little damage. I reported to the Executive
Officer, a white-haired major named James Franklin. After I had explained
the nature of the work I was expected to do, he took me around to the
office of Lieutenant Julius Buchman, the Education and Religious Affairs
Officer, who had also the local MFA&A problems as part of his duties.
Buchman couldn’t have been more pleasant, and said he’d do everything
he could to help. There was an air of quiet good humor about him that I
liked at once. I learned that he was an architect by profession and had
studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau before the war. He spoke fluent German.
I told him that first of all I’d like to get settled, so he guided me to
Captain Wyman Ooley, the Billeting Officer.

Ooley was a happy-go-lucky fellow, the only Billeting Officer I ever
met who was always cheerful. He had been a schoolteacher in Arkansas.
Together we drove out to the residential section where a group of houses
had been set aside for the Military Government officers. This part of the
city had not been heavily bombed and each one of the houses had a pretty
garden.

“I’ll tell you, I’ve got a real nice room in that house over there,” he
said, pointing to a gray stucco house partly screened by a row of trees.
“But it’s for lieutenant colonels. It’s empty right now, but I might have
to throw you out later.” Thinking that lieutenant colonels would be very
likely to have ideas about good plumbing, I quickly said I’d take the
chance.

The front door was locked. Ooley called, “Lucienne!” One of the upper
windows was instantly flung open and a woman, dust-cloth in hand,
leaned out, waved and disappeared. A moment later she reappeared at the
front door. Lucienne, all smiles, was as French as the tricolor. Ooley
explained in pidgin French, with gestures, that I was to have a room on
the second floor, wished me luck and departed. Lucienne bustled up to the
second floor chattering away at a great rate, expressing surprise and
delight that I was “officier de la Marine” and also taking considerable
satisfaction in having recognized my branch of the service.

She threw open a door and then dashed off to the floor above, still
chattering and gesticulating. I was left alone to contemplate the
splendor before me—an enormous, airy bedroom looking out on a garden
filled with scarlet roses. This couldn’t be true. Even lieutenant
colonels didn’t deserve this. The room had cream-colored walls, paneled
and decorated with chinoiserie designs. A large chest of drawers and
a low table were decorated in the same manner. In one corner was an
inviting chaise longue, covered in rose brocade. Along the end wall
stood the bed—complete with sheets and a pillow. The built-in wardrobe
had full-length mirrors which reflected the tall French windows and the
garden beyond.

As I stood there trying to take it all in, Lucienne appeared again. With
her was a dapper little fellow whom she introduced as her husband, René.
He acknowledged the introduction and then solemnly introduced Lucienne.
After this bit of mock formality, he explained that he and Lucienne had
charge of all the houses in the block. If anything was not to my liking I
was to let them know and it would be righted at once.

Further conversation revealed that the two of them had been deported from
Paris early in 1941 and been obliged to remain in Frankfurt, working
for the Germans, ever since. All through the bombings, I asked? But of
course, and they had been too terrible. During one of the worst raids
they had been imprisoned in the bomb shelter. The falling stones had
blocked the exit. They had had to remain under the ground for forty-eight
hours. They had been made deaf by the noise, yes, for two months. And the
concussion had made them bleed from the nose and the ears. I asked if
they expected to go back to Paris. Yes, of course, but they were in no
hurry. It was very nice in Germany, now that the Americans were there.
With that they left me to unpack and get settled.

When I had finished, I decided to explore a bit. There were two other
bedrooms on the second floor. Neat labels on the doors indicated that
they were occupied by lieutenant colonels. There were two other doors at
the end of the hall. Neither one was labeled, so I peered in. They were
the bathrooms. And what bathrooms! Marble floors, tiled walls, double
washbasins and built-in tubs. Although it was only the middle of the
morning, I had to sample one of those magnificent tubs. And as a kind of
tribute to all this elegance, I felt constrained to discard my khakis and
put on blues.

Captain La Farge had stressed the urgency of setting up an art depot, so
the next ten days were given over to that project. Buchman generously
shelved his own work to help me with it. Together we inspected the
University of Frankfurt. The newest of the German universities, it
had opened its doors at the outbreak of the first World War. The main
administration building, an imposing structure of red sandstone, had
been badly damaged by incendiaries but could be repaired. It would be a
big job, but we could worry about that later. The first step was to have
it allocated for our use. That had to be done through the proper Army
“channels.” Buchman steered me through. Then we had to obtain an estimate
of the repairs. It took three days to get one from the university
architect. It was thorough but impractical and had to be completely
revised. We took the revised estimate to the Army Engineers and asked
them to make an inspection of the building and check the architect’s
figures. They were swamped with work. It would be a week before they
could do anything. I said it was a high priority job, hoping to speed
things along. But the Engineers had heard that one before. We’d have to
be patient.

Charlie Kuhn and Colonel Webb had moved up to Frankfurt and were
established at SHAEF headquarters in the I. G. Farben building. Their
office was only a few blocks from mine, and during my negotiations for
the use of the university building I was in daily communication with them.

While waiting for the Engineers to make the promised inspection, I made
a couple of field trips with Buchman. The first was a visit to Schloss
Kronberg, a few kilometers from Frankfurt. It was a picturesque medieval
castle, unoccupied since the first part of the seventeenth century.
Valuable archives were stored there. We wanted to see if they were in
good condition, and also to make sure that the place had been posted with
the official “Off Limits” signs.

A flock of geese scattered before us as we drove up to the entrance
at the end of a narrow, winding road. We knocked on the door of the
caretaker’s cottage and explained the purpose of our visit to the old
fellow who timidly appeared with a large bunch of keys. He limped ahead
of us across the cobbled courtyard, and we waited while he fitted one of
the keys into the lock.

A wave of heavy perfume issued from the dark room as the door swung
open. When our eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, we saw that
we were in the original _Waffenraum_ of the castle. But, in addition to
the clustered weapons affixed to the walls, there were five sarcophagi
in the center of the vaulted room. Around them stood vases filled with
spring flowers. On the central sarcophagus rested a spiked helmet of the
first World War. The others were unadorned.

The old caretaker explained that the central tomb was that of the
Landgraf of Hesse who had died thirty years ago. Those on either side
contained the remains of his two sons who had likewise died in the first
World War. The other two coffins were those of the elder son’s wife and
of a princess of Baden who had been killed in one of the air raids on
Frankfurt in 1944. All five sarcophagi had originally stood in the little
chapel across the courtyard. It had been destroyed by an incendiary bomb
the winter before.

We left this funerary chamber with a feeling of relief and continued
our inspection of the castle. A winding ramp in one of the towers led
to the floors above. From the top story we had a superb view of the
broad Frankfurt plain spread out below. The caretaker told us he had
watched the bombings from that vantage point. The great banqueting
hall, with a musicians’ gallery at one end, had been emptied of its
original furnishings and was now a jumble of papers stacked in piles of
varying heights. These were part of the Frankfurt archives. Others were
stored in two rooms on the ground floor. All of the rooms were dry and
weatherproof, so there was nothing further to be done about them for the
present. There was no place in Frankfurt as yet to which they could be
moved. “Off Limits” signs had been posted. They would discourage souvenir
hunters from unauthorized delving.

On our way back to the car the caretaker told us that the castle still
belonged to Margarethe, Landgräfin of Hesse, the youngest sister of the
last Kaiser. Although she was now in her seventies, she came every day
to put fresh flowers beside the tombs of her husband and her two sons.
She lived at a newer castle, Schloss Friedrichshof, only a few kilometers
away. He apparently didn’t know that Schloss Friedrichshof had been
taken over by the Army and was being used as an officers’ country club.
The old Landgräfin was living modestly in one of the small houses on
the property. Her scapegrace son, Prince Philip, as I learned later,
had played an active role in the artistic depredations of the Nazi
ringleaders. I was to hear more of the Hesse family before the end of the
year.

A second excursion took us still farther afield. On an overcast morning
two days later, Buchman, Charlie Kuhn, Captain Rudolph Vassalle (who was
the Public Safety Officer of the detachment) and I set out in the little
Opel sedan which had been assigned the MFA&A office. We struck out to the
east of Frankfurt on the road to Gelnhausen. We stopped at this pleasant
little town with its lovely, early Gothic church and went through the
formality of obtaining clearance from the local Military Government
Detachment to make an inspection in that area.

From there we continued by a winding secondary road which led us through
increasingly hilly country to Bad Brückenau. Our mission there was
twofold: Captain Vassalle wanted to track down a young Nazi officer,
reportedly a member of the SS, and to find a warehouse said to contain
valuable works of art. I had gathered from Buchman that many such reports
petered out on investigation. Still, there was always the chance that
the one you dismissed as of no importance would turn out to be something
worth while.

[Illustration: The bronze coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia was
found in a mine near Bernterode.]

[Illustration: Canova’s life-size marble statue of Napoleon’s sister was
found at the monastery of Hohenfurth.]

[Illustration: The administration buildings at the salt mine at Alt
Aussee, Austria. Removal of stolen art treasures from the mine was
carried out late in 1945.]

[Illustration: Truck at entrance to the main building of the mine is
being loaded with paintings, to be taken to Munich for dispersal to their
owner nations.]

After making several inquiries, we eventually located a small house on
the edge of town. In response to our insistent hammering, the door of
the house was finally opened by a pallid young man probably in his late
twenties. If he was the object of the captain’s search he had certainly
undergone a remarkable metamorphosis, for he bore little resemblance to
the dapper officer of whom Captain Vassalle carried a photograph for
identification. The captain seemed satisfied that he was the man. So
leaving them in conversation, the three of us followed up the business
of the reported works of art. The other two occupants of the house—an
old man and a young woman who may have been the wife of the man who
had opened the door—responded to our questions with alacrity and took
us to the cellar. There we were shown a cache of pictures, all of them
unframed and none of them of any value. They appeared to be what the old
man claimed—their own property, brought to Bad Brückenau when they had
left Frankfurt to escape the bombings. In any case, we made a listing of
the canvases, identifying them as best we could and making notations of
the sizes, and also admonishing the couple not to remove them from the
premises.

After that the old man took us across the back yard to a large modern
barn which was heavily padlocked. Once inside he unshuttered a row of
windows along one side of the main, ground-floor room. It was jammed to
the ceiling with every conceivable item of household furnishings: chairs,
tables, beds, bedding, kitchen utensils and porcelain. But no pictures.
We poked around enough to satisfy ourselves that first appearances were
not deceiving. They weren’t, so, having made certain that the old fellow,
who claimed to be merely the custodian of these things, understood the
regulations forbidding their removal, we picked up Captain Vassalle. He
had completed his interrogation of the alleged SS officer and placed him
under house arrest.

Our next objective was an old Schloss which, according to our map, was
still a good hour’s drive to the northeast. As it was nearly noon and we
were all hungry, we decided to investigate the possibilities of food in
the neighborhood. On our way back through Bad Brückenau we stopped at
the office of a small detachment of troops and asked where we could get
some lunch. The hospitable second lieutenant on duty in the little stucco
building, which had once been part of the Kurhaus establishment, gave us
directions to the sprawling country hotel, high up above the town, where
his outfit was quartered. He said that he would telephone ahead to warn
the mess sergeant of our arrival.

For a little way we followed along the Sinn, which flows through the
grassy valley in which Bad Brückenau nestles. Then we began to mount
sharply and, for the next fifteen minutes, executed a series of hairpin
turns and ended abruptly beside a rambling structure which commanded a
wonderful view of the valley and the wooded hills on the other side. Our
hosts were a group of friendly young fellows who seemed delighted to have
the monotony of their rural routine interrupted by our visit. They asked
Charlie and me the usual question—what was the Navy doing in the middle
of Germany—and got our stock reply: we are planning to dig a canal from
the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

We had a heavy downpour during lunch, and we waited for the rain to let
up before starting out again. Then we took the winding road down into
town, crossed the river and drove up into the hills on the other side of
the valley. An hour’s drive brought us to upland meadow country and a
grove of handsome lindens. At the end of a long double row of these fine
trees stood Schloss Rossbach. “Castle” was a rather pompous name for the
big seventeenth century country house with whitewashed walls and heavily
barred ground-floor windows.

We were received by the owners, a Baron Thüngen and his wife, and
explained that we had come to examine the condition of the works of
art, which, according to our information, had been placed there for
safekeeping. They ushered us up to a comfortable sitting room on the
second floor where we settled down to wait while the baroness went off to
get the keys. In the meantime we had a few words with her husband. His
manner was that of the haughty landed proprietor, and he looked the part.
He was a big, burly man in his sixties. He was dressed in rough tweeds
and wore a matching hat, adorned with a bushy “shaving brush,” which he
hadn’t bothered to remove indoors. That may have been unintentional, but
I idly wondered if it weren’t deliberate discourtesy and rather wished
that I had kept my own cap on. I wished also that I could have matched
his insolent expression, but thought it unlikely because I was frankly
enjoying the obvious distaste which our visit was causing the old codger.

However, his attitude was almost genial compared with that of his waspish
wife, who reappeared about that time, armed with a huge hoop from which
a great lot of keys jangled. The baroness, who was much younger than
her husband, had very black hair and discontented dark eyes. She spoke
excellent English, without a trace of accent. I felt reasonably sure that
she was not German but couldn’t guess her nationality. It turned out that
she was from the Argentine. She was a sullen piece and made no effort to
conceal her irritation at our intrusion. She explained that neither she
nor her husband had anything to do with the things stored there; that, in
fact, it was a great inconvenience having to put up with them. She had
asked the young woman who knew all about them to join us.

The young woman in question arrived and was completely charming. She
took no apparent notice of the baroness’ indifference, which was that
of a mistress toward a servant whom she scarcely knew. Her fresh, open
manner cleared the atmosphere instantly. She introduced herself as Frau
Holzinger, wife of the director of Frankfurt’s most famous museum, the
Staedelsches Kunstinstitut. Because of conditions in Frankfurt, and more
particularly because their house had been requisitioned by the American
military authorities, she had come to Schloss Rossbach with her two young
children. Country life, she continued, was better for the youngsters and,
besides, her husband had thought that she might help with the things
stored at the castle. I had met Dr. Holzinger when I went one day to
have a look at what remained of the museum, so his wife and I hit it off
at once. I was interested to learn that she was Swiss and a licensed
physician. She smilingly suggested that we make a tour of the castle and
she would show us what was there.

The first room to be inspected was a library adjoining the sitting room
in which we had been waiting. Here we found a quantity of excellent
French Impressionist paintings, all from the permanent collection of the
Staedel, and a considerable number of fine Old Master drawings. Most of
these were likewise the property of the museum, but a few—I remember one
superb Rembrandt sketch—appeared to have come from Switzerland. Those
would, of course, have to be looked into later, to determine their exact
origin and how they came to be on loan at the museum. But for the moment
we were concerned primarily with storage conditions and the problem of
security. In another room we found an enormous collection of books, the
library of one of the Frankfurt museums. In a third we encountered an
array of medieval sculpture—saints of all sizes and description, some of
carved wood, others of stone, plain or polychromed. These too were of
museum origin.

The last storage room was below ground, a vast, cavernous chamber beneath
the house. Here was row upon row of pictures, stacked in two tiers down
the center of the room and also along two sides. From what we could make
of them in the poor light, they were not of high quality. During the
summer months they would be all right in this underground room, but we
thought that the place would be very damp in the winter. Frau Holzinger
assured us that this was so and that the pictures should be removed
before the bad weather set in.

The baroness chipped in at this point and affably agreed with that idea,
undoubtedly happy to further any scheme which involved getting rid of
these unwelcome objects. She also warned us that the castle was far from
safe as it was, what with roving bands of Poles all over the countryside.
As we indicated that we were about to take our leave, she elaborated upon
this theme, declaring that their very lives were in danger, that every
night she and her husband could hear prowlers in the park. Since they—as
Germans—were not allowed to have firearms, they would be at the mercy
of these foreign ruffians if they should succeed in breaking into the
castle. By this time we were all pretty fed up with the whining baroness.
As we turned to go, Charlie Kuhn, eyeing her coldly, asked, “Who brought
those Poles here in the first place, madam? We didn’t.”

To our delight, the weather had cleared and the sun was shining. Ahead
of us on the roadway, the foliage of the lindens made a gaily moving
pattern. Our work for the day was done and we still had half the
afternoon. I got out the map and, after making some quick calculations,
proposed that we could take in Würzburg and still get back to Frankfurt
at a reasonable hour. We figured out that, with the extra jerry can of
gas we had with us, we could just about make it. We would be able to fill
up at Würzburg for the return trip. So, instead of continuing on the road
back to Bad Brückenau, we turned south in the direction of Karlstadt.

It was pleasant to be traveling a good secondary road instead of the
broad, characterless Autobahn, on which there were no unexpected
turns, no picturesque villages. There was little traffic, so we made
very good time. In half an hour we had threaded our way through
Karlstadt-on-the-Main. In this part of Franconia the Main is a capricious
river, winding casually in and out of the gently undulating hills.
A little later we passed the village of Veitschöchheim where the
Prince-Bishops of Würzburg had an elaborate country house during the
eighteenth century. The house still stands, and its gardens, with a tiny
lake and grottoes in the Franco-Italian manner, remain one of the finest
examples of garden planning of that day. As we drove by we were glad that
this inviting spot had not attracted the attention of our bombers.

Alas, such was not the case with Würzburg, as we realized the minute we
reached its outskirts! The once-gracious city, surely one of the most
beautiful in all Germany, was an appalling sight. Its broad avenues
were now lined with nothing but the gaping, ruined remnants of the
stately eighteenth century buildings which had lent the city an air of
unparalleled distinction and consistency of design. High on its hilltop
above the Main, the mellow walls of the medieval fortress of Marienberg
caught the rays of the late afternoon sun. From the distance, the
silhouette of that vast structure appeared unchanged, but the proud city
of the Prince-Bishops which it overlooked was laid low.

We drove slowly along streets not yet cleared of rubble, until we came
to the Residenz, the great palace of the Prince-Bishops, those lavish
patrons of the arts to whom the city owed so much of its former grandeur.
This magnificent building, erected in the first half of the eighteenth
century by the celebrated baroque architect, Johann Balthasar Neumann,
for two Prince-Bishops of the Schönborn family, was now a ghost palace,
its staring glassless windows and blackened walls pathetic vestiges of
its pristine splendor.

We walked up to the main entrance wondering if it could really be true
that the crowning glory of the Residenz—the glorious ceiling by Tiepolo,
representing Olympus and the Four Continents—was, as we had been told,
still intact. With misgivings we turned left across the entrance hall to
the Treppenhaus and mounted the grand staircase. We looked up and there
it was—as dazzling and majestically beautiful as ever—that incomparable
fresco, the masterpiece of the last great Italian painter. Someone with
a far greater gift for words than I may be able to convey the exaltation
one experiences on seeing that ceiling, not just for the first time
but at any time. I can’t. It leaves artist and layman alike absolutely
speechless. I think that, if I had to choose one great work of art, it
would be this ceiling in the Residenz. You can have even the Sistine
ceiling. I’ll take the Tiepolo.

For the next half hour we examined every corner of it. Aside from a few
minor discolorations, the result of water having seeped through the lower
side of the vault just above the cornice, the fresco was undamaged.
Considering the destruction throughout the rest of the building, I
could not understand how this portion of the palace could be in such a
remarkable state of preservation. The explanation was an interesting
example of how good can sometimes come out of evil. Some forty years
ago, as I remember the story, there was a fire in the Residenz. The
wooden roof over a large portion, if not all, of the building was burned
away. When it came to replacing the roof, the city fathers decided
it would be a prudent idea to cover the part above the Tiepolo with
steel and concrete. This was done, and consequently, when the terrible
conflagration of March 1945 swept Würzburg—following the single raid of
twenty minutes which destroyed the city—the fresco was spared. As we
wandered through other rooms of the Residenz—the Weisser Saal with its
elaborate stucco ornamentation and the sumptuous Kaiser Saal facing the
garden, once classic examples of the Rococo—I wished that those city
fathers had gone a little farther with their steel and concrete.

We stopped briefly to examine the chapel in the south wing. Here,
miraculously enough, there had been relatively little damage, but the
caretaker expressed concern over the condition of the roof and said that
if it weren’t repaired before the heavy rains the ceiling would be lost.
Knowing how hard it was to obtain building materials for even the most
historic monuments when people didn’t have a roof over their heads, we
couldn’t reassure him with much conviction.

The spectacle of ruined Würzburg had a depressing effect upon us, so we
weren’t very talkative on our way back to Frankfurt. We passed through
only one town of any size, Aschaffenburg, which, like Würzburg, had
suffered severe damage. Although I had not been long in Germany and
had seen but few of her cities, I was beginning to realize that the
reports of the Allied air attacks had not been exaggerated. I was ready
to believe that there were only small towns and villages left in this
ravaged country.

One morning Charlie Kuhn rang up to say that I should meet him at the
Reichsbank early that afternoon. This was something I had been looking
forward to for some time, the chance to look at the wonderful things
from the Merkers mine which were temporarily stored there. With Charlie
came two members of the MFA&A organization whom I had not seen since
Versailles and then only briefly. They had been stationed at Barbizon, as
part of the Allied Group Control Council for Germany (usually referred
to simply as “Group CC”) the top level policy-making body as opposed
to SHAEF, which dealt with the operational end of things. These two
gentlemen were John Nicholas Brown, who had come over to Germany with the
assimilated rank of colonel as General Eisenhower’s adviser on cultural
affairs, and Major Mason Hammond, in civilian life professor of the
Classics at Harvard.

It had been decided, now that we were about to acquire a permanent
depot in which to store the treasures, to make one Monuments officer
responsible for the entire collection. By this transfer of custody, the
Property Control Officer in whose charge the things were at present,
could be relieved of that responsibility. Major Hammond had with him a
paper designating me as custodian. Knowing in a general way what was
stored in the bank, I felt that I was on the point of being made a sort
of director, pro tem, of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum.

The genial Property Control Officer, Captain William Dunn, was all
smiles at the prospect of turning his burden over to someone else. But
before this transfer could be made, a complete check of every item was
necessary. Major Hammond knew just how he wanted this done. I was to have
two assistants, who could come over the next morning from his office in
Hoechst, twenty minutes from Frankfurt. The three of us, in company with
Captain Dunn, would make the inventory.

We wandered through the series of rooms in which the things were stored.
In the first room were something like four hundred pictures lined up
against the wall in a series of rows. In two adjoining rooms were great
wooden cases piled one above another. In a fourth were leather-bound
boxes containing the priceless etchings, engravings and woodcuts from the
Berlin Print Room. Still another room was filled with cases containing
the renowned Egyptian collections. It was rumored that one of them held
the world-famous head of Queen Nefertete, probably the best known and
certainly the most beloved single piece of all Egyptian sculpture. It had
occupied a place of special honor in the Berlin Museum, in a gallery all
to itself.

Still other rooms were jammed with cases of paintings and sculpture of
the various European schools. In a series of smaller alcoves were heaped
huge piles of Oriental rugs and rare fabrics. And last, one enormous
room with bookshelves was filled from floor to ceiling with some thirty
thousand volumes from the Berlin Patent Office. Quite separate and apart
from all these things was a unique collection of ecclesiastical vessels
of gold and silver, the greater part of them looted from Poland. These
extremely precious objects were kept in a special vault on the floor
above.

Captain Dunn brought out a thick stack of papers. It was the complete
inventory. Major Hammond said that the two officers who would help
with the checking were a Captain Edwin Rae and a WAC lieutenant named
Standen. Aside from having heard that Rae had been a student of Charlie
Kuhn’s at Harvard, I knew nothing about him. But the name Standen rang
a bell: was she, by any chance, Edith Standen who had been curator of
the Widener Collection? Major Hammond smilingly replied, “The same.” I
had known her years ago in Cambridge where we had taken Professor Sachs’
course in Museum Administration at the same time. I remembered her as
a tall, dark, distinguished-looking English girl. To be exact, she was
half English: her father had been a British Army officer, her mother a
Bostonian. Recalling her very reserved manner and her scholarly tastes, I
found it difficult to imagine her in uniform.

Early the following morning, I met my cohorts at the entrance to the
Reichsbank. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Rae was
an old acquaintance if not an old friend. He also had been around the
Fogg Museum in my time. Edith looked very smart in her uniform. She had
a brisk, almost jovial manner which was not to be reconciled with her
aloof and dignified bearing in the marble halls of the Widener house at
Elkins Park. We hunted up Captain Dunn and set to work. Our first task
was to count and check off the paintings stacked in the main room. We
got through them with reasonable speed, refraining with some difficulty
from pausing to admire certain pictures we particularly fancied. Then we
tackled the Oriental rugs, and that proved to be a thoroughly thankless
and arduous task. We had a crew of eight PWs—prisoners of war—to help us
spread the musty carpets out on the floor. Owing to the fact that the
smaller carpets—in some cases they were hardly more than fragments—had
been rolled up inside larger ones, we ended with nearly a hundred more
items than the inventory called for. That troubled Captain Dunn a bit,
but I told him that it didn’t matter so long as we were over. We’d have
to start worrying only if we came out short. By five o’clock we were
tired and dirty and barely a third of the way through with the job.

The next day we started in on the patent records. There had been a fire
in the mine where the records were originally stored. Many of them were
slightly charred, and all of them had been impregnated with smoke.
When we had finished counting the whole thirty thousand, we smelled
just the way they did. As a matter of fact we hadn’t wanted to assume
responsibility for these records in the first place. Certainly they had
nothing to do with art. But Major Hammond had felt that they properly
fell to us as archives. And of course they were archives of a sort.

On the morning of the third day, as I was about to leave my office for
the Reichsbank, I had a phone call from Charlie Kuhn. He asked me how the
work was coming along and then, in a guarded voice, said that something
unexpected had turned up and that he might have to send me away for a few
days. He told me he couldn’t talk about it on the telephone, and anyway,
it wasn’t definite. He’d probably know by afternoon. I was to call him
later. This was hardly the kind of conversation to prepare one for a
humdrum day of taking inventory, even if one were counting real treasure.
And for a person with my curiosity, the morning’s work was torture.

When I called Charlie after lunch he was out but had left word that I was
to come to his office at two o’clock. When I got there he was sitting at
his desk. He looked up from the dispatch he was reading and said with
a rueful smile, “Tom, I am going to send you out on a job I’d give my
eyeteeth to have for myself.” Then he explained that certain developments
had suddenly made it necessary to step up the work of evacuating art
repositories down in Bavaria and in even more distant areas. For the
first time in my life I knew what was meant by the expression “my heart
jumped a beat”—for that was exactly what happened to mine! No wonder
Charlie was envious. This sounded like the real thing.

Charlie told me that I was to fly down to Munich the next morning and
that I would probably be gone about ten days. To save time he had already
had my orders cut. All I had to do was to pick them up at the AG office.
I was to report to Third Army Headquarters and get in touch with George
Stout as soon as possible. Charlie didn’t know just where I’d find
George. He was out in the wilds somewhere. As a matter of fact he wasn’t
too sure about the exact location of Third Army Headquarters. A new
headquarters was being established and the only information he had was
that it would be somewhere in or near Munich. The name, he said, would be
“Lucky Rear” and I would simply have to make inquiries and be guided by
signs posted along the streets.

I asked Charlie what I should do about the completion of the inventory
at the Reichsbank, and also about the impending report from the Corps of
Engineers on the University of Frankfurt building. He suggested that I
leave the former in Captain Rae’s hands and the latter with Lieutenant
Buchman. Upon my return I could take up where I had left off.

That evening I threw my things together, packing only enough clothes to
see me through the next ten days. Not knowing where I would be billeted I
took the precaution of including my blankets. Even at that my luggage was
compact and light, which was desirable as I was traveling by air.




(3)

_MUNICH AND THE BEGINNING OF FIELD WORK_


The next morning I was up before six and had early breakfast. It was a
wonderful day for the trip, brilliantly clear. The corporal in our office
took me out to the airfield, the one near Hanau where Craig Smyth and I
had landed weeks before. It was going to be fun to see Craig again and
find out what he had been up to since we had parted that morning in Bad
Homburg. The drive to the airfield took about forty-five minutes. There
was a wait of half an hour at the field, and it was after ten when we
took off in our big C-47. We flew over little villages with red roofs,
occasionally a large town—but none that I could identify—and now and then
a silvery lake.

Just before we reached Munich, someone said, “There’s Dachau.” Directly
below us, on one side of a broad sweep of dark pine trees, we saw a group
of low buildings and a series of fenced-in enclosures. On that sunny
morning the place looked deserted and singularly peaceful. Yet only a
few weeks before it had been filled with the miserable victims of Nazi
brutality.

In another ten minutes we landed on the dusty field of the principal
Munich airport. Most of the administration buildings had a slightly
battered look but were in working order. It was a welcome relief to
take refuge from the blazing sunshine in the cool hallway of the main
building. The imposing yellow brick lobby was decorated with painted
shields of the different German states or “Länder.” The arms of Bavaria,
Saxony, Hesse-Nassau and the rest formed a colorful frieze around the
walls.

A conveyance of some kind was scheduled to leave for town in a few
minutes. Meanwhile there were sandwiches and coffee for the plane
passengers. By the time we had finished, a weapons carrier had pulled
up before the entrance. Several of us climbed into its dust-encrusted
interior. It took me a little while to get my bearings as we drove toward
Munich. I had spotted the familiar pepper-pot domes of the Frauenkirche
from the air but had recognized no other landmark of the flat, sprawling
city which I had known well before the war.

It was not until we turned into the broad Prinz Regenten-Strasse that
I knew exactly where I was. As we drove down this handsome avenue, I
got a good look at a long, colonnaded building of white stone. The roof
was draped with what appeared to be an enormous, dark green fishnet.
The billowing scallops of the net flapped about the gleaming cornice of
the building. It was the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, the huge exhibition
gallery dedicated by Hitler in the middle thirties to the kind of art
of which he approved—an art in which there was no place for untrammeled
freedom of expression, only the pictorial and plastic representation
of all the Nazi regime stood for. The dangling fishnet was part of the
elaborate camouflage. I judged from the condition of the building that
the net had admirably served its purpose.

In a moment we rounded the corner by the Prinz Karl Palais. Despite the
disfiguring coat of ugly olive paint which covered its classic façade, it
had not escaped the bombs. The little palace, where Mussolini had stayed,
had a hollow, battered look and the formal garden behind it was a waste
of furrowed ground and straggling weeds. We turned left into the wide
Ludwig-Strasse and came to a grinding halt beside a bleak gray building
whose walls were pockmarked with artillery fire. I asked our driver if
this were Lucky Rear headquarters and was told curtly that it wasn’t,
but that it was the end of the line. It was MP headquarters and I’d have
to see if they’d give me a car to take me to my destination, which the
driver said was “’way the hell” on the other side of town.

Before going inside I looked down the street to the left. The familiar
old buildings were still standing, but they were no longer the trim,
cream-colored structures which had once given that part of the city such
a clean, orderly air. Most of them were burned out. Farther along on
the right, the Theatinerkirche was masked with scaffolding. At the end
of the street the Feldherren-Halle, Ludwig I’s copy of the Loggia dei
Lanzi, divested of its statuary, reared its columns in the midst of the
desolation.

It was gray and cool in the rooms of the MP building, but the place was
crowded. Soldiers were everywhere and things seemed to be at sixes and
sevens. After making several inquiries and being passed from one desk to
another, I finally got hold of a brisk young sergeant to whom I explained
my troubles. At first he said there wasn’t a chance of getting a ride out
to Lucky Rear. Every jeep was tied up and would be for hours. They had
just moved into Munich and hadn’t got things organized yet. Then all at
once he relented and with a grin said, “Oh, you’re Navy, aren’t you? In
that case I’ll have to fix you up somehow. We can’t have the Navy saying
the Army doesn’t co-operate.”

He walked over to a window that looked down on the courtyard below,
shouted instructions to someone and then told me I’d find a jeep and
driver outside. “Think nothing of it, Lieutenant,” he said in answer to
my thanks. “Maybe I’ll be wanting a ship to take me home one of these
days before long. Have to keep on the good side of the Navy.”

[Illustration: In the Kaiser Josef chamber of the Alt Aussee mine Karl
Sieber and Lieutenant Kern view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child, stolen
from a church at Bruges.]

[Illustration: Lieutenants Kovalyak, Stout and Howe pack the Michelangelo
Madonna for return to Bruges. The statue was restored to the Church of
Notre Dame in September of 1945.]

[Illustration: The famous Ghent altarpiece by van Eyck was flown from
the Alt Aussee mine to Belgium in the name of Eisenhower as a token
restitution.]

[Illustration: Karl Sieber, German restorer, Lieutenant Kern, American
Monuments officer, and Max Eder, Austrian engineer, examine the panels of
the Ghent altarpiece stored in the Alt Aussee mine.]

On my way out I gathered up my luggage from the landing below and
climbed into the waiting jeep. We turned the corner and followed the
Prinz Regenten-Strasse to the river. I noticed for the first time that
a temporary track had been laid along one side. This had been done, the
driver said, in order to cart away the rubble which had accumulated
in the downtown section. We turned right and followed the Isar for
several blocks, crossed to the left over the Ludwig bridge, then drove
out the Rosenheimer-Strasse to the east for a distance of about three
miles. Our destination was the enormous complex of buildings called the
Reichszeugmeisterei, or Quartermaster Corps buildings, in which the
rear echelon of General Patton’s Third Army had just established its
headquarters.

Even in the baking sunlight of that June day, the place had a cold,
unfriendly appearance. We halted for identification at the entrance, and
there I was introduced to Third Army discipline. One of the guards gave
me a black look and growled, “Put your cap on.” Startled by this burly
order, I hastily complied and then experienced a feeling of extreme
irritation at having been so easily cowed. I could at least have asked
him to say “sir.”

The driver, sensing my discomfiture, remarked good-naturedly, “You’ll get
used to that sort of thing around here, sir. They’re very, very fussy now
that the shooting’s over. Seems like they don’t have anything else to
worry about, except enforcing a lot of regulations.” This was my first
sample of what I learned to call by its popular name, “chicken”—a prudent
abbreviation for the exasperating rules and regulations one finds at an
Army headquarters. Third Army had its share of them—perhaps a little
more than its share. But I didn’t find that out all at once. It took me
all of two days.

My driver let me out in front of the main building, over the central
doorway of which the emblem of the Third Army was proudly displayed—a
bold “A” inside a circle. The private at the information desk had never
heard of the “Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section,” but said that
if it was a part of G-5 it would be on the fifth floor. I found the
office of the Assistant Chief of Staff and was directed to a room at the
end of a corridor at least two blocks long. I was told that the officer I
should see was Captain Robert Posey. I knew that name from the reports I
had studied at Versailles, as well as from a magazine article describing
his discovery, months before, of some early frescoes in the little
Romanesque church of Mont St. Martin which had been damaged by bombing.
The article had been written by an old friend of mine, Lincoln Kirstein,
who was connected with the MFA&A work in Europe.

When I opened the door of the MFA&A office, George Stout was standing in
the middle of the room. The expression of surprise on his face changed to
relief after he had read the letter I handed him from Charlie Kuhn.

“You couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time,” he said. “I came
down from Alt Aussee today to see Posey, but I just missed him. He left
this morning for a conference in Frankfurt. I wanted to find out what
had happened to the armed escort he promised me for my convoys. We’re
evacuating the mine and desperately shorthanded, so I’ve got to get back
tonight. It’s a six-hour drive.”

“Charlie said you needed help. What do you want me to do?” I asked. I
hoped he would take me along.

“I’d like to have you stay here until we get this escort problem
straightened out. I was promised two half-tracks, but they didn’t show
up this morning. I’ve got a call in about them right now. It’s three
o’clock. I ought to make Salzburg by five-thirty. There’ll surely be some
word about the escort by that time, and I’ll phone you from there.”

Before he left, George introduced me to Lieutenant Colonel William
Hamilton, the Assistant Chief of Staff, and explained to him that I had
come down on special orders from SHAEF to help with the evacuation work.
George told the colonel that I would be joining him at the mine as soon
as Captain Posey returned and provided me with the necessary clearance.
After we had left Colonel Hamilton’s office, I asked George what he meant
by “clearance.” He laughed and said that I would have to obtain a written
permit from Posey before I could operate in Third Army territory. As
Third Army’s Monuments Officer, Posey had absolute jurisdiction in all
matters pertaining to the fine arts in the area occupied by his Army. At
that time it included a portion of Austria which later came under General
Mark Clark’s command.

“Don’t worry,” said George. “I’ll have you at the mine in a few days, and
you’ll probably be sorry you ever laid eyes on the place.”

I went back to the MFA&A office and was about to settle down at Captain
Posey’s vacant desk. I looked across to a corner of the room where
a lanky enlisted man sat hunched up at a typewriter. It was Lincoln
Kirstein, looking more than ever like a world-weary Rachmaninoff. Lincoln
a private in the U. S. Army! What a far cry from the world of modern art
and the ballet! He was thoroughly enjoying my astonishment.

“This is a surprise, but it explains a lot of things,” I said, dragging a
chair over to his desk. “So you are the Svengali of the Fine Arts here at
Third Army.”

“You mustn’t say things like that around this headquarters,” he said
apprehensively.

During the next two hours we covered a lot of territory. First of all, I
wanted to know why he was an enlisted man chained to a typewriter. With
his extraordinary intelligence and wide knowledge of the Fine Arts, he
could have been more useful as an officer. He said that he had applied
for a commission and had been turned down. I was sorry I had brought up
the subject, but knowing Lincoln’s fondness for the dramatic I thought it
quite possible that he had wanted to be able to say in later years that
he had gone through the war as an enlisted man. He agreed that he could
have been of greater service to the Fine Arts project as an officer.

Then I asked him what his “boss”—he was to be mine too—was like. He said
that Captain Posey, an architect in civilian life, had had a spectacular
career during combat. In the face of almost insurmountable obstacles,
such as lack of personnel and transportation and especially the lack of
any real co-operation from the higher-ups, he had accomplished miracles.
Now that the press was devoting more and more space to the work the
Monuments officers were doing—the discovery of treasures in salt mines
and so on—they were beginning to pay loving attention to Captain Posey
around the headquarters.

I gathered from Lincoln that the present phase of our activities appealed
to the captain less than the protection and repair of historic monuments
under fire. If true, this was understandable enough. He was an architect.
Why would he, except as a matter of general cultural interest, find
work that lay essentially in the domain of a museum man particularly
absorbing? It seemed reasonable to assume that Captain Posey would
welcome museum men to shoulder a part of the burden. But I was to learn
later that my assumption was not altogether correct.

Eventually I had to interrupt our conversation. It was getting late, and
still no word about the escort vehicles. Lincoln told me where I would
find the officer who was to have called George. He was Captain Blyth, a
rough-and-ready kind of fellow, an ex-trooper from the state of Virginia.
The outlook was not encouraging. No vehicles were as yet available.
Finally, at six o’clock, he rang up to say that he wouldn’t know anything
before morning.

Lincoln returned from chow, I gave him the message in case George called
while I was out and went down to eat. It was after eight when George
telephoned. The connection from Salzburg was bad, and so was his temper
when I told him I had nothing to report.

Lincoln usually spent his evenings at the office. That night we stayed
till after eleven. Here and there he had picked up some fascinating
German art books and magazines, all of them Nazi publications lavishly
illustrated. They bore eloquent testimony to Hitler’s patronage of
the arts. The banality of the contemporary work in painting was
stultifying—dozens of rosy-cheeked, buxom maidens and stalwart,
brown-limbed youths reeking with “strength through joy,” and acres of
idyllic landscapes. The sculpture was better, though too often the
tendency toward the colossal was tiresomely in evidence. It was in
recording the art of the past, notably in the monographs dealing with
the great monuments of the Middle Ages and the Baroque, that admirable
progress had been made. I asked Lincoln enviously how he had got hold of
these things. He answered laconically that he had “liberated” them.

Captain Blyth had good news for me the next morning. Two armored vehicles
had left Munich for the mine. I gave the message to George when he called
just before noon.

“They’re a little late,” he said. “Thanks to the fine co-operation of
the 11th Armored Division, I am being taken care of from this end of the
line. I’ll try to catch your fellows in Salzburg and tell them to go
back where they came from. I am sending you a letter by the next convoy.
It’s about a repository which ought to be evacuated right away. I can’t
give you any of the details over the phone without violating security
regulations. As soon as Posey gets back, you ought to go to work on it.
After that I want you to help me here.”

After George had hung up, I asked Lincoln if he had any idea what
repository George had in mind. Lincoln said it might be the monastery at
Hohenfurth. It was in Czechoslovakia, just over the border from Austria.
While we were discussing this possibility, Craig Smyth walked in.

As soon as he had recovered from the surprise of finding me at Captain
Posey’s desk, he explained the reason for his visit. Something had to
be done right away about the building he was setting up as a collecting
point. He had been promised a twenty-four-hour guard. He had been
promised a barrier of barbed wire. So far, Third Army had failed to
provide either one. A lot of valuable stuff had already been delivered to
the building, and George was sending in more. He couldn’t wait any longer.

“Let’s have a talk with Colonel Hamilton,” I said. As we walked down to
the Assistant Chief of Staff’s office, Craig told me that the buildings
he had requisitioned were the ones Bancel La Farge had suggested when we
saw him at Wiesbaden a month ago.

“Can’t this matter wait until Captain Posey returns?” the colonel asked.

“I am afraid it can’t, sir,” said Craig. “As you know, the two buildings
were the headquarters of the Nazi party. The Nazis meant to destroy them
before Munich fell. Having failed to do so, I think it quite possible
that they may still attempt it. Both buildings are honeycombed with
underground passageways. Only this morning we located the exit of one
of them. It was half a block from the building. We hadn’t known of its
existence before. The works of art stored in the building at present are
worth millions of dollars. In the circumstances, I am not willing to
accept the responsibility for what may happen to them. I must have guards
or a barrier at once.”

The colonel reached for the telephone and gave orders that a cordon of
guards was to be placed on the buildings immediately. He made a second
call, this time about the barbed wire. When he had finished he told Craig
that the guard detail would report that afternoon; the barbed wire would
be strung around the building the next morning. We thanked the colonel
and returned to Posey’s office.

We found two officers who had just come in from Dachau. They were waiting
to see someone connected with Property Control. They had brought with
them a flour sack filled with gold wedding rings; a large carton stuffed
with gold teeth, bridgework, crowns and braces (in children’s sizes);
a sack containing gold coins (for the most part Russian) and American
greenbacks. As we looked at these mementos of the concentration camp, I
thought of the atrocity film I had seen at Versailles and wondered how
anyone could believe that those pictures had been an exaggeration.

I went back with Craig to his office at the Königsplatz. The damage to
Munich was worse than I had realized. The great Deutsches Museum by the
river was a hollow-eyed specter, but sufficiently intact to house DPs.
Aside from its twin towers, little was left of the Frauenkirche. The
buildings lining the Brienner-Strasse had been blasted and burned. Along
the short block leading from the Carolinen Platz to the Königsplatz,
the destruction was total: on the left stood the jagged remnants of the
little villa Hitler had given D’Annunzio; on the right was a heap of
rubble which had been the Braun Haus. But practically untouched were the
two Ehrentempel—the memorials to the “martyrs” of the 1923 beer-hall
“putsch.” The colonnades were draped with the same kind of green
fishnet that had been used to camouflage the Haus der Deutschen Kunst.
The classic façades of the museums on either side of the square—the
Glyptothek and the Neue Staatsgalerie—were intact. The buildings
themselves were a shambles.

I followed Craig up the broad flight of steps to the entrance of the
Verwaltungsbau, or Administration Building. It was three stories high,
built of stone, and occupied almost an entire block. True to the Nazi
boast, it looked as though it had been built to “last a thousand
years.” And it was so plain and massive that I didn’t see how it could
change much in that time. There was nothing here that could “grow old
gracefully.” The interior matched the exterior. There were two great
central courts with marble stairs leading to the floor above.

Although the building had not been bombed, it had suffered severely
from concussion. Craig said that when he had moved in two weeks ago
the skylights over the courts had been open to the sky. On rainy days
one could practically go boating on the first floor. There had been no
glass in the windows. Now they had been boarded up or filled in with a
translucent material as a substitute. All of the doors had been out of
line and would not lock. But the repairs were already well under way
and, according to Craig, the place would be shipshape in another month
or six weeks. He said that his colleague, Hamilton Coulter, a former New
York architect now a naval lieutenant, was directing the work and doing
a magnificent job. Even under normal conditions it would have been a
staggering task. With glass and lumber at a premium, to say nothing of
the scarcity of skilled labor, a less resourceful man would have given up
in despair.

[Illustration: Vermeer’s _Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_ in the
Alt Aussee mine was purchased by Hitler for his proposed museum. It has
been returned to Vienna.]

[Illustration: One of the picture storage rooms in the mine, constructed
with wooden partitions and racks. The temperature was constant, averaging
40° Fahrenheit in summer, 47° in winter.]

[Illustration: Panel from the Louvain altarpiece, _Feast of the
Passover_, by Bouts, was stored at Alt Aussee.]

[Illustration: Hitler acquired the Czernin Vermeer for an alleged price
of 1,400,000 Reichsmarks.]

Craig was rapidly building up a staff of German scholars and museum
technicians to assist him in the administration of the establishment.
It would soon rival a large American museum in complexity and scope.
Storage rooms on the ground floor had been made weatherproof. Paintings
and sculpture were already pouring in from the mine at Alt Aussee—six
truckloads at a time. In accordance with standard museum practice, Craig
had set up an efficient accessioning system. As each object came in, it
was identified, marked and listed for future reference. Quarters had been
set aside for a photographer. Racks were being built for pictures. A
two-storied record room was being converted into a library.

Craig had also requisitioned the “twin” of this colossal building—the
Führerbau, where Hitler had had his own offices. This was only a
block away on the same street and also faced the Königsplatz. It was
connected with the Verwaltungsbau by underground passageways. It was in
the Führerbau that the Munich Pact of 1938—the pact that was to have
guaranteed “peace in our time”—had been signed. Craig showed me the table
at which Mr. Chamberlain had signed that document. Craig was using it now
for a conference table.

Repairs were being concentrated on the Administration Building, since its
“twin” was being held in reserve for later use. At the moment, however, a
few of the rooms were occupied by a small guard detail. The truck drivers
and armed guards who came each week with the convoys from the mine were
also billeted there.

Just as Craig and I were finishing our inspection of the Führerbau,
a convoy of six trucks, escorted by two half-tracks, pulled into the
parking space behind the building. The convoy leader had a letter for
me. It was the one George Stout had mentioned on the telephone. Lincoln
was right. The repository George had in mind was the monastery at
Hohenfurth. In his letter he stressed the fact that the evacuation should
be undertaken at once. He suggested that I try to persuade Posey to send
Lincoln along to help me.

Craig had a comfortable billet in the Kopernikus-Strasse, a four-room
flat on the fourth floor of a modern apartment building. The back windows
looked onto a garden. Over the tops of the poplar trees beyond, one could
see the roof of the Prinz Regenten Theater where, back in the twenties, I
had seen my first complete performance of Wagner’s _Ring_. Craig told me
that the theater was undamaged except for the Speisesaal where, in prewar
days, lavish refreshments were served during intermissions. That one room
had caught a bomb.

I accepted Craig’s invitation to share the apartment with him while
in Munich and made myself at home in the dining room. It had a couch,
and there was a sideboard which I could use as a chest of drawers. The
bathroom was across the hall and he said that the supply of hot water
was inexhaustible. By comparison, the officers’ billets at Third Army
Headquarters were tenements.

Ham Coulter had similar quarters on the ground floor. We stopped there
for a drink on our way to supper at the Military Government Detachment.
“Civilized” was the word that best described Ham. He was a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with sleek black hair, finely-chiseled features
and keen, gray eyes. When he smiled, his mouth crinkled up at the
corners, producing an agreeably sarcastic expression. Ham poured out the
drinks with an elegance the ordinary German cognac didn’t deserve. They
should have been dry martinis. I liked him at once that first evening,
and when I came to know him better I found him the wittiest and most
amiable of companions. He and Craig were a wonderful combination. They
had the greatest admiration and respect for each other, and during
the many months of their work together there was not the slightest
disagreement between them.

The officers’ dining room that evening was a noisy place. The clatter
of knives and forks and the babble of voices mingled with the rasping
strains of popular American tunes pounded out by a Bavarian band. As we
were about to sit down, the music stopped abruptly and a second later
struck up the current favorite, “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the
Time.” Colonel Charles Keegan, the commanding officer, had entered the
dining hall. I was puzzled by this until Ham told me that it happened
every night. This particular piece was the colonel’s favorite tune and he
had ordered it to be played whenever he came in to dinner. The colonel
was a colorful character—short and florid, with a shock of white hair.
He had figured prominently in New York politics and would again, it was
said. He had already helped Craig over a couple of rough spots and if
some of his antics amused the MFA&A boys, they seemed to be genuinely
fond of him.

While we were at dinner, three officers came and took their places at
a near-by table. Craig identified one of them as Captain Posey. I had
been told that he was in his middle thirties, but he looked younger than
that. He had a boyish face and I noticed that he laughed a great deal as
he talked with his two companions. When he wasn’t smiling, there was a
stubborn expression about his mouth, and I remembered that Lincoln had
said something about his “deceptively gentle manner.” On our way out I
introduced myself to him. He was very affable and seemed pleased at my
arrival. But he was tired after the long drive from Frankfurt, so, as
soon as I had arranged to meet him at his office the next day, I joined
Ham and Craig back at the apartment.

I got out to Third Army Headquarters early the following morning and
found Captain Posey already at his desk, going through the papers which
had accumulated during his absence. We discussed George’s letter at
considerable length, and I was disappointed to find that he did not
intend to act on it at once. Somehow it had never occurred to me that
anyone would question a proposal of George’s.

For one thing, Captain Posey said, he couldn’t spare Lincoln; and for
another, there was a very pressing job much nearer Munich which he wanted
me to handle. He then proceeded to tell me of a small village on the road
to Salzburg where I would find a house in which were stored some eighty
cases of paintings and sculpture from the Budapest Museum. He showed me
the place on the map and explained how I was to go about locating the
exact house upon arrival. I was to see a certain officer at Third Army
Headquarters without delay and make arrangements for trucks. He thought I
would need about five. It shouldn’t take more than half a day to do the
job if all went well. After this preliminary briefing, I was on my own.

My first move was to get hold of the officer about the trucks. How many
did I need? When did I want them and where should he tell them to report?
I said I’d like to have five trucks at the Königsplatz the following
morning at eight-thirty. The officer explained that the drivers would be
French, as Third Army was using a number of foreign trucking companies to
relieve the existing shortage in transportation.

Later in the day I had a talk with Lincoln about my plans and he gave me
a piece of advice which proved exceedingly valuable—that I should go
myself to the trucking company which was to provide the vehicles, and
personally confirm the arrangements. So, after lunch I struck out in a
jeep for the west side of Munich, a distance of some seven or eight miles.

I found a lieutenant, who had charge of the outfit, and explained the
purpose of my visit. He had not been notified of the order for five
trucks. There was no telephone communication between his office and
headquarters, so all messages had to come by courier, and the courier
hadn’t come in that day. He was afraid he couldn’t let me have any trucks
before the following afternoon. I insisted that the matter was urgent and
couldn’t wait, and, after much deliberating and consulting of charts, he
relented. I told him a little something about the expedition for which I
wanted the trucks and he showed real interest. He suggested that I ought
to have extremely careful drivers. I replied that I should indeed, as we
would be hauling stuff of incalculable value.

Thereupon he gave me a harrowing description of the group under his
supervision. All of them had been members of the French Resistance
Movement—ex-terrorists he called them—and they weren’t afraid of God,
man or the Devil. Well, I thought, isn’t that comforting! “Oh, yes,” he
said, “these Frenchies drive like crazy men. But,” he continued, “one
of the fellows has got some sense. I’ll see if I can get him for you.”
He went over to the window that looked out on a parking ground littered
with vehicles of various kinds. Here and there I saw a mechanic bent over
an open hood or sprawled out beneath a truck. The lieutenant bellowed,
“Leclancher, come up here to my office!”

A few seconds later a wiry, sandy-haired Frenchman of about forty-five
appeared in the doorway. Leclancher understood some English, for he
reacted with alert nods of the head as the lieutenant gave a brief
description of the job ahead, and then turned and asked me if I spoke
French. I told him I did, if he had enough patience. This struck him as
inordinately funny, but I was being quite serious. What really pleased
him was the fact that I was in the Navy. He said that he had been in
the Navy during the first World War. Then and there a lasting bond was
formed, though I didn’t appreciate the value of it at the time.

Eight-thirty the next morning found me pacing the Königsplatz. Not
a truck in sight. Nine o’clock and still no trucks. At nine thirty,
one truck rolled up. Leclancher leaped out and with profuse apologies
explained that the other four were having carburetor trouble. There
had been water in the gas, too, and that hadn’t helped. For an hour
Leclancher and I idled about, whiling away the time with conversation
of no consequence, other than that it served to limber up my French. At
eleven o’clock Leclancher looked at his watch and said that it would
soon be time for lunch. It was obvious that he understood the Army’s
conception of a day as a brief span of time, in the course of which one
eats three meals. If it is not possible to finish a given job during the
short pauses between those meals, well, there’s always the next day. I
told him to go to his lunch and to come back as soon as he could round up
the other trucks. In the meantime I would get something to eat near by.

When I returned shortly after eleven thirty—having eaten a K ration under
the portico of the Verwaltungsbau in lieu of a more formal lunch—my
five trucks were lined up ready to go. I appointed Leclancher “chef de
convoi”—a rather high-sounding title for such a modest caravan—and he
assigned positions to the other drivers, taking the end truck himself.
Since my jeep failed to arrive, I climbed into the lead truck. The driver
was an amiable youngster whose name was Roger Roget. During the next
few weeks he was the lead driver in all of my expeditions, and I took to
calling him “Double Roger,” which I think he never quite understood.

To add to my anxiety over our belated start, a light rain began to fall
as we pulled out of the Königsplatz and turned into the Brienner-Strasse.
We threaded our way cautiously through the slippery streets choked with
military traffic, crossed the bridge over the Isar and swung into the
broad Rosenheimer-Strasse leading to the east.

Once on the Autobahn, Roger speeded up. The speedometer needle quivered
up to thirty-five, forty and finally forty-five miles an hour. I pointed
to it, shaking my head. “We must not exceed thirty-five, Roger.”

He promptly slowed down, and as we rolled along, I forgot the worries
of the morning. I dozed comfortably. Suddenly we struck an unexpected
hole in the road and I woke up. We were doing fifty. This time I spoke
sharply, reminding Roger that the speed limit was thirty-five and that we
were to stay within it; if we didn’t we’d be arrested, because the road
was well patrolled. With a tolerant grin Roger said, “Oh, no, we never
get arrested. The MPs, they stop us and get very angry, but—” with a
shrug of the shoulders—“we do not understand. They throw the hands up in
the air and say ‘dumb Frenchies’ and we go ahead.”

“That may work with you,” I said crossly, “but what about me? I’m not a
‘dumb Frenchy.’”

For the next hour I pretended to doze and at the same time kept an eye on
the speedometer. This worked pretty well. Now and again I would look up,
and each time, Roger would modify his speed.

Presently we came to a bad detour, where a bridge was out. We had to
make a sharp turn to the left, leave the Autobahn and descend a steep
and tortuous side road into a deep ravine. That day the narrow road was
slippery from the rain, so we had to crawl along. The drop into the
valley was a matter of two or three hundred feet and, as we reached
the bottom, we could see the monstrous wreckage of the bridge hanging
drunkenly in mid-air. The ascent was even more precarious, but our five
trucks got through.

We had now left the level country around Munich and were in a region of
rolling hills. Along the horizon, gray clouds half concealed the distant
peaks. Soon the rain stopped and the sun came out. The mountains changed
to misty blue against an even bluer sky. The road rose sharply, and when
we reached the crest, I caught a glimpse of shimmering water. It was
Chiemsee, largest of the Bavarian lakes.

In another ten minutes the road flattened out again and we came to the
turnoff marked “Prien.” There we left the Autobahn for a narrow side
road which took us across green meadows. Nothing could have looked more
peaceful than this lush, summer countryside. Reports of SS troops still
hiding out in the near-by forests seemed preposterous in the pastoral
tranquillity. Yet only a few days before, our troops had rounded up a
small band of these die-hards in this neighborhood. The SS men had come
down from the foothills on a foraging expedition and had been captured
while attempting to raid a farmhouse. It was because of just such
incidents, as well as the ever-present fire hazard, that I had been sent
down to remove the museum treasures to a place of safety.

The road was dwindling away to a cow path and I was beginning to wonder
how much farther we could go with our two-and-a-half-ton trucks, when we
came to a small cluster of houses. This was Grassau. I had been told
that a small detachment of troops was billeted there, so I singled out
the largest of the little white houses grouped around the only crossroads
in the village. It had clouded over and begun to rain again. As I entered
the gate and was crossing the yard, the door of the house was opened by a
corporal.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me. Someone at Munich had sent down word
to Prien that I was coming, and the message had reached him from there. I
asked if he knew where the things I had come for were stored. He motioned
to the back of the house and said there were two rooms full of big
packing cases. He explained that he and one other man had been detailed
to live in the house because of the “stuff” stored there. They had been
instructed to keep an eye on the old man who claimed to be responsible
for it. That would be Dr. Csanky, director of the Budapest Museum, who,
according to my information, would probably raise unqualified hell when I
came to cart away his precious cases. The corporal told me that the old
man and his son occupied rooms on the second floor.

I was relieved to hear that they were not at home. It would make things
much simpler if I could get my trucks loaded and be on my way before
they returned. It was already well after two and I wanted to start back
by five at the latest. I asked rather tentatively about the chances of
getting local talent to help with the loading, and the corporal promptly
offered to corral a gang of PWs who were working under guard near by.

While he went off to see about that, I marshaled my trucks. There was
enough room to back one truck at a time to the door of the house. A few
minutes later the motley “work party” arrived. There were eight of them
in all and they ranged from a young fellow of sixteen, wearing a faded
German uniform, to a reedy old man of sixty. By and large, they looked
husky enough for the job.

I knew enough not to ask my drivers to help, but knew that the work would
go much faster if they would lend a hand. Leclancher must have read my
thoughts, for he immediately offered his services. As soon as the other
four saw what Leclancher was doing, they followed suit.

There were eighty-one cases in all. They varied greatly in size, because
some of them contained sculpture and, consequently, were both bulky and
heavy. Others, built for big canvases, were very large and flat but
relatively light. We had to “design” our loads in such a way as to keep
cases of approximately the same type together. This was necessary for
two reasons: first, the cases would ride better that way, and second, we
hadn’t any too much space. As I roughly figured it, we should be able to
get them all in the five trucks, but we couldn’t afford to be prodigal in
our loading.

The work went along smoothly for an hour and we were just finishing the
second truck when I saw two men approaching. They were Dr. Csanky and
his son. This was what I had hoped to avoid. The doctor was a dapper
little fellow with a white mustache and very black eyes. He was wearing
a corduroy jacket and a flowing bow tie. The artistic effect was topped
off by a beret set at a jaunty angle. His son was a callow string bean
with objectionably soulful eyes magnified by horn-rimmed spectacles. They
came over to the truck and began to jabber and wave their arms. We paid
no attention whatever—just kept on methodically lifting one case after
another out of the storage room.

The dapper doctor got squarely in my path and I had to stop. I checked
his flow of words with a none too civil “Do you speak English?” That drew
a blank, so I asked if he spoke German. No luck there either. Feeling
like an ad for the Berlitz School, I inquired whether he spoke French.
He said “Yes,” but the stream of Hungarian-French which rolled out from
that white mustache was unintelligible. It was hopeless. At last I simply
had to take him by the shoulders and gently but firmly set him aside.
This was the ultimate indignity, but it worked. At that juncture he and
the string bean took off. I didn’t know what they were up to and I didn’t
care, so long as they left us alone.

Our respite was short-lived. By the time we had the third truck ready to
move away, they were back. And they had come with reinforcements: two
women were with them. One was a rather handsome dowager who looked out of
place in this rural setting. Her gray hair, piled high, was held in place
by a scarlet bandanna, and she was wearing a shabby dress of green silk.
Despite this getup, there was something rather commanding about her. She
introduced herself as the wife of General Ellenlittay and explained in
perfect English that Dr. Csanky had come to her in great distress. Would
I be so kind as to tell her what was happening so that she could inform
him?

“I am removing these cases on the authority of the Commanding General
of the Third United States Army,” I said. If she were going to throw
generals’ names around, I could produce one too—and a better one at that.

Her response to my pompous pronouncement was delivered charmingly and
with calculated deflationary effect. “Dear sir, forgive me if I seemed to
question your authority. That was not my intention. It is quite apparent
that you are removing the pictures, but where are you taking them?”

“I am sorry, but I am not at liberty to say,” I replied. That too
sounded rather lordly, but I consoled myself by recalling that Posey had
admonished me not to answer questions like that.

She relayed this information to Dr. Csanky and the effect was
startling. He covered his face with his hands and I thought he was going
to cry. Finally he pulled himself together and let forth a flood of
unintelligible consonants. His interpreter tackled me again.

“Dr. Csanky is frantic. He says that he is responsible to his government
for the safety of these treasures and since you are taking them away,
there is nothing left for him to do but to blow his brains out.”

My patience was exhausted. I said savagely, “Tell Dr. Csanky for me that
he can blow his brains out if he chooses, but I think it would be silly.
If you must know, Madame, I am a museum director myself and you can
assure him that no harm is going to come to his precious pictures.”

I should never have mentioned that I had even so much as been inside
a museum, for, from that moment until we finished loading the last
truck, the little doctor never left my side. I was his “cher collègue,”
and he kept up a steady barrage of questions which the patient Madame
Ellenlittay tried to pass along to me without interrupting our work.

As we lined the trucks up, preparatory to starting back to Munich, Dr.
Csanky produced several long lists of what the cases contained. He asked
me to sign them. This I refused to do but explained to him through
the general’s wife that if he cared to have the lists translated from
Hungarian and forwarded to Third Army Headquarters, they could be checked
against the contents and eventually returned to him with a notation to
that effect.

Our little convoy rolled out of Grassau at six o’clock, leaving the group
of Hungarians waving forlornly from the corner. Just before we turned
onto the Autobahn, Leclancher signaled from the rear truck for us to
stop. He came panting up to the lead truck with a bottle in his hand.
With a gallant wave of the arm he said that we must drink to the success
of the expedition. It was a bottle of Calvados—fiery and wonderful. We
each took a generous swig and then—with a rowdy “en voiture!”—we were on
our way again. It was a nice gesture.

The trip back to Munich was uneventful except for the extraordinary
beauty of the long summer evening. The sunset had all the extravagance
of the tropics. The sky blazed with opalescent clouds. As we drove into
Munich, the whole city was suffused with a coral light which produced
a more authentic atmosphere of Götterdämmerung than the most ingenious
stage Merlin could have contrived.

It was nearly nine when we rolled into the parking area behind the
Führerbau—too late to think about unloading and also, I was afraid, too
late to get any supper. We had pieced out with K rations and candy bars,
but were still hungry. A mess sergeant, lolling on the steps of the
building, reluctantly produced some lukewarm stew. After we had eaten, I
prevailed on one of the building guards to take my five drivers out to
their billets south of town. It was Saturday night. I told Leclancher we
would probably be making a longer trip on Monday and that I would need
ten drivers. He promised to select five more good men, and we arranged to
meet in the square as we had that morning. But Monday, he promised, they
would be on time.

After checking the tarpaulins on my five trucks, I sauntered over to the
Central Collecting Point on the off-chance that Craig might be working
late. I found him looking at some of the pictures which George had sent
in that day from the mine. The German packers whom Craig had been able to
hire from one of the old established firms in Munich—one which had worked
exclusively for the museums there—had finished unloading the trucks only
a couple of hours earlier. Most of the things in this shipment had
been found at the mine, so now the pictures were stacked according to
size in neat rows about the room. In one of them we found two brilliant
portraits by Mme. Vigée-Lebrun. Labels on the front identified them as
the likenesses of Prince Schuvalov and of the Princess Golowine. Marks
on the back indicated that they were from the Lanckoroncki Collection
in Vienna, one of the most famous art collections in Europe. Hitler was
rumored to have acquired it en bloc—through forced sale, it was said—for
the great museum he planned to build at Linz. In another stack we came
upon a superb Rubens landscape, a fine portrait by Hals and two sparkling
allegorical scenes by Tiepolo. These had no identifying labels other
than the numbers which referred to lists we didn’t have at the moment.
However, Craig said that the documentation on the pictures, as a whole,
was surprisingly complete. Then we ran into a lot of nineteenth century
German masters—Lenbach, Spitzweg, Thoma and the like. These Hitler had
particularly admired, but they didn’t thrill me. I was getting sleepy and
suggested that we had had enough art for one day. I still had a report of
the day’s doings to write up for Captain Posey before I could turn in, so
we padlocked the room and took off.

Even though the next day was Sunday, it was not a day of rest for me.
The trek to Hohenfurth, scheduled for Monday, involved infinitely more
complicated preliminary arrangements than the easy run of yesterday.
Captain Posey got out maps of the area into which the convoy would be
traveling; gave me the names of specific outfits from whom I would have
to obtain clearance as well as escorts along the way; and, most important
of all, supplied information concerning the material to be transported.
None of it, I learned, was cased. He thought it consisted mainly of
paintings, but there was probably also some furniture. This wasn’t too
definite. Nor did we have a very clear idea as to the exact number of
trucks we would need. I had spoken for ten on the theory that a larger
number would make too cumbersome a convoy. At least I didn’t want to be
responsible for more at that stage of the game, inexperienced as I was.
In the circumstances, two seasoned packers might, I thought, come in
handy, so I was to see if I could borrow a couple of Craig’s men. There
was the problem of rations for the trip up and back. Posey procured a big
supply of C rations, not so good as the K’s, but they would do. While at
Hohenfurth we would be fed by the American outfit stationed there. It was
a good thing that there was so much to be arranged, because it kept me
from worrying about a lot of things that could and many that did happen
on that amazing expedition.

In the afternoon I went out to make sure of my trucks and on the way back
put in a bid for the two packers. My request wasn’t very popular, because
Craig was shorthanded, but he thought he could spare two since it was to
be only a three-day trip—one day to go up, one day at Hohenfurth, and
then back the third day. Craig gloomily predicted that I’d never get ten
trucks loaded in one day, but I airily tossed that off with the argument
that we had loaded five trucks at Grassau in less than four hours. “But
that stuff was all in cases,” he said. “You’ll find it slow going with
loose pictures.” Of course he was right, but I didn’t believe it at the
time.




(4)

_MASTERPIECES IN A MONASTERY_


We woke up to faultless weather the following morning, and on the way
down to the Königsplatz with Craig I was in an offensively optimistic
frame of mind. All ten of my trucks were there. This was more like it—no
tiresome mechanical delays. We were all set to go. Leclancher had even
had the foresight to bring along an extra driver, just in case anything
happened to one of the ten. That was a smart idea and I congratulated him
for having thought of it.

It wasn’t till I started distributing the rations that I discovered our
two packers were missing. But that shouldn’t take long to straighten
out. Craig’s office was just across the way. I found them cooling their
heels in the anteroom. They looked as though they had come right out of
an Arthur Rackham illustration—stocky little fellows with gnarled hands
and wizened faces as leathery as the _Lederhosen_ they were wearing. Each
wore a coal-scuttle hat with a jaunty feather, and each had a bulging
bandanna attached to the end of a stick. There was much bowing and
scraping. The hats were doffed and there was the familiar “Grüss Gott,
Herr Kapitän,” when I walked in.

Craig appeared and explained the difficulty. Until the last minute, no
one had thought to ask whether the men had obtained a Military Government
permit to leave the area—and of course they hadn’t. With all due respect
to the workings of Military Government, I knew that it would take hours,
even days, to obtain the permits. So, what to do? I asked Craig what
would happen if they went without them. He didn’t know. But if anyone
found out about it, there would be trouble. I didn’t see any reason why
anyone should find out about it. The men would be in my charge and I said
I’d assume all responsibility.

Meanwhile the two Rackham characters were shifting uneasily from one foot
to the other, looking first at Craig and then at me, without the faintest
idea what the fuss was all about. Craig reluctantly left it up to me. Not
wanting to waste any more time, I told the little fellows that everything
was “in Ordnung” and bundled them off to the waiting trucks.

Again our way led out to the east, the same road we had taken two days
before; and again I was perched up in the lead truck with Double Roger.
The country was more beautiful than ever in the morning sunlight.
We skirted the edge of Chiemsee and sped on through Traunstein. The
mountains loomed closer, their crests gleaming with snow. Roger commented
that it was “_la neige éternelle_,” and I was struck by the unconscious
poetry of the phrase.

To save time we ate our midday rations en route, pulling off to one side
of the Autobahn in the neighborhood of Bad Reichenhall. Farther on we
came to a fork in the highway. A sign to the right pointed temptingly
to Berchtesgaden, only thirty kilometers away. But our road was the one
to the left—to Salzburg. In another few minutes we saw its picturesque
fortress, outlined against the sky, high above the town.

I had to make some inquiries in Salzburg. Not knowing the exact location
of the headquarters where I could obtain the information I needed, I
thought it prudent to park the convoy on the outskirts and go on ahead
with a single truck. It probably wasn’t going to be any too easy, even
with exact directions, to get all ten of them through the narrow
streets, across the river and out the other side. This was where a jeep
would have come in handy. I had been a fool not to insist on having one
for this trip.

Leclancher asked if he might go along with Roger and me. The three of
us drove off, leaving the other nine drivers and the two little packers
to take their ease in the warm meadow beside which we had halted. It
was about three miles into the center of town and the road was full
of confusing turns. But on the whole it was well marked with Army
signs. Before the end of the summer I became reasonably proficient in
translating the cabalistic symbols on these markers, but at that time
I was hopelessly untutored and neither of my companions was any help.
After driving through endless gray archways and being soundly rebuked
by the MPs for going the wrong direction on several one-way streets, we
found ourselves in a broad square paved with cobblestones. It was the
Mozartplatz.

The lieutenant colonel I was supposed to see had his office in one of the
dove-colored buildings facing the square. It was a big, high-ceilinged
room with graceful rococo decorations along the walls and a delicate
prism chandelier in the center. I asked the colonel for clearance to
proceed to Linz with my convoy. After I had explained the purpose of my
trip to Hohenfurth, he offered to expedite the additional clearance I
would need beyond Linz.

He rang up the headquarters of the 65th Infantry Division which was
stationed there. In a few minutes everything had been arranged. The
colonel at the other end of the line said that he would send one of his
officers to the outskirts of the city to conduct us to his headquarters
on our arrival. There would be no difficulty about billets. He would
also take care of our clearance across the Czechoslovakian border
the following day. I thanked the colonel and hurried down to rejoin
Leclancher and Roger.

Since the proposed Autobahn to Linz had never been finished, we had to
take a secondary highway east of Salzburg. Our road led through gently
rolling country with mountains in the distance. I was grateful for the
succession of villages along the way. They were a relief after the
monotony of the Autobahn and also served to control the speed of the
convoy. We wound through streets so narrow that one could have reached
out and touched the potted geraniums which lined the balconies of the
cottages on either side. Laughing, towheaded children waved from the
doorways as we passed by. Roger, intent on his driving, didn’t respond to
the exuberance of the youngsters, and I wondered if he might be thinking
of the villages of his own country, where the invaders had left a bitter
legacy of wan faces.

It was after seven when we reached the battered outskirts of Linz, the
city of Hitler’s special adoration. He had lavished his attention on the
provincial old town, his mother’s birthplace, hoping to make it a serious
rival of Vienna as an art center. To this end, plans for a magnificent
museum had been drawn up, and already an impressive collection of
pictures had been assembled against the day when a suitable building
would be ready to receive them.

We approached the city from the west—its most damaged sector. It was
rough going, as the streets were full of chuckholes and narrowed by piles
of rubble heaped high on both sides. There was no sign of an escort,
so we drew up beside an information post at a main intersection. Our
cavalcade was too large to miss, as long as we stayed in one place.
We waited nearly an hour before a jeep came along. A jaunty young
lieutenant came over, introduced himself as the colonel’s “emissary”
and said that he had been combing the town for us. The confusion of
the debris-filled streets had caused us to take a wrong turn and,
consequently, we had missed the main thoroughfare into town. The
lieutenant, whose name was George Anderson, led us by a devious route
to a large, barrackslike building with a forecourt which afforded
ample parking space for the trucks. Billets had already been arranged,
as promised, but to get food at such a late hour was another matter.
However, by dint of coaxing in the right quarter, Anderson even contrived
to do that.

As we drove off in his jeep to the hotel where the officers were
billeted, he remarked with a laugh that he wouldn’t be able to do as
well by me but thought he could dig up something. The hotel was called
the “Weinzinger,” and Anderson said that Hitler had often stayed there.
Leaving me to get settled, he went off on a foraging expedition. He
returned shortly with an armful of rations, a bottle of cognac and a
small contraption that looked like a tin case for playing cards. This
ingenious little device, with a turn of the wrist, opened out into a
miniature stove. Fuel for it came in the form of white lozenges that
resembled moth balls. Two of these, lighted simultaneously, produced a
flame of such intensity that one could boil water in less than a quarter
of an hour. I got out my mess kit while Anderson opened the rations, and
in ten minutes we whipped up a hot supper of lamb stew. With a generous
slug of cognac for appetizer, the lack of variety in the menu was
completely forgotten.

While we topped off with chocolate bars, I asked him about conditions up
the line in the direction of Hohenfurth.

“You won’t have any trouble once you reach Hohenfurth, because it’s
occupied by our troops,” he said, “but before swinging north into
Czechoslovakia you’ll have to pass through Russian-held Austrian
territory.”

This was bad news, for I had no clearance from the Russians. I hadn’t
foreseen the need of it. Captain Posey couldn’t have known about it
either because he was punctilious and would never have let me start off
without the necessary papers.

I had heard stories of the attitude of the Russians toward anyone
entering their territory without proper authorization. An officer in
Munich told me that his convoy had been stopped. He had been subjected to
a series of interrogations and not allowed to proceed for a week.

“Could your colonel obtain clearance for me from the Russians?” I asked.

“He could try, but it would probably take weeks,” Anderson said. “If
you’re in a hurry, your best bet is to take a chance and go on through
without clearance. You never can tell about the Russians. They might stop
you and again they might not.”

Then I mentioned my problem children—my German packers. Anderson didn’t
think the Russians would look on them with much favor, if my trucks were
stopped and inspected. I asked about another road to Hohenfurth. Perhaps
there was one to the west of the Russian lines. He didn’t know about any
other route but said that we could take a look at the big map in the
O.D.’s office on the next floor.

To my great relief, it appeared that there was another road—one which ran
parallel with the main road, four or five miles to the west of it. But
Anderson tempered enthusiasm with the remark that it might not be wide
enough for my two-and-a-half-ton trucks. There was nothing on the map to
indicate whether it was much more than a cow path and the duty officer
didn’t know. One of the other officers might be able to tell me. I could
ask in the morning.

That night I worried a good deal about the hazards that seemed to lie
ahead, and woke up feeling depressed. Things, I reflected, had been going
too well. I should have guessed that there would be rough spots here and
there. After early breakfast I called to thank the colonel, Anderson’s
chief, for his kindness, and while in his office had a chance to inquire
about the alternate route.

“The back road is all right,” he said without hesitation. “Take it by
all means. You will cross the Czech frontier just north of Leonfelden.
A telephone call to our officer at the border control will fix that up.
You should be able to make Hohenfurth in about two hours. The C.O. at
Hohenfurth is Lieutenant Colonel Sheehan of the 263rd Field Artillery
Battalion.”

On my way through the outer office I stopped for a word with Lieutenant
Anderson, and while there the colonel gave instructions about the call
to the border control post. That done, Anderson said, “If you’ve got a
minute, there’s something I want to show you.” I followed him down the
stairs and through the back entrance of the hotel to the broad esplanade
beside the Danube. The river was beautiful that morning. Its swiftly
flowing waters were really blue.

We walked over to the river where a white yacht tugged at her moorings.
She was the _Ungaria_, presented by Hitler to Admiral Horthy, the
Hungarian Regent. Anderson took me aboard and we made a tour of her
luxurious cabins. She was about a hundred twenty feet over all and her
fittings were lavish to the last detail. The vessel was now in the
custody of the American authorities, but her original crew was still
aboard.

After this unexpected nautical adventure, Anderson took me to my trucks
and saw us off on the last lap of the journey. Beyond Urfahr, the town
across the Danube from Linz, we turned north. It was slow going for
the convoy because the road was steep and winding. Our progress was
further impeded by an endless line of horse-drawn carts and wagons, all
moving in the direction of Linz. Most of them were filled with household
furnishings. Presently the road straightened out and we entered a region
of rolling, upland meadows and deep pine forests. After an hour and a
half’s drive we reached Leonfelden, a pretty village with a seventeenth
century church nestling in a shallow valley. Just beyond it was the
frontier. We identified ourselves to the two officers—one American, the
other Czech—and continued on our way. Our entry into Czechoslovakia had
been singularly undramatic. In another twenty minutes we pulled into
Hohenfurth.

It was not a particularly prepossessing village on first sight. Drab,
one-story houses lined the one main street. The headquarters of the 263rd
Field Artillery Battalion occupied an unpretentious corner building.
Lieutenant Colonel John R. Sheehan, the C.O., was a big, amiable fellow,
with a Boston-Irish accent.

“If you’ve come for that stuff in the monastery,” he said, “just tell
me what you need and I’ll see that you get it. I’m anxious to get the
place cleared out because we’re not going to be here much longer. When we
leave, the Czechs are going to take over.” The colonel called for Major
Coleman W. Thacher, his “Exec,” a pleasant young Bostonian, and told him
to see that I was properly taken care of. The major, in turn, instructed
his sergeant to show me the way to the monastery and to provide billets
for my men.

It was after eleven, but the sergeant said we’d have time to take a look
at the monastery before chow. He suggested that we take the trucks to
the monastery, which was not more than three-quarters of a mile from
headquarters. We drove down a narrow side street to the outskirts of
town. The small villas on either side were being used for officers’
billets. The street ended abruptly, and up ahead to the left, on a slight
eminence, I saw the cream-colored walls of the monastery.

A curving dirt road wound around to the entrance on the west side.
The monastery consisted of a series of rambling buildings forming two
courtyards. In the center of the larger of these stood a chapel of
impressive proportions. An arched passageway, leading through one of the
buildings on the rim of the enclosure, provided the only means of access
to the main courtyard. It had plenty of “Old World charm” but looked
awfully small in comparison with our trucks.

Leclancher pooh-poohed my fears and said he’d take his truck through. He
did—that is, part way through. With a hideous scraping sound the truck
came to a sudden stop. The bows supporting the tarpaulin had not cleared
the sloping sides of the pointed arch. This was a fine mess, for it was
a good two hundred yards from the entrance to the building, behind the
chapel, in which the things were stored. It would prolong the operation
beyond all reason if we had to carry them all that way to the trucks.
And what if it rained? As if in answer to my apprehension, it suddenly
did rain, a hard drenching downpour. I should have had more faith in the
resourcefulness of my Frenchmen; at that critical juncture Leclancher
announced that he had found the solution. The bows of the trucks could be
forced down just enough to clear the archway.

As soon as this had been done, nine of the trucks filed through and lined
up alongside the buttresses of the chapel. The tenth remained outside to
take the drivers and the two packers to chow. After seeing to it that
they were properly cared for, the sergeant deposited me at the officers’
mess.

At lunch, Colonel Sheehan introduced me to the military Government
Officer of his outfit, Major Lewis W. Whittemore, a bluff Irishman, who
gave me considerable useful information about the setup at the monastery.

“Mutter, an elderly Austrian, is in charge of the collections stored
there—a custodian appointed by the Nazis. He is a dependable fellow
so we’ve allowed him to stay on the job. You’ll find him thoroughly
co-operative,” said the major. “One of the buildings of the monastery is
being used as a hospital for German wounded.”

“Are there any monks about the place?” I asked.

“Hitler ran them all out, but a few have returned. When Hohenfurth
is turned over to the Czechs, it will make quite a change in this
Sudetenland community. Even the name is going to be changed—to its Czech
equivalent, Vysi Brod. All the signs in town will be printed in Czech,
too. It will be the official language. Except for a few families, the
entire population is German.”

“How will that work?” I asked.

The major apparently interpreted my question as an expression
of disapproval of the impending change-over, for he said rather
belligerently, “The Czechs in this region have had a mighty raw deal from
the Germans during the past few years.” I rallied weakly with the pious
observation that two wrongs had never made a right and that I hoped some
satisfactory solution to the knotty problem could be reached.

By the time we had finished lunch the rain had dwindled to a light
drizzle. I started out on foot to the monastery, leaving word at the
colonel’s quarters for the sergeant to meet me in the courtyard of the
_Kloster_. He got there about the same time I did, and together we
started looking for Dr. Mutter, the Austrian custodian. We went first
to the library of the monastery—a beautiful baroque room lined with
sumptuous bookcases of burled walnut surmounted with elaborate carved and
gilded scroll-shaped decorations. The room was beautifully proportioned,
some seventy feet long and about forty feet wide. Tall French windows
looked out on the peaceful monastery garden, which, for lack of care, was
now overgrown with tangled vines and brambles. Along the opposite side
of the handsome room stood a row of massive sixteenth century Italian
refectory tables piled high with miscellaneous bric-a-brac: Empire
candelabra, Moorish plates, Venetian glass, Della Robbia plaques and
Persian ceramics. Across one end, an assortment of Louis Quinze sofas
and chairs seemed equally out of place. What, I wondered, were these
incongruous objects doing in this religious establishment?

The explanation was soon forthcoming. The sergeant found Dr. Mutter in
a small room adjoining the library. He was a lanky, studious individual
with a shock of snow-white hair, prominent teeth and a gentle manner
which just missed being fawning. Hohenfurth’s Uriah Heep, I thought
unkindly. The moment he began to speak in halting English, I revised my
estimate of him. He was neither crafty nor vicious. On the contrary, he
was just a timid, and, at the moment, frightened victim of circumstance.
What German I know has an Austrian flavor, and when I trotted this out
he was so embarrassingly happy that I wished I had kept my tongue in
my head. But it served to establish an _entente cordiale_ which proved
valuable during the next few days. They were to be more hectic than I had
even faintly imagined.

After a little introductory palaver, I explained that I had come to
remove the collections which had been brought to the monastery by the
Germans, and that I would like to make a preliminary tour of inspection.
I suggested that we look first at the paintings.

“Paintings?” he asked doubtfully. “You mean the modern pictures? They
are not very good—just the work of some of the Nazi artists. They were
brought here—and quite a lot of sculpture too—when it was announced that
Hitler was coming to Hohenfurth to see the really important things.”

Then I learned what he meant by the “really important things”—room after
room, corridor after corridor, all crammed with furniture and sculpture,
methodically looted from two fabulous collections, the Rothschild of
Vienna and the Mannheimer of Amsterdam. By comparison, the Hearst
collection at Gimbel’s was trifling. The things I had seen in the library
were only a small part of this mélange. In an adjoining chamber—a vaulted
gallery, fifty feet long—there were a dozen pieces of French and Dutch
marquetry. And stacked against the walls were entire paneled rooms,
coffered ceilings and innumerable marble busts. Next to that was a room
crowded with more of the same sort of thing, except that the pieces were
small and more delicate. In one corner I saw an extraordinary table made
entirely of tortoise shell and mounted with exquisite ormolu.

It was an antique-hunter’s paradise, but for me quite the reverse. How
was I going to move all of this stuff? Dr. Mutter could see that I was
perplexed, and apologetically added that I had seen only a part of the
collections. Remembering that I had asked to see the pictures, he took
me to a corner room containing approximately a hundred canvases. As he
had said, they were a thoroughly dull lot—portraits of Hitler, Hess
and some of the other Nazi leaders, tiresome allegorical scenes, a few
battle subjects and a group of landscapes. The labels pasted on the
backs indicated that they had all been shown at one time or another
in exhibitions at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich. While I was
looking at them, Dr. Mutter shyly confessed that he was a painter but
that he didn’t admire this kind of work.

On the floor below, there was a forest of contemporary German
sculpture—plaster casts, for the most part, all patinated to resemble
bronze. In addition there were a few portrait busts in bronze and one
or two pieces in glazed terra cotta. The terra-cotta pieces had some
merit. The sculpture occupied one entire side of a broad corridor which
ran around the four sides of a charming inner garden. The corridor had
originally been open but the archways were now glassed in. Turning a
corner, we came upon a jumble of architectural fragments—carved Gothic
pinnacles, sections of delicately chiseled moldings, colonnettes,
Florentine well-heads and wall fountains. At one end was a pair of
elaborate gilded wrought-iron doors and at either side were handsome wall
lanterns, also of wrought iron. These too were Mannheimer, Dr. Mutter
replied, when I hopefully asked if they were not a part of the monastery
fittings.

As final proof of the looters’ thorough methods, I was shown a vaulted
reception hall, into the walls of which had been set a large and
magnificent relief by Luca della Robbia, a smaller but also very
beautiful relief of the Madonna and Child by some Florentine sculptor
of the fifteenth century, and an enormous carved stone fireplace of
Renaissance workmanship. The hall was stacked with huge cases as yet
unpacked, and from the ceiling were suspended two marvelous Venetian
glass chandeliers—exotic accents against a background of chaste plaster
walls.

This partial tour of inspection ended with a smaller room across from the
reception hall where Dr. Mutter proudly exhibited what he considered the
finest thing of all—a life-sized, seated marble portrait by Canova. It
was indeed a distinguished piece of work. Hitler had bought the statue in
Vienna, so Dr. Mutter said, from the Princess Windischgrätz. It had been
destined for the Führer Museum at Linz.

I learned afterward that the statue had belonged at one time to the
Austrian emperor, Franz Josef. Canova began the statue in 1812 as a
portrait of Maria-Elisa, Princess of Lucca—a sister of Napoleon. The
sculptor’s more celebrated portrait of Napoleon’s sister Pauline had been
carved a few years earlier. When Maria-Elisa lost her throne and fortune,
she was unable to pay for the portrait. But Canova was resourceful: he
changed the portrait into a statue of Polyhymnia, the Muse of poetry
and song. He accomplished this metamorphosis by idealizing the head and
adding the appropriate attributes of the Muse. Later the statue was
given to Franz Josef. Eventually it passed into the collection of his
granddaughter—the daughter of Rudolf, who died at Mayerling—the Princess
Windischgrätz.

The statue was one of the most delicate and graceful examples of the
great neoclassic master’s style, and I marveled both at its cold
perfection and the fact that it had come through its travels completely
unscathed. For all her airy elegance, the Muse must weigh at least a
ton and a half, I calculated—suddenly coming down to earth with the
realization that I would be expected to take her back to Munich!

Over Dr. Mutter’s protest that I had not yet seen everything, I said
that I should get my men started. There was no time to be lost. Colonel
Sheehan provided eight men and, after cautioning them about the value and
fragility of the objects, I detailed Dr. Mutter to supervise their work.
The first job was to bring some of the furniture down to the ground
floor. As yet we had no packing materials, so we could do no actual
loading. The next step was to show the packers what we were up against.
At first they went from room to room shaking their heads and muttering,
but after I had explained that we would only select certain things, they
cheered up and set to work. Luckily, some of the furniture had a fair
amount of protective padding—paper stuffed with excelsior—and that could
be used until we were able to get more. We had enough, they agreed, to
figure on perhaps two truckloads. Leaving them to mull over that, I went
off to round up a couple of the trucks. Here was another problem. Not
only did the furniture have to be brought down a long flight of stone
stairs, but to reach the stairs in the first place it had to be carried a
distance of two hundred yards. Once down the stairs it had to be carried
another two hundred yards down a long sloping ramp to the only doorway
opening onto the courtyard. I told Leclancher to bring one of the trucks
around to that doorway and then took off in search of paper, excelsior,
rope and blankets. In one of the near-by sheds I found only a small
supply of paper and some twine. We would need much more.

Major Whittemore came to the rescue and drove me to a lumber and paper
mill several kilometers away. As we drove along he told me that he had
been having trouble with the German managers of the mill, but they knew
now that he meant business, so I was not to _ask_ for what I wanted,
I was to _tell_ them. At the mill I got a generous supply of paper,
excelsior and rope and, on my return to the monastery, sent one of the
trucks back to pick it up. But there wasn’t a spare blanket to be had in
all of Hohenfurth.

When I got back, it looked like moving day. The ramp was already lined
with tables, chairs and chests. Dr. Mutter was running back and forth,
cautioning one GI not to drop a delicate cabinet, helping another with an
overambitious armful of equal rarity and all the while trying in vain to
check the numbers marked on the pieces as they flowed down the stairs in
a steady stream. Meanwhile, my two packers trudged up and down the ramp,
lugging heavy chests and monstrous panels which looked more than a match
for men twice their size.

In spite of their concerted efforts, we didn’t have anything like enough
help, so I appealed to Leclancher. With discouraging independence, he
indicated that his men were drivers, not furniture movers, and that he
couldn’t order them to help. But he would put it up to them. After a
serious conference with them, Leclancher reported that they had agreed
to join the work party. Now, with a crew of twenty, things moved along
at a faster pace. With a couple of the GIs, the two packers and I set
to work loading the first truck. Here was where the little Rackhamites
shone. In half an hour the first truck was packed and ready to be driven
back to its place beside the chapel wall. The second truck was brought up
and before long joined its groaning companion, snugly parked against a
buttress.

Presently, the eight GIs trooped out into the courtyard. It was half
past five and time for chow. The Frenchmen knocked off too, leaving
Dr. Mutter, the two packers and me to take stock of the afternoon’s
accomplishment. While we were thus engaged, Leclancher came to tell me
that my driver, the one I called “Double Roger,” was feeling sick and
wanted to see a doctor. In the confusion of the afternoon’s work I hadn’t
noticed that he was not about. We found him curled up in the back of the
truck and feeling thoroughly miserable. I drove him down to the Medical
Office in the village and there Dr. Sverdlik, the Battalion Surgeon,
examined him. Roger’s complaint was a severe pain in the midriff and the
doctor suggested heat treatments. He said that the German surgeon up at
the monastery hospital had the necessary equipment.

That seemed simple enough, since the drivers were billeted in rooms
adjoining the hospital wing. But I reckoned without Roger. What? Be
treated by a German doctor? He was terrified at the prospect, and it
required all my powers of persuasion to talk him into it. Finally he
agreed, but only after Dr. Sverdlik had telephoned to the hospital doctor
and given explicit instructions. I also had to promise to stand by while
the doctor ministered to him.

The German, Major Brecker, was methodical and thorough. He found
that Roger had a kidney infection and recommended that he be taken
to a hospital as soon as possible. I explained that we would not be
returning to Munich for at least two days and asked if the delay would
be dangerous. He said that he thought not. In the meantime he would
keep Roger under a “heat basket.” Roger eyed this device with suspicion
but truculently allowed it to be applied. When I went off to my supper,
twenty minutes later, he was sleeping peacefully—but not alone. Three of
his fellow drivers were sprawled on cots near by, just in case that Boche
had any intentions of playing tricks on their comrade. Maybe not, but
they were taking no chances! What a lot of children they were, I thought,
as I walked wearily down to supper.

That evening I asked the colonel if I could get hold of some PWs to help
out with the work the following day. He said that there was a large camp
between Hohenfurth and Krummau and that I could have as many as I wanted.
So I put in a bid for sixteen. After arranging for them to be at the
monastery at eight the next morning, I went to my own quarters which were
in a house just across the way.

[Illustration: At the Rest House at Unterstein near Berchtesgaden, Major
Harry Anderson supervises the removal of the Göring Collection, brought
from Karinhall, near Berlin. _International News Photo_]

[Illustration: One of the forty rooms in the Rest House in which the
Göring pictures, 1,100 in all, were exhibited before their removal to
Munich for subsequent restitution. _International News Photo_]

[Illustration: The GI Work Party which assisted the Special Evacuation
Team (Lieutenants Howe, Moore and Kovalyak) pack the Göring Collection
for removal from Berchtesgaden to Munich.]

[Illustration: Truck loaded with sculpture from the Göring Collection at
Berchtesgaden. Statues were packed upright in excelsior for removal to
the Central Collecting Point in Munich.]

I had one little errand of mercy to take care of before I turned in.
There was a recreation room on the first floor and adjoining it a
makeshift bar. Most of the officers had gone to the movies, so I managed
to slip in unobserved and pilfer two bottles of beer. Tucking them inside
my blouse, I made off for the monastery. There, after some difficulty
in finding my way around the dark passageways, I located the rooms
occupied by my two little packers. They were making ready for bed, but
when they saw what I had for them, their leathery old faces lighted
up with ecstatic smiles. If I had been a messenger from heaven, they
couldn’t have been happier. Leaving them clucking over their unexpected
refreshments, I went back to my own billet and fell into bed. I hadn’t
had exactly what one would call a restful day myself.

That beer worked wonders I hadn’t anticipated. When I arrived at the
monastery a little before eight the next morning I found that my two
packers, together with Dr. Mutter, had been at work since seven. As
yet there was no sign of the Frenchmen, but I thought that they would
probably show up before long. At eight my gang of PWs appeared and the
sergeant who brought them explained that I wouldn’t be having the crew
of GIs who had helped out the day before. When I protested that I needed
them more urgently than ever, he informed me that the combination of GI
and PW labor simply wouldn’t work out; that I certainly couldn’t expect
to have them both doing the same kind of work together. I said that I
most certainly could and did expect it. Well, my protest was completely
unavailing, and if I had to make a choice I was probably better off with
the sixteen PWs. Perhaps my two packers could get enough work out of
them to compensate for the loss of the GIs.

I had just finished assigning various jobs to the PWs when Leclancher
turned up. “May I have a word with you?” he asked. “It is about Roger.”

“What about Roger? Is he any worse?” I asked.

“No, but he is not any better either,” he said. “Is it possible that we
shall be returning to Munich tomorrow morning?”

“Not the ghost of a chance,” I said. “We shan’t be through loading before
tomorrow night. We’re too shorthanded.”

“But if we all pitched in and worked, even after supper?” he asked.

“It would make a big difference,” I said. “But it’s entirely up to you.
It’s certainly worth a try if the drivers are willing.”

I’ll never forget that day. I never saw Frenchmen move with such rapidity
or with such singleness of purpose. When five o’clock came, we had
finished loading the fifth truck. Taking into account the two from the
preceding day, that left only three more trucks to fill. Leclancher came
to me again. The drivers wanted to work until it got dark. That meant
until nine o’clock. Knowing that the two packers were equally eager to
get back to Munich, I agreed. I hurried off to call the sergeant about
the PWs. Special arrangements would have to be made to feed them if we
were keeping on the job after supper. Also, I had to make sure that
someone at Battalion Headquarters would be able to provide a vehicle to
take them back to their camp.

While the drivers went off to chow and the PWs were being fed in the
hospital kitchen, I joined Dr. Mutter and the packers to discuss these
new developments. I felt sure that I would be returning to Hohenfurth in
another few days with additional trucks to complete the evacuation. That
being the case, some preliminary planning was necessary. I instructed
Dr. Mutter to call in a stonemason to remove the Della Robbia relief and
the other pieces which had been set into the walls, so that they would
be ready for packing when we came back. I gave him a written order which
would enable him to lay in a supply of lumber for packing cases which
would have to be built for some of the more fragile pieces. Lastly, the
four of us surveyed the storage rooms and made an estimate of the number
of trucks we would need for the things still on hand.

To save time I had a couple of chocolate bars for my supper and was ready
to resume work when our combined forces reappeared. The next two hours
and a half went by like a whirlwind and by eight o’clock we knotted down
the tarpaulin on the last truck. Everybody was content. Even the PWs
seemed less glum than usual, but that was probably because they had been
so well fed in the hospital kitchen.

If we were to make it through to Munich in the one day, we would have
to start off early the next morning. Accordingly I left word that the
trucks were to be lined up outside the monastery entrance at seven-thirty
sharp. Then I went down to the colonel’s quarters to see about an armed
escort for the convoy. I found Colonel Sheehan and Major Thacher making
preparations to “go out on the town.” They looked very spruce in their
pinks and were in high spirits.

“We missed you at supper,” said the colonel. “How’s the work coming
along?”

“My trucks are loaded and ready to roll first thing in the morning if I
can have an escort,” I said.

“That calls for a celebration,” he said. “Pour yourself a drink. I’ll
make a bargain with you. You can have the escort on one condition—that
you join our party tonight.”

I didn’t protest. I thought it was a swell idea. A few minutes later, the
captain with whom I was billeted arrived and the four of us set out for
an evening of fun.

In the short space of two days I had grown very fond of these
three officers, although we had met only at mealtime. They were,
in fact, characteristic of all the officers I had encountered at
Hohenfurth—friendly, good-natured and ready to do anything they could
to help. That they were all going home soon may have had something
to do with their contented outlook on life, and they deserved their
contentment. As members of the 26th Division, the famous “Yankee
Division,” they had seen plenty of action, and as we drove along that
night in the colonel’s car, my three companions did a lot of reminiscing.

While they exchanged stories, I had a chance to enjoy the romantic
countryside through which we were passing. We were, the colonel had said,
headed for Krummau, an old town about fifteen miles away.

The road followed along the winding Moldau River, which had an almost
supernatural beauty in the glow of the late evening light. The bright
green banks were mirrored, crystal clear, on its unrippled surface, as
were the rose-gold colors of the evening clouds.

We crossed the river at Rosenberg, and as we went over the bridge I
noticed that it bore—as do all bridges in that region—the figure of St.
John Nepomuk, patron saint of Bohemia. The castle, perched high above the
river, was the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Rosenberg who ruled this
part of Bohemia for hundreds of years. One of them murdered his wife and,
according to the legend, she still haunted the castle. Robed in white,
she was said to walk the battlements each night between eleven-thirty
and twelve. Major Thacher thought that we should test the legend by
paying a visit to the castle on our return from Krummau later that
evening.

When we arrived in Krummau it was too dark to see much of the old town
except the outline of the gray buildings which lined the narrow streets.
Our objective was a night club operated by members of an underground
movement which was said to have flourished there throughout the years
of Nazi oppression. There was nothing in any way remarkable about
the establishment, but it provided a little variety for the officers
stationed thereabouts. My companions were popular patrons of the place.
They were royally welcomed by the proprietor, who found a good table for
us, not too near the small noisy orchestra. Two pretty Czech girls joined
us and we all took turns dancing. There were so many more men than girls
that we had to be content with one dance each. Then the girls moved on to
another table.

We whiled away a couple of hours at the club before the colonel said that
we should be starting back. I hoped that we would be in time to pay our
respects to the phantom duchess, but the clock in the square was striking
twelve when we rumbled through the empty streets of Rosenberg. It had
begun to rain again.

At six the next morning, I looked sleepily out the window. It was still
raining. We would have a slow trip unless the weather cleared, and
I thought apprehensively of the steep road leading into Linz. Fresh
eggs—instead of the usual French toast—and two cups of black coffee
brightened my outlook on the soggy morning and I was further cheered to
find the convoy smartly lined up like a row of circus elephants when I
reached the monastery at seven-thirty. Leclancher had taken the lead
truck and the ailing Roger was bundled up in the cab of one of the
others.

Dr. Mutter waved agitated farewells from beneath the ribs of a tattered
umbrella as we slid slowly down the monastery drive. At the corner of
the main street of the village we picked up our escort, two armed jeeps.
They conducted us to the border where we gathered in two similar vehicles
which would set the pace for us into Linz. The bad weather was in one
respect an advantage: there was practically no traffic on the road.

At Linz I stopped long enough to thank Anderson and his colonel for the
escort vehicles they had produced on a moment’s notice that morning
in response to a call from Colonel Sheehan. This third pair of jeeps
were very conscientious about their escort duties. The one in the
vanguard kept well in the lead and would signal us whenever he came to a
depression in the road. This got on Leclancher’s nerves, for I heard him
muttering under his breath every time it happened. But I was so glad to
have an escort of any kind that I pretended not to notice his irritation.

When we reached Lambach, midway between Linz and Salzburg, we lost this
pair of guardians but acquired two sent on from the latter city. While
waiting for them to appear, I scrounged lunch for myself and the drivers
at a local battery. As soon as the new escorts arrived we started on
again and pulled into Salzburg at two-thirty. This time there were no
delays and we threaded our way through the dripping streets and out on to
the Autobahn without mishap.

I now had only one remaining worry—the bad detour near Rosenheim. Again,
perhaps thanks to the weather, we were in luck and found this treacherous
by-pass free of traffic. As we rolled into Munich, the rain let up and by
the time we turned into the Königsplatz, the sun had broken through the
clearing skies.

My first major evacuation job was finished. As soon as I got my drivers
fixed up with transportation back to their camp and the members of our
escort party fed and billeted I could relax with a clear conscience. It
was a little after five-thirty, and Third Army’s inflexible habits about
the hour at which all enlisted men should eat didn’t make this problem
such an easy one. Third Army Headquarters was a good twenty minutes
away, so I took the men to the Military Government Detachment where the
meal schedule was more elastic. Afterward I shepherded them to their
billets and went off to my own. I would have to write up a report of the
expedition for Captain Posey, but that could wait.




(5)

_SECOND TRIP TO HOHENFURTH_


The first order of business the next morning was a conference with
Captain Posey. I gave him a complete account of the Hohenfurth trip and
presented my recommendations for a second and final visit to complete
the evacuation. It was my suggestion that I return to the monastery with
the same trucks—as soon as they could be unloaded and serviced—and that
he send up another officer with at least eight additional trucks, the
second convoy to arrive by the time I had completed the loading of my
own. I proposed taking four packers this time instead of two, the idea
being that two of the packers could help me with the loading while the
others were building cases for the fragile objects which would have to
be crated. I mentioned also the impending withdrawal of our troops from
Hohenfurth, which would make later operations of such nature impossible.

This was of course no news to Captain Posey as, presumably, it had been
the determining factor in the removal of the Hohenfurth things in the
first place. He approved my plan and advised me to get my trucks lined
up, and said he would see what he could do about sending an additional
officer. I didn’t like the sound of that. Too often I had used those
same words myself when confronted with a difficult request. Furthermore,
it had been my experience with the Army in general thus far—and with
Third Army in particular—that “out of sight, out of mind” was a favorite
motto. I had no intention of going back to Hohenfurth until I had a
definite promise that reinforcements would be forthcoming. I think
that my insistence piqued the captain a bit. But at that point I was
feeling exceedingly brisk and businesslike—a mood which I found new and
stimulating. It would be better to have a clear understanding now as to
who would join me in Hohenfurth; as I explained to Captain Posey, I would
like to give the officer some detailed instructions, preferably oral
ones, before I started off.

I spent the rest of that day and most of the following one at the
Verwaltungsbau supervising the unloading of the ten trucks from
Hohenfurth and making trips out to the trucking company headquarters to
conclude arrangements for continued use of the vehicles. Also, I had to
put in a request for eight others. It was gratifying to find that every
piece we had packed at Hohenfurth came through without a scratch. My two
packers, to whom all credit for this belonged, were equally elated. My
request for the services of four packers was met with black looks, but
when I promised that we’d not be gone more than four or five days, Craig
acquiesced.

Late in the afternoon of the second day, I went again to Posey’s office.
He was not there but I found Lincoln, as usual hunched morosely over his
typewriter. He said he had good news for me. Captain Posey had pulled a
fast one and snatched a wonderful guy away from Jim Rorimer, Monuments
Officer at Seventh Army—a fellow named Lamont Moore. Moore was already,
he thought, on his way down to Munich to make the trip to Hohenfurth.
When I said I didn’t know Moore, Lincoln proceeded to tell me about him.

“Lamont was director of the educational program at the National Gallery
in Washington before he went into the Army. Before that he had a
brilliant record at the Newark Museum. The two of you ought to get along
famously. Lamont’s got a wonderful sense of humor. He’s exceedingly
intelligent and he’s had a lot of experience in evacuation work.”

“Where did you know him?” I asked.

“We were in France last winter. That was before he was commissioned. He’s
a lieutenant now,” Lincoln said.

“That sounds perfect. But I want to ask you a question about something
else and I want a truthful answer. I have a sneaking notion that you knew
all the time what was in that monastery at Hohenfurth. How about it?”

“Furniture and sculpture, you mean, instead of paintings?” he asked. “Of
course I didn’t.”

“Well, maybe you didn’t, but perhaps you can imagine how I felt when
I found that the Mannheimer collection alone contained more than two
thousand items, and that the Rothschild pieces totaled up to a similar
figure.”

Lincoln’s chuckle belied his protestations. “I’ve got another piece
of news for you,” he said. “John Nicholas Brown and Mason Hammond are
arriving tomorrow. I thought you might like to see them before you return
to Hohenfurth.”

“You told me once that Captain Posey, like many another officer, doesn’t
relish visitors from higher headquarters,” I said. “Am I to infer a
connection between his absence from the office and the impending arrival
of these two distinguished emissaries from the Group Control Council?”

He assured me that I was not, but I left the office wondering about it
all the same.

That evening George Stout paid one of his rare and fleeting visits to
Munich. On these occasions he stayed either with Craig or Ham Coulter.
This time the four of us—all “strays” from the Navy—gathered in Ham’s
quarters.

“The work at the mine,” George said, “is going along as rapidly as can be
expected in the circumstances. But it’s got to be stepped up. I came down
to find out how soon you could join me.”

“I’m going back to Hohenfurth again,” I said. “Lamont Moore is to meet me
there.”

George was glad to hear this and said that he and Lamont had worked
together at the Siegen mine in Westphalia. He confirmed all of the good
things Lincoln had told me about Lamont and said that he’d like to have
both of us at Alt Aussee. He promised to have a talk with Posey about
it, because he was of the opinion that these big evacuation jobs should
be handled by a team rather than by a single officer. According to
George, a team of at least three—and preferably four—officers would be
the perfect setup. Then the work could be divided up. Each officer would
have specific duties, assigned to him on the basis of his particular
talents. But all members of the team would have responsibilities of equal
importance. It would be teamwork in the real sense of the term.

Like all of George’s proposals, this one sounded very sensible. At the
same time, when I recalled the haphazard way I had been obliged to
conduct operations thus far myself, I wondered if it weren’t Utopian.
That didn’t discourage George. When he had a good idea he never let go
of it. And, if we had only been a larger group, I am convinced that his
brain child about teams would have had wonderful results. As it was, the
events of the next few weeks were to demonstrate how effective the scheme
was on a small scale.

When I got out to Third Army Headquarters the next morning, George had
already come and gone. I would have liked to ask Posey about their
conversation but he didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood—at least not on
that subject. However, he did have a few caustic things to say about
“people from high headquarters who have nothing better to do than travel
around and interrupt the work of others.”

Knowing that he was referring to Messrs. Brown and Hammond—Lincoln’s
assurance of the night before to the contrary notwithstanding—I piously
observed that high-level visitors to the field might do quite a lot of
good. For one thing, the fact that they had taken the trouble to visit it
emphasized the importance of the work they had come to inspect; and, for
another, it pleased the officer in the field to have his job noticed by
the boys at the top. I thought I sounded pretty convincing, but sensing
that I was not, I turned to other topics.

About that time John and Mason arrived. Our last meeting had taken place
in the vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfurt several weeks before. Mason
referred to that and jokingly accused me of having run out on him. When
I told him that I was about to return to Hohenfurth he announced loudly
that that was perfect—he and John would drop in to see me there. I said
that would be fine but, when I noted the expression on Captain Posey’s
face, I added to myself, “fine, if they get the clearance.” Before coming
up to see me, they expected to visit one or two places south of Munich,
so they wouldn’t reach Hohenfurth before the end of the week.

Captain Posey was a great believer in the old theory that the Devil
finds work for idle hands, at least as far as I was concerned. That same
afternoon he casually suggested that I take a “little run down into the
Tyrol” for him and inspect a castle about which he had been asked to
make a report. He proposed the trip with such prewar insouciance that it
sounded like a pleasant holiday excursion. As a matter of fact it was
an appealing suggestion, despite my plans for an early morning start to
Hohenfurth.

It was a beautiful summer day and my jeep driver asked if a friend of
his, a sergeant who was keen about photography, might come along. I
agreed and the three of us headed out east of Munich on the Autobahn. It
was fun to be riding in an open jeep instead of an enclosed truck.

We reached Rosenheim in record time and there struck south into the
mountains. Our objective was the little village of Brixlegg, between
Kufstein and Innsbruck. We were on the main road to the Brenner Pass.
Italy was temptingly close. We stopped from time to time so that the
sergeant could get a snapshot of some particularly dramatic vista.
But there was an embarrassment of riches—every part of the road was
spectacularly beautiful.

Brixlegg was a tiny cluster of picturesque chalets, but it had not been
tiny enough to elude the attentions of the air force. On the outskirts
we saw the shattered remains of what had been an important factory for
the manufacture of airplane parts. Happily, the bombers had concentrated
their efforts on the factory. The little village had suffered practically
no damage at all.

We located our castle without difficulty. It was Schloss Matzen, one
of the finest castles of the Tyrol—the property of a British officer,
Vice-Admiral Baillie-Grohman. This gentleman had requested a report on
the castle from the American authorities. We found everything in perfect
order. The admiral’s cousin—a Hungarian baron named Von Schmedes who
spoke excellent English—was in residence. He showed us over the place.
The castle was an example of intelligent restoration. According to the
inscription on a plaque over the entrance, the aunt of the present owner
had devoted her life to this task.

Although an “Off Limits” sign was prominently displayed on the premises,
the baron was fearful of intruders. As the castle stood some distance
from the main highway, I thought he was being unduly apprehensive. He
said that an official letter of warning to unwelcome visitors would be
an added protection. To please him I wrote out a statement to the effect
that the castle was an historic monument, the property of a British
subject, etc., and signed it in the name of the Commanding General of the
Third U. S. Army.

On our way out we were shown two rooms on the ground floor which were
filled with polychromed wood sculpture from the museum at Innsbruck. The
baron said that additional objects from the Innsbruck museum were stored
in a near-by castle, Schloss Lichtwert.

It was but a few minutes’ drive from Schloss Matzen, so I decided to have
a look at it. Schloss Lichtwert, though not nearly so picturesque either
in character or as to site, was the more interesting of the two. It stood
baldly in the middle of a field and was actually a big country house
rather than a castle.

We were hospitably received by a courtly old gentleman, Baron von Iname,
to whom I explained the reason for our visit. One of his daughters
offered to do the honors, saying that her father was extremely deaf.
We followed her to a handsome drawing room on the second floor, where
several other members of the family were gathered in conversation around
a large table set with coffee things. In one of the wall panels was a
concealed door, which the daughter of the house opened by pressing a
hidden spring. Leading the way, she took us into a room about twenty feet
square filled with violins, violas and ’cellos. They hung in rows from
the ceiling, like hams in a smokehouse. Fräulein von Iname said that the
collection of musical instruments at Innsbruck was a very fine one. We
were standing in a Stradivarius forest.

When we passed back into the drawing room, the father whispered a few
words to his daughter. She turned to us smiling and said, “Father asked
if I had pointed out to you the thickness of the walls in this part
of the castle. He is very proud of the fact that they date from the
fourteenth century and that our family has always lived here. He also
asks me to invite you to take coffee with us.”

Knowing that coffee was valued as molten gold, I declined the invitation
on the grounds that we had a long trip ahead of us. Thanking her for her
courtesy, we left. It was after eleven when we got back to Munich. We had
driven a little more than three hundred miles.

Bad weather and bad luck attended us all the way to Hohenfurth the next
day. Less than an hour out on the Autobahn, we came upon a gruesome
accident—an overturned jeep and the limp figures of two GIs at one side
of the road, the mangled body of a German soldier in the center of the
pavement. An ambulance had already arrived and a doctor was ministering
to the injured American soldiers. The German was obviously beyond medical
help. As soon as the road was cleared, we continued—but at a very sober
pace.

On the other side of Salzburg we had carburetor trouble which held us up
for nearly two hours. It was after five thirty when we reached Linz. We
stopped there for supper and I had a few words with the colonel who had
looked after us so well a few days before. He seemed surprised to see me
again, and rather agitated.

“You can get through this time,” he said, “but don’t try to come back
this way.”

“What do you mean, sir?” I asked, puzzled by his curt admonition.

Apparently annoyed by my query, he said brusquely, “Don’t ask any
questions. Just do as I say—don’t come back this way.”

At supper I saw Lieutenant Anderson again and I broached the subject to
him. “Does the colonel mean that the Russians are expected to move up to
the other side of the Danube?” I asked.

“Take a good look at the bridge when you cross over tonight,” he said.

It was my turn to be nettled now. “Look here, I don’t mean to be
intruding on any precious military secret, but I am expecting a second
convoy to join me at Hohenfurth in two days; if the other trucks aren’t
going to be able to get through I ought to let the people at Third Army
Headquarters know.”

“Well, frankly I don’t know just what the score is, but the colonel
probably has definite information,” he said. “What I meant about the
bridge is that it’s jammed with people and carts, all coming over to the
west side of the Danube. It’s been like that for the past two days and it
can mean only one thing—that the Russians aren’t far behind.”

This wasn’t too reassuring, but I decided to take a fatalistic attitude
toward it. If I had to find some other route back from Hohenfurth, I’d
worry about it when the time came. I did, however, try to get through to
Third Army Headquarters on the phone. Posey’s office didn’t answer, so I
asked Anderson to put in a call for me in the morning.

It was slow going over the bridge, but we finally forced our way through
the welter of carts and wagons. Once we were in open country, the traffic
thinned out and we moved along at a faster pace. The Czech and American
officers at the frontier recognized us and waved us through without
formality. We arrived in Hohenfurth a little before nine. I knew the
ropes this time, so it was a simple matter to get the men billeted in the
monastery. After that I went on to my own former billet. When I reached
the house, I found a group of officers in the recreation room. They were
holding an informal meeting. Colonel Sheehan was presiding and motioned
to me to join the group. He had just returned from the headquarters at
Budweis with important news. His own orders had come through, so he would
be pulling out for home in a few days. But of greater concern to me was
the news that the Czechs would definitely take over at the end of the
week. We would still have some troops in the area, but their duties would
be greatly curtailed. I would have to finish the job at the monastery as
fast as possible and head back to Munich.

We resumed our work at the monastery with surprisingly few delays. It was
almost as if there had been no interruption of our earlier operations.
This time I had double the number of PWs, so I did not have to call on
the drivers to help with the loading. During my absence, Dr. Mutter had
put a stonemason to work on the pieces which had been set into the wall,
and these now lay like parts of a puzzle in a neat pattern on the floor
of the reception hall, ready to be packed. He had also procured lumber
and nails, so my two extra packers were able to get to work on the cases
which had to be built. By evening, seven of the trucks were loaded,
leaving only one more to do the next day.

That night I consulted one of the officers, who had a wide knowledge
of the roads in that area, about an alternate route to Munich. He
showed me, on the map, a winding back road which would take me through
Passau—instead of Linz and Salzburg—to Munich. It was, he said, a very
“scenic route” but longer than the way I had come. He felt sure, though,
that I could get my trucks through, that there were no bad detours, etc.
It was comforting to know that this route existed as a possibility—just
in case. But I still had hopes of being able to go back by way of Linz,
in spite of the colonel’s warning.

The next day was the Fourth of July—not that I expected either my French
or German associates to take special notice of the fact. Still I was glad
that I had only one truck to load on the holiday. I took advantage of
the later breakfast hour, knowing that my faithful German packers would
be on the job at seven o’clock as usual. When I arrived at the monastery
at nine-thirty, I found that the last truck was already half loaded.
There was enough room to add the two cases containing the Della Robbia
plaque and the Renaissance fireplace taken out of the wall; and, if we
were careful, we might find a place for the fifteenth century Florentine
relief which the stonemason had also painstakingly removed. Once that
was done, there was nothing to do but wait for the arrival of Lieutenant
Moore and the additional trucks.

I called the workmen together. In halting German, I explained the
significance of the Fourth of July and announced that there would be no
more work that day. It was providentially near the lunch hour. I could
send the PWs back to their camp as soon as they had eaten. The German
packers, intent on returning to Munich as soon as possible, chose to get
on with the cases they were building. Dr. Mutter and I retired to his
study to take stock of the receipts we had thus far made out. As for the
French drivers, they had disappeared to their quarters.

After lunching at the officers’ mess, I decided to celebrate the Glorious
Fourth in my own quiet way. Major Whittemore had lent me a car, so I set
out on an expedition of my own devising. Ever since the night of our trip
to Krummau, I had wanted to explore the castle of Rosenberg, and this
seemed the logical time to do it. Rosenberg was only eight kilometers
away.

It was a sleepy summer afternoon. Not a leaf was stirring as I followed
the winding Moldau into the pretty village with its storybook castle. The
road to the castle was rough and tortuous, reminding me of a back road
in the Tennessee mountain country. Just as I was beginning to wonder if
the little sedan were equal to the climb, the road turned sharply into a
level areaway before the castle courtyard.

I parked the car and went in search of the caretaker. When I found no
one, I ascended a flight of stone steps which led from the courtyard to
the second floor. The room at the head of the stairs was empty, but I
heard voices in the one adjoining. Two cleaning women were scrubbing the
floor, chattering to each other as they worked. They were startled to see
me, but one of them had the presence of mind to scurry off and return a
few minutes later with the archetype of all castle caretakers. He had
been custodian for the past fifty-six years. Lately there hadn’t been
many visitors.

He took me first to the picture gallery—a long high-ceilinged room with
tall windows looking out over the river. There were a dozen full-length
canvases around the rough plaster walls, past Dukes of Rosenberg and
their sour-faced Duchesses. The _clou_ of the collection was a tubercular
lady in seventeenth century costume. The caretaker solemnly informed
me that she was the ill-fated duchess who paced the ramparts of the
castle every night just before twelve. She had lived, he told me, in
the fourteenth century. When I mentioned as tactfully as possible that
her gown indicated she had been a mere three hundred years ahead of the
styles, he gave me a dirty look as much as to say, “a disbeliever.” I
did my best to erase this unfortunate impression and proceeded to the
next series of apartments. They included a weapon room, a sumptuous
state bedchamber reserved for royal visitors, several richly furnished
reception rooms, and a long gallery called the Crusaders’ Hall—a
copy, the caretaker said, of a room in the Palace at Versailles. Here
hung full-length portraits of such historic personages as Godefroy
de Bouillon, Robert Guiscard and Frederick Barbarossa—all done by an
indifferent German painter of the last century. Notwithstanding its
ostentatious atmosphere, the gallery had a dignity quite in keeping with
the musty elegance of the castle.

I thanked the old man, gave him a couple of cigarettes and returned to
the car. It was time for me to be getting back to the monastery.

I gauged my arrival nicely. As I pulled up to the entrance, the guard at
the archway came over to the car to tell me that eight trucks had just
driven through. When I reached the courtyard the last of them was backing
up against the chapel wall.

A tall, rangy lieutenant, wearing the familiar helmet liner prescribed
by Third Army regulations, walked up to the car as I was getting out and
said, “Good afternoon, sir. Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

So this was Lamont Moore. Just as Lincoln had predicted, I liked him
at once. There was a quiet self-possession about him, coupled with a
quizzical, humorous expression, which was pleasantly reassuring. I have
never forgotten the impression of Olympian calm I received at that first
meeting. In succeeding months, there were many times when Lamont got
thoroughly riled, but his composure never deserted him. His even temper
and his sense of humor could always be depended upon to leaven the more
impetuous actions of his companions.

Without wasting breath on inconsequential conversation, he suggested that
we “case the joint.” After introducing him to Dr. Mutter, who was still
hovering around like a distracted schoolmaster, we made a tour of the
premises. By the time we had finished I had the comforting, if somewhat
unflattering, feeling that he had a clearer understanding of the work
there than I, notwithstanding the time I had spent at the monastery.

On our way down to the village afterward, I asked Lamont if he had had
any difficulty coming up through Linz. He said no, but that he also had
been warned not to return that way.

As soon as he had found a billet, we settled down to talk over the
loading of his trucks. “The colonel says that we’ll have to finish the
job in a hurry. The Czechs are taking over at the end of the week,” I
said. “And if the Russians move up to the Danube, we won’t be able to go
back by way of Linz. We’ll have to return by way of Passau.”

“I understand that there isn’t any bridge over the Danube at Passau,”
Lamont said quietly. At that I got excited, but in the same quiet voice
Lamont said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got more important things to think
about—something to drink, for example.”

We went over to the officers’ club, arriving just in time to be offered
a sample of the Fourth of July punch which two of the officers had
been mixing that afternoon. From the look of things, they had perfect
confidence in their recipe, which called for red wine, armagnac and
champagne. After the first sip I didn’t have to be told there would be
fireworks in Hohenfurth that evening.

Lamont and I began to discuss mutual friends and acquaintances in the
museum world, a habit deeply ingrained in members of our profession. We
agreed that a mutual “hate” often brought people together more quickly
than a mutual admiration. Then inconsistently—it was probably the
punch—we started talking about Lincoln, whom we both liked very much.

“It was Lincoln who told me what a fine fellow you are, Lamont,” I said.

“That’s interesting,” he said with a noiseless laugh. “He said the same
thing about you.”

Comparing notes, we found that Lincoln had given us identical vignettes
of each other.

“Tell me something about the work you’ve been doing in MFA&A. This is my
first real job, so I’m still a neophyte,” I said.

Lamont rolled his eyes wearily and said, “Oh, I’ve been evacuating works
of art for the past four months, and I wonder sometimes if it’s ever
going to end. Siegen was my big show. It was the foul and dripping copper
mine in Westphalia where the priceless treasures from the Rhineland
museums were stored. The shaft was two thousand feet deep and some of the
mine chambers were more than half a mile from the shaft. Walker Hancock
of First Army and George Stout had inspected it originally and advised
immediate evacuation. But no place was available. First Army was pushing
eastward, so all Walker could do was to reassure himself from time to
time that the contents were adequately guarded.

“Shortly before VE-Day, I received a cryptic telegram at Ninth Army
Headquarters stating that, as of midnight that particular night, Siegen
was my headache. Then followed weeks of activity in which Walker, Steve
and I were involved.”

“Who is Steve?” I asked.

“Steve Kovalyak of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania,” said Lamont. “I think
he’s with George at Alt Aussee now. I hope you’ll meet him. He’s a great
character.

“A bunker at Bonn was approved as a new repository for the Siegen
treasures. I surveyed the roads to Bonn and found them impossible for
truck transport. George was called to Alt Aussee. Walker went off to see
about setting up a collecting point at Marburg.

“Then I was called back to Ninth Army Headquarters. The evacuation of
Siegen was momentarily at a standstill.

“Later I returned and, with Walker’s and Steve’s assistance, completed
the evacuation. We moved everything to Marburg, except the famous
Romanesque doors from the church of Santa Maria im Kapitol. Walker took
them to the cathedral at Cologne, along with the Aachen crown jewels.

“Siegen was the second major evacuation—perhaps you could say it was the
first carried out by a _team_ of MFA&A officers.”

“What was the first?” I asked.

“The Merkers mine, where the Nazi gold and the Berlin Museum things were
stored. That was the most spectacular of the early evacuations—that and
Bernterode.”

“What about Bernterode?” I asked. I had read Hancock’s official report
of the operation and had seen some snapshots taken in the mine, so I was
curious to have a firsthand account.

“Walter Hancock was the officer in charge of the evacuation,” said
Lamont. “Like Siegen, it was a deep-shaft mine, so the contents had to
be brought up by an elevator. It was a hell of a job to get the elevator
back in working order. The dramatic thing about Bernterode was the
discovery of a small chapel, or shrine, constructed in one of the mine
chambers and then completely walled up.

“In this concealed shrine, the Nazis had placed the bronze sarcophagi of
Frederick the Great, Frederick William—the Soldier King—and those of Von
Hindenburg and his wife. On the coffins had been laid wreaths, ribbons
and various insignia of the Party. Around and about them were some two
hundred regimental banners, many of them dating from the early Prussian
wars.

“When Walker was ready to take the coffins out of the mine, he found
they were so large and heavy that they’d have to come up one at a time.
He was standing at the top of the shaft as the coffin of Frederick the
Great rose slowly from the depths. As it neared the level, a radio in the
distance blared forth the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ And just as the coffin
came into view, the radio band struck up ‘God Save the King.’ The date,”
Lamont added significantly, “was May the eighth.”

If I thought I was going to get much sleep that night, I reckoned without
the patriotic officers of the Yankee Division, who were hell-bent on
making it a really Glorious Fourth. It had been my mistake in the first
place to move into quarters directly over the recreation room. It wasn’t
much of a bedroom anyway—just an alcove with an eighteenth century settee
for a bed. I was resting precariously on this spindly collector’s item
when the door was flung open and Major Thacher shouted that I was wanted
below. I told him to go away. To my surprise he did—but only to return a
few minutes later with reinforcements. I must come down at once—colonel’s
orders, and if I wouldn’t come quietly, they’d carry me down. Before I
could get off my settee, it was pitched forward and I sprawled on the
floor. What fun it was for everybody—except me! I put on a dressing
gown and was marched down the stairs. I had been called in, as a naval
officer, to settle an argument: Who had won the Battle of Jutland? The
Battle of Jutland, of all things! At that moment I wasn’t at all sure in
what war it had been fought, let alone who had won it. But assuming an
assurance I was far from feeling I declared that it had been a draw. My
luck was with me that night after all, for that had been the colonel’s
contention. So I was allowed to return to my makeshift bed.

Lamont took some of the wind out of my sails by assuring me the next
morning that the British had defeated the German fleet at Jutland in 1916.

But we were having our own battle of Hohenfurth that morning, so I was
too preoccupied to give Jutland more than a passing thought. Just before
noon, as we finished our fourth truck, John Nicholas Brown and Mason
Hammond arrived. Mason, as was his custom when traveling about Germany,
was bundled up in a great sheepskin coat—the kind used by the Wehrmacht
on the Russian front—and looked like something out of _Nanook of the
North_. John, less arctically attired, hailed us gaily from the back seat
of the command car.

Lamont and I suspended operations to show them around. We were pleased
by their comments on our work—how admirably it was being handled and so
on—but we struck a snag when we showed them Canova’s marble Muse. Lamont
and I had just about decided to leave her where she was. Our two visitors
thought that would be a pity, a downright shame. We pointed out that to
transport the statue would be a hazardous business, even if we succeeded
in getting it onto a truck in the first place. We had no equipment with
which to hoist anything so heavy. On our inspection tour they kept coming
back to the subject of the Canova, and Lamont gave me an irritated look
for having called their attention to it at all.

At lunch, which we had with the colonel, they fixed us. When the subject
of the statue was brought up, the colonel instantly agreed to provide us
with a winch and also two extra trucks. We needed the trucks all right,
but we weren’t particularly happy about the winch.

As soon as we got back to the monastery, we broke the news to Dr. Mutter.
The Muse was about to take a trip. He held up his hands in dismay and
said it would take us half a day to get the statue loaded. When we told
the German packers what we had in mind, they made a few clucking noises,
and then began the necessary preparations. The first thing they did was
to get hold of two logs, each about six feet in length and five inches in
diameter. With the help of a dozen PWs, they got them placed beneath the
base of the statue. From that point on, it was a matter of slowly rolling
the statue as the logs rolled. It was arduous work. A distance of well
over four hundred yards was involved, and the last half of it was along a
sloping ramp where it was particularly difficult to keep the heavy marble
under control.

Once the truck was reached, it was necessary to set up a stout runway
from the ground to the bed of the truck. This done, the next move was to
place heavy pads around the base of the statue, so that the cable of the
winch would not scratch the surface of the marble. It was a tense moment.
Would the winch be strong enough to drag its heavy burden up the runway?
It began to grind, and slowly the Muse slid up the boards, paused for
a quivering instant and then glided majestically along the bed of the
truck. There were cheers from the PWs who had gathered around the truck
to watch. We all sighed with relief, and then congratulated the little
packers who had engineered the whole operation. Dr. Mutter kept shaking
his head in disbelief. He told us that when the statue had been brought
to the monastery in the first place, it had taken three hours to unload
it. The present operation had taken forty-five minutes.

After this triumph, the loading of the remaining trucks seemed an
anticlimax, but we kept hard at it for the next six hours. By seven
o’clock, all ten of them were finished. All told, we would be a convoy of
eighteen trucks.

We were on the point of starting down to the village for supper, when
Dr. Mutter, even more agitated than he had been before, rushed up and
implored us to grant him a great favor. Would we, out of the kindness
of our hearts—oh, he knew he had no right to ask such a favor—would we
take him and his wife and little girl along with us to Linz the next
day? Linz was his home, he had a house there. He had brought his family
to Hohenfurth only because the Nazis wouldn’t allow him to give up his
duties as custodian of the collections at the monastery. Now the Czechs
were going to be in complete control. He and his family were Austrians
and there was no telling what would happen to them.

How news does get around, I thought to myself. We hadn’t said a word
about the Czechs taking over, but when I expressed the proper surprise
and asked him where he had heard _that_ rumor, he wagged his head as much
as to say, “Oh, I know what I am talking about, all right!”

My heart wasn’t exactly bleeding for Dr. Mutter, but at the thought of
his little girl, who was about the age of my own, I couldn’t say no. I
told him to be ready to leave at seven the next morning. I didn’t tell
him how uncertain it was that we would ever get to Linz at all.

It was pouring when I crawled out of my bed at six A.M. I seemed to
specialize in bad weather, particularly when starting out with a convoy!
At the monastery everything was in order. At the last minute I decided to
tell Dr. Mutter there was a possibility—even a probability—that we would
not be able to cross over at Linz, and I told him why. He was terrified
when I mentioned the prospect of being stopped by the Russians. I assured
him that we would drop him and his family off at one of the villages on
the other side of the Austrian border, if we found there was going to be
trouble. It was cold comfort but the best I had to offer.

I climbed into the lead truck, Lamont into the tenth, and Leclancher, as
usual, took over the last truck. Leclancher, with his customary ability
to pull a rabbit out of a hat at a critical juncture, had found among his
drivers one who spoke some Russian, so we had put him at the controls of
the first truck. It might make a good impression.

Once again we had a jeep escort to the border, and there we picked up
three others to conduct us as far as Linz. The cocky little sergeant in
the jeep that was to lead came over to my truck, squinted up at me and
said, “You look nervous this morning, Lieutenant.”

Well, I thought, if it’s that apparent, what’s the use of denying it?
“I am,” I said. “This is a big convoy and it’s filled with millions of
dollars’ worth of stuff. I’d hate to have anything happen to it.”

He whistled at that. Then, rubbing his hands briskly, he retorted, “And
nothing is going to happen to it.”

He took off and we swung in behind him. The first hour was a long one.
There was more traffic than ever before—a steady stream of carts all
moving toward Linz. At last we shifted into low gear, and I knew that we
were on the steep grade leading down to Urfahr. If there were going to be
trouble, we’d know it in a minute. At that moment, the sergeant in the
lead jeep turned around and waved. I thought, There’s trouble ahead. But
he was only signaling that the road was clear.

We rolled over the rough cobblestones onto the bridge. I saw the gleaming
helmet liners of the new escort awaiting us as we drew up to the center
of the span. I motioned to one of our new guardians that we would stop at
the first convenient place on the other side.

We were such a long convoy that I thought we’d be halfway through Linz
before our escort directed us to pull over to the curb. There we unloaded
the Mutter family and their luggage. The doctor and his wife were
tearfully grateful and the little girl smiled her thanks.

I was feeling relaxed and happy and wanted to share my relief with
someone, so I suggested to Lamont that we pay our respects to the colonel
who had warned us not to come through Linz. It was a letdown to find only
a warrant officer in the colonel’s anteroom. But he remembered us and was
surprised to see us again. He said we had been lucky; the latest news
was that the Russians would move up to the opposite side of the Danube
by noon. We left appropriate messages for the colonel and his adjutant,
returned to our trucks and headed west toward Lambach.

As on the previous trip, the escort turned back at that point. A new
one—this time an impressive array of six armed jeeps—shepherded us from
there. We stopped for lunch with a Corps of Engineers outfit of the 11th
Armored Division on the outskirts of Schwannenstadt. The C.O., Major
Allen, and his executive officer, Captain Myers, welcomed us as warmly as
if we had been commanding generals instead of a motley crew of eighteen
French drivers, plus twelve “noncoms” from the escorting jeeps—a total of
thirty-two, including Lamont and me. We doled out K rations to our four
packers, for we couldn’t take civilians into an Army mess.

After lunch I telephoned ahead to Salzburg to ask for an escort from
there to Munich, requesting that it meet us on the edge of town, east
of the river. The weather had cleared, and drying patches of water on
the road reflected a blue sky. By the time we had sighted Salzburg it
was actually hot. As we rolled into the outskirts we were enveloped in
clouds of dust from the steady procession of military vehicles. We waited
in vain for our new escort. After an hour we decided to proceed without
one. I didn’t like the idea very much, but it was getting on toward five
o’clock, and we wanted to reach Munich in time for supper. We fell far
short of our goal, being forced to stop once because of a flat tire, and
a second time because of carburetor trouble. These two delays cost us
close to two hours. At seven o’clock we halted by the placid waters of
Chiemsee and ate cold C rations in an idyllic setting. It was after nine
when we lumbered into the parking area behind the Gargantuan depot at
the Königsplatz. Lamont and I had twin objectives—hot baths and bed. It
didn’t take us long to achieve both!

We had had every intention of making an early start the next morning,
not so much because of any blind faith in Benjamin Franklin’s precepts,
but simply because they stopped serving breakfast in the Third Army
mess shortly before eight o’clock. In fact, the first thing one saw on
entering the mess hall was a large placard which stated peremptorily,
“The mess will be cleared by 0800. By order of the Commanding General.”
And such was Third Army discipline—we had a different name for it—that
the mess hall was completely devoid of life on the stroke of eight.

It was a little after seven when I woke up. Lamont was still dead to the
world, so I shaved and dressed before waking him. There was a malevolent
gleam in his eyes when he finally opened them. He asked frigidly, “Are
you always so infernally cheerful at this hour of the morning?” I told
him not to confuse cheerfulness with common courtesy, and mentioned the
peculiar breakfast habits of the Third Army.

We arrived at the mess hall with a few minutes to spare. The sergeant at
the entrance asked to see our mess cards. We had none but I explained
that we were attached to the headquarters.

“Temporary duty?” he asked.

“Yes, just temporary duty,” I said with a hint of thankfulness.

“Then you can’t eat here. Take the bus to the Transient Officers’ Mess
downtown.”

I asked about the bus schedule. “Last bus left at 0745,” he said. It was
then 0750.

“Well, how do you like ‘chicken’ for breakfast?” I asked Lamont as we
walked out to the empty street.

There was nothing to do but walk along until we could hail a passing
vehicle. We had gone a good half mile before we got a lift. Knowing that
the downtown mess closed at eight, I thought we’d better try the mess
hall at the Military Government Detachment where the officers usually
lingered till about eight-thirty. Among the laggards we found Ham
Coulter and Craig. After airing our views on the subject of Third Army
hospitality, we settled down to a good breakfast and a full account of
our trip back from Hohenfurth. We told Craig that a couple of our French
drivers were to meet us at the Collecting Point at nine. They were to
bring some of the trucks around for unloading before noon. It was a
Saturday and in Bavaria everything stopped at noon. Once in a great while
Craig could persuade members of his civilian crew to work on Saturday
afternoons, but it was a custom they didn’t hold with, so he avoided
it whenever possible. There were those who frowned on this kind of
“coddling,” as they called it, but they just didn’t know their Bavarians.
Craig did, and I think he got more work out of his people than if he had
tried to change their habits.

We spent part of the morning with Herr Döbler, the chief packer, at
the Collecting Point, helping him decipher our trucking lists, hastily
prepared at Hohenfurth in longhand. Meanwhile the trucks, one after
another, drew up to the unloading platform and disgorged their precious
contents. The descent of the marble Muse caused a flurry of excitement.
Our description of loading the statue had lost nothing in the telling
and we were anxious to see how she had stood the trip. The roads had
been excruciatingly rough in places, especially at Linz and on the dread
detour near Rosenheim. At each chuckhole I had offered up a little
prayer. But my worries had been groundless—she emerged from the truck in
all her gleaming, snow-white perfection.

Just before noon, Captain Posey summoned Lamont and me to his office. He
cut short our account of the Hohenfurth operation with the news that we
were to leave that afternoon for the great mine at Alt Aussee. At last we
were to join George—both of us. George was going to have his team after
all.

A command car had already been ordered. The driver was to pick us up at
one-thirty. Posey got out a map and showed us the road we were to take
beyond Salzburg. As his finger ran along the red line of the route marked
with the names St. Gilgen, St. Wolfgang, Bad Ischl and Bad Aussee, our
excitement grew. Untold treasures were waiting to be unearthed at the end
of it.

He said that the trip would take about six hours. We could perhaps stop
off at Bad Aussee for supper. Two naval officers—Lieutenants Plaut and
Rousseau, both of them OSS—had set up a special interrogation center
there, an establishment known simply as “House 71,” and were making an
intensive investigation of German art-looting activities. They lived very
well, Posey said with a grin. We could do a lot worse than to sample
their hospitality. I knew Jim Plaut and Ted Rousseau—in fact had seen
them at Versailles not so many weeks ago—so I thought we could prevail on
them to take us in.

The mention of food reminded Lamont that we ought to pick up a generous
supply of rations—the kind called “ten-in-ones”—somewhere along the
road. The captain gave us a written order for that, and also provided
each of us with a letter stating that we were authorized to “enter
art repositories in the area occupied by the Third U. S. Army.” Our
earlier permits had referred to specific localities. These were blanket
permits—marks of signal favor, we gathered from the ceremonious manner in
which they were presented to us.

There were various odds and ends to be attended to before we could get
off, among them the business of our PX rations. That was Lamont’s idea.
He said that we might not be able to get them later. He was right; they
were the last ones we were able to lay our hands on for three weeks.

[Illustration: German altarpiece from the Louvre Museum, by the Master of
the Holy Kinship, was acquired by Göring in exchange for paintings from
his own collection.]

[Illustration: This panel, _Mary Magdalene_, by van Scorel, was given to
Hitler by Göring. Shortly before the war’s end the Führer returned it to
Göring for safekeeping.]

[Illustration: Wing of an Italian Renaissance altarpiece by del Garbo,
representing Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Justin.]

[Illustration: Life-size statue of polychromed wood, _The Magdalene_, by
Erhardt, was formerly owned by the Louvre.]




(6)

_LOOT UNDERGROUND: THE SALT MINE AT ALT AUSSEE_


It was nearly two o’clock by the time we were ready to start. I was now
so familiar with the road between Munich and Salzburg that I felt like
a commuter. Just outside Salzburg, Lamont began looking for signs that
would lead us to a Quartermaster depot. He finally caught sight of one
and, after following a devious route which took us several miles off the
main road, we found the depot. We were issued two compact and very heavy
wooden boxes bound with metal strips. We dumped them on the floor of the
command car and drove on into town.

Across the river, we picked up a secondary road which led out of the
city in a southeasterly direction. For some miles it wound through hills
so densely wooded that we could see but little of the country. Then,
emerging from the tunnel of evergreens, we skirted Fuschl See, the first
of the lovely Alpine lakes in that region. Somewhere along its shores, we
had been told, Ribbentrop had had a castle. It was being used now as a
recreation center for American soldiers.

Our road led into more rugged country. We continued to climb and with
each curve of the road the scenery became more spectacular. After an
hour’s drive we reached St. Gilgen, its neat white houses and picturesque
church spire silhouetted against the blue waters of St. Wolfgang See.
Then on past the village of Strobl and finally into the crooked streets
of Bad Ischl, where the old Emperor Franz Josef had spent so many
summers. From Bad Ischl our road ribboned through Laufen and Goisern to
St. Agatha.

Beyond St. Agatha lay the Pötschen Pass. The road leading up to it was a
series of hairpin turns and dangerous grades. As we ground slowly up the
last steep stretch to the summit, I wondered what route George was using
for his convoys from the mine. Surely not this one. Large trucks couldn’t
climb that interminable grade. I found out later that this was the only
road to Alt Aussee.

On the other side of the pass, the road descended gradually into a
rolling valley and, in another half hour, we clattered into the narrow
main street of Bad Aussee. From there it was only a few miles to Alt
Aussee. Midway between the two villages we hoped to find the house of our
OSS friends.

We came upon it unexpectedly, around a sharp bend in the road. It was a
tall, gabled villa, built in the gingerbread style of fifty years ago.
Having pictured a romantic chalet tucked away in the mountains, I was
disappointed by this rather commonplace suburban structure, standing
behind a stout iron fence with padlocked gates, within a stone’s throw of
the main highway.

Jim and Ted received us hospitably and took us to an upper veranda with
wicker chairs and a table immaculately set for dinner. We were joined
by a wiry young lieutenant colonel, named Harold S. Davitt, who bore a
pronounced resemblance to the Duke of Windsor. He was the commanding
officer of a battalion of the 11th Armored Division stationed at Alt
Aussee, the little village just below the mine. Colonel Davitt’s men
constituted the security guard at the mine. He knew and admired our
friend George Stout. It was strange and pleasant to be again in an
atmosphere of well-ordered domesticity. To us it seemed rather a fine
point when one of our hosts rebuked the waitress for serving the wine in
the wrong kind of glasses.

During dinner we noticed a man pacing about the garden below. He was
Walter Andreas Hofer, who had been Göring’s agent and adviser in art
matters. A shrewd and enterprising Berlin dealer before the war, Hofer
had succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Reichsmarschall. He,
more than any other single individual, had been responsible for shaping
Göring’s taste and had played the stellar role in building up his
priceless collection of Old Masters.

Some of his methods had been ingenious. He was credited with having
devised the system of “birthday gifts”—a scheme whereby important
objects were added to the collection at no cost to the Reichsmarschall.
Each year, before Göring’s birthday on January twelfth, Hofer wrote
letters to wealthy industrialists and businessmen suggesting that the
Reichsmarschall would be gratified to receive a token of their continued
regard for him. Then he would designate a specific work of art—and the
price. More often than not, the piece in question had already been
acquired. The prospective donor had only to foot the bill. Now and then
the victim of this shakedown protested the price, but he usually came
through.

In Hofer, the Reichsmarschall had had a henchman as rapacious and greedy
as himself. And Hofer had possessed what his master lacked—a wide
knowledge of European collections and the international art market.
Göring had been a gold mine and Hofer had made the most of it.

Hofer had been arrested shortly after the close of hostilities. He
had been a “guest” at House 71 for some weeks now, and was being
grilled daily by our “cloak and dagger boys.” They were probing into
his activities of the past few years and had already extracted an
amazing lot of information for incorporation into an exhaustive report
on the Göring collection and “how it grew.” Hofer was just one of a
long procession of witnesses who were being questioned by Plaut and
Rousseau in the course of their tireless investigation of the artistic
depredations of the top Nazis. These OSS officers knew their business.
With infinite patience, they were cross-examining their witnesses
and gradually extracting information which was to lend an authentic
fascination to their reports.

Hofer’s wife, they told us, had ably assisted her husband. Her talents
as an expert restorer had been useful. She had been charged with the
technical care of the Göring collection—no small job when one stopped
to consider that it numbered over a thousand pictures. Indeed, there
had been more than enough work to keep one person busy all the time. We
learned that Frau Hofer was living temporarily at Berchtesgaden where,
until recently, she had been allowed to attend to emergency repairs on
some of the Göring pictures there.

We turned back to the subject of Hofer, who had not yet finished his
daily constitutional and could be seen still pacing back and forth below
us. He was, they said, a voluble witness and had an extraordinary memory.
He could recall minute details of complicated transactions which had
taken place several years before. On one occasion Hofer had recommended
an exchange of half a dozen paintings of secondary importance for two
of the very first quality. As I recall, the deal involved a group of
seventeenth century Dutch pictures on the one hand, and two Bouchers on
the others. Hofer had been able to reel off the names of all of them and
even give the price of each. It was just such feats of memory, they said
with a laugh, that made his vague and indefinite answers to certain
other questions seem more than merely inconsistent.

Listening to our hosts, we had forgotten the time. It was getting late
and George would be wondering what had happened to us. There had been a
heavy downpour while we were at dinner. The weather had cleared now, but
the evergreens were dripping as we pulled out of the drive.

The road to Alt Aussee ran along beside the swift and milky waters of an
Alpine river. It was a beautiful drive in the soft evening light. The
little village with its winding streets and brightly painted chalets was
an odd setting for GIs and jeeps, to say nothing of our lumbering command
car.

We found our way to the Command Post, which occupied a small hotel in
the center of the village. There we turned sharply to the right, into a
road so steep that it made the precipitous grades over which we had come
earlier that afternoon seem level by comparison. We drove about a mile on
this road and I was beginning to wonder if we wouldn’t soon be above the
timber line—perhaps even in the region of “eternal snow” to which Roger
had once so poetically referred—when we came to a bleak stone building
perched precariously on a narrow strip of level ground. Behind it, a
thousand feet below, stretched an unbroken sea of deep pine forests.
This was the control post, and the guard, a burly GI armed with a rifle,
signaled us to stop. We asked for Lieutenant Stout. He motioned up the
road, where, in the gathering dusk, we could distinguish the outlines of
a low building facing an irregular terrace. It was a distance of about
two hundred yards. We drove on up to the entrance where we found George
waiting for us.

He took us into the building which he said contained the administrative
offices of the salt mine—the Steinbergwerke, now a government
monopoly—and his own living quarters. We entered a kind of vestibule
with white plaster walls and a cement floor. A narrow track, the rails
of which were not more than eighteen inches apart, led from the entrance
to a pair of heavy doors in the far wall. “That,” said George, “is the
entrance to the mine.”

He led the way to a room on the second floor. Its most conspicuous
feature was a large porcelain stove. The woodwork was knotty pine. Aside
from the two single beds, the only furniture was a built-in settle with
a writing table which filled one corner. The table had a red and white
checked cover and over it, suspended from the ceiling, was an adjustable
lamp with a red and white checked shade. Opening off this room was
another bedroom, also pine-paneled, which was occupied by the captain
of the guard and one other officer. George apologized for the fact that
the only entrance to the other room was through ours. Apparently, in the
old days, the two rooms had formed a suite—ours having been the sitting
room—reserved for important visitors to the mine. For the first few days
there was so much coming and going that we had all the privacy of Grand
Central Station, but we soon got used to the traffic. George and Steve
Kovalyak shared a room just down the hall. Lamont had spoken of Steve
when we had been at Hohenfurth, and I was curious to meet this newcomer
to the MFA&A ranks. George said that Steve would be back before long. He
had gone out with Shrady. That was Lieutenant Frederick Shrady, the third
member of the trio of Monuments Officers at the mine.

While Lamont and I were getting our things unpacked, George sat and
talked with us about the work at the mine and what he expected us to
do. As he talked he soaked his hand in his helmet liner filled with hot
water. He had skinned one of his knuckles and an infection had set in.
The doctors wanted to bring the thing to a head before lancing it the
next day. I had noticed earlier that one of his hands looked red and
swollen. But George hadn’t said anything about it. As he was not one to
relish solicitous inquiries, I refrained from making any comment.

George outlined the local situation briefly. The principal bottle-neck
in the operation lay in the selection of the stuff which was to be
brought out of the various mine chambers. There were, he said, something
like ten thousand pictures stored in them, to say nothing of sculpture,
furniture, tapestries, rugs and books. At the moment he was concentrating
on the pictures and he wanted to get the best of them out first. The less
important ones—particularly the works of the nineteenth century German
painters whom Hitler admired so much—could wait for later removal.

He and Steve and Shrady had their hands full above ground. That left
only Sieber, the German restorer, who had been at the mine ever since
it had been converted into an art repository, to choose the paintings
down below. In addition Sieber had to supervise the other subterranean
operations, which included carrying the paintings from the storage
racks, dividing them into groups according to size, and padding the
corners so that the canvases wouldn’t rub together on the way up to the
mine entrance. Where we could be of real help would be down in the mine
chambers, picking out the cream of the pictures and getting them up
topside. (George’s vocabulary was peppered with nautical expressions.)

In the midst of his deliberate recital, we heard a door slam. The chorus
of “Giannina Mia” sung in a piercingly melodic baritone echoed from the
stairs. “Steve’s home,” said George.

A second later there was a knock on the door and the owner of the voice
materialized. Steve looked a bit startled when he caught sight of two
strange faces, but he grinned good-naturedly as George introduced us.

“I thought you were going out on the town with Shrady tonight,” said
George.

“No,” said Steve, “I left him down in the village and came back to talk
to Kress.”

Kress was an expert photographer who had been with the Kassel Museum
before the war. He had been captured when our troops took over at the
mine just as the war ended. Since Steve’s arrival, he had been his
personal PW. Steve was an enthusiastic amateur and had acquired all kinds
of photographic equipment. Kress, we gathered, was showing him how to use
it. Their “conversations” were something of a mystery, because Steve knew
no German, Kress no English.

“I use my High German, laddies,” Steve would say with a crafty grin and a
lift of the eyebrows, as he teetered on the balls of his feet.

We came to the conclusion that “High German” was so called because it
transcended all known rules of grammar and pronunciation. But, for
the two of them, it worked. Steve—stocky, gruff and belligerent—and
Kress—timid, beady-eyed and patient—would spend hours together. They
were a comical pair. Steve was always in command and very much the
captor. Kress was long-suffering and had a kind of doglike devotion to
his master, whose alternating jocular and tyrannical moods he seemed to
accept with equanimity and understanding. But all this we learned later.

That first evening, while George went on with his description of
the work, Steve sat quietly appraising Lamont and me with his keen,
gray-green eyes. He had worked with Lamont at Bernterode, so I was his
main target. Now and then he would look over at George and throw in a
remark. Between the two there existed an extraordinary bond. As far as
Steve was concerned, George was perfect, and Steve had no use for anyone
who thought otherwise. If, at the end of a hard day, he occasionally
beefed about George and his merciless perfection—well, that was Steve’s
prerogative. For his part, George had a fatherly affection for Steve and
a quiet admiration for his energy and resourcefulness and the way he
handled the men under him.

Presently Steve announced that it was late and went off to bed. I
wondered if he had sized me up. There was a flicker of amusement in
Lamont’s eyes and I guessed that he was wondering the same thing. When
George got up to go, he said, “You’ll find hot water down in the kitchen
in the morning. Breakfast will be at seven-thirty.”

Steve roused us early with a knock on the door and said he’d show us
the way to the kitchen. We rolled out, painfully conscious of the cold
mountain air. Below, in the warm kitchen, the sun was pouring in through
the open door. There were still traces of snow on the mountaintops. The
highest peak, Steve said, was Loser. Its snowy coronet glistened in the
bright morning light.

When my eyes became accustomed to the glare, I noticed that there were
several other people in the kitchen. One of them, a wrinkled little
fellow wearing _Lederhosen_ and white socks, was standing by the stove.
Steve saluted them cheerfully with a wave of his towel. They acknowledged
his greeting with good-natured nods and gruff monosyllables. These
curious mountain people, he said, belonged to families that had worked in
the mine for five hundred years. They were working for us now, as members
of his evacuation crew.

We washed at a row of basins along one wall. Above them hung a sign
lettered with the homely motto:

    “_Nach der Arbeit_
    _Vor dem Essen_
    _Hände waschen_
    _Nicht vergessen._”

It rang a poignant bell in my memory. That same admonition to wash before
eating had hung in the little pension at near-by Gründlsee where I had
spent a summer fifteen years ago.

Our mess hall was in the guardhouse down the road, the square stone
building where the sentry had challenged us the night before. We lined
up with our plates and, when they had been heaped with scrambled eggs,
helped ourselves to toast, jam and coffee and sat down at a long wooden
table in the adjoining room. George was finishing his breakfast as the
three of us came in. With him was Lieutenant Shrady, who had recently
been commissioned a Monuments officer at Bad Homburg. Subsequently he had
been sent down to Alt Aussee by Captain Posey. He was a lean, athletic,
good-looking fellow. Although he helped occasionally with the loading,
his primary duties at the mine were of an administrative nature—handling
the workmen’s payrolls through the local Military Government Detachment,
obtaining their food rations, making inspections in the area, filing
reports and so on. After he and George had left, Steve told us that
Shrady was a portrait painter. Right now he was working on a portrait of
his civilian interpreter-secretary who, according to Steve, was something
rather special in the way of Viennese beauty. This was a new slant on
the work at the mine and I was curious to know more about the glamorous
Maria, whom Steve described as being “beaucoup beautiful.” But George
was waiting to take us down into the mine. As we walked up the road,
Steve explained to us that the miners worked in two shifts—one crew
from four in the morning until midday, another from noon until eight in
the evening. The purpose of the early morning shift was to maintain an
uninterrupted flow of “stuff” from the mine, so that the daytime loading
of the trucks would not bog down for lack of cargo.

At the building in which the mine entrance was located we found George
with a group of the miners. It was just eight o’clock and the day’s work
was starting. We were introduced to two men dressed in white uniforms
which gave them an odd, hybrid appearance—a cross between a street
cleaner and a musical-comedy hussar. This outfit consisted of a white
duck jacket and trousers. The jacket had a wide, capelike collar reaching
to the shoulders. Two rows of ornamental black buttons converging at the
waistline adorned the front of the jacket, and a similar row ran up the
sleeves from cuff to elbow. In place of a belt, the jacket was held in
place by a tape drawstring. A black garrison cap completed the costume.

The two men were Karl Sieber, the restorer, and Max Eder, an engineer
from Vienna. It was Eder’s job to list the contents of each truck.
Perched on a soapbox, he sat all day at the loading entrance, record
book and paper before him on a makeshift desk. He wrote down the number
of each object as it was carried through the door to the truck outside.
The truck list was made in duplicate: the original was sent to Munich
with the convoy; the copy was kept at the mine to be incorporated in the
permanent records which Lieutenant Shrady was compiling in his office on
the floor above.

In the early days of their occupancy, the Nazis had recorded the loot,
piece by piece, as it entered the mine. The records were voluminous and
filled many ledgers. But, during the closing months of the war, such
quantities of loot had poured in that the system had broken down. Instead
of a single accession number, an object was sometimes given a number
which merely indicated with what shipment it had arrived. Occasionally
there would be several numbers on a single piece. Frequently a piece
would have no number at all. In spite of this confusion, Eder managed
somehow to produce orderly lists. If the information they contained was
not always definitive, it was invariably accurate.

George was anxious to get started. “It’s cold down in the mine,” he said.
“You’d better put on the warmest things you brought with you.”

“How cold is it?” I asked.

“Forty degrees, Fahrenheit,” he said. “The temperature doesn’t vary
appreciably during the year. I believe it rises to forty-seven in the
winter. And the humidity is equally constant, about sixty-five per cent.
That’s why this particular salt mine was chosen as a repository, as you
probably know.”

While we went up to get our jackets and mufflers, George ordered Sieber
to hitch up the train. When we returned we noticed that the miners, who
resembled a troop of Walt Disney dwarfs, were wearing heavy sweaters and
thick woolen jackets for protection against the subterranean cold.

The train’s locomotion was provided by a small gasoline engine with
narrow running boards on either side which afforded foothold for the
operator. Attached to it were half a dozen miniature flat-cars or
“dollies.” The miners called them “Hünde,” that is, dogs. They were about
five feet long, and on them were placed heavy wooden boxes approximately
two feet wide. The sides were roughly two feet high.

Following George’s example, we piled a couple of blankets on the bottom
of one of the boxes and squeezed ourselves in. Each box, with judicious
crowding, would accommodate two people facing each other.

At a signal from Sieber, who was sardined into a boxcar with George,
one of the gnomes primed the engine. After a couple of false starts,
it began to chug and the train rumbled into the dim cavern ahead. For
the first few yards, the irregular walls were whitewashed, but we soon
entered a narrow tunnel cut through the natural rock. It varied in height
and width. In some places there would be overhead clearance of seven or
eight feet, and a foot or more on either side. In others the passageway
was just wide enough for the train, and the jagged rocks above seemed
menacingly close. There were electric lights in part of the tunnel, but
these were strung at irregular intervals. They shed a dim glow on the
moist walls.

George shouted that we would stop first at the Kaiser Josef mine. The
track branched and a few minutes later we stopped beside a heavy iron
door set in the wall of the passageway. This part of the tunnel was not
illuminated, so carbide lamps were produced. By their flickering light,
George found the keyhole and unlocked the door.

We followed him into the unlighted mine chamber. Flashlights supplemented
the wavering flames of the miners’ lamps. Ahead of us we could make out
row after row of huge packing cases. Beyond them was a broad wooden
platform. The rays of our flashlights revealed a bulky object resting on
the center of the platform. We came closer. We could see that it was a
statue, a marble statue. And then we knew—it was Michelangelo’s Madonna
from Bruges, one of the world’s great masterpieces. The light of our
lamps played over the soft folds of the Madonna’s robe, the delicate
modeling of the face. Her grave eyes looked down, seemed only half aware
of the sturdy Child nestling close against her, one hand firmly held in
hers. It is one of the earliest works of the great sculptor and one of
his loveliest. The incongruous setting of the bare boards served only to
enhance its gentle beauty.

The statue was carved by Michelangelo in 1501, when he was only
twenty-six. It was bought from the sculptor by the Mouscron brothers
of Bruges, who presented it to the Church of Notre Dame early in the
sixteenth century. There it had remained until September 1944, when the
Germans, using the excuse that it must be “saved” from the American
barbarians, carried it off.

In the early days of the war, the statue had been removed from its
traditional place in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament to a specially
built shelter in another part of the church. The shelter was not sealed,
so visitors could see the statue on request. Then one afternoon in
September 1944, the Bishop of Bruges, prompted by the suggestion of a
German officer that the statue was not adequately protected, ordered the
shelter bricked up. That night, before his orders could be carried out,
German officers arrived at the church and demanded that the dean hand
over the statue. With an armed crew standing by, they removed it from the
shelter, dumped it onto a mattress on the floor of a Red Cross lorry and
drove away. At the same time, they perpetrated another act of vandalism.
They took with them eleven paintings belonging to the church. Among them
were works by Gerard David, Van Dyck and Caravaggio. The statue and the
pictures were brought to the Alt Aussee mine. It was a miracle that the
two lorries with their precious cargo got through safely, for the roads
were being constantly strafed by Allied planes.

Now we were about to prepare the Madonna for the trip back. This time she
would have more than a mattress for protection.

In the same mine chamber with the Michelangelo was another plundered
masterpiece of sculpture—an ancient Greek sarcophagus from Salonika. It
had been excavated only a few years ago and was believed to date from the
sixth century B.C. Already the Greek government was clamoring for its
return.

On our way back to the train, George said that the other cases—the ones
we had seen when we first went into the Kaiser Josef mine—contained the
dismantled panels of the Millionen Zimmer and the Chinesisches Kabinett
from Schönbrunn. The Alt Aussee mine, he said, had been originally
selected by the Viennese as a depot for Austrian works of art, which
accounted for the panels being there. They had been brought to the mine
in 1942. Then, a year later, the Nazis took it over as a repository for
the collections of the proposed Führer Museum at Linz.

We boarded the train again and rumbled along a dark tunnel to the Mineral
Kabinett, one of the smaller mine chambers. Again there was an iron
door to be unlocked. We walked through a vestibule into a low-ceilinged
room about twenty feet square. The walls were light partitions of
unfinished lumber. Ranged about them were the panels of the great Ghent
altarpiece—the _Adoration of the Mystic Lamb_—their jewel-like beauty
undimmed after five hundred years. The colors were as resplendent as the
day they were painted by Hubert and Jan van Eyck in 1432.

This famous altarpiece, the greatest single treasure of Belgium, had also
been seized by the Germans. One of the earliest examples of oil painting,
it consisted originally of twelve panels, eight of which were painted on
both sides. It was planned as a giant triptych of four central panels,
with four panels at either side. The matching side panels were designed
to fold together like shutters over a window. Therefore they were painted
on both sides.

I knew something of the history of the altarpiece. It belonged originally
to the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent. Early in the nineteenth century,
the wings had been purchased by Edward Solly, an Englishman living in
Germany. In 1816, he had sold them to the King of Prussia and they were
placed in the Berlin Museum. There they had remained until restored to
Belgium by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. From 1918 on, the entire
triptych was again in the Cathedral of St. Bavon. In 1933, the attention
of the world was drawn to the altarpiece when the panel in the lower
left-hand corner was stolen. This was one of the panels painted on both
sides. The obverse represented the _Knights of Christ_; the reverse, _St.
John the Baptist_.

According to the story, the thief sent the cathedral authorities an
anonymous letter demanding a large sum of money and guarantee of his
immunity for the return of the panels. As proof that the panels were in
his possession, he is said to have returned the reverse panel with his
extortion letter. The authorities agreed to these terms but sought to lay
a trap for the culprit. Their attempt was unsuccessful and nothing was
heard of the panel until a year or so later.

On his deathbed, the thief—one of the beadles of the cathedral—confessed
his guilt. As he lay dying, he managed to gasp, “You will find the panel
...” but he got no further. The panel has never been found.

In May 1940, the Belgians entrusted the altarpiece to France for
safekeeping. Packed in ten cases, it was stored in the Château of Pau
together with many important works of art from the Louvre. The Director
of the French National Museums, mindful of his grave responsibilities,
obtained explicit guarantees from the Germans that these treasures would
be left inviolate. By the terms of this agreement, confirmed by the
Vichy Ministry of Fine Arts, the Ghent altar was not to be moved without
the joint consent of the Director of the French National Museums, the
Mayor of Ghent and the German organization for the protection of French
monuments.

Notwithstanding this contract, the Director of the French National
Museums learned quite by accident in August 1942 that the altarpiece had
just been taken to Paris. Dr. Ernst Büchner, who was director of the
Bavarian State Museums, in company with three other German officers had
gone to Pau the day before with a truck and ordered the Director of the
Museum there to hand over the retable. A telegram from M. Bonnard, Vichy
Minister of Fine Arts, arriving simultaneously, reinforced Dr. Büchner’s
demands. Nothing was known of its destination or whereabouts, beyond the
fact that it had been taken to Paris.

There the matter rested until the summer of 1944. With the arrival of
Allied armies on French soil, reports of missing masterpieces were
received by our MFA&A officers. The Ghent altarpiece was among them.
But there were no clues as to where it had gone. Months passed and by
the time our troops had approached Germany, our Monuments officers, all
similarly briefed with photographs and other pertinent data concerning
stolen works of art, began to hear rumors about the _Lamb_. It might be
in the Rhine fortress of Ehrenbreitstein; perhaps it had been taken to
the Berghof at Berchtesgaden or possibly to Karinhall, Göring’s palatial
estate near Berlin. And then again it might have been flown out of the
country altogether—to one of the neutral countries, Spain or Switzerland.

Captain Posey and Private Lincoln Kirstein picked up additional rumors
from museum directors in Luxembourg. They had heard that the altarpiece
was in a salt mine, but they had also been told that it was in the
vaults of the Berlin Reichsbank. It was impossible to reconcile these
conflicting pieces of information. Finally, near Trier, Posey and
Kirstein tracked down a young German scholar who had been in France
during the occupation. Lincoln told me later that it was hard to believe
that this unassuming fellow had been high in the confidence of Göring and
other members of the Nazi inner circle. From him they learned that the
altarpiece had been taken to Alt Aussee.

Then followed the rapid advance across Germany. To Posey and Kirstein it
was a period of agonizing suspense. They couldn’t be sure that Third Army
would move into the area in which the mine lay. Just as their hopes began
to fade, occupancy of the cherished area did fall to Third Army. Tactical
troops were alerted to the importance of the isolated mountain region.
It was of no significance as a military objective and would doubtless
otherwise have been left unoccupied for the moment. They pressed forward
through Bad Ischl and the wild confusion of capitulating German troops to
the wilder confusion of surrendering SS units in the little village of
Alt Aussee itself. From there it was but a mile to the mine.

When they reached the mine, they found it heavily guarded by men of
the 80th Infantry Division, but the mine had been dynamited. It wasn’t
possible to go into the mine chambers. Armed with acetylene lamps, Posey
and Lincoln entered the main tunnel. They groped their way along the damp
passageway for a distance of a quarter of a mile or more before they
reached the debris of the first block. After assessing the damage they
returned to consult the Austrian mineworkers. The miners said it would
take from ten days to two weeks to clear the passageway. Captain Posey
thought that the Army Engineers could do it in less than a week, perhaps
in two or three days. Both were wrong. They entered the first mine
chamber the next day.

And now, here before us, stood the fabulous panels which they had found
on that May morning a few weeks before. While we examined them, Sieber
pieced out the one gap in the story of the altarpiece: the Nazis had
taken it from Paris to the Castle of Neuschwanstein where a restorer from
Munich worked on the blisters which had developed on some of the panels.
The altarpiece remained at the castle for two years. It was brought to
the mine in the summer of 1944. Pieces of waxed paper were still affixed
to the surface of the panels, on the places where the blisters had been
laid. The big panel representing St. John had split lengthwise with the
grain of wood. This had happened at the mine. Sieber had repaired it,
and George said he had done a good job. As we were leaving the Mineral
Kabinett, Sieber asked me if Andrew Mellon really had offered ten million
dollars for the altarpiece. People had said so in Berlin. I hated to tell
him that the story was without foundation, so far as I knew.

When we came out of the mine at noon we found that Steve and Shrady had
finished loading two trucks. They said they had enough pictures left
to fill two more. The afternoon crew would be coming on at four. In
the meantime it was up to Lamont and me to select at least two hundred
paintings, so that the loading could go on without interruption.

After lunch we returned to the mine with Sieber. This time the trip on
the train was much longer. Our objective was a part of the mine called
the Springerwerke. Owing to the peculiar honeycomb structure of the mine
network, it had been necessary to establish guard posts at intervals
along the tunnels. One of these was at the entrance to the Springerwerke.
Two GIs were on duty. It was a dismal assignment as well as a cold one.
They were bundled up in fleece-lined coats which had been made for German
troops on the Russian front. George and Steve had obtained about two
hundred of these coats and were using them for packing unframed pictures.
Each time a convoy of empty trucks returned from Munich, they counted the
coats carefully to make sure that none had disappeared.

The Springerwerke contained more than two thousand paintings. They were
arranged in two tiers around three sides and down the center of a room
fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. In one section we found thirty
or forty Italian paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
from the well known Lanz Collection of Amsterdam. Next to them we came
upon the group of canvases, which the Germans in their greedy haste had
filched from Bruges when they had made off with the Michelangelo Madonna.
Aside from these two lots, the pictures had been stored according to
size rather than by provenance. It was a bewildering assortment. Quality
was to be our guide in making this initial selection. And as a kind
of corollary, we were to set aside for shipment all pictures bearing
the infamous “E.R.R.” stencil—the initials of the Rosenberg looting
organization. We had Sieber and four of the gnomes to help. Sieber stood
by with list and flashlight. Two of the gnomes hauled out the pictures
for us to examine. The other two put protective pads of paper filled with
excelsior across the corners of the ones chosen.

By the end of the afternoon we had picked out between a hundred and
fifty and two hundred paintings. The crew which had come on at four had
already gone up with one trainload. We took stock of the lot waiting
to go. We hadn’t done so badly: our selection included works of Hals,
Breughel, Titian, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Rubens, Van Dyck, Lancret,
Nattier, Reynolds, and a raft of smaller examples of the seventeenth
century Dutch school. Not a dud among them, we agreed smugly.

Before we knocked off for supper, Sieber showed us an adjoining room
divided into small compartments. Each one contained a miscellaneous
assortment of art objects—pictures, porcelain, bric-a-brac of various
kinds. Each compartment bore a label with the name of a different family,
fifteen or twenty in all. They were the pilfered possessions of Viennese
Jewish families. Our feelings were of both pathos and disgust. After
working with the fruits of looting on a grand scale, we found these
trifles sordid evidences of greedy persecution.

Lamont and I spent the next two days in the Springerwerke. We worked
nights as well. It was a molelike existence. On the third morning we
transferred our base of operations to the Kammergrafen, the largest of
the mine caverns and the most remote. It was three-quarters of a mile
from the mine entrance. Whereas the other mine chambers were on one
level, the great galleries of the Kammergrafen were on several. Beyond
those in which floors had been laid, there were vast unlighted caves of
echoing blackness.

The galleries were so high that those on the first level could
accommodate three tiers of pictures between floor and ceiling, while
those on the second had four tiers.

The records listed _six thousand pictures_. In addition there were
quantities of sculpture, hundreds of examples of the very finest
eighteenth century French cabinetwork, tapestries and rugs, and the books
and manuscripts of the Biblioteca Herziana in Rome—one of the greatest
historical libraries in the world. Kammergrafen was quality and quantity
combined, for here had been stored the collections for Linz.

Among the pictures, for example, were canvases from the Rothschild,
Gutmann and Mannheimer collections, the celebrated tempera panels of the
fourteenth century Hohenfurth altarpiece, Rembrandts and other great
Dutch masters from the stock of Goudstikker, who had been the Duveen of
Amsterdam, a collection of French pictures known as the “Sammlung Berta,”
and hundreds of nineteenth century German paintings, these last the
objects of Hitler’s special veneration.

The sculpture ranged from ancient to modern, with notable emphasis on
examples of the Gothic period. There were Egyptian tomb figures, Roman
portrait busts, Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, exquisite French marbles
of the eighteenth century and delicate Tanagra figurines. A bewildering
hodgepodge of the plastic arts.

There were tapestries from Cracow, furniture from the Castle at Posen,
rows of inlaid tables and cabinets from the Vienna Rothschilds, shelves
and cases filled with the finest porcelains, prints and drawings of the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the decorations from
the Reichskanzlei in Berlin, and Hitler’s own purchases from the annual
exhibitions of German art in Munich. Such was the Kammergrafen treasure.
And the best of it, as I have said before, was to have adorned the
galleries of the unbuilt Führer Museum at Linz, the city by the Danube
which Hitler aspired to raise to the dignity of Vienna.

The rarest treasure of that collection was the celebrated Vermeer
_Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_. This superb work of the
seventeenth Dutch master, by whom there are only some forty unquestioned
examples in the world, had been for years in the collection of Count
Czernin at Vienna. The collection was semipublic; I had visited it before
the war. Known simply as the “Czernin Vermeer,” the picture had long been
coveted by the great collectors. It had remained for Hitler to succeed
where others had failed: he acquired this masterpiece in 1940 for an
alleged price of one million, four hundred thousand Reichsmarks—part
of his earnings from the sale of _Mein Kampf_. He boasted at the time
that Mr. Mellon had offered six million dollars for it. Whether the
sale was made under duress is still a matter of controversy. Members of
the Czernin family today contend that it was. The picture has now been
returned to Vienna where the matter will be ultimately decided.

Rivaling the Vermeer in international significance were the fifteen
cases of paintings and sculpture from Monte Cassino. The paintings
included Titian’s _Danaë_, Raphael’s _Madonna of the Divine Love_, Peter
Breughel’s _Blind Leading the Blind_, a _Crucifixion_ by Van Dyck, an
_Annunciation_ by Filippino Lippi, a _Sacra Conversazione_ by Palma
Vecchio, a _Landscape_ by Claude Lorraine, and Sebastiano del Piombo’s
_Portrait of Pope Clement VII_. Among the sculpture were antique bronzes
of the greatest rarity and importance from Herculaneum and Pompeii. All
had belonged to the Naples Museum. In 1943 the Italians had placed them,
together with one hundred and seventy-two other cases of objects from
the Naples Museum, in the Abbey of Monte Cassino for safekeeping. The
following January, arrangements were made for all of the cases to be
returned to the Vatican. When they arrived, fifteen were missing. Members
of the Hermann Göring Division had carried them off as a birthday gift
for the Reichsmarschall. Göring was incensed, when he learned of the
arrival of these treasures, and refused to accept them. There is reason
to believe that such was his reaction, for he had striven to maintain
a semblance of legality in his art transactions. Even this rapacious
collector could not have interpreted the behavior of his loyal officers
as “correct,” so far as the Monte Cassino affair was concerned. After the
Reichsmarschall’s refusal of the cases, they were brought to Alt Aussee
for storage, pending their later return to Italy.

The Springerwerke had been child’s play compared with the task
confronting us in the Kammergrafen. We began arbitrarily with the big
pictures. Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt—all
were represented in profusion. Many of them were from private collections
in Holland, Belgium and France, and were unknown to us save through
reproduction. It was a great lesson in connoisseurship, particularly when
we had exhausted the “stars” and come to the lesser masters. The Dutch
school of the seventeenth century was abundantly represented. There were
scores, hundreds, of still lifes and flower paintings. My predilection
for them amused Lamont and Sieber. I had always admired these incredibly
deft creations of the seventeenth century Dutch artists, and here was an
unparalleled opportunity to study them.

There was one peculiar thing about our selections: if a picture looked
good to us down in the mine, it invariably looked better when we examined
it later in the light of day at the mine entrance. This happened time
and again. I remember one instance in particular. The painting was a
large Rembrandt, a study of two dead peacocks. Down in the mine we had
looked at it without much enthusiasm, though we admired it, and had even
hesitated to include it in that first selection, which was to number only
the best of the best. The next morning, as it was being loaded onto the
truck, we were struck by its distinction.

And I remember the next time I saw that picture: it was at the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was included in the small group of
outstanding Dutch masterpieces returned to Holland by special plane as a
gesture of token restitution in the name of General Eisenhower!

Lamont and I liked Sieber, the German restorer. Lamont referred to him as
the “tragic Gilles in white.” Not that there was anything particularly
tragic about him, any more than there was about the plight in which most
Nazis found themselves. He made no bones about having joined the Party
in the early thirties—ironically enough at the suggestion of one of his
clients, a Jewish art dealer, who had thought it would be a good thing
for Sieber’s business. Sieber had been a restorer of pictures in Berlin
and had done a little dealing on the side. It was the half-mournful
expression he perpetually wore, together with his white costume, that
accounted for Lamont’s appellation. George had described him as a good,
run-of-the-mill restorer, perhaps a little better than average. He
had sized him up as a man ninety-eight per cent preoccupied with his
profession and possibly two per cent concerned with politics. And George,
as I think I have observed before, was a good judge of men. Sieber was
a quiet, willing worker. He was neither fawning on the one hand, nor
arrogant on the other. When you asked him a question, you always got a
considered answer.

One evening we drew Sieber out on the subject of the attempted
destruction of the mine. We had heard several versions of this fantastic
plot and, according to one, Sieber had been instrumental in foiling
the conspirators. The story was as follows: On the tenth, thirteenth
and thirtieth of April 1945, Glinz, the Gauinspektor of Ober-Donau,
had come to the mine with eight great cases marked in black letters
“_Marmor—Nicht stürzen_,” that is, “Marble—Don’t drop.” He was acting on
explicit instructions from Eigruber, Gauleiter of the region, to place
them at strategic positions in the mine tunnels. Each case contained a
hundred-pound bomb. Had these bombs been detonated, the entire contents
of the mine would have been destroyed. The resulting cave-ins would have
blocked every means of access. It would have taken months to repair the
apparatus which carried off the water seeping constantly into the mine
chambers. By that time the treasures they contained would have been
completely ruined. It is generally agreed that Eigruber had obtained
Hitler’s tacit consent to this artistic Götterdämmerung, if not his
actual approval of it.

I learned later that Captain Posey found a letter from Martin Bormann,
Hitler’s deputy, stating in the first paragraph that the contents of
the mine must, at all costs, be kept from falling into the hands of the
enemy. And then the second paragraph stated that the contents of the mine
must not be harmed.

Members of the Austrian resistance movement got wind of this diabolical
plan and took Sieber into their confidence. His intimate knowledge of
the mine passageways enabled him to set off small charges of dynamite
here and there along the tunnels without endangering the contents of the
chambers beyond. The resulting damage was slight and served a twofold
purpose: it gave the impression that the mine had been permanently
walled up; and, if that ruse were discovered, immediate access to the
art works themselves was denied the plotters. Eigruber did discover
that his attempt had been thwarted and in his rage gave orders for the
counterconspirators to be rounded up and shot. But by that time it was
the seventh of May, so the tragedy was mercifully averted.

Sieber told the story in a straightforward, factual way. I don’t think
it mattered to him who got control of the mine, but it was simply
unthinkable that any harm should come to the precious things it housed.
It was very much to his credit that he never capitalized on the part he
played in this affair. The only other reference he made to it was when he
later showed us the places where he had set off the charges of dynamite.

During all the time we were at the mine, Sieber made only one request
of us. It came at the very end of our stay and was reasonable enough:
he asked if we could expedite his return to Germany. There seemed to be
little prospect of regular employment for him in Austria, but that was of
less concern to him than the welfare of his wife and young daughter who
lived with him in a house near the mine. Some months later, one of our
officers tried to get him a job in Wiesbaden, but he was not acceptable
to the Military Government authorities there because of his political
affiliations. The last I heard of him, he and his family were still at
Alt Aussee, waiting for permission to go back to Germany. I hope they
finally got it.

Our concentrated efforts underground produced the desired results.
Pictures were coming out of the mine at such a prodigious rate that
George called a halt. Enough of a backlog had been accumulated to make
further selection down in the mine unnecessary for a couple of days.
Lamont and I had better help with the actual loading.

Loading a truck was a specialized operation, and George had perfected the
technique. Lamont, Steve and Shrady were his pupils. That left me the
only neophyte. So far I had had experience only with the loading of cases
and heavier objects such as furniture and sculpture.

Packing pictures, especially unframed ones—and there were a great many of
the latter at Alt Aussee—was an altogether different problem. The first
step was to place a length of waterproof paper over the side bars of the
truck and spread it smoothly on the floor to the center of the truck bed.
For this we had a large supply of stout, green, clothlike paper which
had been used by the Wehrmacht as protection against gas attacks. Then
a strip of felt was laid over the paper. The third step was to place
“sausages” in two rows, end to end, on the floor of the truck. The space
between the rows would depend on the size of the pictures to be loaded,
for they were intended to cushion the shock as the trucks rumbled along
over bumpy roads. The “sausages” had been George’s invention. Packing
materials of all kinds were at a premium, and certain types just didn’t
exist. To make up for the lack of the usual packer’s pads, George had
improvised this substitute. In one of the mine chambers he had found a
large supply of ordinary curtain material of machine-made ecru lace. This
had been cut up into yard lengths, eighteen inches wide. When rolled
around a central core of coarser cloth, or sometimes excelsior, and tied
with string, they were a very satisfactory “ersatz” product. We used to
refer to them augustly as the pads made from Hitler’s window curtains.
Their manufacture was periodically one of the major industries at the
mine. George had trained a crew of the gnomes and they loved to turn them
out. It was easy work. Seated at long benches they resembled a kind of
Alpine “husking bee.”

Once the paper, felt and “sausages” were in place, the pictures could
be brought to the truck. One after another they were placed in a stack
leading from the sideboards of the truck to the center. Pads and small
blankets were inserted between them to prevent rubbing. To ensure safe
packing, all the pictures in a given row had to be carefully selected as
to size, ranging from large to medium in one, and from medium to small
in another. That was the most tedious part of the entire operation.
As soon as a row had been “built,” it required only a few minutes to
bring first the felt and then the green paper over the top of the row,
tuck both down along the sides, and then lash the whole stack firmly
to the side of the truck. By this method it was possible to load as
many as a hundred and fifty medium-sized canvases on a single truck,
for three rows of twenty-five each could be built up on either side of
our big two-and-a-half-ton trucks. A truck loaded in this way could
often accommodate several pieces of sculpture as well. Carefully padded
and swathed in blankets, these could be placed down the center. The
final step was to adjust the tarpaulin over the bows and to close the
tailboard. A truck of the size we used could normally be loaded in two
hours.

We were at the mercy of the weather, as far as loading was concerned. On
rainy days we could work on only one truck at a time, because there was
but one doorway with a protective stoop under which a single truck could
park. Taking advantage of the sunny mornings, we would divide up into two
teams—George and Steve on one truck, Lamont and I on another. As soon
as a truck was filled and the tarpaulin securely fastened down, it was
driven to one side of the narrow terrace in front of the building. The
average convoy consisted of six trucks.

We had a crew of eighteen Negro drivers. Barboza, the C.O., was a very
starchy lieutenant, Jamaica born. He and his men were billeted down in
the little town of Bad Aussee. They were magnificent drivers but a bit
reckless. Their occasional disregard for their vehicles was a worry to
George. It would have been so with any drivers, I guess. A breakdown on
the steep mountain roads could be a serious matter. It meant the complete
disruption of the convoy schedule, involving reloading en route. To
provide for this contingency, we made a practice of loading the trucks
to three-quarters of their capacity. The contents of a single truck could
thus be absorbed by the others.

When a convoy was ready to start, either George or I would lead off in a
jeep and escort the six trucks down the precipitous road to Alt Aussee.
Two half-tracks from the 11th Armored Division, as front and rear guards,
would be waiting to accompany the convoy to Munich.

At breakfast one morning George said, “This looks like a good day to load
the gold-seal products.” He meant the Michelangelo Madonna and the Ghent
altarpiece. This was an important event, for they were unquestionably the
two most precious things still at the mine. Every possible precaution
would have to be taken to make this operation a success. It must go off
without a hitch. If anything happened to either of these masterpieces,
the repercussions would be catastrophic. They would overshadow all the
accomplishments of our MFA&A officers.

For the past several days, George and Steve had been working on the
Madonna. She was now heavily padded and trussed up like a ham, ready to
be brought out of the mine. We all went down to the Kaiser Josef chamber
where we had first seen her. George made a final inspection of the ropes
and pulleys which had been set up to hoist her onto the waiting train.
Then, with a satisfied smile, he said, “I think we could bounce her from
Alp to Alp, all the way to Munich, without doing her any harm.”

Once the statue was gently loaded on the little flat car, the train
pulled slowly out of the mine chamber and switched back onto the track of
the main tunnel. From there it chugged slowly—George walking alongside—to
the mine entrance where the truck stood waiting. This truck and the one
which was to carry the altarpiece had been put in perfect condition.
And George had put the fear of God into the two drivers, both of whom he
had personally chosen from our crew. A dozen of the gnomes were waiting
to lift the marble onto the truck. We slid it cautiously to the fore
part where boards had been laid parallel and nailed to the floor. These
would prevent shifting. On either side of the statue, small packing cases
about two feet square were arranged in even rows and lashed firmly to the
sides of the truck. These cases had been stored in a chamber of the mine
called the Kapelle. They contained the coin collection intended for the
Linz Museum and were accordingly marked “Münz Kabinett” or Coin Room.
Blankets were wedged in between the cases and the statue. The large case
containing the Greek sarcophagus from Salonika was set in place behind
the statue and similarly secured to the floor and at the sides. That
done, the truck was ready to go.

As George was putting the finishing touches on the packing, he said,
“Tom, will you go down and get the ‘Lamb’?” To be entrusted with the
removal of the great altarpiece was an exciting assignment. I wanted
to share it with someone who would also get a kick out of telling his
grandchildren that he had actually brought the famous panels out of their
underground hiding place. I called Lamont, and the two of us, followed by
eight of the gnomes, hitched four of the “dogs” to the little engine and
proceeded to the Mineral Kabinett. One of the “dogs,” especially designed
to carry pictures of unusual height, had a lower bed than the others. We
would use this one for the big central panel of the altarpiece. Otherwise
it would not clear a portion of the mine tunnel where the jagged rocks
hung low over the track.

The panels were now in their cases, and it was a relatively simple
matter to carry them from the storage room to the train. We had to make
two trips down and back in order to get all ten cases up to the mine
entrance. They were much lighter than the statue, but the loading was a
more exacting undertaking. Lashing them upright in parallel rows, in the
truck, and stowing cases on either side for ballast, took time. We didn’t
finish until well after six. It had taken most of the day to load the
“gold-seal products.”

[Illustration: _Mary Magdalene_ by Cranach. Göring was especially fond of
Cranach’s work and owned many paintings by him.]

[Illustration: _The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine_ by David was one
of the finest in the Göring Collection.]

[Illustration: _Diana_, an exquisite Boucher acquired by Göring from the
Rothschild Collection, has been returned to France.]

[Illustration: _Atalanta and Meleager_ by Rubens, found in the Göring
Collection, was from the Goudstikker Collection of Amsterdam.]

That night we held a conference in George’s room. He was to go to Munich
the next morning with the convoy to supervise the unloading of the
Madonna and the “Lamb” at the depot. He expected to come back directly,
but might have to go on up to Frankfurt. He mapped out the work he
wanted us to do while he was away. In addition to the job at the mine,
there was a special one down at Bad Ischl. A series of famous panels by
Albrecht Altdorfer, one of the greatest German painters of the fifteenth
century, was stored on the second floor of a highly combustible old inn.
These panels were among his finest works and belonged to the monastery
of St. Florian outside Linz. Fifty or sixty pieces of sculpture—mostly
polychromed wood figures, fifteenth century Gothic—also the property of
the monastery, were stored there too. George thought we’d better figure
on two trucks. We were to pick up the stuff, bring it back to the mine
and then send it to Munich with the next convoy.

We made notations of what he had told us, and then Steve produced
drinks—something of an occasion, for liquor was hard to come by at the
mine. Somehow he had got hold of a bottle of cognac and insisted on
making “Alpine Specials.” This was a drink consisting of a jigger of
cognac and an equal amount of a pink syrupy liquid resembling grenadine.
Steve prized the syrup. Eder, the chemical engineer at the mine, had
concocted it especially for him. The mixture made a drink of dubious
merit. We drank to the success of George’s trip to Munich.

The convoy got off early the next morning. Lamont and I went down with
George as far as the village. Two half-tracks were waiting to escort the
trucks to Munich. They were equipped with radios for intercommunication,
in case of delays along the way. Between Alt Aussee and Salzburg, the
road led through isolated country. Conditions were as yet far from
settled. Small bands of SS troops still lurked in the mountains. The
half-tracks weren’t just going along for the ride.

When we returned to the mine, we found Steve and Shrady in conversation.
They were planning an excursion and asked us to join them. We expressed
pious disapproval of letting up on the job the minute George’s back was
turned. Steve’s answer was, “That’s a crock. I haven’t taken a day off in
two weeks. You can do as you like, me lads; I’m off to see the wizard.”
The two of them climbed into the sporty Mercedes-Benz convertible which
Shrady had recently acquired, and drove off down the mountain.

“I have an idea,” said Lamont. “They can have their fun today. We’ll have
ours tomorrow, while they pick up the Altdorfer panels at Bad Ischl.”

Lamont turned to the loading of trucks, while I went down to the
Kammergrafen with Sieber. In the course of the morning I selected
approximately two hundred pictures. We concentrated on those of small
size, which were stored on the top racks, and the work went rapidly.
Among the paintings we chose was one which had a typewritten label on
the back. I read the words “Von dem Führer noch nicht entschieden”—not
yet decided upon by the Führer. I asked Sieber what this signified.
He explained that every picture intended for the Linz Museum—and this
was one of them—had to be personally approved by Hitler before it
could be officially included in the prospective collection. I could
easily understand that the Führer would have wanted to examine the more
important acquisitions, but that each canvas had to receive his personal
approval struck me as preposterous. Hitler had entrusted the formation
of his collections first to Dr. Hans Posse, a noted scholar, and, after
his death, to Dr. Hermann Voss, director of the Dresden Gallery. This
meticulous procedure, involving the submission of all pictures to the
Führer in Munich, must have been trying to those two luminaries of the
German art world.

When I came up from the mine for lunch I found that Lamont had completed
the loading of two trucks. As the stock of pictures in the packing
room at the mine entrance was almost exhausted, he said that he would
join Sieber and me in making further selections. We returned to the
Kammergrafen and continued with the smaller pictures.

On one of the top shelves we found a cardboard carton bearing the name of
Dr. Helmut von Hümmel, who had been connected with the formation of the
Linz collections. The label indicated that the contents had been destined
for the museum. On the carton appeared the word “_Sittenbilder_.”
Lamont and I knew the word “_Bilder_” meant pictures, but the other two
syllables conveyed nothing. Sieber knew very little English but tried to
explain. He thought perhaps the word meant “customs,” or something like
that. I thought that I understood him. He probably meant that they were
little scenes from everyday life.

We opened the carton. On top were three small watercolors, with beautiful
gray-blue mounts and carved, gilt frames. If they were not by François
Boucher, they were by a close pupil. The workmanship was exquisite and
they were highly pornographic. So these were “_Sittenbilder_.” In our
limited German we tried to tell Sieber that they might be called “scenes
from life,” but hardly everyday life.

The rest of the things in the carton were of the same order, some of them
contemporary, all of them licentious. None approached the first three
watercolors in sheer virtuosity of technique. We wondered just which
department of the Linz Museum would have harbored them.

Later we showed them to Steve. When he looked at the three watercolors he
asked, “Who did those?”

“They look very much like Boucher,” I said without thinking.

“Boucher?” asked Steve incredulously. “Not the fellow who painted that
‘Holy Family’ I saw this afternoon?”

Lamont said quickly, “Tom means a pupil of Boucher, not Boucher himself.”

“Well, that’s more like it,” said Steve. “I didn’t see how an artist who
painted anything so beautiful as that big picture could paint smutty
things like these.”

The Holy Family to which he referred was a sensitive and tender
representation. Steve’s point was well taken. The fact that he had not
seen much eighteenth century French painting didn’t alter the validity of
his argument.

On our way up from the Kammergrafen that afternoon we stopped at the
Kapelle. This was one of the mine chambers which I had visited only long
enough to take out some of the cases used in packing the Bruges Madonna.
In addition to the Münz Kabinett collections, the Kapelle contained the
magnificent collection of Spanish armor—casques, breastplates, full
suits of armor, and a great number of firearms—which had been gathered
together at Schloss Konopischt by the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Most of it was of sixteenth century workmanship, exquisitely inlaid with
gold and silver. Formerly Austrian, it had been the property of the
Czech government since the last World War. Nonetheless, the Germans had
carried it off, using some flimsy nationalistic argument to justify their
action. While the atmosphere of the mine was excellent for paintings, it
was not satisfactory for metal objects. Consequently, every piece in the
Konopischt collection had been heavily coated with grease to keep it from
oxidizing.

Their storage room, the Kapelle, was—as the name indicates—a chapel,
dedicated to the memory of Dollfuss, the Austrian Chancellor. It had an
electrically illuminated altar, hewn from a block of translucent salt
crystal, which was one of the sights of the mine.

That night when Steve and Shrady returned from their outing we all had
hot chocolate and cheese and crackers in the comfortable kitchen on the
ground floor of the main building. They had had a wonderful day. Maria,
Shrady’s interpreter-secretary, had been with them. They had gone first
to St. Wolfgang. There a sentry had tried to prevent them from driving
up the road leading to the little church. Leopold, the Belgian king, was
living near there with his wife, and motorists were not allowed on that
road. But they had got around the sentry and gone into the church to see
the wonderful carved altarpiece by Michael Pacher. Steve had brought us
some colored photographs of it. Afterward they had had a swim in the lake
and a picnic lunch. And in the afternoon—this had been the high spot of
the day—they had gone over to Bad Ischl and called on Franz Léhar. The
old fellow had been delighted to see them, had played the _Merry Widow_
waltz for them and given them autographed photographs. It sounded like
fun. Our day at the mine had been very prosaic in comparison. Mention of
Bad Ischl reminded Lamont of his scheme for the next day. He proposed to
Steve and Shrady that they should call for the Altdorfer panels. They
fell in with the suggestion at once, and before we could explain that we
thought we’d take the day off, Steve was telling us about some of the
things we should see in the neighborhood.

We slept late and when we got up the sky was gray and threatening. It
was no day for an outing. In fact it was so cold that we decided we’d be
warmer down in the mine. There was still one series of chambers which
we had not explored. This was the Mondsberg, and it took us almost
three-quarters of an hour to reach it. The pictures were arranged on
racks as in the Kammergrafen and the Springerwerke, only in the Mondsberg
there were a great many contemporary paintings. It didn’t take us long to
run through them. They were all obviously German-owned and, judging from
the labels, the great majority of the canvases had been included in the
annual exhibitions at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich.

Ranged along one side of the main chamber was a row of old pictures.
These were of high quality, and we went through them carefully. I came to
a canvas which looked vaguely familiar. It was the portrait of a young
woman dressed in a gown of cherry brocade. I guessed it to be sixteenth
century Venetian, perhaps by Paris Bordone. I said to Lamont, “I’m sure
I’ve seen that picture somewhere, but I can’t place it.”

“Let’s see if there’s any mark on the back that might give you a lead,”
said Lamont.

He found a label and started reading aloud, “California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, San Francisco....”

I thought he was joking. But not at all. There was the printed label
of my museum. And there too _in my own handwriting_ appeared the words
“Portrait of a Young Woman, by Paris Bordone”! No wonder the portrait
had looked familiar. I had borrowed it from a New York art dealer for a
special loan exhibition of Venetian painting in the summer of 1938. I
learned from the mine records that the dealer had subsequently sold the
picture to a Jewish private collector in Paris. The Nazis had confiscated
it with the rest of his collection. It was a weird business finding it
seven years later in an Austrian salt mine.

After supper that evening Shrady asked us to go down to Alt Aussee with
him. Some Viennese friends of his were having an evening of music.
The weather had cleared and the snow on the mountains was pink in the
afterglow as we drove down the winding road from the mine. The house, a
small chalet, stood on the outskirts of the village. Our host, his wife
and their two daughters, had taken refuge there just before the Russians
reached Vienna.

He introduced us to Dr. Victor Luithlen, one of the curators of the
Vienna Museum, who had driven over from Laufen. Many of the finest things
from the museum were stored in the salt mine there. Dr. Luithlen was the
custodian.

Both he and Shrady played the piano well. Luithlen played some Brahms
and Shrady followed with the music he had composed for a ballet based
on Poe’s “Raven.” Shrady said that it had been produced by the Russian
Ballet in New York. It was a very flamboyant piece and Shrady performed
it with terrific virtuosity.

Afterward coffee and strudel were served. The atmosphere of the household
was casual and friendly. I was reminded of what an Austrian friend of
mine had once told me: “In other countries, conditions are often serious,
but not desperate; in Austria they are often desperate but never serious.”

Thinking that George Stout might have returned from Munich, Lamont and
I went back up to the mine that night before the others. George had
just come in. He brought exciting but disturbing news. We were to
continue the work at Alt Aussee for another ten days. Then we were to
transfer our base of operations to Berchtesgaden. Our job there would
be the evacuation of the Göring collection! On our way through Salzburg
we were to pick up the pictures and tapestries from the Vienna Museum.
These were the paintings by Velásquez, Titian and Breughel which had
been highjacked by the Nazis two months ago and later retrieved by our
officers. The disturbing part of what George had to tell was that he was
going to leave us to carry on alone at the mine. He would try to join us
at Berchtesgaden. But there was a possibility that he might not be able
to make it.

Months ago George had put in a request for transfer to the Pacific.
He felt that things were shaping up on the European scene and that
others could carry on the work. There would be a big job protecting and
salvaging works of art in Japan. He didn’t think that a program had
been planned. He had offered his services. He had already told us that
he had asked for this assignment, but we had never considered it as a
possibility of the present or even of the immediate future. Now it looked
as though it might materialize at once. In any case he was going up to
Frankfurt the day after tomorrow to find out.

“As senior officer, Tom,” George said, “you will take over as headman
of the team. I’ll take you down to see Colonel Davitt before I go. He
is responsible for the security guard here at the mine and has been
extremely co-operative. You should go to him if you have any complaints
about the arrangements after I am gone.”

Back in our rooms that night Lamont said, “I have a hunch that this is
the last we’ll see of George. It’s not like him to talk the way he did
tonight if he hasn’t a pretty good idea that he won’t be coming back.”

Together we mapped out a tentative division of the work ahead. Steve,
who had come into the room in time to hear George’s news, joined our
discussion. It was after midnight when the first meeting of the “three
powers” broke up.

While George was in Munich he had been informed of the imminent
withdrawal of Third Army from the part of Austria in which we were
working. No one could, or would, tell him the exact date, but it appeared
likely that it would take place within two weeks. It was difficult for
me to understand why the arrival of another American army—General Mark
Clark’s Fifth from Italy—should cause the cessation of our operations.
But of course the Army had its own way of doing things. We were attached
to Third Army and if they were getting out, we would have to get out with
them. All along we had known that this might happen before we could empty
the mine. It was quite probable that Fifth Army would want to resume the
work, but it would take time. Such a delay would impede the processes
of restitution, and we had therefore been giving first attention to the
finest things.

Having taken stock of the paintings, sculpture and furniture on which we
were going to concentrate in the time we had left, we spent George’s last
day working as usual. The loading went well and we finished four more
trucks. Another convoy would be ready to take off in the morning.

George had his own jeep and driver and could make better time than
the convoy, so after early breakfast we went down to Colonel Davitt’s
office. George explained the change in his own plans and said that I
would be taking over at the mine. Then he thanked the colonel for his
co-operation. It was a long speech for George.

When he had finished, Colonel Davitt said, “In all the time you’ve been
here, you haven’t made a single unreasonable demand. If Lieutenant Howe
can come anywhere near that record, we’ll get along all right.”

Compliments embarrassed George, so he said good-by as quickly as possible
and climbed into his jeep. He wished me luck and drove off. I waited
for Lamont to come down with the convoy and give me a lift back up the
mountain.




(7)

_THE ROTHSCHILD JEWELS; THE GÖRING COLLECTION_


We had our share of troubles during those last ten days at Alt Aussee.
They began that first day of my investiture as head of the team. Lamont
and I were sorting pictures in the room at the mine entrance. It was
early in the afternoon and we were about to start loading our third
truck. I had just said to Lamont that I thought the morning’s convoy had
probably passed Salzburg, when a jeep pulled up to the door. The driver
called out to us that one of our trucks had broken down at Goisern. That
was an hour’s drive from the mine. Why hadn’t we been notified earlier? I
asked. He didn’t know. Perhaps there hadn’t been anybody around to bring
back word. Maybe the driver had thought he could repair the truck.

We got hold of Steve and the three of us started for Goisern in the
messenger’s jeep. We’d have to transfer the load, so an empty truck
followed us. We were thankful that the breakdown hadn’t happened while
the convoy was going over the Pötschen Pass. It would have been a tough
job to shift the pictures from one truck to another on that steep and
dangerous part of the road. It was bad enough as it was, because it
looked as though we’d have rain. One of the trucks had a lot of very
large pictures. We hoped that it wasn’t the one that had broken down.

It was a little after three when we reached Goisern. The truck had been
parked by the headquarters of a small detachment of troops on the edge
of town. There were several houses near by but plenty of room for us to
maneuver the empty truck alongside. The Negro driver of the stranded
truck said that it had “thrown a rod” and would have to be taken to
Ordnance for repairs. That meant that the vehicle would be laid up for
two or three weeks. We’d have to see about a replacement. The main thing
was to get on with the unloading before it began to rain. And it _was_
the truck with the big pictures.

With the two trucks lined up alongside, and only a few inches apart, we
could hoist the pictures over the sideboards. In this way each row of
paintings was kept in the same order. Lamont and Steve boarded the empty
truck, while one of the gnomes from the mine and I started unlashing the
first stack of loaded pictures. Before long a crowd of women and children
had collected to watch this unusual operation. There were excited “oh’s”
and “ah’s” as we began to transfer one masterpiece after another—two
large Van Dycks, a Veronese, a pair of colossal decorative canvases
by Hubert Robert, a Rubens, and so on. The spectators were quiet and
well behaved, whispering among themselves. They didn’t pester us with
questions. We rather enjoyed having an audience. We finished the job in
an hour and a half.

It wasn’t too soon, for as we were securing the tarpaulin at the rear of
the newly loaded truck, it began to pour. We parked the truck, arranged
for an overnight guard, then climbed into our jeep and started back to
the mine. In a few minutes the rain turned to hail. The stones were so
large that we were afraid they’d break the windshield of the jeep. We
pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the storm to let up.
While we waited, the gnome told us that sometimes the hailstones were
large enough to kill sheep grazing in the high meadows. Only the summer
before he had lost two of his own lambs during one of the heavy summer
storms. He swore that the stones were the size of tennis balls.

We were thoroughly soaked and half frozen when we got back to the mine.
But we had won our race with the weather, and the truck would proceed to
Munich with the next convoy.

During the next three days we were beset by a series of minor
difficulties. Two of the trucks broke down on the way up to the mine to
be loaded. It took half a day to get replacements, so the convoy was
delayed. One night the guard on duty at the mine entrance developed an
unwarranted interest in art and poked around among the pictures which
Lamont and I had carefully stacked according to size for loading the next
morning. No harm was done, but it caused a delay. He was under strict
orders to let no one into the temporary storage room and was not to go
in there himself. It was partly our fault; we shouldn’t have trusted
him with the key. The captain of the guard was notified and appropriate
disciplinary action taken. The gnomes developed a tendency to prolong
their regular rest periods beyond a point Steve considered reasonable,
and we had to come to an understanding about that. On the whole, however,
the work went fairly well.

Even the great chambers of the Kammergrafen were beginning to thin out.
They were far from empty, but we had cleared them of a substantial part
of the external loot, that is, the loot which had come from countries
outside Germany. There were still quantities of things taken from
Austrian collections, but they had not been our primary concern. The time
had come to make a final check, to make sure that we had not overlooked
anything important in the category of external loot.

Together with Sieber, we started this last inspection. We checked off the
pictures first. Our work there had been pretty thorough. After that the
sculpture. This also seemed to be well weeded out. And the furniture too.

Sieber was ahead of us with his flashlight. The light fell on two cartons
standing in a dark corner behind a group of Renaissance bronzes. I
asked what was in them. Sieber shrugged his shoulders. They had never
been opened. He had forgotten that they were there. We dragged them out
and looked for an identifying label. Sieber recalled that one of the
former custodians at the mine had said the things inside were “_sehr
wertvoll_”—very valuable, but he knew nothing more.

We carried the boxes to a table where there was better light. They were
the same size, square, and about two feet high. They were not heavy. We
pried open the lid of one of them with great care. It might be Roman
glass, and that stuff breaks almost when you look at it. But it wasn’t
Roman glass. Inside was a row of small cardboard boxes. I lifted the lid
and removed a layer of cotton. On the cotton beneath lay a magnificent
golden pendant studded with rubies, emeralds and pearls. The central
motif, a mermaid exquisitely modeled and wrought in iridescent enamel,
proclaimed the piece the work of an Italian goldsmith of the Renaissance.
The surrounding framework of intricate scrolls, shells and columns blazed
with jewels.

There were forty boxes filled with jewels—necklaces, pendants and
brooches—all of equal splendor. The collection was worth a fortune. Each
piece bore a minute tag on which appeared an identifying letter and a
number. These were Rothschild jewels. And we had stumbled on them quite
by accident.

Lamont and I agreed that they should be taken to Munich without delay.
There they could be stored in a vault. Furthermore we decided to deliver
them ourselves. It wouldn’t do to risk such precious objects with the
regular convoy. We admonished Sieber to say nothing about our find. In
the meantime we would keep the two boxes under lock and key in our room.

That night we told Steve we had a special surprise for him. After barring
the door against unexpected visitors, we emptied the boxes onto one
of the beds. We told him not to look until we were ready. We arranged
each piece with the greatest care, straightening out the links of the
necklaces, adjusting the great baroque pearls of the pendants, balancing
one piece with another, until the whole glittering collection was spread
out on the white counterpane. Then we signaled to Steve to turn around.

“God Almighty, where did you find those?” he asked.

While we were telling him how we had happened onto the two cartons that
afternoon, he kept shaking his head, and when we had finished, said
solemnly, “They’re beyond my apprehension.” The expression stuck and from
that time on we invoked it whenever we were confronted with an unexpected
problem.

Early the following morning we stowed the jewels in the back seat of our
command car and set out for Munich. Halfway to Salzburg we encountered
Captain Posey, headed in the opposite direction. He was surprised to
see us, and still more surprised when we told him what we had in the
car. He was on his way to the mine. There were some things he wanted to
tell us about our next job—at Berchtesgaden—but if we would come to his
office the next day that would be time enough. He wasn’t going to stay
at the mine more than a couple of hours. He should be back in Munich
before midnight. He said there was one thing we could do when we reached
Salzburg—call on the Property Control Officer and arrange for clearance
on the removal of the Vienna Museum pictures to the Munich depot. This
was an important part of the plan which George had outlined, so we said
that we’d see what we could do.

We had some difficulty finding the right office. There were two Military
Government Detachments in Salzburg—one for the city, and the other
for the region. They were on opposite sides of the river. We caught
Lieutenant Colonel Homer K. Heller, the Property Control Officer, as
he was leaving for lunch. I explained that it was our intention to
call for the paintings and tapestries on our way to Berchtesgaden the
following week. He said he could not authorize the removal; that we would
have to see Colonel W. B. Featherstone at the headquarters across the
river. If the colonel gave his O.K., it would be all right with him. He
didn’t think that the colonel would take kindly to the idea. This was a
surprise. Who would have the temerity to question the authority of Third
Army? Lamont was amused. He told me I could have the pleasure of tackling
Colonel Featherstone alone.

It was after two o’clock before the colonel was free. Nothing doing on
the Vienna pictures. That would require an O.K. from Verona. Why Verona,
I asked? “General Clark’s headquarters,” was the answer. Didn’t I know
that the Fifth Army was taking over the area very shortly? Then the
colonel, in accents tinged with sarcasm, expressed his satisfaction at
finally meeting one of the Monuments officers of the Third Army. He had
heard such a lot about them and the wide territory they had covered. He
had been told that a group of them was working at the Alt Aussee mine,
but I was the first one he had laid eyes on.

I gathered that he was mildly nettled by Third Army in general and by
me in particular. As a matter of fact, the colonel’s attitude about
the Vienna pictures was logical: why move them out of Austria? If, as
he supposed, they were to be returned to Vienna eventually, why take
them all the way to Munich? I had no answer to that and took refuge in
the old “I only work here” excuse. He found it rather droll that the
Navy should be mixed up in this high-class van and storage business. I
had too, once, but the novelty had worn off. I rejoined Lamont and the
jewels. I wondered what Captain Posey would have to say to all this.

We reached Munich too late that afternoon to see Craig at the depot, so
we took the jewels with us to his quarters. I had not seen him since my
departure for Alt Aussee some weeks before. In the interim, there had
been a tightening up on billeting facilities. As a result he and Ham
Coulter were now sharing a single apartment. I was the only one adversely
affected by this arrangement. Craig no longer had a spare couch for
chance guests.

When Lamont and I walked in, we found them talking with a newly arrived
naval lieutenant. He was Lane Faison, who had been around Harvard in
my day. In recent years he had been teaching at Williams and was at
present in OSS. After we had been there a little while, Lamont asked very
casually, “Would you boys care to see the Rothschild jewels?”

Ham wanted to know what the hell he was talking about. “Well, we have two
boxes filled with them here in the hall,” Lamont said.

For the second time we displayed the treasures. Craig’s enthusiasm was
tempered with concern for their safety. He was relieved when we said we
had come purposely to put them in one of the steel vaults at the depot.
We went with him to the Königsplatz forthwith and stowed them safely for
the night.

Lamont and I continued on our way to Third Army Headquarters. Lincoln was
working late. When we walked in he looked up from his typewriter and said
“Hello” in a flat voice. Lincoln was in one of his uncommunicative moods.
We left him alone and busied ourselves with letters from home which
we found on Posey’s desk. Lincoln went on with his typing. Presently
he stopped and said, “George’s orders came through. He’s gone to the
Pacific.”

“It ought to be interesting work,” said Lamont.

“Oh, you knew about his orders?” asked Lincoln.

“No,” said Lamont.

That broke the mood. We had a lively session for the next hour. Lincoln
was always a reservoir of information, a lot of it in the realm of rumor,
but all of it fascinating. That evening he was unusually full of news. He
had a perfect audience in Lamont and me because we had been completely
out of touch with things while at the mine.

After exhausting his stock of fact and fiction, he produced his latest
box of food from home. There were brandied peaches, tins of lobster and
caviar, several kinds of cheese, dried fruits and crackers. It was a
combination you’d never risk at home, if you were in your right mind.

“You do very well for yourself,” I said when he had the refreshments
spread out on his desk.

“My wife knows the enlisted men’s motto: ‘Nothing is too good for our
boys, and nothing is what they get.’”

We finished the box and Lincoln showed us an article he had written on
Nazi sculpture. We were reading it when Captain Posey came in. He asked
if we had stopped in Salzburg to see Colonel Heller. I told him what had
happened there. If he was annoyed, he gave no sign of it. He rummaged
in his desk and brought out a list of instructions for us in connection
with the operation at Berchtesgaden. He suggested that we stop there on
the way back to Alt Aussee; it wouldn’t be very much out of our way. He
gave us the names of the officers we should see about billeting, and
so on. It would be well to have all these things settled in advance.
Then he gave us some special orders for Lieutenant Shrady, who was to be
transferred to Heidelberg, now that the evacuation of the mine was ending.

Captain Posey said that I was to take over the Mercedes-Benz. It had been
obtained originally for the evacuation team. We were to take it with
us to Berchtesgaden. I could make good use of the car, transportation
facilities being what they were, but I didn’t relish the prospect of
taking it from Shrady. He had spent money of his own fixing it up and
looked on it as his personal property. I told Captain Posey how I felt.
He said he had a letter for me which would take care of the matter. It
was a letter directing me to deliver Lieutenant Shrady’s orders and to
appropriate the car.

When we saw Faison at the depot the next morning, he asked if he might
drive back with us. He was joining Plaut and Rousseau at House 71 to
work with them on the investigation of Nazi art looting. I said we’d be
glad to have him. The three of us started off after early lunch. We were
looking forward to the Berchtesgaden detour. None of us had been there
during the Nazi regime and I, for one, was curious to see what changes
had taken place in the picturesque resort town since I had last seen it
fifteen years before.

We took the Salzburg Autobahn past Chiemsee almost to Traunstein, and
then turned off to the southwest. This was the finest secondary road I
ever traveled. It led into the mountains and the scenery was worthy of
Switzerland. Thanks to perfectly banked turns, we made the ninety-mile
run in two hours.

The little town was as peaceful and quiet as I remembered it. In fact it
was so quiet that Lamont and I had difficulty locating an Army outfit to
give us directions. We learned that the 44th AAA Brigade had just moved
in and that the last remnants of the famous 101st Airborne Division were
pulling out. There was no love lost between the two, as we found out
later. Consequently, when I asked an officer of the AAA Brigade where I
would find Major Anderson of the 101st Airborne, he informed me curtly
that that outfit was no longer at Berchtesgaden. Then I asked if he
knew where the Göring collection was. He didn’t seem to know what I was
talking about, so I rephrased my question, inquiring about the captured
pictures which had been on exhibition a short time ago. Yes, he knew
vaguely that there had been some kind of a show. He thought it had been
over in Unterstein, not in Berchtesgaden. Well, where was Unterstein?
He said it was about four kilometers to the south, on the road to the
Königssee.

His directions weren’t too explicit, but eventually we found the little
back road which landed us in Unterstein ten minutes later. In a clearing
on the left side of the road stood the building we were looking for.
It was a low rambling structure of whitewashed stucco in the familiar
Bavarian farmhouse style. It had been a rest house for the Luftwaffe.
The center section, three stories high, had a gabled roof with widely
overhanging eaves. On either side were long wings two stories high,
similarly roofed. The casement windows were shuttered throughout.

We found Major Harry Anderson on the entrance steps. He was a husky
fellow with red hair and a shy, boyish manner. He was not altogether
surprised to see us because George had stopped by on his last trip to
Munich and told him we’d be arriving before long. How soon could we start
to work on the collection? In four or five days’ time, we thought. Could
he make some preliminary arrangements for us? We would need billets for
three officers, that is, the two of us—and Lieutenant Kovalyak. No, there
would be four, we had forgotten to include the Negro lieutenant in
charge of the truck drivers. Then there would be twenty drivers. Could
we say definitely what day we’d arrive? Lamont and I made some rapid
calculations. It was a Tuesday. How about Friday evening? That was fine.
The sooner the better as far as the major was concerned. He was slated to
pull out the minute the job was done, so we couldn’t start too soon to
suit him.

He asked if we’d care to take a preliminary look around but we declined.
It was getting late and we still had a hard three-hour drive ahead of us.
As we turned to go, Jim Plaut and Ted Rousseau came out of the building.
They had been expecting Faison but were surprised to find him with us.
Wouldn’t we all have dinner with them that night at House 71? They had
come over from Bad Aussee that afternoon, bringing Hofer with them. They
had been quizzing him about certain pictures in the collection and he had
wanted to refresh his memory by having a look at them. They pointed to
a stocky German dressed in gray tweeds who stood a little distance away
talking with a tall, angular woman. We recognized him as the man we had
seen pacing the garden at House 71 weeks before—the evening Lamont and I
first reported to George at the mine. That was his wife, they said. Would
we mind taking Hofer back with us? If we could manage that, they’d take
Faison with them. There were some urgent matters they’d like to talk over
with him in connection with their work. We agreed and Ted brought Hofer
to the car.

As we left he called out, “Wiederschauen, liebe Mutti,” and kept waving
and throwing kisses to his tall wife. I was struck by the stoical
expression on her face. She watched us go but made no effort to return
his salutations. I wondered if she gave a damn.

Hofer was a loquacious passenger. All the way to Bad Aussee he kept up a
line of incessant chatter, half in English, half in German, on all sorts
of subjects. He gesticulated constantly with both hands, notwithstanding
the fact that one of them was heavily bandaged. He explained that he had
scalded it. The bandage had been smeared with evil-smelling ointment
which had soaked through. As he gestured the air was filled with a
disagreeable odor of medication. Did we know Salzburg? Ah, such a lovely
city, so musical! Did we know Stokowski? He knew him well. “Then you’ll
probably be interested to know that he has just married one of the
Vanderbilt heiresses, a girl of nineteen,” I said. But I must be joking.
Was it really so?

I was getting bored with this chatterbox when he suddenly began to talk
about Göring and his pictures. We asked him the obvious question: What
did Göring really like when it came to paintings? Well, he was fond of
Cranach. Yes, we knew that. And Rubens; he had greatly admired Rubens.
And many of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. But according
to Hofer it was he who had directed the Reichsmarschall’s taste. Then,
to my surprise, he mentioned Vermeer. Did we know about the Vermeer
which Göring had bought? After that he went into a lengthy account of
the purchase, leading up to it with an involved story of the secrecy
surrounding the transaction, which had many confusing details. When we
pulled up before House 71, Hofer was still going strong. Lamont and I
were worn out.

Shrady departed the following morning in compliance with the orders I had
brought him. He left the Mercedes-Benz behind. If I could have foreseen
the trouble that car was going to cause us, nothing could have tempted me
to add it to our equipment. Even then Lamont eyed it with suspicion, but
we were both talked out of our misgivings by Steve, who rubbed his hands
with satisfaction at the prospect of the éclat it would lend our future
operations.

With Shrady’s going, we fell heir to his duties. During our last three
days at the mine they complicated our lives considerably. There were
records to be put in order, reports to be finished, pay accounts to be
adjusted, ration books to be extended for the skeleton crew which would
remain at the mine. In addition, I had to see Colonel Davitt about
the reduction and reorganization of the guard, and make provision for
different billeting and messing facilities.

In the midst of these preparations, Ted Rousseau telephoned from House
71. Were we planning to take Kress, the photographer, with us to
Berchtesgaden? We certainly were. Steve would sooner have parted with
his right eye. Well, they wanted to interrogate him before we left. How
long would they need him? A few days. I suggested they start right away.
We’d be needing him too. Steve was wild when he heard about it. I agreed
that it was a nuisance but that we’d have to oblige. The OSS boys came
for Kress that afternoon. Steve watched them, balefully, as they drove
off down the mountain. Then he resumed the work he had been doing on his
big Steyr truck. This was a cumbersome vehicle which he and Kress had
been putting in order. It had belonged originally to the _Einsatzstab
Rosenberg_ and was part of Kress’ photographic unit. He and Steve were
refitting it to serve our purposes in a similar capacity. It was a fine
idea, but so far they hadn’t been able to get it in running order. Steve
had had it painted. When he had nothing better to do, he tinkered with
the dead motor. Next to Kress, the truck was his most prized possession.

I returned to Shrady’s old office where I found Lamont in conversation
with Dr. Hermann Michel. Michel was a shadowy figure who had been working
at the mine with Sieber and Eder throughout our stay. When Posey and
Lincoln Kirstein had arrived at Alt Aussee in May, he had identified
himself as one of the ringleaders of the Austrian resistance movement and
vociferously claimed the credit of saving the mine. Since then he had
been working in the mine office. Captain Posey had given him permission
to make a routine check of the books and archives stored there. He was
such a talkative fellow that we kept out of his way as much as possible.
And we didn’t like his habit of praising himself at the expense of
others. He was forever running to Plaut and Rousseau at House 71 with
written and oral reports, warning them to beware of this or that man in
the mine organization.

Lamont looked decidedly harassed when I walked in. Michel was protesting
our demands for a complete set of the records. We were to leave them
in Colonel Davitt’s care when we closed the mine. Michel had taken the
opportunity to say a few unpleasant things about Sieber. We finally made
it clear to him that there would be no nonsense about the records, and
also that what we did about Sieber was our business. We finally packed
him off still protesting and shaking his head.

The afternoon before our departure Lamont and I had to go over to St.
Agatha. The little village lay in the valley on the other side of the
Pötschen Pass. We were to verify the report that a small but important
group of paintings was stored in an old inn there. A fine Hubert Robert
_Landscape_, given to Hitler by Mussolini, was said to be among them.

We went first to the Bürgermeister who had the key. He drove with us to
the inn. It was an attractive Gasthaus, built in the early eighteenth
century. The walls were frescoed and a wrought-iron sign hung over the
doorway. When we arrived the proprietress was washing clothes in the
arched passageway through the center of the building.

She took us to a large corner room on the second floor. There were some
fifty pictures, all of them enormous and unframed. The Bürgermeister
helped us shift the unwieldy canvases about, so that we could
properly examine them. They were, for the most part, of indifferent
quality—sentimental landscapes by obscure German painters of the
nineteenth century.

But we did find five that were fine: the mammoth landscape with classical
ruins by Hubert Robert, the eighteenth century French master—this was
the one Mussolini had given the Führer; an excellent panel by Pannini—it
too a landscape; a Van Dyck portrait; a large figure composition by Jan
Siberechts, the seventeenth century Flemish painter; and a painting by
Ribera, the seventeenth century Spanish artist. We set them aside and
said we’d return for them in a few days.

We had hoped to leave for Berchtesgaden by midmorning the next day, but
we didn’t get off until three in the afternoon. At the last minute I
received word from Colonel Davitt’s office that the Mercedes-Benz was to
be left at the mine. I said that since we had no escort vehicle, it was
an indispensable part of our convoy. That being the case, the colonel’s
adjutant said we could take the car, but on condition that we return it
within twenty-four hours. I said I’d see what I could do about that.

Steve fumed while I talked. When I hung up the receiver he said, “Don’t
be a damn fool. Once the car’s out of his area, the colonel hasn’t got a
thing to say about it. Let’s get going.”

Sieber and Eder, together with a dozen of the gnomes, were waiting in
front of the mine building when we came down the stairs. Lamont was
already in the car. I gave final instructions to the captain of the
guard, said good-bys all around, and got in the car myself. Everybody
smiled and waved as we drove off.

The evacuation had been a success. Ninety truckloads of paintings,
sculpture and furniture had been removed from the mine during the past
five weeks. Although it was by no means empty, the most important
treasures had been taken out. Third Army was withdrawing from the area.
From now on the mine would be the responsibility of General Clark’s
forces.

We were a lengthy cavalcade. Lamont and I took the lead. Steve followed
in the Steyr truck, in running order at last. Behind him trailed five
trucks. We were to pick up eight more at Alt Aussee. It wasn’t going
to be easy to keep such a long convoy in line. If we could only stay
together until we got over the pass, the rest of the trip wouldn’t be too
difficult.

We made it over the pass without mishap. From time to time Lamont looked
back to make sure the trucks were still following. He couldn’t count
them all, they were so strung out and the road was so winding. But we
had instructed the Negro lieutenant to give orders to his men to signal
the truck ahead in case of trouble, so we felt reasonably sure that
everything was in order. When we reached Fuschl See we stopped along the
lake shore to take count. One after another eight trucks pulled up. Five
were missing. Fifteen minutes passed and still no sign of the laggards.
Steve said not to worry, to give them another quarter of an hour.

The blue waters of the lake were inviting. Schiller might have composed
the opening lines of _Wilhelm Tell_ on this very spot. “Es lächelt der
See, er ladet zum Bade.” Steve and Lamont decided to have a swim. I
dipped my hand in the water; it was icy. While they swam I kept an eye
out for the missing vehicles. Presently two officers drove by in a jeep.
I hailed them and ask if they had seen our trucks. They had—about ten
miles back two trucks had gone off the road. They thought there had
been two or three others at the scene of the accident. Lamont and Steve
dressed quickly. Steve said he’d go on with the eight trucks and meet us
in Salzburg. Then Lamont and I started back toward Bad Ischl.

We hadn’t gone more than five miles when we came upon three of our
vehicles. We signaled them to pull over to the side of the road. At first
we couldn’t make out what the drivers were saying—all three talked at
once. We finally got the story. A driver had taken a curve too fast and
had lost control of his truck. The one behind had been following too
closely and had also crashed over the side. The first driver had got
pinned under his truck and they had had to amputate a finger before he
could be extricated. The lieutenant in charge had stayed behind to take
care of things. He had told them to try to catch up with the rest of
the convoy. By the time they had given us all the details, we realized
that they had been drinking. And we guessed that alcohol had also
had something to do with the truck going off the road. We would have
something to say to the lieutenant when he reached Berchtesgaden. He was
new on the job, having replaced Lieutenant Barboza only two days ago. We
were thankful that our precious packing materials had been put in two of
the trucks up ahead.

Steve was waiting for us in the Mozart Platz when we reached Salzburg an
hour and a half later with our three trucks in tow. He told the drivers
where they could get chow. The three of us went across the river to the
Gablerbräu, the small hotel for transients, for our own supper. The
Berchtesgaden operation hadn’t begun auspiciously.

Our troubles weren’t over. When we pulled into Berchtesgaden at eight
o’clock, we couldn’t find Major Anderson, so we had to fend for
ourselves. We managed to put the drivers up for the one night in a
barracks by the railway station before going on to Unterstein ourselves.
The lieutenant in charge of the drivers hadn’t turned up when we were
ready to go, so I left word that he was to report to me first thing the
next morning. While we three felt unhappy over the lack of billeting
arrangements for us, we were too tired to think much about it that night.
Bed was all that mattered. The officer on duty at the Unterstein rest
house said there was an empty room over the entrance hall which we could
use until we got permanent quarters. There were three bunks, so we moved
in.

By contrast, everything started off beautifully the following morning.
Major Anderson appeared as we were finishing breakfast.

His apologies were profuse and he did everything he could to make
amends. We declined his offer to obtain rooms for us at the elegant
Berchtesgadener Hof in town. We wanted to be on the spot. There was
plenty of room in the rest house where we would be working; and we could
mess with the half-dozen officers billeted in the adjacent barracks. The
major introduced us to Edward Peck, the sergeant, who had been working on
an inventory of the collection.

Together we made a tour of the premises. The paintings alone filled forty
rooms. Four rooms and a wide corridor at the end of the ground-floor
hall were jammed with sculpture. Still another room was piled high with
tapestries. Rugs filled two rooms adjoining the one with the tapestries.
Two more rooms were given over to empty frames, hundreds of them. There
was the “Gold Room” where the objects of great intrinsic value were
kept under lock and key. And there were three more rooms crammed with
barrels, boxes and trunks full of porcelain. One very large room was a
sea of books and magazines, eleven thousand altogether. A small chapel on
the premises was overflowing with fine Italian Renaissance furniture.

The preliminary survey was discouraging. Although the objects were
infinitely more accessible than those at the mine had been, this
advantage was largely offset by the fact that they were all loose and
would have to be packed individually. Even the porcelain in barrels would
have to be repacked.

Our first request was for a work party of twelve men—GIs, not PWs.
We suggested to the young C.O., Major Paul Miller, that he call for
volunteers. If possible, we wanted men who might prefer this kind of job
to guard duty or other routine work. They could start in on the books
while we mapped out our plan of attack on the rest of the things. Steve
went off with Major Miller to select the crew, and Lamont and I settled
down to discuss other problems with Major Anderson and Sergeant Peck.

It was the sergeant’s idea that the collection could be packed up one
room at a time. He had compiled his inventory with that thought in mind.
Unfortunately we couldn’t carry out the evacuation in that order. We
explained why his system wouldn’t work: paintings, for example, had to
be arranged according to size. Otherwise we couldn’t build loads that
would travel safely. Even if we could have packed the pictures as he
suggested—one room at a time—it would have meant the loss of valuable
truck space. We assured him that, in the long run, our plan was the
practical one. It did, however, involve considerable preliminary work.
The first job would be to assemble all of the pictures—and there were a
thousand of them—in a series of rooms on one floor of the building. As
the sergeant had not quite finished his lists, we agreed to devote our
energies to the books for the rest of the day. By morning he would have
his inventory completed. Then the pictures could be shifted.

Lamont and I wanted to know more about the collection. How did it get to
Berchtesgaden in the first place? Major Anderson was the man who could
answer our questions.

As the war ended, the French reached the town ahead of the Americans.
They had it to themselves for about three days and had raised hell
generally. Göring’s special train bearing the collection had reached
Berchtesgaden just ahead of the French. The collection, having been
removed from the Reichsmarschall’s place, Karinhall, outside Berlin,
was to have been stored in an enormous bunker by his hunting lodge up
the road. But there hadn’t been time. The men in charge of the train
got only a part of the things unloaded. Some of them were put in the
bunker, others in a villa near by. Most of the collection was left in the
nine cars of the train. The men had been more interested in unloading a
stock of champagne and whisky which had been brought along in two of the
compartments.

When the French entered the town, the train was standing on a siding not
far from the bunker. They may have made off with a few of the things, but
there were no apparent depredations. They peppered it along one side with
machine-gun fire. However, the damage had been relatively slight.

Then the French had cleared out and the train was, so to speak, dumped in
Major Anderson’s lap, since he was the Military Government Officer with
the 101st Airborne Division. Under his supervision, the collection had
been transferred from the train, from the bunker and from the villa, to
the rest house. Later he had been instrumental in having it set up as an
exhibition. The exhibition had been a great success—perhaps too great a
success. He meant that it had attracted so much attention that some of
the higher-ups began to worry about the security of the things. Finally
he had received orders that the show was to close and of course he had
complied at once.

He said that General Arnold had come to see the exhibition the day after
that. We asked if he had let him in. Well, what did we think? But he had
turned down a three-star general who had come along after hearing that
General Arnold had been admitted. The general, he said, was hopping mad.

The major’s most interesting experience in connection with the
collection was his visit with Frau Göring. He heard that some of the
best pictures were in her possession, so he took a run down to Zell am
See where she was staying in a Schloss belonging to a South American.
He found the castle; he found Emmy; and he found the pictures. There
were indeed some of the best pictures—fifteen priceless gems of the
fifteenth century Flemish school, from the celebrated Renders collection
of Brussels. Göring had bought the entire collection of about thirty
paintings. We knew that M. Renders was already pressing for the return
of his treasures, claiming that he had been forced to sell them to the
Reichsmarschall. But that was another story.

Frau Göring wept bitterly when the major took the pictures, protesting
that they were her personal property and not that of her husband. On the
same visit he had recovered another painting in the collection. Frau
Göring’s nurse handed over a canvas measuring about thirty inches square.
She said Göring had given it to her the last time she saw him. As he
placed the package in her hands he had said, “Guard this carefully. It is
of great value. If you should ever be in need, you can sell it, and you
will not want for anything the rest of your life.” The package contained
Göring’s Vermeer.

Major Anderson stayed for lunch. As we walked back from the mess, a
command car pulled up in front of the rest house. Bancel La Farge and a
man in civilian clothes climbed out. I hadn’t seen Bancel for two months.
He was a major now. The civilian with him was an old friend of mine, John
Walker, Chief Curator of the National Gallery at Washington and a special
adviser to the Roberts Commission. John had flown over to make a brief
inspection tour of MFA&A activities. Bancel was serving as his guide.
They were on their way to Salzburg and Alt Aussee.

Major Anderson proposed a trip to the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountain
hide-out, suggesting that the visitors could look at the Göring pictures
that evening. Lamont and I said we had work to do, but we were easily
talked out of that.

You could see the Eagle’s Nest from the rest house. It was perched on top
of the highest peak of the great mountain range which rose sharply from
the pine forests across the valley. We crossed to the western side and
began a steep ascent. About a thousand feet above the floor of the valley
we came to Obersalzberg, once a select community of houses belonging
to the most exalted members of the Nazi hierarchy. In addition to the
Berghof, Hitler’s massive chalet, it included a luxurious hotel—the
Platter Hof—SS barracks, and week-end “cottages” for Göring and Martin
Bormann. The British bombed Obersalzberg in April 1945. The place was now
in ruins. The Berghof was still standing but gutted by fire and stripped
of all removable ornamentation by souvenir hunters.

We continued up the winding road carved from the solid rock, through
three tunnels, at length emerging onto a terraced turnaround, around,
five thousand feet above Berchtesgaden. The major told us that the road
had been built by slave labor. Three thousand men had worked on it for
almost three years.

[Illustration: _Portrait of a Young Girl_ by Chardin (_left_) and _Young
Girl with Chinese Figure_ by Fragonard (_right_) were acquired by Göring
from the confiscated Rothschild Collection of Paris. The paintings have
been returned to France.]

[Illustration: _Christ and the Adulteress_, the fraudulent Vermeer, for
which Göring exchanged 137 paintings of unquestioned authenticity.]

[Illustration: _Portrait of the Artist’s Sister_ by Rembrandt. One of the
five Rembrandts in the Göring Collection.]

The Eagle’s Nest was still four hundred feet above. From the turnaround
there were two means of access: an elevator and a footpath. The elevator
shaft, hewn out of the mountain itself, was another feat of engineering
skill. A broad archway of carved stone marked the entrance. Beside the
elevator stood a sign which read, “For Field Grade Officers Only”—that
is, majors and above.

“A sentiment worthy of the builder,” Lamont observed as we took to the
footpath.

On our steep climb we wondered what Steve would say to such
discrimination. We hadn’t long to wait. He made a trip to the Eagle’s
Nest a few days later. When stopped by the guard, he looked at him
defiantly and asked, “What do you take me for, a Nazi?” Steve rode up in
the elevator.

The Eagle’s Nest was devoid of architectural distinction. Built of cut
stone, it resembled a small fort, two stories high. From the huge,
octagonal room on the second floor—a room forty feet across, with windows
on five sides—one could look eastward into Austria, southward to Italy. A
mile below lay the green valleys and blue lakes of Bavaria. They used to
say that every time Hitler opened a window a cloud blew in. The severity
of the furnishings matched the bleakness of the exterior. An enormous
conference table occupied the center of the room. Before the stone
fireplace stood a mammoth sofa and two chairs. A smaller room adjoined
the main octagon at a lower level. The heavy carpet was frayed along one
side. The caretaker, pointing to the damage, said that in his frequent
frenzies Hitler used to gnaw the carpet, a habit which had earned him
the nickname of “_Der Teppich-Beisser_,” the rug-biter. Considering the
labor expended on this mountain eyrie, the place had been little used.
The same caretaker told us that Hitler had never stayed there overnight.
Daytime conferences had been held there occasionally, but that was all.

It was late when we got back to the rest house, so our guests postponed
their inspection of the Göring collection until the following morning.
That evening Lamont and I made a second and more thorough survey of the
rooms in which the paintings were stacked. We began with a room which
contained works of the Dutch, Flemish, German and French schools. The
inventory listed five Rembrandt portraits. One was the _Artist’s Sister_;
another was his son _Titus_; the third was his wife, _Saskia_; the fourth
was the portrait of a _Bearded Old Man_; and the fifth was the likeness
of a _Man with a Turban_.

We examined the backs of the pictures for markings which might give us
clues to previous ownership. Two of the portraits—those of Saskia and of
the artist’s sister—had belonged to Katz, one of the best known Dutch
dealers. I had been surprised to learn in Paris that Katz, a Jew, had
done business with the Nazis. But I was also told that only through
acceding to their demands for pictures had he been able to obtain permits
for his relatives to leave Holland. According to the information I
received, he had succeeded thereby in smuggling twenty-seven members of
his family into Switzerland. A revealing commentary on the extent and
quality of his paintings.

The portrait of Titus had been in the Van Pannwitz collection. Mme.
Catalina van Pannwitz, South American born, but a resident of the
Netherlands, I believe, had sold a large part of her collection to
Göring. Whether it had been a bona fide or a forced sale was said to be a
moot question.

Another important Dutch private collection, that of Ten Cate at Almelo,
had “contributed” the _Man with a Turban_. And the _Bearded Old Man_ had
been bought from the Swiss dealer, Wendland, who had agents in Paris. He
had allegedly discovered the painting in Marseilles.

These five pictures posed an interesting problem in restitution. To whom
should they be returned? Who were the rightful owners—as of the summer of
1945?

At the time we were beginning our work on the Göring collection, definite
plans for the restitution of works of art were being formulated by the
American Military Government. They were an important part of the general
restitution program then being planned by the Reparations, Deliveries
and Restitution Division of the U. S. Group Control Council. Pending the
implementation of the program, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives
Section of U. S. Forces, European Theater, was the technical custodian of
all art works eventually to be restituted.

Bancel La Farge, who became Chief of the Section when SHAEF dissolved,
had outlined the plans to us on our way back from the Eagle’s Nest
that afternoon. There were two main categories of works of art slated
for prompt restitution to the overrun countries from which they had
been taken. The first included all art objects _easily identifiable as
loot_—the great Jewish collections and the property of other “enemies
of the state” which had been seized by the Nazis. The second embraced
all art works _not_ readily identifiable as loot, but for which some
compensation was known or believed to have been paid by the Nazis.

The actual restitution was to be made on a wholesale scale. Works
of art were to be returned _en bloc_ to the claimant nations, _not_
to individual claimants of those nations. To expedite this “mass
evacuation” country by country, properly qualified art representatives
would be invited to the American Occupied Zone, specifically to the
Central Collecting Point at Munich, where they could present their
claims. Once their claims were substantiated—either by documents in their
possession or by records at the Collecting Point—the representatives
would be responsible for the actual removal.

We asked Bancel how the various representatives were to be selected.
He explained that several of the overrun countries had set up special
Fine Arts Commissions. The one in France was called the _Commission de
Récupération Artistique_. The one in Holland had an unpronounceable
name, so it was known simply as “C.G.R.”—the initials stood for the name
translated into French, _Commission de Récupération Générale_. And the
one in Belgium had such a long name that he couldn’t remember it offhand.
Czechoslovakia, Poland and Greece would probably establish similar
committees before long. Each commission would choose a representative
and submit his name to the MFA&A Section for approval. Once the names
were approved and the necessary military clearances obtained, the
representatives could enter the American Zone, proceed to Munich and
start to work.

Bancel said that each representative would have to sign a receipt in
the name of his country before he could remove any works of art from
the Collecting Point. The receipt would release our government from all
further responsibility for the objects concerned—as of the time they left
the Collecting Point. Furthermore, it would contain a clause binding the
receiving nation to rectify any mistakes in restitution. For example, if
the Dutch representative inadvertently included a painting which later
turned out to be the property of a Belgian, then, by the provisions of
the receipt, Holland would be obligated to return that painting to
Belgium. The chief merit of this system of fine arts restitution lay
in the fact that it relieved American personnel of the heavy burden of
settling individual claims. From the point of view of our government,
this was an extremely important consideration because of the limited
number of men available for so formidable an undertaking. And from the
point of view of the receiving nations, the system had the advantage of
accelerating the recovery of their looted treasures.

In the room where Lamont and I had seen the Rembrandts, we found a pair
of panels by Boucher, the great French master of the eighteenth century.
Each represented an ardent youth making amorous advances to a coy and
but half-protesting maiden in a rustic setting. They were appropriately
entitled _Seduction_ and were said to have been painted for the boudoir
of Madame de Pompadour. According to the inventory, the panels had been
bought from Wendland, the dealer of Paris and Lucerne.

These slightly prurient canvases flanked one of the most beautiful
fifteenth century Flemish paintings I had ever seen, _The Mystic Marriage
of St. Catherine_ by Gerard David. The Madonna with the Child on her lap
was portrayed against a landscape background, St. Catherine kneeling at
her right, dressed in russet velvet. Round about were grouped five other
female saints, each richly gowned in a different color. It was not a
large composition, measuring only about twenty-five inches square, but
it possessed the dignity and monumentality of a great altarpiece. The
authenticity of its sentiment put to shame the facile virtuosity of the
two Bouchers which stood on either side.

The second room we visited that evening contained an equally
miscellaneous assortment of pictures. Here the canvases were even more
varied in size. A _Dutch Interior_ by Pieter de Hooch, a _View of the
Piazza San Marco_ by Canaletto, and two Courbet landscapes were lined
up along one wall. The de Hooch, an exceptionally fine example of the
work of this seventeenth century master, was listed in the inventory as
having belonged to Baron Édouard de Rothschild of Paris. The Courbets
were something of a rarity, as Göring had few French paintings of the
nineteenth century. One of the landscapes, a winter scene, was an
important work, signed and dated 1869. The inventory did not indicate
from whom it had been acquired. In one corner stood a full-length
portrait of the Duke of Richmond by Van Dyck. Our list stated that it
had come from the Katz collection. Beside it was a brilliant landscape
by Rubens. There were perhaps ten other pictures in the room, among them
several nondescript panels which appeared to be by an artist of the
fifteenth century Florentine school, a portrait by the sixteenth century
German master, Bernhard Strigel, a “fête champêtre” by Lancret, and two
or three seascapes of the seventeenth century Dutch school.

Lamont and I had been looking at this assemblage for some little time
before we noticed an unframed canvas standing on the washbasin by the
window. The upper edge of the picture leaned against the wall mirror at
an angle which made it difficult to get a good look at the composition
from where we stood. Closer inspection revealed the subject to be _Christ
and the Woman Taken in Adultery_. I studied it for a few minutes and was
still puzzled. Turning to Lamont I asked, “What do you make of this? I
can’t even place it as to school, let alone guess the artist.”

“Unless I am very much mistaken,” he said slowly, “that is the famous
Göring ‘Vermeer.’”

“You’re crazy,” I said. “Why, I could paint something which would look
more like a Vermeer than that.”

We consulted the inventory. Lamont was right. A few lines below the
listing of the Rubens landscape—a picture I had just been admiring in
another part of the room—appeared the entry “Vermeer, Jan ... ‘The
Adulteress’ ... Canvas, 90 cm. × 96 cm.” The subject coincided with that
of the picture on the washbasin. The measurements were identical.

I tried to visualize the picture properly framed, properly lighted and
hanging in a richly furnished room. But still I couldn’t conceive how
such trappings could blind one to the flat greens and blues, the lack
of subtlety in the modeling of the flesh tones, the absence of that
convincing rendering of the “total visual effect” which Vermeer had so
completely mastered.

“Who attributed this painting to Vermeer?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lamont, “but it is related stylistically to the
‘Vermeer,’ in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, the _Christ at Emmaus_.”

So this was the painting Hofer was talking about; this was the painting
Göring had given the nurse. One of the notorious Van Meegeren fakes.

Lamont’s reference to the Boymans’ “Vermeer” called to mind the great
furor in the art world nearly a decade ago when that picture had turned
up in the art market.

Dr. Bredius, the famous connoisseur of Dutch painting, discovered the
picture in Paris in 1936. He was convinced that it was a hitherto unknown
work by Vermeer, the rarest of all Dutch masters. The subject matter was
of special interest to Dr. Bredius, for the _only_ other Vermeer which
dealt with a religious theme was the one in the National Gallery at
Edinburgh.

The past history of the picture was as reassuring as that of many another
accepted “old master.” Dr. Bredius learned that it had belonged to a
Dutch family. One of the daughters had married a Frenchman in the middle
eighties. The picture had been a wedding present and she had taken it
with her to Paris. But their house had been too small for such a large
painting—it was four feet high and nearly square—so the canvas had been
relegated to the attic. According to the story, they hadn’t known that it
was particularly valuable or they might have sold it. In any case, the
picture remained in the attic until the couple died. It had come to light
again when the house was being dismantled.

Through Dr. Bredius, the Boymans Museum had become interested in the
picture. Other experts were called in. A few questioned it, but the
majority accepted it as a Vermeer. In 1937, the directors of the Boymans
Museum purchased the _Christ at Emmaus_ for the staggering price of three
hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

Unknown to the outside world, several more Vermeers were “discovered”
during the war years. All were of religious subjects. One was bought
at a fantastic price by Van Beuningen, the great private collector
of Rotterdam; another by the Nazi-controlled Dutch Government for an
exorbitant sum; and a third by Hermann Göring. Though the Reichsmarschall
did not pay cash for his Vermeer, the price was high; he traded one
hundred and thirty-seven pictures from his collection. According to
Hofer, his adviser and agent, the paintings he gave in exchange were all
of high quality.

The final chapter in the story of these newly found Vermeers is one of
the most interesting in the annals of the art world. At the close of the
war, Dr. van Gelder, the director of the Mauritshuis—the museum at The
Hague—and other Dutch art authorities began an official investigation. It
was curious that so many lost Vermeers had come to light in such a short
space of time. It was recalled that in 1942 an artist named Van Meegeren
had delivered a million guilders to a Dutch bank for credit to his
account. The money was in thousand-guilder notes, which the Germans had
ordered withdrawn from circulation at that time. The artist was not known
to be a man of means and his mediocre talents as a painter could not have
enabled him to amass such a fortune.

Van Meegeren was questioned and finally admitted that he had painted
the _Christ at Emmaus_ and the other lately discovered “Vermeers.” Even
after he had made a full confession, there were certain Dutch critics
who doubted the truth of his statements. This nettled Van Meegeren, and
he promptly offered to demonstrate his prowess. His choice of a subject
might have been symbolic: Jesus Confounding the Doctors. It took him
two months to finish the picture. The work was done in the presence of
several witnesses. He painted entirely from memory, using no models.

In the course of the demonstration, he explained the ingenious methods
he had used to defraud the experts. In the first place his compositions
were original but painted _in the style_ of Vermeer. In the second, he
used old canvas and only the pigments known to the Dutch masters of the
seventeenth century. It had not been difficult to pick up at auctions
old paintings of little value. It was not always necessary to remove the
existing pictures. He frequently adapted portions of them to his own
compositions, or, conversely, rearranged his to take advantage of part of
an old picture. He was scrupulously careful to avoid modern zinc white
and used only lead white which had been employed by the artists of the
seventeenth century. He took equal precautions with his other colors,
using ground lapis lazuli and cochineal for his blues and reds. He had
obtained these, at great expense, from abroad.

At the time I was evacuating the Göring pictures, the Dutch government
was completing its investigation of Van Meegeren’s activities.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences publicly
announced its findings, confirming the fact that Henrik van Meegeren was
the author of the celebrated picture in the Boymans Museum and also of
“other forgeries done so marvelously that the best art experts pronounced
them genuine.”

Bancel La Farge and John Walker returned the following morning. Although
it was Sunday, our crew of GIs had reported for work at seven-thirty and,
under Steve’s supervision, continued to pack books. Some eight thousand
volumes remained to be placed in cases before they could be loaded onto
the trucks. While this work was in progress Lamont and I made a tour
of the pictures with our guests. We looked again at the rooms we had
visited the night before, singling out the paintings we thought would be
of greatest interest to them, such as the best of the Dutch and Flemish
masters, the Cranachs, the eighteenth century French pictures and the
finest sculptures. We concluded the tour at noon. Our visitors had to get
started on their way to the mine at Alt Aussee.

After lunch Lamont joined the crew at work on the books, while I
went in search of Sergeant Peck. We had explained to him that all of
the paintings would have to be numbered before we could prepare them
for loading. The sergeant had agreed, but I was not certain that he
altogether understood why we were so insistent on this point. I found
Peck in his room at the end of the south wing of the rest house. As
usual, he was working on the inventory. He was a serious, scholarly
fellow. Before entering the Army, he had been an art teacher at an
Ohio college, so his present assignment was very much to his liking.
He had done a remarkably fine job on the inventory. It was a detailed
seventy-page document giving the title of each picture, the name of the
artist, the dimensions of the canvas and, where known, the name of the
collection from which it had been acquired.

I told him that we hoped to get started on the pictures the next morning.
We would arrange them in rooms on the second floor of the center section
of the building. Those rooms were the ones most accessible to the door
leading to our loading platform. We would want him to be responsible for
checking off each picture as it was carried onto the truck. Since there
were more than a thousand paintings in the inventory, there was only one
practical way this checking could be done: by going through all the rooms
and numbering each picture, setting down the corresponding number on the
correct entry in the inventory.

I asked if he could spare the time to help me with the numbering that
afternoon. He agreed; so, armed with the inventory and some chalk, we
began with the rooms on the second floor. By midafternoon we had finished
marking two hundred pictures. Lamont could start with these the next
forenoon. They would keep him busy until we had numbered an additional
batch.

At three Steve and I drove over to Brigade Headquarters to make
arrangements for escort vehicles. We expected to have our first convoy
ready to leave for Munich the following afternoon. It was only a
ninety-mile run, Autobahn all the way, so two jeeps would suffice.

The 44th AAA Brigade was established in General Keitel’s old
headquarters, about two miles northwest of Berchtesgaden. With its
smooth gravel driveways and well-tended lawns, the place had the air
of a luxurious country club. The administrative offices were located
in an L-shaped building, a modern adaptation of the familiar Bavarian
provincial style. The surrounding buildings—barracks and small houses—had
been designed in the same style.

We were received by Captain Putman, the Chief of Staff’s adjutant, a
brisk young man, who promised to provide us with the necessary escort
vehicles.

“Cocky fellow, wasn’t he?” said Steve as we left the office.

“Yes, but I have a feeling we’ll get our jeeps on schedule,” I said.

My hunch was right. Only once during the entire Berchtesgaden operation
did the escort vehicles fail to report for duty at the appointed hour.
That one time was when Captain Putman had a day off.

By noon the next day our first convoy of four trucks was ready for the
road. Two of the trucks were filled with books, twenty-seven cases of
them. The other two contained twenty-five cases, but not cases of books:
four were filled with glassware (308 pieces); seven contained porcelain
(1135 pieces); eight contained gold and silver plate (415 pieces); and
the remaining six were packed with rugs. These were from Karinhall, near
Berlin, the largest of Göring’s seven households.

As soon as we had dispatched the convoy, Lamont and four members of the
work party resumed the sorting and stacking of the numbered paintings.
Sergeant Peck and I, with two helpers to shift the larger canvases,
proceeded with the numbering. Steve took off for Alt Aussee to pick up
Kress, the photographer, and his paraphernalia.

That night Lamont decided we should improve our quarters. This involved
moving from the room we occupied at the front of the building to a much
larger one at the back. The new room had several advantages which the old
one lacked. It had been the reading room of the rest house in the days of
the Luftwaffe occupancy and was attractively paneled in natural oak with
built-in bookshelves. It was thirty feet long and fifteen wide, nearly
twice the size of our former room, and opened onto a broad porch. There
were French doors and two large windows which afforded a spectacular view
of the mountain range to the east. The Eagle’s Nest crowned the highest
of the peaks. At one end of the room was an alcove, with a built-in desk
and couch. With a little fixing up, it could be turned into a comfortable
sitting room.

Before we could transfer our belongings to this spacious apartment, we
had to clear out a few of the Reichsmarschall’s—half a dozen pieces of
sculpture and three large altarpieces. The outstanding piece of sculpture
was a life-size statue of the Magdalene which Göring had acquired from
the Louvre. Similarly, the most important of the three altarpieces
was a big triptych which also had come from the Louvre. Göring did
not remove these objects by force. He obtained them by exchange after
prolonged negotiations with the officials of the museum. According to
the information given me, both parties were well pleased with the trade.
As I recall, the Louvre received six objects from the Reichsmarschall’s
collection in return for the triptych and the statue. I was told that
one of the six pieces was a painting by Coypel, the eighteenth century
French artist, which had belonged to one of the Paris Rothschilds. It was
because they were of German workmanship that Göring particularly coveted
the pieces which he obtained from the Louvre. It is presumed that this
did not prejudice the Louvre in their favor.

The statue, portraying the Magdalene clothed only in her long blonde
tresses, was known as “la belle allemande,” the beautiful German. It
was an exceptionally fine example, in polychromed wood, of the work of
Gregor Erhardt, a Swabian sculptor of the first quarter of the sixteenth
century. I fancied that Göring detected a resemblance between the statue
and his wife. Lamont and I carried the statue down to the first floor of
the rest house and placed it at the foot of the stairs.

It was one of the last objects we packed for shipment and, during our
stay at Berchtesgaden, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had caught
Frau Göring on her way to the bath. I was not the only one with that
idea. One evening I found the GI guard draping a raincoat about the
Magdalene’s shoulders. I had given strict orders that the guards were to
touch nothing in the collection, so I stopped to have a word with him on
the subject. He said with a sheepish look, “I didn’t mean to break the
rules, sir, but I thought Emmy looked cold.”

The altarpiece which Göring acquired from the Louvre was a sumptuous
affair consisting of three panels painted with nearly life-size figures
against a gold background. It was by the Master of the Holy Kinship, an
artist of the Cologne School of the fifteenth century. The large center
panel represented the _Presentation in the Temple_; the right-hand panel,
the _Adoration of the Magi_; the left-hand panel, _Christ Appearing to
Mary_. During its recent peregrinations the central panel had cracked
from top to bottom. But fortunately the cleavage, which ran through the
center of the middle panel, fell in an area devoid of figures. An adroit
restorer could easily repair the damage. We shifted the altarpiece to an
adjoining room.

The two remaining altarpieces were works of the fifteenth century French
school. One represented the _Crucifixion_; the other, the _Passion of
Christ_. The _Crucifixion_ had belonged to the Paris dealer Seligmann,
whose collection had been confiscated by the Nazis. The inventory did
not show the name of the former owner of the other panel. A highly
imaginative composition with nocturnal illumination, it was attributed to
the rare French master, Jean Bellegambe. As we carried the altarpieces
into the room in which we had placed the one from the Louvre, I remarked
to Lamont that for a godless fellow Göring seemed to have had a nice
taste for religious subjects. The pieces of sculpture, which we added to
the collection in the lower hallway, were also of devotional character:
two Gothic statues of St. George and the Dragon, one of St. Barbara, and
two of the Madonna and Child.

We brought three large wardrobes from our old room, placed two of them
at right angles to the walls to form a partition, and set the third in a
corner of the new room. The beds came next. In another hour we had the
furniture arranged to our satisfaction. By the time we had added a silver
lamp, borrowed temporarily from the Göring collection, and tacked up a
few of our photographs, the place looked as though we had been living
there for weeks.

Without Steve the loading went more slowly, but we managed to finish
three trucks by two o’clock the next day. The driver of one of the
escort jeeps had brought us a message from Munich that it would simplify
the work at the Central Collecting Point if we dispatched the trucks
in groups of three or four instead of waiting until we had six loaded.
At the Alt Aussee mine we hadn’t been able to work on such a schedule
because we lacked sufficient escort vehicles. We didn’t have that problem
at Berchtesgaden because the shorter distance made possible a one day
turnaround. The jeeps could easily make the round trip in half a day.
Accordingly, we sent off our second convoy that afternoon. The trucks
contained the rest of the books—forty-three cases in all—sixty-five
paintings and fifteen of the larger pieces of sculpture.

In anticipation of Kress’ arrival, we spent the next morning assembling
all the paintings that appeared to have suffered recent damage of any
kind. His first job would be to make a photographic record which we
would include in our final report on the evacuation of the collection.
We found thirty-four pictures in this category. Only two had sustained
serious injury. These were the side panels of a large triptych by the
sixteenth century Italian artist, Raffaellino del Garbo. They had been
badly splintered by machine-gun fire while the collection was still
aboard the special train which had brought it to Berchtesgaden. Three
other panels bore the marks of stray bullets, but the harm done was
relatively slight. In general, the damage consisted of minor nicks
and scratches and water spots. Considering the hazards to which the
collection had been exposed, the pictures had come through remarkably
well. I was reminded of what George Stout had said, “There’s a lot of
nonsense talked about the fragility of the ‘old masters.’ By and large,
they are a hardy lot. Otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

We had worked our crew all day Sunday, so we told them to knock off
as soon as we had finished selecting and segregating the damaged
pictures. With the afternoon to ourselves, we turned our attention to
the miscellaneous assortment of objects in the “Gold Room.” This was
the name given the small room on the ground floor in which Sergeant
Peck had stored the things of great intrinsic value. There were
seventy-five pieces in all: gold chalices studded with precious stones;
silver tankards; reliquaries of gold and enamel work; boxes of jade and
malachite; candelabra, clocks and lamps of marble and gold; precious
plaques of carved ivory; and sets of gold table ornaments. They presented
a specialized packing job which Lamont and I could handle better alone
than with inexperienced helpers.

Our first problem was to find some small packing cases. We searched
the rest house without success. Then Lamont remembered seeing a pile
of individual wooden file cabinets in the little chapel where most of
the furniture was stored. These were admirably suited to our purpose.
They were rectangular boxes about six feet long and two feet high. Each
was divided into three compartments. There were thirty of them—more
than enough for the job. We had a supply of flannel cloths which we had
borrowed from a packing firm in Munich. After wrapping each piece, we
placed it in one of the compartments of the file cabinet. We stuffed the
compartments with excelsior so that the objects could not move about.

A few of the items were equipped with special leather cases. Among these
were two swords: one, with a beautifully etched blade of Toledo steel,
had been presented to Göring by the Spanish air force; the other, with
a jewel-studded gold handle, had been a gift from Mussolini. There was
also a gold baton encrusted with precious stones, a present from the
Reichsmarschall’s own air force.

Of all these objects, perhaps twenty were of modern workmanship. In
contrast to the older things, they were ornate without being beautiful.
Ugliest of the lot was a standing lamp. The stalk, eight inches in
diameter, was a shaft of beaten gold. The shade, with a filigree design,
was also of gold, as were the pull cords. Rivaling it in costly vulgarity
was a set of gold table ornaments. The large centerpiece consisted of
an elliptical framework. At each end and in the center of the two sides
stood Egyptian maidens, fashioned of gold, four feet high. The German
slang word for such stuff is “kitsch.” I think the closest English
equivalent is “corny.”

Toward the end of the afternoon we were waited on by a delegation of
three officers from the 101st Airborne Division. They had come to inquire
if we would consider turning over to them the gold sword which Mussolini
had given to Göring. They wanted it as a trophy for a club of 101st
Airborne officers which they were organizing. They planned to set up a
clubroom when they got back home and have annual reunions. The sword,
they said, would be such an appropriate souvenir. I told them that I had
been directed to ship everything to Munich and did not have authority to
make any other disposition of objects in the collection. But, since the
sword could not be regarded as a “cultural object”—a fact which I called
to their attention—I suggested that they take the matter up with Third
Army Headquarters in Munich. I refrained from informing them that, for
all of me, they could have their pick of the modern objects in the “Gold
Room.”

We made an interesting discovery that afternoon. Rummaging in a closet
off the “Gold Room” we found a stack of photograph albums. At the bottom
of the heap lay an enormous portfolio. It contained architect’s drawings
for the proposed expansion of Karinhall. The estate, greatly enlarged,
was to have become a public museum. We had heard that Göring intended
to present his art collection to the Reich on his sixtieth birthday.
Here was concrete proof of those intentions. Each drawing bore the date
“January 1945.”

Steve returned in triumph at noon the next day. With him in the command
car was Kress, looking more timid than ever. Steve said that Kress had
had a bad time after we left Alt Aussee; the boys at House 71 had clapped
him in jail and left him there for two days before interrogating him.
Steve had been “burned up” about it and had given them a piece of his
mind. He said contemptuously that he had known all along they didn’t have
anything on Kress. But he was content to let bygones be bygones. Steve
had his man Friday back again.

He pointed happily to the six-by-six which had pulled up behind the
command car. All of Kress’ photographic equipment was packed up inside
it. There was a tremendous lot of stuff: three large cameras, a metal
table for drying prints, reflectors, a sink, pipes of various sizes,
boxes of film and paper, and a couple of large cabinets. Steve planned to
get everything installed at once. Kress was to sleep in one of the rooms
of the rest house. An adjoining room was to be set up as a darkroom.

We showed Steve our new quarters and suggested that Kress take over our
old room. The one next door would make a good darkroom. I asked Steve how
he was going to get all the stuff installed. He’d have to have a plumber.
That didn’t bother Steve. He asked me to tell the mess sergeant that
Kress was to have his meals with the civilian help in the kitchen. He’d
take care of everything else. Steve was as good as his word. He found a
plumber and by the end of the day Kress was ready to start work.

Notwithstanding these interruptions, Lamont and I managed to load and
dispatch a convoy of three trucks. This third convoy contained two
hundred paintings, thirty tapestries, fifteen more pieces of large
sculpture and a dozen pieces of Italian Renaissance furniture.

At odd moments during our first days at Berchtesgaden, we had worried
about the sculpture. In the first three convoys we had disposed of only
thirty of the two hundred and fifty pieces. Most of those remaining were
just under life size. We had no materials with which to build crates.
And even if we had had the lumber, the labor of building them would have
greatly delayed the evacuation. That evening we found the solution of
the problem. The three of us were standing on the open porch outside our
room after supper. Two of the trucks were parked by the loading platform
directly below. Why not make a checkerboard pattern of ropes, strung
waist high across the truck bed? The floor of the truck could be padded
with excelsior. We could set a statue in each of the squares. The ropes
would hold each piece in place. If we stuffed quantities of excelsior
between the statues, they wouldn’t rub. Perhaps it was a crazy idea. On
the other hand, it might work.

The following morning Steve and two of the men prepared the truck while
Lamont and I selected the statues for the trial load. We chose thirty of
the largest pieces. We figured on seven or eight rows, with four statues
in each row. Kress set up his camera on the porch and photographed the
progress of the operation. One by one the long row of madonnas, saints
and angels was set in place. We hadn’t been far off in our calculations.
There were twenty-nine in all. The truck looked like a tumbrel of the
French Revolution filled with victims for the guillotine. It was a new
technique in the packing of sculpture. Steve said we’d have to send
George Stout a photograph. “And we’ll have to send for more excelsior,
too,” Lamont said. He was quite right. We had used up the last shred.

That afternoon Steve combed the countryside for a fresh supply of
excelsior, returning just before supper with three new bales. In the
meantime, Lamont went over, with Kress, the paintings to be photographed.
Sergeant Peck and I completed numbering the last of the pictures.

The next day we loaded three more trucks. With Steve on hand to crack the
whip over the men, the loading went fast, so fast in fact that Sergeant
Peck had a hard time checking off the paintings as they were hoisted onto
the trucks. We packed four hundred pictures, the cases containing the
gold and silver objects which Lamont and I had finished the day before,
and another dozen pieces of furniture. The convoy—our fourth—got off in
the early afternoon. We placed a special guard on the truck with the
sculpture to make sure that the driver didn’t smoke on the way.

We finished one more truck and stopped for a cigarette. It was a hot day
and we didn’t feel like doing any more work. Steve had gone up to the
darkroom to see Kress. Lamont said, “Let’s go up to Munich.”

“That suits me, but what excuse have we got?” I asked.

“If we must have an excuse, I can think of at least four,” he said
thoughtfully. “We’re out of cigarettes and candy. We ought to be on hand
when they unpack the sculpture at the Collecting Point. We’ve worked for
a week without taking a day off. And perhaps there’ll be some mail for us
at Posey’s office.”

“What about the little brown bear? Do you think he’ll mind our taking
off?” I asked. This was Lamont’s name for Steve, but it was never used
when he was within earshot.

“Steve’s had his trip for this week,” said Lamont, meaning Steve’s trip
to Alt Aussee.

Sergeant Peck, who had overheard part of our conversation, asked if he
might join us. We told him to be ready in ten minutes and went off to
notify Steve of our plans and to pack up our musette bags. Steve was
so busy helping Kress with his developing that he scarcely paid any
attention to us. After leaving him a final injunction to have at least
three trucks loaded before we got back the next evening, we called for
the command car. The driver, a restless redhead named Freedberg, who
hated the monotonous routine at Berchtesgaden, was delighted with the
idea of going to Munich. Sergeant Peck appeared and we set off.

We chose the shorter road through the mountains and overtook the convoy
on the Autobahn, halfway to Munich. The front escort jeep was holding
the speed down to thirty-five miles an hour, in accordance with my
instructions. The driver waved envyingly as we passed them doing fifty.
Twenty miles from Munich, Freedberg turned west off the Autobahn and took
the back road from Bad Tölz, a short cut which brought us directly to
Third Army Headquarters.

We arrived at Captain Posey’s office just as Lincoln Kirstein was leaving
for chow. He told us that the captain had gone to Pilsen the middle of
the week but was due back that evening. “There’s quite a lot of mail for
both of you,” Lincoln said. He handed us each a thick batch of letters.
It was the first mail I had received from home in six weeks. There were
forty-two letters!

“I told you there’d be mail for us,” said Lamont with a satisfied smile.

We had supper with Craig Smyth and Ham Coulter at the Detachment that
evening. Craig said that the convoy had not arrived before he left the
Collecting Point, but two of his German workmen were to be on duty the
next morning, even though it was Sunday. We arranged to meet him at his
office and supervise the unloading. Lincoln had said that Posey would not
be back before ten, so we spent the evening with Craig and Ham at their
apartment.

Just before we returned to Third Army Headquarters, Ham gave us a small
paper-bound volume. It was entitled _The Ludwigs of Bavaria_. The author
was Henry Channon.

“This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read,” Ham said.
“You might take it along with you.”

I thanked him, and stuck it in my musette bag. Before our operations
in Bavaria ended two months later, that little book had come to mean
a great deal to the members of the evacuation team. We called it our
“Bavarian bible.” So alluring were Channon’s descriptions of the
“Seven Wonders of Bavaria” that whenever we had a free day—or even
a few hours to ourselves—we made excursions to these architectural
fantasies: the swirling, baroque churches of Wies, Weltenburg,
Ottobeuren and Vierzehnheiligen; the Amalienburg and the palace of
Herrenchiemsee. The Residenz at Würzburg, which we had seen, was one
of the seven. Unofficially we added an eighth to the list: Schloss
Linderhof, Ludwig II’s opulent little palace near Oberammergau—ornate and
vulgar, yet fascinating in its lonely mountain setting. But these were
extracurricular activities, falling outside the orbit of our official
work.

We found Captain Posey at his office when we got there a few minutes
before ten that evening. He asked us for a complete account of our
operations at Berchtesgaden. We reported that we had sent a total of
fourteen truckloads up to Munich the first week; that we had cleaned
out half the pictures, but that we had just begun on the sculpture. We
estimated that it would take us another ten days to finish; we would
probably fill seventeen or eighteen more trucks.

We asked him what plans he would have for us when we completed the job.
He said he might send us to the Castle of Neuschwanstein. The place
was full of things looted from Paris. In fact, it was one of the major
repositories of the _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_. The French were clamoring to
have it evacuated. Then there was another big repository in a Carthusian
monastery at Buxheim. That too contained loot from Paris. Perhaps we
could take a run down to both places and size up the jobs after we had
finished with the Göring things. The captain was tired after his long
trip, so we didn’t go into details about either of the two prospective
assignments. He offered us a billet for the night and the three of us
turned in shortly after eleven. It was none too soon for me: I still had
forty-two unopened letters from home in the pocket of my jacket.

When we arrived at the Collecting Point the next morning, the two German
workmen who had been with me at Hohenfurth were starting to unpack the
truck with the sculpture. Lamont and I examined each statue as it was
lifted from its nest of excelsior. All twenty-nine had come through
without a scratch. Our experiment was a success. We would be able to
use the same technique with the rest of the sculpture. I instructed the
workmen to leave all of the excelsior in the truck, as we had none to
spare.

I persuaded Craig to drive back to Berchtesgaden with us for the
night. He looked tired and I thought the change would do him good. His
responsibilities at the Collecting Point—the “Bau,” as we called it (our
abbreviation for Verwaltungsbau)—were heavy; and he never took a day off.

On the return trip he told us his latest troubles. Only three days ago a
small bomb had exploded in the basement of the “Bau.” It had blown one
of the young German workmen to bits. Craig gave all the grisly details,
which included discovering one of the poor fellow’s arms in a heap of
debris fifty feet from the scene of the explosion. The tragedy had had
one beneficial result. For weeks Craig had been harping on the subject of
additional guards for the Collecting Point. His words had fallen on deaf
ears—until the bomb episode. He said that a general and three colonels
arrived at the building within half an hour. Since then everyone had
been so “security-conscious” that he had had no further difficulty in
obtaining the desired number of guards. The Bomb Disposal Unit inspected
the premises and some pointed comments were made about the thoroughness
of the original survey.

In our absence Steve had loaded three trucks. As a reward for his
labors, I suggested that he take Craig up to the Eagle’s Nest the
following morning. While they were gone, Lamont and I finished three
more loads. We had the convoy of six lined up by noon. Craig returned
to Munich in one of the escort jeeps. This fifth convoy contained
one hundred and sixty-seven paintings, one hundred and six pieces
of sculpture, twenty-five tapestries, sixty-eight cases filled with
bibelots, and fifty-three pieces of furniture. It was our largest convoy
out of Berchtesgaden thus far.

It was also the first one to break down. Late in the afternoon, the rear
escort jeep arrived at the rest house with word that two of the trucks
had broken down fifteen miles out of Berchtesgaden. Steve and I drove
to Berchtesgaden to arrange to have them towed in for reloading. I also
wanted to do a little investigating. There could be little excuse for
breakdowns on the Munich road if the trucks had been in good mechanical
condition when they started out.

On the way into town, Steve said, “Tom, I think I know what caused the
trouble. I didn’t think of it till just now. But the other day on the
road back from Alt Aussee, two six-by-sixes passed me at a hell of a
clip. I thought I recognized the drivers as two of ours.”

I questioned the lieutenant in charge of the drivers. He professed
ignorance of any unauthorized junkets back to Alt Aussee.

“I am going to have a word with Tiny,” said Steve as we left the
lieutenant’s room. Tiny was the head mechanic and the only one of the
entire crew who was always on the job. Steve wanted to talk to him alone,
so I waited in the car.

A few minutes later he came back with a satisfied grin on his face. “I
got the whole story,” he said. “The drivers have been racing back and
forth to Alt Aussee all the time we’ve been here. They were crazy about
it up at the mine. Tiny says they hate it here at Berchtesgaden.”

“Well, we’ll fix that,” I said. I went back to see the lieutenant. “How
many drivers have you got and how many trucks?” I asked.

“Sixteen drivers and thirteen trucks,” he said.

“Send eight of the drivers and five of the trucks up to Munich first
thing in the morning and have them report to the trucking company. We can
finish the job here without them.”

Steve always sang when he was in a particularly happy frame of mind. That
evening, on the way back to the rest house, he was in exceptionally good
voice.

Five days later we completed the evacuation of the Göring collection.
The last two convoys, of four and seven trucks respectively, contained
the larger pictures, one hundred and seventy-seven of them; sixty
pieces of sculpture, twenty miscellaneous cases, sixty-seven pieces
of furniture and two hundred empty picture frames. We had heavy rain
that last week and the mud was ankle-deep around the loading platform.
Although it was early August, the nights were cold and the rest house,
emptied of its treasures, was a cheerless place. We were glad to see
the last of the trucks pull out of the drive. It had been a strenuous
operation—thirty-one truckloads in thirteen days. In the early afternoon
we would collect our personal belongings and return to Munich.




(8)

_LOOTERS’ CASTLE: SCHLOSS NEUSCHWANSTEIN_


A telephone call from Brigade Headquarters changed our plans. It was
Major Luther Miller of G-2. He had just made an inspection of a house
belonging to one of Göring’s henchmen and there was a lot of “art stuff”
in it. He had reported the find to Third Army Headquarters and Captain
Posey had told him to get in touch with me. Could I go up to the house
with him that afternoon?

Major Miller picked me up after lunch. He was a handsome fellow, tall
and sparely built. He had an easy, pleasant manner. As we drove along
he gave me further details about the house to which we were going. It
had been occupied until the day before by Fritz Görnnert and his wife.
Görnnert had been the social secretary and close confidant of Göring. The
Görnnerts had been living on the second and third floors. They shared the
house with a man named Angerer, who had the first floor. Both Görnnert
and Angerer had been apprehended and were now in jail. Major Miller had
found a suspiciously large number of tapestries and other art objects on
the premises. He thought they might be loot.

The house was an unpretentious villa hidden among pine trees high up
in the hills above the town. The place was under guard. On the ground
floor we examined the contents of a small store-room. There were several
cases bearing Angerer’s name and three or four large crates containing
Italian furniture. A similar store-room on the second floor contained a
dozen tapestries, a pile of Oriental rugs, a large collection of church
vestments and nearly a hundred rare textiles mounted on cardboard. I
noticed that the tapestries, vestments and textiles were individually
tagged and that the markings were in French.

Concealed beneath the tapestries were ten cases, each one about two feet
square and a foot high. Major Miller hadn’t seen these before. On each
one was stenciled in Gothic letters: “Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.”
They contained a magnificent collection of Oriental weapons.

In a room which Görnnert had apparently used for a study we found six
handsome leather portfolios filled with Old Master drawings. The drawings
were by Dutch and French artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

There was a possibility that all of these things, with the exception of
the weapon collection, which Göring had probably entrusted to Görnnert,
were the legitimate property of the tenants. It was equally possible
that they had been illegally acquired. In the circumstances, Major
Miller wished me to take charge of them. I said that I could take them
to the Central Collecting Point at Munich where they would be held in
safekeeping until ownership had been determined.

The house had been thoroughly ransacked. Drawers had been pulled out and
their contents disarranged. Closet doors stood open and the clothing
on the hangers had been gone over. The beds were rumpled, for even the
mattresses had been searched. Despite the topsy-turvy look of things,
there was no evidence of wanton destruction. The search had been thorough
and methodical. I asked the major what his men had been looking for, but
his answer was noncommittal. He did say, though, that the discovery of
documents hidden in a false partition in the living room had prompted the
search.

The following morning Steve, Lamont and I went to the Görnnert house in
the command car. It would have been difficult to take a large truck up
the narrow winding road. In any case, I thought we could probably load
all of the stuff in the command car. Major Miller had sent one of his
officers ahead with the key. The house had been searched again. This time
it looked as though a cyclone had struck it. Pillows had been ripped
open; drawers had been emptied on the floor; clothes were scattered all
over the bedrooms. I was relieved to find that the things which we had
come to take away had not been tampered with. I asked the lieutenant with
the key what had been going on in the house, and he muttered something
about “those CIC boys.” I seemed to have touched on a sore subject,
so I didn’t pursue the matter. Lamont, who knew the ways of the Army
far better than I, said that probably there had been a “jurisdictional
dispute” over who had the right to search the place and that perhaps two
different outfits had taken a crack at it. I was glad that Major Miller’s
emissary was there to bear witness to _our_ behavior.

We bundled up the rugs, tapestries and textiles and got out as quickly
as possible. They completely filled the command car. Lamont and Steve
sat in front with the driver. I wedged myself in between the top of the
pile and the canvas top of the car. There was no room for the ten cases
of weapons, so I sent a message to Major Miller to have one of his men
deliver them to us later in the day.

When we got back to the rest house, Kress had dismantled his darkroom
and after lunch we loaded the photographic equipment onto the one truck
we had held over for that purpose. There was ample space for the things
from the Görnnert house. Before packing them we had to make a complete
list of the items. There were two hundred and thirteen church vestments,
eighty-one mounted textiles, twenty rugs and eleven tapestries. It was
suppertime when we finished. As the ten cases of weapons hadn’t arrived,
we decided to wait till morning and load everything at once.

That evening Major Anderson of the 101st Airborne came over with the
official receipt which I was to sign. It was an elaborate document
comprising Sergeant Peck’s seventy-page inventory and a covering letter
from the C.O. of the 101st Airborne Division to the Commanding General of
the Third Army stating that I had received from Major Anderson the entire
Göring collection for delivery to the Central Collecting Point at Munich.
Having discharged his responsibility, the major was free to go home to
the U.S.A. That called for a celebration and he had brought a bottle
of cognac. It was sixty years old. He said that it came from Hitler’s
private stock at the Berghof. Even Steve, who had harbored a slight
grudge toward Anderson since the night of our arrival in Berchtesgaden,
relented and the four of us toasted the successful evacuation of the
Göring treasures.

The major had another surprise for us: he had engaged a room at the
Berchtesgadener Hof. He insisted that the three of us move over from the
rest house. The next day was Sunday. What would be the point of going up
to Munich? We had been working hard for two weeks. Why not take life easy
for a day or two?

The Berchtesgadener Hof was a luxurious resort hotel. Its appointments
were modern and lavish. In the days of the Nazi regime, it had been
patronized by all visiting dignitaries, save the chosen few who had been
invited to stay at the Berghof or the small hotel at Obersalzberg. It
was now being used by the Army as a “leave hotel.” We had an enormous
double room with twin beds and a couch. We had our own private terrace.
The room faced south with a wonderful view of the mountains. We even had
a telephone which worked. I hadn’t seen such magnificence since the Royal
Monceau in Paris. There was a room for our driver on the top floor. The
final de luxe touch was the schedule of meal hours; breakfast wasn’t even
served until eight-thirty. It was hard to believe that we were in Germany.

We were awakened early by a call from Major Miller. He had another job
for me—two, in fact. They had been interrogating Görnnert and he had told
them that several pieces of valuable sculpture had been buried in the
grounds of his house. The major had located the spot and the things were
to be excavated before noon. Also he wanted me to go with him to inspect
a cache of pictures reported hidden in a forester’s house not far from
Berchtesgaden. I said I’d be ready in an hour.

The phone rang again. This time it was Captain Posey. Had we remembered
to pick up the pictures at St. Agatha? The ones Mussolini had given to
Hitler? No, we hadn’t. We were to be sure to attend to that before we
returned to Munich. Steve was cursing these early callers and Lamont was
shaking his head sadly. Our life of ease was getting off to a hell of a
poor start.

When Major Miller and I reached the Görnnert place, the Sergeant of the
Guard and one of his men were standing beside a hole in the ground some
twenty yards behind the house. The hole was about six feet square and
four feet deep. Four bundles wrapped in discolored newspaper lay on the
ground at the edge of the excavation. The first bundle I opened contained
a wood statue of the Madonna and Child, about eighteen inches high. It
had been an attractive example of the fifteenth century French school,
but moisture had seriously damaged the original polychromy and the wood
beneath was soft and pulpy. The next two bundles contained pieces of
similar workmanship, but they were not polychromed. One was a Madonna and
Child; the other a figure of St. Barbara. Although they were damp, the
wood had not disintegrated. The fourth package contained the prize of the
lot, an ivory figure of the Madonna and Child. It was a fine piece from
the hand of a French sculptor of the late fourteenth century. The ivory
was discolored but otherwise in good condition. I wrapped the statues in
fresh paper and put them in the car.

Our next objective was the little village of Hintersee, a few kilometers
west of Berchtesgaden. The forester’s house, a large chalet with
overhanging eaves, stood at the edge of a meadow several hundred yards
from the road. I explained the purpose of our visit to the young woman
in peasant dress who answered our knock. She took us to a room on the
second floor which was filled with unframed canvases stacked in neat
rows along the walls. They were the work of contemporary German painters
and, according to the young woman, had been the property of the local
Nazi organization. From my point of view, the trip had been a waste of
time. There wasn’t a looted picture in the lot. While I looked at the
paintings, Major Miller thumbed through a pile of books on a big table
in one corner of the room. Among them he found a volume called _Die
Polnische Grausamkeit_—_The Polish Atrocity_. A characteristic sample
of German propaganda, it was a compilation of “horror photographs”
illustrating the alleged inhuman treatment of Germans by the Poles. It
added a gruesome touch to our visit.

[Illustration: Removal of treasures from the castle of Neuschwanstein was
completed by Captain Adams and Captain de Brye.]

[Illustration: Neuschwanstein—Ludwig II’s fantastic castle in which the
Nazis stored looted art treasures from France.]

[Illustration: Neuschwanstein. Packing looted furniture for return to
France. The carpentry shop was set up in the castle kitchen. (Note the
large range in the foreground.)]

[Illustration: Neuschwanstein. Typical storage room in the castle. In
adjoining room Lieutenants Howe, Moore and Kovalyak packed 2,000 pieces
of gold and silver looted from M. David-Weill.]

When I got back to the hotel at noon I found messages from Steve and
Lamont. Steve had gone over to Unterstein to see about the repairs on
his Steyr truck, the one he and Kress had spent so much time on—fitting
it up as a mobile photographic unit. There was also some work to be done
on the Mercedes-Benz, which had been standing idle, concealed behind a
clump of bushes by the rest house, during our evacuation of the Göring
collection. Steve had been right about the car; Colonel Davitt at Alt
Aussee had not pressed his claim to it.

Lamont had taken off for St. Agatha in a truck borrowed from Brigade
Headquarters to pick up the Hitler-Mussolini pictures.

There was also a message brought down by courier from Captain Posey’s
office. It contained a list of three places in the vicinity of
Berchtesgaden which should be inspected on the chance that they contained
items from the Göring collection. One of them was the forester’s hut
at Hintersee which I had just seen. The other two were castles in
the neighborhood: Schloss Stauffeneck-Tiereck and Schloss Marzoll. I
asked Major Anderson at lunch what he knew about them. He had nothing
to contribute on the subject and said I’d probably draw a blank on
all three. After removing the Göring things from the train, he had
taken the precaution of publishing a notice to all residents of the
area instructing them to declare all art works in their possession.
He had done this as a means of recovering objects which might have
been sequestered by Göring’s agents and objects which might have been
surreptitiously removed from the train while it stood on the siding.
The results had been disappointing. Only about thirty pictures had been
turned in and none of them was in any way connected with Göring.

The major’s prediction was correct. Lamont, Steve and I visited the two
castles the next day. In addition to their own furnishings, Schloss
Stauffeneck-Tiereck and Schloss Marzoll contained only books from the
University of Munich. These fruitless researches took all day. It was
after five when we left Berchtesgaden.

It was raining when we reached Munich three hours later. Kress had no
place to stay and it took us an hour to locate a civilian agency which
provided billets for transients. The only thing they had to offer was a
room for one night in a ruined nunnery on the Mathilde-Strasse. It was a
gloomy place. There was no light and the windows were without glass. One
of the Sisters, candle in hand, led us along a dark corridor to a small
single room at the back. We followed with our flashlights. We gave Kress
a box of K rations and told him we’d come back for him in the morning.
Steve was of two minds about the place: on the one hand it wasn’t good
enough for Kress; on the other he was impressed by the compassion of
the Sisters in offering refuge to strangers. He wanted me to point out
to Kress the anomaly of his being given sanctuary by the Church. I
convinced him that my German wasn’t fluent enough. We thanked the Sister
and went off to find ourselves a billet. We decided on the Excelsior,
the hotel for transient officers. We were several miles from Third Army
Headquarters, whereas the hotel was only a few blocks away.

I didn’t like driving the Mercedes-Benz around Munich, even though I had
got away with it so far. The Third Army regulation forbidding officers
to drive was strictly enforced. Perhaps my uniform baffled the MPs.
It consisted of a Navy cap with blue cover, a British battle jacket
with Navy shoulder boards, khaki trousers and black riding boots. It
was my personal opinion that the MPs mistook the shoulder bars for the
insignia of a Polish officer. The Poles, and the other liaison officers
as well, were allowed to drive their own cars. Steve used to pooh-pooh
my apprehensions about the MPs. “They’re a bunch of dumbheads,” he would
say. “I ought to know. I used to be one.” All the same, he didn’t do much
daytime driving around town.

Captain Posey had our next job lined up for us. We were to evacuate
the records of the _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_—the German art-looting
organization—from Neuschwanstein Castle. The job would include the
removal of part of the stolen art treasures also. The captain told us
that the castle contained a great quantity of uncrated objects, mostly
gold and silver. They presented a serious security problem and it wasn’t
safe to leave them there indefinitely. Even though the French were
anxious to get everything back from Neuschwanstein, for the present they
would have to be content with the gold and the silver objects and as many
of the smaller cases as we could handle. It would be more practicable
to ship the larger things—furniture, sculpture and pictures—direct to
France by rail. This possibility was being investigated. It would save
moving the things twice—first from Neuschwanstein to Munich, and then
from Munich to Paris. But the records were badly needed at the Collecting
Point in connection with the identification of the plunder stored there.
So we were to concentrate on them and on the objects of great intrinsic
value.

It was going to take three or four days to line up the trucks necessary
for this operation. There was a critical shortage of transportation
at the moment because all available vehicles were being used to haul
firewood. This was popularly known as “Patton’s pet project.” For some
weeks it had first priority after foodstuffs.

We welcomed the delay, for it gave us time to make a trip to Frankfurt.
All three of us had urgent business to attend to there. Lamont’s and
Steve’s records had to be straightened out. Both of them had been
working in the field for so long that the headquarters to which they
were technically assigned had lost track of them. And I wanted to find
out what had happened to the personal belongings I had left in Frankfurt
months ago. When I left I had expected to be gone ten days.

In the back of our minds, too, lurked the hope of becoming “incorporated”
as a Special Evacuation Team. That’s what we were in fact, but we wanted
to be recognized as such in name. The three of us worked well together
and did not want to be separated. The decision would rest with Major La
Farge and Lieutenant Kuhn.

We wheedled a command car out of the sergeant at the motor pool and took
off late in the afternoon. Lamont, Steve and I rode in the Mercedes-Benz,
the command car following. I had little confidence in our rakish
convertible. The car had been behaving well enough mechanically, but the
tires were paper-thin. They were an odd size and we had not been able to
get any replacements. It was reassuring to know that the sturdy command
car was trailing along behind.

We arrived at Ulm in time for supper. Long before we reached the city,
we could see the soaring single spire of the cathedral silhouetted
against the sky. There was literally nothing left of the old city. All
the medieval houses which, with the cathedral, had made it one of the
most picturesque cities in Germany, lay in ruins. But the cathedral was
undamaged.

We stopped for gas just outside Ulm. To our surprise, the Army attendant
filled our tanks. This was Seventh Army territory. In Third Army area the
maximum was five gallons. I mentioned this to the attendant. He said,
“There’s no gas shortage here. General Patton must be building up one
hell of a big stockpile.”

We spent the night in Stuttgart. As the main transient hotel was full, we
were assigned rooms at a small inn on the outskirts of the battered city.
It took us an hour to find the place, so it was past midnight when we
turned in.

The next morning we detoured a few kilometers in order to visit the
castle at Ludwigsburg. The little town was laid out in the French manner,
and its atmosphere was that of a miniature Versailles. The caretaker told
us that the kings of Württemberg had lived at the castle until 1918. Our
visit to it was the one pleasant experience of the day, which happened
to be my birthday. We had our first flat tire in the castle courtyard, a
second one an hour later, and a third between Mannheim and Darmstadt. It
was Sunday and we had a devilish time finding places where we could get
the inner tubes repaired. It was ten P.M. when we pulled into Frankfurt.
The trip from Stuttgart had taken eleven hours instead of the usual four.
We had spent seven hours on tire repairs.

My old room with the pink brocaded furniture was vacant, so I moved in
for the night. In my absence it had been successively occupied by three
lieutenant colonels. All of my belongings had been boxed and stored away
in the closet. Lamont and Steve put up at the house next door.

We called on Bancel La Farge and Charlie Kuhn at USFET Headquarters
the next morning. We were lucky to find them together. Their office at
that time was a kind of house divided against itself. Thanks to the
organizational whim of a colonel, Bancel and Charlie had to spend part of
the day in the office at the big Farben building—where we found them—and
part at their office in Höchst. Höchst was about six miles away. The
remnant of the U. S. Group Control Council, which had not yet moved up
to Berlin, was located there—in another vast complex of I. G. Farben
buildings. It was an exhausting arrangement.

Bancel and Charlie looked tired—and worried too. They seemed glad to
see us, but they were preoccupied and upset about something. Presently
Charlie showed us a document which had just reached his desk a few days
earlier. It was unsigned and undated.

It bore the letterhead “Headquarters U. S. Group Control Council.” The
subject was “Art Objects in the U. S. Zone.”[2] In the first paragraph
reference was made to the great number and value of the art objects
stored in emergency repositories throughout the U. S. Zone. Farther on,
the art objects were divided into three classes, according to ownership.

Those in “Class C” were defined as “works of art, placed in the U. S.
Zone by Germany for safekeeping, which are the bona fide property of the
German nation.”

Concerning the disposition of the works of art thus described, the letter
had this to say: “It is not believed that the U. S. would desire the
works of art in Class C to be made available for reparations and to be
divided among a number of nations. Even if this is to be done, these
works of art might well be returned to the U. S. to be inventoried, and
cared for by our leading museums.”

The next, and last, sentence contained this extraordinary proposal: “They
could be held in trusteeship for return, many years from now, to the
German people if and when the German nation had earned the right to their
return.”

Clipped to the document was a notation, dated July 29, 1945, bearing
the signature of the Chief of Staff of General Lucius D. Clay, Deputy
Military Governor. It read, in part, “General Clay states that this paper
has been approved by the President for implementation after the close of
the current Big 3 Conference.”

We were dumfounded. No wonder Bancel and Charlie were worried. It had
never occurred to any of us that German national art treasures would
be removed to the United States. After speculating on the possible
consequences attendant on an implementation of the document, we dropped
the subject. Momentarily there was nothing to do but wait—and hope that
the whole matter would be dropped.

By comparison, our personal problems seemed insignificant. But Charlie
and Bancel heard us out. They approved our idea of remaining together as
a team working out of USFET. I was already permanently assigned to USFET
and there were two vacancies on their T.O. (Table of Organization) to
which Lamont and Steve could be appointed. The necessary “paper work”
took up most of the day and involved a trip to ECAD headquarters at Bad
Homburg. At five o’clock we had our new orders.

Steve suggested that we drive up to Marburg to see Captain Hancock, the
Monuments officer in charge of the two great art repositories which had
been established there. They were the prototype of the Central Collecting
Point at Munich. However, they differed in an important respect from the
one at Munich: they contained practically no loot. Virtually everything
in them belonged to German museums and had been recovered by our
Monuments officers from the mines in which the Germans had placed them
for safekeeping during the war.

Marburg, some fifty miles north of Frankfurt, lay in the
Regierungsbezirk, or government district, of Kassel, which was in turn
a subdivision of the Province of Hesse. It was a two-hour drive, but we
stopped en route for supper with a Quartermaster outfit at Giessen, so it
was nearly eight o’clock when we arrived.

We found Walker Hancock in his office in the Staatsarchiv building. He
was a man in the middle forties, and of medium height. His face broke
into a smile and his fine dark eyes lighted up with an expression of
genuine pleasure at the sight of Lamont and Steve. This was the first
time they had seen one another since the close of the war when they
had been working together in Weimar. I had never met Walker Hancock,
but I had heard more about him than about any other American Monuments
officer. I knew that he had had a distinguished career as a sculptor
before the war and that he had been the first of our Monuments officers
to reach France. He had been attached to the First Army until the end of
hostilities. Lamont was devoted to Walker, and Steve’s regard for him
bordered on worship. While the three of them reminisced, I found myself
responding to his warmth and sincerity.

He wouldn’t hear of our returning to Frankfurt that night. He wanted
to show us the things in his two depots and we wouldn’t be able to see
more than a fraction of them before morning. The few that we did see
whetted our appetite for more. In the galleries on the second floor
we saw some of the finest pictures from the museums of the Rhineland:
there were three wonderful Van Goghs. One was the portrait of Armand
Rollin, the young man with a mustache and slouch hat. It belonged to the
Volkwang Museum at Essen. Color reproductions of this portrait had, in
recent years, rivaled those of Whistler’s _Mother_ in popularity. Walker
said that it had been covered with mold when he found it in the Siegen
mine with the rest of the Essen pictures. His assistant, Sheldon Keck,
formerly the restorer of the Brooklyn Museum, had successfully removed
the mold before it had done any serious damage.

The second Van Gogh was the famous large still life entitled _White
Roses_. The third was a brilliant late landscape. There were other
magnificent nineteenth century canvases: the bewitching portrait
of M. and Mme. Sisley by Renoir, a full-length Manet, and a great
Daumier. Walker climaxed the display with the celebrated Rembrandt
_Self-Portrait_ from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum of Cologne. This was the
last and most famous of the portraits the artist painted of himself.

We spent the night at the Gasthaus Sonne, a seventeenth century inn
facing the old market place. The proprietor reluctantly assigned us two
rooms on the second floor. They were normally reserved for the top brass.
Judging from the austerity of the furnishings and the simplicity of the
plumbing, I thought it unlikely that we would be routed from our beds by
any late-arriving generals.

Walker met us for breakfast the next morning with word that the war
with Japan had ended. Announcements in German had already been posted
in several of the shop windows. Though thrilling to us, the news seemed
to make very little impression on the citizens of the sleepy university
town. The people in the streets were as unsmiling as ever. If anything,
some of them looked a little grimmer than usual.

We drove to the Staatsarchiv building with Walker. He took us to a room
containing a fabulous collection of medieval art objects. There were
crosses and croziers, coffers and chalices, wrought in precious metals
and studded with jewels—masterpieces of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth
centuries. The most arresting individual piece was the golden Madonna,
an archaic seated figure two feet high, dating from the tenth century.
These marvelous relics of the Middle Ages belonged to the Cathedral of
Metz. It was one of the greatest collections of its kind in the entire
world. Its intrinsic value was enormous; its historic value incalculable.
Walker said that arrangements were being made for its early return to the
cathedral. The French were planning an elaborate ceremony in honor of the
event.

It was a five-minute drive to the other depot under Captain Hancock’s
direction. This was the Jubiläumsbau, or Jubilee Building, a handsome
structure of pre-Nazi, modern design. It was the headquarters of the
archaeological institute headed by Professor Richard Hamann, the
internationally famous medieval scholar. It also housed the archives of
“Photo Marburg,” the stupendous library of art photographs founded and
directed by the professor. Walker was putting the resources of Photo
Marburg to good use, compiling a complete photographic record of the
objects in his care.

Among the treasures stored in the Jubiläumsbau were some of the choicest
masterpieces from the Berlin state museums. Perhaps the most famous were
the twin canvases by Watteau entitled _Gersaint’s Signboard_. Regarded
by many as the supreme work of the greatest painter of the French Rococo
period, the two pictures had been the prized possessions of Frederick the
Great. Painted to hang side by side forming a continuous composition,
they represented the shop of M. Gersaint, dealer in works of art. It is
said that the paintings were finished in eight days. They were painted
in the year 1732 when the artist was at the height of his career. I was
told that, during the early years of the war, Göring made overtures to
the Louvre for one of its finest Watteaus. According to the story, the
negotiations ended abruptly when the museum signified its willingness to
part with the painting in exchange for _Gersaint’s Signboard_.

The brilliant French school of the eighteenth century was further
represented at the Jubiläumsbau by a superb Boucher—the subject, _Mercury
and Venus_—and two exquisite Chardins: _The Cook_, one of his most
enchanting scenes of everyday life, and the _Portrait of a Lady Sealing a
Letter_, an unusually large composition for this unpretentious painter
whose canvases are today worth a king’s ransom.

There were masterpieces of the German school; the great series of
Cranachs which had belonged to the Hohenzollerns filled one entire room.
Excellent examples of Rubens and Van Dyck represented the Flemish school;
Ruysdael and Van Goyen, the Dutch. The high quality of every picture
attested to the taste and connoisseurship of German collectors.

Walker said that he hoped to arrange a public exhibition of the pictures.
Marburg had been neglected by our bombers. Only one or two bombs had
fallen in the city and the resulting damage had been slight. Concussion
had blasted the windows of the Staatsarchiv, but the Jubiläumsbau was
untouched. Perhaps he would put on a series of small exhibitions, say
fifty pictures at a time. The members of his local German committee
were enthusiastic about the project. It would be an important first
step in the rehabilitation of German cultural institutions which
was an avowed part of the American Fine Arts program. Thanks to the
hesitancy of an officer at higher headquarters who was exasperatingly
“security-conscious,” Walker did not realize his ambition until three
months later, on the eve of his departure for the United States.

We celebrated VJ-Day on our return to Frankfurt that evening. The big
Casino, behind USFET headquarters, was the scene of the principal
festivities. Drinks were on the house until the bar closed at ten. It
was a warm summer night and the broad terrace over the main entrance was
crowded. An Army band blared noisily inside. Civilian attendants skulked
in the background, avidly collecting cigarette butts from the ash trays
and the terrace floor. They reaped a rich harvest that night.

The Mercedes-Benz presented a problem. Its status was a dubious one.
Since it was still registered with an MG Detachment in Austria, I
felt uncomfortable about driving it around Germany. At Charlie Kuhn’s
suggestion we filed a request with the Naval headquarters in Frankfurt
for assignment of the vehicle to our Special Evacuation Team. The request
was couched in impressive legal language which Charlie thought would do
the trick. Armed with a copy of this request, I felt confident that we
would not be molested by inquisitive MPs on our trip back to Munich.

We didn’t get started until late afternoon, having wasted two hours
dickering with the Transportation Officer at the Frankfurt MG Detachment
for a spare tire. We returned by way of Würzburg and Nürnberg. It was
dark when we reached Nürnberg, but the light of the full moon was
sufficient to reveal the ruined walls and towers of the old, inner city.
As we struck south of the city to the Autobahn, we could see the outlines
of the vast unfinished stadium, designed to seat one hundred and forty
thousand people. We had to proceed cautiously since many of the bridges
had been destroyed and detours were frequent. As a result it was midnight
when we reached Munich. The transient hotel was full, so we had to be
content with makeshift quarters at the Central Collecting Point.

In our absence the transportation situation had eased up a little.
Captain Posey told us the next morning that six trucks would be available
in the early afternoon. We decided to keep the command car for the trip
to Neuschwanstein and leave the Mercedes-Benz in Munich to be painted. In
anticipation of registration papers from the Navy, we thought it would be
appropriate to have the car painted battleship gray and stenciled with
white letters reading “U. S. Navy.” One of the mechanics in the garage
at the Central Collecting Point agreed to do this for us in exchange for
a bottle of rum and half a bottle of Scotch. Officers at Third Army
Headquarters had bar privileges plus a liquor ration, but the enlisted
men didn’t fare so well.

Our base of operations for the evacuation of the Castle of Neuschwanstein
was the picturesque little town of Füssen, some eighty miles south of
Munich, in the heart of the “Swan country.” This region of southern
Bavaria, celebrated for its association with the name of Richard Wagner,
is one of the most beautiful in all Germany. The mountains rise sharply
from the floor of the level green valley. The turreted castle, perched
on top of one of the lower peaks, at an elevation of a thousand feet,
is visible for miles. Built in the eighteen-seventies by Ludwig II, the
“Mad King” of Bavaria, it was the most fantastic creation of that exotic
monarch whose passion for building nearly bankrupted his kingdom. When we
saw the castle rising majestically from its pine-covered mountaintop, we
were struck by the incongruity of our six-truck convoy lumbering through
the romantic countryside.

We presented our credentials to a swarthy major who was the commanding
officer of the small MG Detachment at Füssen. He arranged for our billets
at the Alte Post, the hotel where officers of the Detachment were
quartered, and, after we had deposited our gear in a room on the fourth
floor, conducted us to the Schloss.

The steep road to the lower courtyard of the castle wound for more than
a mile up the side of the mountain. At the castle entrance, the major
identified us to the guard and our six trucks filed into the courtyard.
In the upper courtyard, reached by a broad flight of stone steps, we
found the caretaker who had the keys to the main section of the castle.
He did not, however, have access to the wing in which the records of the
_Einsatzstab Rosenberg_ were stored. The only door to that part of the
building had been locked and sealed by Lieutenant James Rorimer, the
Monuments officer of the Seventh Army, when the castle had first fallen
into American hands. We had brought the key with us from Third Army
Headquarters.

Before examining those rooms, we made a tour of the four main floors of
the castle. The hallways and vaulted kitchens on the first floor were
filled to overflowing with enormous packing cases and uncrated furniture,
all taken from French collections. Three smaller storage rooms resembling
the stock rooms of Tiffany’s and a porcelain factory combined, were
jammed with gold and silver and rare china. Most of the loot had been
concentrated on the first floor, but the unfinished rooms of the second
had been fitted with racks for the storage of paintings. In addition to
the looted pictures, there were several galleries of stacked paintings
from the museums of Munich. The living apartments on the third floor,
divested of their furnishings, were filled with stolen furniture, Louis
Quinze chairs, table and sofas and ornate Italian cabinets lined the
walls of rooms and corridors. They contrasted strangely with scenes from
the Wagner operas which King Ludwig had chosen as the theme for the mural
decorations. Only the gold-walled Throne Room and, on the floor above,
the lofty Fest-Saal, were devoid of loot.

We proceeded to the wing of the castle which contained the records.
Having broken the seals and unlocked the door, we entered a hallway about
thirty feet long. The doors opening onto this hallway were also locked
and sealed. Behind them lay the offices of the _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_.
They were crowded with bookshelves and filing cabinets. In one room stood
a huge show-case filled with fragile Roman glass. The rooms of the second
floor were full of French furniture and dozens of small packing cases.
These cases were made of carefully finished quarter-sawed oak. We had
seen similar ones in the Göring collection. They had been the traveling
cases for precious objects belonging to the Rothschilds. These too
contained Rothschild treasures—exquisite bibelots of jade, agate, onyx
and jasper, and innumerable pieces of Oriental and European porcelain.

At one end of the hallway were two rooms which had been used as a
photographic laboratory. We had brought Kress with us. Steve went off to
make arrangements to install his equipment, while Lamont and I calculated
the number of men we would need for the evacuation work the next morning.
We asked the major for twenty—two shifts of ten.

The Neuschwanstein operation lasted eight days. We worked nights as well,
because there were thousands of small objects—many of them fragile and
extremely valuable—which we could not trust to the inexpert hands of
our work party. There was no electricity in the small storage rooms, so
we had to work by candlelight. It took us one evening to pack the Roman
glass and the four succeeding evenings, working till midnight, to pack
the two thousand pieces of gold and silver in the David-Weill collection.
The Nazi looters had thoughtfully saved the well-made cases in which
they had carted off this magnificent collection from M. David-Weill’s
house in Paris. There were candelabra, dishes, knives, forks, spoons,
snuffboxes—the rarest examples of the art of the French goldsmiths of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This unique collection had
created a sensation when it was exhibited in Paris a few years before
the war. The fact that the incomparable assemblage would probably one
day be left to the Louvre by the eminent connoisseur, who had spent a
lifetime collecting it, had not deterred the Nazi robbers. He was a Jew.
That justified its confiscation. Aside from the pleasure it gave me to
handle the beautiful objects, I relished the idea of helping to recover
the property of a fellow Californian: M. David-Weill had been born in
San Francisco. The Nazis had been methodical as usual. Every piece was
to have been systematically recatalogued while the collection was at
Neuschwanstein. On some of the shelves we found slips of paper stating
that this or that object had not yet been photographed—“_noch nicht
fotografiert_.”

The tedious manual labor involved in packing small objects and the great
distance which the packed cases had to be carried when ready for loading
were the chief difficulties at Neuschwanstein. Not only did the cases
have to be carried several hundred feet from the storage rooms to the
door of the castle; but from the door to the trucks was a long trek, down
two flights of steps and across a wide courtyard. In this respect the
operation resembled the evacuation of the monastery at Hohenfurth.

Three months after our partial evacuation of the castle, a team composed
of Captain Edward Adams, Lieutenant (jg) Charles Parkhurst, USNR, and
Captain Hubert de Brye, a French officer, completed the removal of the
loot. This gigantic undertaking required eight weeks. If I remember the
figures correctly, more than twelve thousand objects were boxed and
carted away. The cases were built in a carpenter shop set up in the
castle kitchens. One hundred and fifty truckloads were delivered to the
railroad siding at Füssen and thence transported to Paris. It was an
extraordinary achievement, carried out despite heavy snowfall. The only
operation which rivaled it was the evacuation of the salt mine at Alt
Aussee.

The last morning of our stay at Füssen, Lamont and I had a special
mission to perform. A German art dealer named Gustav Rochlitz was living
at Gipsmühle, a five-minute drive from Hohenschwangau, the small village
below the castle. For a number of years Rochlitz had had a gallery in
Paris. His dealings with the Nazis, in particular his trafficking in
confiscated pictures, had been the subject of special investigation
by Lieutenants Plaut and Rousseau, our OSS friends. They were the two
American naval officers who were preparing an exhaustive report on the
activities of the infamous _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_. They had interrogated
Rochlitz and placed him under house arrest. In his possession were
twenty-two modern French paintings, including works by Dérain, Matisse
and Picasso, formerly belonging to well known Jewish collections. He had
obtained them from Göring and other leading Nazis in exchange for old
master paintings. We were to relieve Herr Rochlitz of these canvases.

At the farmhouse in which Rochlitz and his wife were living, the maid
of all work who answered our knock said that no one was at home. Herr
Rochlitz would not be back before noon. Lamont and I returned to our jeep
and started back across the fields to the highway. We had driven about
a hundred yards when we saw a heavy-set sullen-faced man of about fifty
walking toward us.

“I’ll bet that’s Rochlitz,” I said to Lamont. Stopping the car, I called
out to him, “Herr Rochlitz?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

“Hop in, we want to have a talk with you,” I said.

We returned to the farmhouse and followed our truculent host up the
stairs to a sitting room on the second floor. There we were joined by his
wife, a timid young woman who, like her husband, spoke fluent English.

I said that we had come for the pictures. Rochlitz made no protest. He
brusquely directed his wife to bring them in. As she left the room, I
thought it odd that he hadn’t gone along to help her. But she returned
almost immediately with the paintings in her arms. All twenty-two were
rolled around a long mailing tube. Together they spread the canvases
about the room, on the table, on the chairs and on the floor. They were,
without exception, works of excellent quality. One large early Picasso,
the portrait of a woman and child, was alone worth a small fortune.

I was wondering what Rochlitz had given in exchange for the lot, when he
began to explain how the pictures had come into his possession. He must
have taken us for credulous fools, because the story he told made him out
a victim of tragic circumstance. He said that Göring had made an offer on
several of his pictures. Rochlitz had accepted but insisted on being paid
in cash. Göring had agreed to the terms and the pictures were delivered.
Then, instead of paying in cash, Göring had forced him to accept these
modern paintings. He had protested, but to no avail. Of course these
pictures were all right in their way, he said deprecatingly, but he was
not a dealer in modern art. Naturally he did not know that they had been
confiscated. It was all a dreadful mistake, but what could he do? I said
that I realized how badly he must have felt and that I knew he would be
relieved to learn that the pictures were now going back to their rightful
owners.

The pictures were carefully rerolled and we got up to leave. At the door,
Rochlitz told us that he had lost his entire stock. He had stored all of
his paintings at Baden-Baden, in the French Zone. Did we think he would
be able to recover them? We assured him that justice would be done and,
leaving him to interpret that remark as he saw fit, drove off with the
twenty-two pictures.




(9)

_HIDDEN TREASURES AT NÜRNBERG_


On our return to Munich that evening, Craig told us that preparations
were being made for the immediate restitution of several important
masterpieces recovered in the American Zone. General Eisenhower had
approved a proposal to return at once to each of the countries overrun
by the Germans at least one outstanding work of art. This was to be done
in his name, as a gesture of “token restitution” symbolizing American
policy with regard to ultimate restitution of all stolen art treasures to
the rightful owner nations. It was felt that the gracious gesture on the
part of the Commanding General of United States Forces in Europe would
serve to reaffirm our intentions to right the wrongs of Nazi oppression.
In view of the vast amount of art which had thus far been recovered,
it would be months before it could all be restored to the plundered
countries. Meanwhile these “token restitutions” would be an earnest of
American good will. They would be sent back from Germany at the expense
of the United States Government. Thereafter, representatives of the
various countries would be invited to come to our Collecting Points to
select, assemble and, in transportation of their own providing, remove
those objects which the Germans had stolen.

Belgium was to receive the first token restitution. The great van Eyck
altarpiece—_The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb_—was the obvious choice
among the stolen Belgian treasures.

The famous panels had been reposing in the Central Collecting Point at
Munich since we had removed them from the salt mine at Alt Aussee. A
special plane had been chartered to fly them to Brussels. The Belgian
Government had signified approval of air transportation. Direct rail
communication between Munich and Brussels had not been resumed, and the
highways were not in the best of condition. By truck, it would be a rough
two-day trip; by air, a matter of three hours.

Bancel La Farge had already flown from Frankfurt to Brussels, where
plans had been made for an appropriate ceremony on the arrival of the
altarpiece. The American Ambassador was to present the panels to the
Prince Regent on behalf of General Eisenhower. It was to be an historic
occasion.

I went out to the airport to confirm the arrangements for the C-54. It
was only a fifteen-minute drive from the Königsplatz to the field. I was
also to check on the condition of the streets: they were in good shape
all the way.

The plane was to take off at noon. Lamont, Steve and I supervised the
loading of the ten precious cases. We led off in a jeep. The truck
followed with the panels. Four of the civilian packers went along to load
the cases onto the plane. Captain Posey was to escort the altarpiece to
Brussels.

When we got to the airport we learned that the plane had not arrived.
There would be a two-hour delay. At the end of two hours, we were
informed that there was bad weather south of Brussels. All flights
had been canceled for the day. We drove back to the Collecting Point
at the Königsplatz and had just finished unloading the panels when a
message came from the field. The weather had cleared. The plane would
be taking off in half an hour. I caught Captain Posey as he was leaving
the building for his office at Third Army Headquarters. The cases were
reloaded and we were on our way to the field in fifteen minutes.

The truck was driven onto the field where the big C-54 stood waiting. In
another quarter of an hour the panels were aboard and lashed securely
to metal supports in the forepart of the passenger compartment. Captain
Posey, the only passenger, waved jauntily as the doors swung shut.
Enviously we watched the giant plane roll down the field, lift waveringly
from the airstrip and swing off to the northwest. The altarpiece was on
the last lap of an extraordinary journey. We wished George Stout could
have been in on this.

The plane reached Brussels without mishap. The return of the great
national treasure was celebrated throughout the country. Encouraged by
the success of this first “token restitution,” Major La Farge directed
that a similar gesture be made to France. At the Collecting Point Craig
selected seventy-one masterpieces looted from French private collections.
The group included Fragonard, Chardin, Lancret, Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals,
and a large number of seventeenth century Dutch masters. Only examples of
the highest quality were chosen.

Ham Coulter, the naval officer who worked with Craig at the “Bau,”
was the emissary appointed to accompany the paintings to Paris. It
was decided to return them by truck, inasmuch as it would have been
impracticable to attempt shipping uncrated pictures by air. The convoy
consisted of two trucks—one for the pictures, the other for extra
gasoline. It was a hard two-day trip from Munich to Paris. Ham got
through safely, but reported on his return that the roads had been
extremely rough a good part of the way. He had delivered the pictures in
Paris to the Musée du Jeu de Paume, the little museum which the Germans
had used during the Occupation as the clearinghouse for their methodical
plundering of the Jewish collections. His expedition had been marred by
only one minor incident. When the paintings were being unloaded at the
museum, one of the women attendants watching the operation noticed that
some of the canvases were unframed. She had asked, “And where are the
frames?” This was too much for Coulter. In perfect French, the courteous
lieutenant told her precisely what she could do about the frames.

Shortly after the return of the Ghent altarpiece, Captain Posey was
demobilized. His duties as MFA&A Officer at Third Army Headquarters in
Munich were assumed by Captain Edwin Rae. I had not seen Rae since the
early summer when he and Lieutenant Edith Standen had been assigned to
assist me in inventorying the collections of the Berlin museums in the
vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfurt. Edwin was a meticulous fellow,
gentle but determined. Although by no means lacking in a sense of humor,
he resented joking references to a fancied resemblance to Houdon’s well
known portrait of Voltaire, and I didn’t blame him.

He took on his new responsibilities with quiet assurance and in a
short time won the complete confidence of his superiors at Third Army
Headquarters. Throughout his long tenure of office, he maintained an
unruffled calm in the face of obstacles which would have exhausted a
less patient man. He was responsible for all matters pertaining to the
Fine Arts in the Eastern Military District of the American Zone—that is,
Bavaria—an area more than twice the size of the two provinces Greater
Hesse and Württemberg-Baden comprising the Western Military District of
our Zone.

During the early days of Captain Rae’s regime, Charlie Kuhn paid a
brief visit to Munich. He had just completed the transfer of the Berlin
Museum collections from Frankfurt to the Landesmuseum at Wiesbaden.
The university buildings in Frankfurt—which I had requisitioned for a
Collecting Point—had proved unsuitable. The repairs, he said, would have
taken months. On the other hand, the Wiesbaden Museum, though damaged,
was ideal for the purpose. Of course there hadn’t been a glass left in
any of the windows, and the roof had had to be repaired. But thanks
to the energy and ingenuity of Walter Farmer, the building had been
rehabilitated in two months. Captain Farmer was the director of the new
Collecting Point. When I asked where Farmer had got the glass, Charlie
was evasive. All he would say was that Captain Farmer was “wise in the
ways of the Army.”

Charlie was headed for Vienna to confer with Lieutenant Colonel Ernest
Dewald, Chief of the MFA&A Section at USFA Headquarters (United States
Forces, Austria). Colonel Dewald wanted to complete the evacuation of
the mine at Alt Aussee, which was now under his jurisdiction. For this
project he hoped to obtain the services of the officers who had worked
there when the mine had been Third Army’s responsibility. Captain Rae was
reluctant to lend the Special Evacuation Team, because there was still
so much work to be done in Bavaria. But he agreed, provided that Charlie
could sell the idea to the Chief of Staff at Third Army. This Charlie
succeeded in doing, and departed for Vienna a day later. Steve was crazy
to see Vienna—I think his parents had been born there—so Charlie took him
along.

After they had left, Captain Rae requested Lamont and me to make an
inspection trip to northern Bavaria. Our first stop was Bamberg. There we
examined the _Neue Residenz_, which Rae contemplated establishing as an
auxiliary Collecting Point to house the contents of various repositories
in Upper Franconia. Reports reaching his office indicated that storage
conditions in that area were unsatisfactory. Either the repositories
were not weatherproof, or they were not being adequately guarded.

It was also rumored that UNRRA was planning to fill the _Neue Residenz_
with DPs—Displaced Persons. Captain Rae was determined to put a stop to
that, because the building, a fine example of late seventeenth century
architecture, was on the SHAEF List of Protected Monuments. This fact
should have guaranteed its immunity from such a hazard. Even during
combat, the SHAEF list had been a great protection to monuments of
historic and artistic importance. Now that no “doctrine of military
necessity” could be invoked to justify improper use of the building, Rae
did not propose to countenance its occupancy by DPs.

The _Neue Residenz_ contained dozens of empty, brocaded rooms—but no
plumbing. We decided that it would do for a Collecting Point and agreed
with Rae that the DPs should be housed elsewhere if possible. The officer
from the local MG Detachment, who was showing us around, confirmed
the report that UNRRA intended to move in. He didn’t think they would
relinquish the building without a protest. The influx of refugees from
the Russian Zone had doubled the town’s normal population of sixty
thousand.

It was a disappointment to find that the superb sculpture in the
cathedral across the square was still bricked up. The shelters had
proved a needless precaution, for Bamberg had not been bombed. Only the
bridge over the Regnitz had been blown up, and the Germans had done that
themselves.

From Bamberg we drove north to Coburg, where we had a twofold mission.
First we were to obtain specific information about ten cases which
contained a collection of art objects belonging to a prince of Hesse.
The cases were said to be stored in Feste Coburg, the walled castle
above the town. If they were the property of Philip of Hesse, then they
would probably be taken into custody by the American authorities. We had
been told that he was in prison. His art dealings during the past few
years were being reviewed by the OSS officers charged with the special
investigation of Nazi art-looting activities. Philip was the son of the
Landgräfin of Hesse. It was in the flower-filled Waffenraum of her castle
near Frankfurt that I had seen the family tombs months before.

If, on the other hand, the cases belonged to a different prince of
Hesse—one whose political record was clean—and storage conditions were
satisfactory, we would simply leave them where they were for the time
being.

Our second objective was Schloss Tambach, a few kilometers from Coburg.
Paintings stolen by Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, from the palace
at Warsaw were stored there. Schloss Tambach also contained pictures
from the Stettin Museum. Stettin was now in the Russian Zone of Occupied
Germany.

On our arrival in Coburg, Lamont and I drove to the headquarters of the
local MG Detachment, which were located in the Palais Edinburgh. This
unpretentious building was once the residence of Queen Victoria’s son,
the Duke of Edinburgh. There we arranged with Lieutenant Milton A. Pelz,
the Monuments officer of the Coburg Detachment, to inspect the storage
rooms at the castle.

Pelz was a big fellow who spoke German fluently. He welcomed us
hospitably and took us up to the castle where we met Dr. Grundmann, who
had the keys to the storage rooms. This silent, sour-faced German was
curator of the Prince’s collections. He said that his employer was Prince
Ludwig of Hesse, a cousin of Philip. The cases contained paintings and
_objets d’art_ which had been in the possession of the family for years.
Grundmann had personally removed them from Ludwig’s estate in Silesia the
day before the Russians occupied the area.

Ludwig’s most important treasure was the world-famous painting by Holbein
known as the _Madonna of Bürgermeister Meyer_. Painted in 1526, it had
hung for years in the palace at Darmstadt. The Dresden Gallery owned a
seventeenth century replica. Early in the war, Prince Ludwig had sent the
original to his Silesian castle for safekeeping. Grundmann had brought it
back to Bavaria along with the ten cases now at Coburg. From Coburg he
had taken the Holbein to Schloss Banz, a castle not far from Bamberg.

He said that the Prince was living at Wolfsgarten, a small country place
near Darmstadt. Ludwig was eager to regain possession of the painting.
Did we think that could be arranged? We told him he would have to obtain
an authorization from Captain Rae at Munich.

Schloss Tambach was a ten-minute drive from Coburg. This great country
house, built around three sides of a courtyard, belonged to the Countess
of Ortenburg. She occupied the center section. A detachment of troops was
billeted in one wing. The other was filled with the Stettin and Warsaw
pictures. There were over two hundred from the Stettin Museum. Nineteenth
century German paintings predominated, but I noticed two fine Hals
portraits and a Van Gogh landscape among them.

The civilian custodian, answerable to the MG authorities at Coburg, was
Dr. Wilhelm Eggebrecht. He had been curator of the Stettin Museum until
thrown out by the Nazis because his wife was one-quarter Jewish. He was a
mousy little fellow with a bald head and gold-rimmed spectacles. He asked
apprehensively if we intended to send the paintings back to Russian-held
Stettin. We said that we had come only to check on the physical security
of the present storage place. So far as we knew, the paintings would
remain where they were for the present. This inconclusive piece of
information seemed to reassure him.

The paintings looted from Warsaw were the _pièces de résistance_ of
the treasures at Schloss Tambach—especially the nine great canvases by
Bellotto, the eighteenth century Venetian master. Governor Frank had
ruthlessly removed the pictures from their stretchers and rolled them up
for shipment. As a result of this rough handling, the paint had flaked
off in places, but the damage was not serious. When we examined the
pictures, they were spread out on the floor. They filled two rooms, forty
feet square. Later they were taken to the Munich Collecting Point and
mounted on new stretchers, in preparation for their return to Warsaw.

When we got back to Munich, Steve had returned from Vienna. He had news
for us. Charlie Kuhn had already left for Frankfurt. Colonel Dewald was
coming to Munich in a few days to talk to Colonel Roy Dalferes, Rae’s
Chief of Staff at Third Army, about reopening the Alt Aussee mine. Either
Charlie or Bancel would come down from USFET Headquarters when Dewald
arrived. A new man had joined the MFA&A Section at USFA—Andrew Ritchie,
director of the Buffalo Museum. He had come over as a civilian. Steve
thought that Ritchie would be the USFA representative at Munich. There
was a lot of stuff at the Collecting Point which would eventually go back
to Austria. It would have to be checked with the records there. That
would be Ritchie’s job. Steve told us also that Lincoln Kirstein had gone
home. His mother was seriously ill and Lincoln had left on emergency
orders.

The three of us went to Captain Rae’s office. Lamont and I had to make
a report on our trip to Coburg. Rae had a new assignment for us. He
had just received orders from USFET Headquarters to prepare the Cracow
altarpiece for shipment. It was to be sent back to Poland as a token
restitution. This was the colossal carved altarpiece by Veit Stoss
which the Nazis had stolen from the Church of St. Mary at Cracow. Veit
Stoss had been commissioned by the King of Poland in 1477 to carve the
great work. It had taken him ten years. After the invasion of Poland in
1939, the Nazis had carted it off, lock, stock and barrel, to Nürnberg.
They contended that, since Veit Stoss had been a native of Nürnberg, it
belonged in the city of his birth.

The missing altarpiece was the first of her looted treasures for which
Poland had registered a claim with the American authorities at the close
of the war. After months of diligent investigation, it was found by
American officers in an underground bunker across the street from the
Albrecht Dürer house in Nürnberg. In addition to the dismantled figures
of the central panel—painted and gilded figures of hollow wood ten
feet high—the twelve ornate side panels, together with the statues and
pinnacles surmounting the framework, had been crowded into the bunker.

The same bunker contained another priceless looted treasure—the
coronation regalia of the Holy Roman Empire. Among these venerable
objects were the jeweled crown of the Emperor Conrad—commonly called
the “Crown of Charlemagne”—dating from the eleventh century, a shield,
two swords and the orb. Since 1804 they had been preserved in the
Schatzkammer, the Imperial Treasure Room, at Vienna. In 1938, the Nazis
removed them to Nürnberg, basing their claim to possession on a fifteenth
century decree of the Emperor Sigismund that they were to be kept in that
city.

On the eve of the German collapse, two high officials of the city had
spirited away these five pieces. The credit for recovering the treasures
goes to an American officer of German birth, Lieutenant Walter Horn,
professor of art at the University of California. The two officials at
first disclaimed any knowledge of their whereabouts. After hours of
relentless grilling by Lieutenant Horn, the men finally admitted their
guilt. They were promptly tried, heavily fined and sent to prison. Three
months later, at the request of the Austrian Government, the imperial
treasures were flown back to Vienna. This historic shipment contained
other relics which the Nazis had taken from the Schatzkammer—relics of
the greatest religious significance. They included an alleged fragment of
the True Cross, a section of the tablecloth said to have been used at the
Last Supper, a lance venerated as the one which had touched the wounds of
Christ, and links from the chains traditionally believed to have bound
St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John.

On Captain Rae’s instructions, Steve and I went to Nürnberg to pack the
Stoss altarpiece. (At that time the coronation regalia was still in the
bunker, where, on the afternoon of our arrival, we had an opportunity to
examine it.) We found that the heavy framework which supported the altar
panels was not stored in the bunker. Because of its size—the upright
pieces were thirty feet high—it had been taken to Schloss Wiesenthau, an
old castle outside Forchheim, thirty miles away.

Leaving Steve to start packing the smaller figures and pinnacles, I got
hold of a semitrailer, the only vehicle long enough to accommodate a load
of such length. It was an hour’s drive to the castle. With a crew of
twenty PWs, I finished loading the framework in two hours and returned to
Nürnberg in time for supper.

That evening Steve and I figured out the number of trucks we would need
for the altarpiece. Lamont had remained in Munich to make tentative
arrangements, pending word from us. He was going to ask for ten trucks
and we came to the conclusion that this would be about the right
number—in addition, of course, to the semitrailer for the supporting
framework. We got out our maps and studied our probable route to Cracow.
One road would take us through Dresden and Breslau; another by way of
Pilsen and Prague. Perhaps we could go one way and return the other. In
either case we would have to pass through Russian-occupied territory.
It would probably take some time to obtain the necessary clearances. We
figured on taking enough gas for the round trip, since we doubted if
there would be any to spare in Poland. Altogether it promised to be a
complicated expedition, but already we had visions of a triumphal entry
into Cracow.

Our ambitious plans collapsed the following morning. While Steve and I
were at breakfast, I was called to the telephone. The corporal in Captain
Rae’s office was on the wire. I was to return to Munich at once. Major La
Farge was arriving from Frankfurt and wanted to see me that night. Plans
for the trip to Cracow were indefinitely postponed. Internal conditions
in Poland were too unsettled to risk returning the altarpiece.

Our plans had miscarried before, but this was our first major
disappointment. We had begun to look on the Polish venture as the fitting
climax of our work as a Special Evacuation Team. On the way back to
Munich, Steve said he had a feeling that the team was going to be split
up.

Steve’s misgivings were prophetic. At Craig’s apartment after dinner,
Bancel La Farge outlined the plans he had for us. Colonel Dalferes
had acceded to Colonel Dewald’s request. Lamont, Steve and a third
officer—new to MFA&A work—were to resume the evacuation of the salt mine
at Alt Aussee. If the snows held off, it would be possible to carry on
operations there for another month or six weeks.

I was to return to USFET Headquarters at Frankfurt as Deputy Chief of the
MFA&A Section, replacing Charlie Kuhn who had just received his orders
to go home. I knew that Charlie would soon be eligible for release from
active duty, but had no idea that his departure was so imminent.

We didn’t have much to say to one another on the way to our quarters
that night. Steve had already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to
like the new man. Lamont said that he thought it was going to be an
awful anticlimax to reopen the mine. And for me, the prospect of routine
administrative work at USFET was uninviting. After three months of
strenuous and exciting field work, it wouldn’t be easy to settle down in
an office. All three of us felt that the great days were over.

During our last week together in Munich we had little time to feel sorry
for ourselves. Everyone was preoccupied with the restitution program.
We had our full share of the work. Another important shipment was to be
made to Belgium. It was to include the Michelangelo Madonna, the eleven
paintings stolen from the church in Bruges when the statue was taken, and
the four panels by Dirk Bouts from the famous altarpiece in the church
of St. Pierre at Louvain. These panels, which formed the wings of the
altarpiece, had been removed by the Germans in August 1942. Before the
first World War one wing had been in the Berlin Gallery, the other in the
Alte Pinakothek at Munich. As in the case of the Ghent altarpiece, they
had been restored—unjustly, according to the Germans—to Belgium by the
Versailles Treaty.

This shipment to Belgium represented the first practical application of
the “come and get it” theory of restitution, evolved by Major La Farge.
Belgium had already received the Ghent altarpiece as token restitution.
Now it was up to the Belgians to carry on at their own expense. The
special representatives who came down from Brussels to supervise this
initial shipment were Dr. Paul Coremans, a great technical expert, and
Lieutenant Pierre Longuy of the Ministry of Fine Arts. They had their own
truck but had been unable to bring suitable packing materials. We had an
ample supply of pads and blankets which we had stored at the Collecting
Point after our evacuation of the Göring collection. We placed them
at the disposal of the Belgians. But it was Saturday and no civilian
packers were available. Dr. Coremans gratefully accepted the offer of our
services. Steve, Lamont and I loaded the truck. It was the last operation
of the Special Evacuation Team.

The Belgians had no sooner departed than the French and Dutch
representatives arrived. Captain Hubert de Brye for France looked more
like a sportsman than a scholar; but he was a man of wide cultivation and
had a sense of humor which endeared him to his associates in Munich. He
and Ham Coulter were kindred spirits and became great friends.

Ham, who had been responsible for the rehabilitation of both the
Collecting Point and the Führerbau, now had two assistants—Captain George
Lacy and Dietrich Sattler, the latter a German architect. Through this
division of the work, Ham found time for new duties: he took the foreign
representatives in tow, arranged for their billets, their mess cards,
their PX rations and so on. It was an irritating but not a thankless job,
for the recipients of his attentions were devoted to their “wet nurse.”

[Illustration: The Albrecht Dürer house at Nürnberg—before and after the
German collapse. In an underground bunker across the street were stored
the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire and the famous Veit Stoss
altarpiece.]

[Illustration: The Veit Stoss altarpiece from the Church of Our Lady in
Cracow, which was carried off by the Nazis at the beginning of the war,
has been returned to Poland. _Left_, open; _right_, closed.]

The Dutch representative was Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Vorenkamp. He
was a little man with gray hair, shrewd gray eyes and steel-rimmed
spectacles. An eminent authority on Dutch painting, he had been for
several years a member of the faculty at Smith College. He enjoyed the
unusual distinction of having served in both the American and Dutch
Armies during the present war.

I had met him in San Francisco in 1944, shortly after his discharge
from the service. He had been a buck private; and I gathered from the
story of his experiences that our Army had released him in self-defense.
He told me that he often had difficulty in understanding the drill
sergeant. Once, without thinking he had stepped out of formation and
asked politely, “Sergeant, would you mind repeating that last order!”
Vorenkamp said that he had paid dearly for his indiscretion, so dearly in
fact that he had seriously considered changing his name from Alphonse to
Latrinus. Alphonse, he said, was a ridiculous name for a Dutchman anyway.
He preferred to be called Phonse.

Released from the Army, he had gone back to his teaching. Then, only
a few months ago, the Dutch Government had requested his services in
connection with the restitution of looted art. They had offered him a
lieutenant-colonelcy and he had accepted.

The Dutch, as well as the British and French, had made a practice
of conferring upon qualified civilians ranks consistent with the
responsibilities of given jobs. Our government’s failure to do
likewise—so far as the art program was concerned—resulted in a disparity
in rank which frequently placed American MFA&A personnel at a great
disadvantage.

Of all the foreign representatives, none served his country more
zealously than Phonse Vorenkamp. Throughout the fall and winter months,
his convoys shuttled back and forth between Munich and Amsterdam. When I
last heard from him—in the late spring—he had restored to Holland more
than nine hundred paintings, upward of two thousand pieces of sculpture,
porcelain and glass, along with truckloads of tapestries, rugs and
furniture.

I left Munich on a rainy morning at the end of September. Lamont and
Steve were planning to depart for Alt Aussee at the same time. The
three of us had agreed to meet in front of the Collecting Point at
eight-thirty. I was a few minutes late and when I got there the guard at
the entrance said they had already gone. I hadn’t felt so forlorn since
the day Craig and I had parted in Bad Homburg months before. As I started
down the steps to the command car, Phonse Vorenkamp called from the
doorway. He had come to work a little earlier than usual, just to see me
off. He was full of waspish good humor, joked about the magnificence of
my new job in Frankfurt, and promised to look me up when he came through
with his first convoy. The driver stepped on the starter and, as we
rounded the corner into the Brienner-Strasse, Phonse waved us on our way.




(10)

_MISSION TO AMSTERDAM; THE WIESBADEN MANIFESTO_


I reported to Major La Farge upon arrival. Since my visit to Frankfurt
with Lamont and Steve six weeks before, there had been several changes
in the MFA&A Section. With the removal to Berlin of the Monuments
officers attached to the U. S. Group Control Council, our office at USFET
Headquarters in Frankfurt had been transferred to Höchst. The move was
logical enough because we were part of the Restitution Control Branch
of the Economics Division, which was located there. For all practical
purposes, however, we would have been better off in Frankfurt, since our
work involved daily contacts with other divisions—all located at the main
headquarters.

The Höchst office was a barnlike room, some thirty feet square, on
the second floor of the Exposition Building. It required considerable
ingenuity to find the room, for it was tucked in behind a row of
laboratories occupied by white-coated German civilians, former employees
of I. G. Farben, who were now working for the American Military
Government. At one end of the room were desks for the Chief and Deputy
Chief. The rest of the furniture consisted of four long work tables and
two small file cabinets. The staff was equally meager—Major La Farge,
Lieutenant Edith Standen, Corporal James Reeds and a German civilian
stenographer.

The first few days were a period of intensive indoctrination. The morning
I arrived, Bancel defined the relationship between our office and the one
at Berlin; and between us and the two districts of the American Zone—the
Eastern District, which was under Third Army, and the Western District,
under Seventh Army. He described the Berlin office as the final authority
in determining policy. In theory, if not always in fact, a given policy
was adopted only after an exchange of views between the Frankfurt-Höchst
office and the one in Berlin. The activation of policy was our function.
USFET—that is, our office—was an operational headquarters. Berlin was not.

And how did we activate policy? By means of directives. Directives to
whom? To Third Army at Munich and Seventh Army at Heidelberg. That
sounded simple enough, until Bancel explained that a directive was not
exactly an imperial decree. Just as it was our prerogative to activate
policies approved by Berlin, so it was the prerogative of the Armies to
implement our directives as they deemed expedient. He reminded me that
the two Armies were independent and autonomous within their respective
areas. In other words, we could tell them _what_ to do, but not _how_
to do it. Bancel was an old hand at writing directives, knowing how to
give each phrase just the right emphasis. At first the longer ones seemed
stilted and occasionally ambiguous. But I was not accustomed to military
jargon. Later I came to realize that Army communications always sounded
stilted; and what I had mistaken for ambiguity was often deliberate
circumlocution, calculated to soften the force of an unpalatable order.

Bancel said there were more important things to worry about than the
composition of directives. One was the problem of token restitutions. He
was sorry to postpone the one to Poland, but that couldn’t be helped.
Now that France and Belgium had received theirs, Holland was next on the
list. The ceremony in Brussels had made a great hit. He thought a similar
affair might be arranged at The Hague. Vorenkamp was selecting a group of
pictures at the Collecting Point. We would provide a plane to fly them
to Amsterdam. Captain Rae was to notify our office as soon as Vorenkamp
was ready to leave—probably within the next two days. In the meantime
Bancel was having orders cut for me to go to Holland. I was to see the
American ambassador, explain the idea of these token restitutions, and
sound him out on the subject of planning a ceremony similar to the one
our ambassador had arranged in Brussels. Colonel Anthony Biddle, Chief of
the Allied Contacts Section at USFET Headquarters, had promised Bancel
to write a letter of introduction for me to take to The Hague. Bancel
suggested that I make tentative arrangements with the motor pool for a
car and driver.

It was almost noon and Bancel had an appointment in Frankfurt at
twelve-thirty. He just had time to catch the bus. After he left, Reeds
and the stenographer went out to lunch, so Edith Standen and I had the
office to ourselves. We had a lot to talk over, as I had not seen her
since June when we worked together on the inventory of the Berlin Museum
collections at the Reichsbank.

In the meantime, she had been stationed at Höchst. When the Group CC
outfit—to which she was officially attached—moved to Berlin, she had
preferred to remain with the USFET office. On the Organizational Chart
of the MFA&A Section, Edith was listed as the “Officer in Charge of
Technical Files.” Actually she was in charge of a great many other things
as well. When the Chief and Deputy Chief were away from headquarters at
the same time—and they often were—Edith took over the affairs of the
Section. She must have been born with these remarkable administrative
gifts, for she could have had little opportunity to develop them as the
cloistered curator of the Widener Collection where, as she said herself,
she was “accustomed to the silent padding of butlers and the spontaneous
appearance of orchids and gardenias among the Rembrandts and the
Raphaels.”

I asked her if there had been any new developments regarding the proposed
removal of German-owned art to the United States. Yes, there had been.
But nothing conclusive. There was a cable from General Clay to the War
Department early in September.[3] The cable spoke of “holding German
objects of art in trust for eventual return to the German people.” But
it didn’t contain the clause “if and when the German nation had earned
the right to their return” which had appeared in the original document.
Besides the cable, there had been a communication from Berlin asking for
an estimate of the cubic footage in art repositories of the American
Zone. It was a question impossible to answer accurately. But Bancel and
Charlie had figured out a reply, citing the approximate size of one of
the repositories and leaving it up to Berlin to multiply the figures
by the total number in the entire zone. Now that John Nicholas Brown
and Charlie Kuhn were back in the United States, they might be able to
discourage the projected removal. I had only one piece of information to
contribute on the subject: a letter from George Stout saying that he had
been asked by the Roberts Commission to give an opinion, based on purely
technical grounds, of the risk involved in sending paintings to America.
He did so, stating that to remove them would _cube_ the risk of leaving
them in Germany.

When Corporal Reeds returned to the office, Edith and I went across the
street to the Officers’ Mess. While we were at lunch, she told me that
Jim Reeds had been a discovery of George’s. He had been with George and
Bancel at their office in Wiesbaden. Jim was a tall, serious fellow with
sandy hair and a turned-up nose. Edith said that he had been a medical
student before the war and that he came from Missouri. There was so much
paper work to do in the office that he never got caught up. The German
typist was slow and inaccurate. Jim had to do over nearly half the
letters he gave her to copy. But his patience was inexhaustible and he
never complained.

Bancel didn’t get back from Frankfurt until late in the afternoon. The
return of the Veit Stoss altarpiece had come up again and he had had a
long talk about it with the Polish liaison officer at USFET, who was a
nephew of the Archbishop of Cracow. After that he had had a session with
Colonel A. J. de la Bretesche, the French liaison officer. And, for good
measure, he had to take up the problem of clearance for the two Czech
representatives who would be arriving in a few days. He said wearily
that practically all of his days were like that, now that restitution
was going full speed ahead. I told him that I had had an uneventful
but profitable afternoon, going through the correspondence which had
accumulated on his desk. There had been several telephone calls, among
them one from Colonel Walter Kluss. Bancel said he would answer that one
in person, as he wanted to introduce me to the colonel, who was chief of
the Restitution Control Branch. Restitution involved settling the claims
of the occupied countries for everything the Germans had taken from
them. These claims covered every conceivable kind of property—factory
equipment, vehicles, barges, machinery, racehorses, livestock, household
furniture, etc.

The colonel’s office was at the end of the corridor. On our way down the
hall, Bancel said that the Army could do with a few more officers like
Colonel Kluss. This observation didn’t give me a very clear picture of
the colonel, but when I met him I knew what Bancel meant. There was an
unassuming friendliness and simplicity about him that I didn’t usually
associate with full colonels. His interest in the activities of the MFA&A
Section was genuine and personal. He was particularly fond of Bancel and
Edith and, during our visit with him that afternoon, spoke admiringly of
the work which they and Charlie Kuhn had done. While other sections of
the Restitution Control Branch were still generalizing about restitution,
the MFA&A Section had tackled the problem realistically. It wasn’t a
question of mapping out a program which might work. The program _did_
work. The wisdom and foresight of Bancel’s planning appealed to the
practical side of Colonel Kluss’ nature and, throughout the months of our
association with him, he was never too busy to help us when we went to
him with our troubles.

Bancel and I took the seven o’clock bus over to Frankfurt that evening.
We had dinner at the Officers’ Mess in the Casino behind USFET
Headquarters. We were joined there by Lieutenant William Lovegrove,
the officer whom Bancel had selected as our representative at Paris in
connection with the restitution of looted art works to the French. With
the arrival of the French representative in Munich, regular shipments
would soon be departing for France. Their destination in Paris was to
be the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which was now the headquarters of the
_Commission de Récupération Artistique_, the commission composed of
officials from the French museums charged with the task of sorting and
distributing the plundered treasures. Among the officials selected to
assist in this work was Captain Rose Valland, the courageous Frenchwoman
who, as I mentioned earlier, had spied on the Nazi thieves in that same
museum during the Occupation.

We had roughly estimated that it would require from three to six months
to send back the main bulk of the French loot from Germany. Mass
evacuation, as I have mentioned before, had the advantage of accelerating
restitution. It had the disadvantage of rendering difficult our procedure
of evaluating and photographing objects before they were returned. It
was our intention that Lieutenant Lovegrove should obtain the desired
photographs and appraisals. American military establishments in France
were being drastically reduced, but we planned to attach him to the USFET
Mission to France. We had been told that the Mission would be withdrawn
in the early spring. If Lovegrove’s work weren’t finished by that time,
Bancel thought it might be possible to attach him to our Paris Embassy
when the Mission folded.

When Bancel introduced me to Lovegrove that evening at the Casino, I
thought he would be very much at home in an embassy. He was of medium
height, bald, had a pink and white complexion and wore a small mustache.
He was self-possessed without being blasé. Lovegrove was a sculptor and
had lived in Paris for many years before the war. Bancel said that he
spoke a more perfect French than most Frenchmen.

Subsequent developments proved the wisdom of Bancel’s choice. Lovegrove
was exceedingly popular with his French associates at the Musée du Jeu de
Paume. His extraordinary tact and his capacity for hard work were equally
remarkable.

I particularly remember our last meeting. It was in February, when I
was stopping briefly in Paris on my way home from Germany. By that time
hundreds of carloads of stolen art had been received at the Jeu de
Paume. There were one or two final matters which I wished to take up with
M. Henraux and M. Dreyfus, members of the _Commission de Récupération
Artistique_. When Lovegrove and I arrived at the museum, we found
these two charming, elderly gentlemen in their office. With them was
M. David-Weill. He was examining a fine gold snuffbox. The office was
littered with gold and silver objects. They were part of the fabulous
collection which Lamont, Steve and I had packed by candlelight in the
Castle of Neuschwanstein six months before.

During the second week of October, I left for Amsterdam. It was a
three-hundred-mile drive from Frankfurt. Cassidy, the driver of the jeep,
was a New Jersey farm boy who, unlike most drivers, preferred long trips
to short local runs. The foothills of the Taunus Mountains were bright
with fall coloring along the back road to Limburg. From there we turned
west to the Rhine. Then, skirting the east bank of the river, we crossed
over into the British Zone at Cologne. From Cologne—where we lunched at
a British mess—our road led through Duisburg, Wesel and the skeleton of
Emerich.

We crossed the Dutch frontier at five and continued through battered
Arnhem to Utrecht. Utrecht was full of exuberant Canadians. I stopped
at the headquarters of the local Town Major to inquire about a mess for
transient officers. A friendly lieutenant, a blonde Dutch girl on his
arm, was on his way to supper and suggested that I join them. He said
that Cassidy could eat at a Red Cross Club.

The dining room in the officers’ hotel was noisy and crowded. Most of the
officers, the lieutenant explained, were going home in a few days. It was
good to be in a city which, superficially at least, showed no scars of
battle.

We reached Amsterdam about nine-thirty. At night the canals were
confusing. Cassidy and I looked in vain for the Town Major. Finally we
found a Canadian “leave hotel.” The enlisted man on duty at the desk
dispensed with the formality of the billet permit I should have obtained
from the Town Major, and assigned us rooms on the same floor. Cassidy
decided that the Canadians were a democratic outfit.

Bancel had instructed me to inform the Dutch Restitution Commission,
known as the “C.G.R.,” that Lieutenant Colonel Vorenkamp was scheduled
to reach Amsterdam at noon on the day following my arrival, so the next
morning I went to the headquarters of the commission to deliver Major
La Farge’s message. The commission occupied the stately old Goudstikker
house on the Heerengracht. Before the war, Goudstikker had been a great
Dutch art dealer. In the galleries of this house had been held many
fine exhibitions of Dutch painting. During the German Occupation of the
Netherlands, an unscrupulous Nazi named Miedl had “acquired” the entire
Goudstikker stock from the dealer’s widow. We had found many of the
Goudstikker pictures at Alt Aussee and in the Göring collection.

Bancel had told me to ask for Captain Robert de Vries. I was informed
that the captain was in London. In his stead Nicolaes Vroom, his
scholarly young deputy, received me. He had had no word of Colonel
Vorenkamp’s impending arrival. Vroom transmitted the message immediately
to Jonkheer Roel, director of the Rijksmuseum. Twenty minutes later,
this distinguished gentleman appeared in Vroom’s office. With him were
Lieutenant Colonel H. Polis and Captain ter Meer, both of whom were
attached to the C.G.R. They were delighted to know about the plane which
I told them was due at Schiphol Airport. Telephonic connections with
Munich had not yet been re-established. They had to depend on the USFET
Mission at The Hague for transmission of all messages from the American
Zone. It often took days for a telegram to get through.

There was barely time enough to telephone for a truck to meet the plane.
Also Mr. van Haagen, Permanent Secretary of Education and Science,
must be notified at once. I was told that he would accompany us to the
airport. In another hour we were all on our way to Schiphol.

We waited two hours at the field and still no sign of the plane from
Munich. The weather was fine at the airport, but there were reports of
heavy fog to the south. At two o’clock we returned to Amsterdam and
lunched at the Dutch officers’ mess. My hosts apologized for the food.
They said that they no longer received British Army rations. The menu
was prepared from civilian supplies. It was a Spartan diet—cheese, bread
and jam, and weak coffee. But they shared it so hospitably that only a
graceless guest would have complained of the lack of variety. Captain ter
Meer said that it was more palatable than the tulip bulbs he had lived on
the winter before.

After lunch, Cassidy and I drove to the USFET Mission at The Hague.
Colonel Ira W. Black, Chief of the Mission, arranged for me to see the
American ambassador. The temporary offices of our embassy were located in
a tall brick building on the edge of the city.

I presented Colonel Biddle’s letter to Mr. Stanley Hornbeck, the
ambassador, who looked more like a successful businessman than a
diplomat. He frowned as he read, and when he had finished, said gruffly,
“Commander, Tony Biddle is a charming fellow and I am very fond of him.
I’d like to be obliging, but we’ve had too damn many celebrations and
ceremonies in this country already. We need more hard work instead of
more holidays. It’s very nice about the pictures coming back, but steel
mills and machinery would be a lot more welcome.”

I hadn’t expected this reaction and, having had little experience with
ambassadors—irascible or otherwise—I hardly knew what to say. After an
embarrassing pause, I ventured the remark that a very simple ceremony
would be enough.

After his first outburst, the ambassador relented to the extent of saying
he’d think it over. As I left his office, he called after me, “My bark’s
worse than my bite.”

On my way back to Amsterdam, I concluded unhappily that as a diplomatic
errand boy I was a washout. I’d better go back to loading trucks.

When I reached the hotel I found a message that the plane with Vorenkamp
and the pictures had arrived. I met Phonse the following morning at
the Goudstikker house. He introduced me to Lieutenant Hans Jaffé, a
Dutch Monuments officer, who bore a striking resemblance to Robert
Louis Stevenson. Several weeks later Jaffé was chosen as the Dutch
representative for the Western District of the American Zone. His work
at Seventh Army Headquarters in Heidelberg was comparable to that of
Vorenkamp’s in Munich. He was intelligent and industrious. During the
next few months he was as successful in his investigations of looted
Dutch art works as Phonse was in Bavaria. Jaffé didn’t reap so rich a
harvest, but that was only because there was less loot in his territory.

He and Phonse took me to the Rijksmuseum where the twenty-six paintings
from Munich were being unpacked. They were a hand-picked group consisting
mainly of seventeenth century Dutch masters, which included four
Rembrandts. One of the Rembrandts was the _Still Life with Dead Peacocks_
which Lamont and I had taken out of the mine at Alt Aussee. There was
a twenty-seventh picture: it was the fraudulent Vermeer of the Göring
collection. Phonse had brought it back to be used as evidence against its
author, the notorious Van Meegeren.

The Rijksmuseum was holding a magnificent exhibition, appropriately
entitled “The Return of the Old Masters.” Among the one hundred and forty
masterpieces, which had been stored in underground shelters for the
past five years, were six Vermeers, nine paintings by Frans Hals, and
seventeen Rembrandts, including the famous _Night Watch_.

That evening Phonse took Cassidy and me to the country place occupied
by the officers of the C.G.R. It was called “Oud Bussum” and was near
Naarden, about fifteen miles from Amsterdam. The luxurious house had been
the property of a well known Dutch collaborator. Many high-ranking Nazis
had been entertained there. As a mark of special favor I was given the
suite which had been used by Göring.

At dinner I sat between Colonel W. C. Posthumus-Meyjes, Chief of the
Restitution Commission, and Phonse Vorenkamp. The colonel, to the
regret of his associates, was soon to relinquish his duties in order to
accept an important diplomatic post in Canada. Toward the end of the
meal, Phonse asked me how I had made out with the ambassador. I gave a
noncommittal reply. He looked at me shrewdly through his steel-rimmed
spectacles and said, “We would not expect your ambassador to arrange a
ceremony. That is for us to do. It is for us to express our gratitude to
General Eisenhower.”

(Phonse was as good as his word. A few weeks later, officials of the
Netherlands Government arranged a luncheon in one of the rooms of the
Rijksmuseum. It was the first affair of its kind in the history of
the museum. Only the simplest food was served, but the table was set
with rare old silver, porcelain and glass. Colonel Kluss and Bancel
represented USFET Headquarters. I was told that no one enjoyed himself
more than the American ambassador.)

The next morning Phonse suggested that I return with him in the plane. He
had it entirely to himself except for the empty packing cases which he
was taking back to Munich. He said that the slight detour to Frankfurt
could be easily arranged. So I sent Cassidy back in the jeep and at noon
Phonse and I—sole occupants of the C-47 which had been chartered in the
name of General Eisenhower—took off from Schiphol Airport. An hour and
twenty minutes later we landed at Frankfurt.

Before the end of October, a token restitution was made to
Czechoslovakia. The objects chosen were the famous fourteenth century
Hohenfurth altarpiece and the collections of the Army Museum at Prague.
Both had been stolen by the Nazis. The altarpiece, evacuated from the Alt
Aussee mine, was now at the Central Collecting Point in Munich. The Army
Museum collections were stored at Schloss Banz, near Bamberg. Lieutenant
Colonel František Vrečko and Captain Egon Suk, as representatives of
the Czech Government, were invited to USFET Headquarters. We arranged
for them to proceed from there to Schloss Banz, where they were met by
Lieutenant Walter Horn. I have mentioned Horn before as the Monuments
officer whose remarkable sleuthing resulted in recovery of the five
pieces of the coronation regalia at Nürnberg. While the Czech officers
were en route, we directed Captain Rae at Third Army to arrange for the
delivery of the Hohenfurth panels to Schloss Banz. Captain Rae, in turn,
designated Lieutenant Commander Coulter to transport them from Munich.
(Both Ham Coulter and I had received our additional half-stripe earlier
in the month.) This joint operation was carried out successfully and,
in succeeding months, restitution to Czechoslovakia became a matter of
routine shipments at regular intervals.

Also before the end of October, we became involved again in the
complicated problem of the Veit Stoss altarpiece. Major Charles
Estreicher was selected as the Polish representative. The major spent
several days at our office in Höchst studying our files for additional
data on Polish loot in the American Zone before continuing to Munich and
Nürnberg. Because of the condition of the roads, the actual return of the
altarpiece as a token restitution to Poland was delayed until the early
spring.

While we were in the midst of these negotiations Bancel conferred with
Colonel Hayden Smith at USFET headquarters in Frankfurt on the subject
of the proposed removal of German-owned works of art to the United
States. Colonel Smith was Chief of Staff to Major General C. L. Adcock,
Deputy Director of the office of military government, U. S. Zone. Bancel
impressed upon the colonel the practical difficulties involved and
stressed the _technical_, not the moral objections to shipping valuable
works of art to America. As a result of this conference the colonel asked
Bancel to prepare a memorandum on the subject for submission to his chief.

The finished memorandum which Edith and I helped Bancel prepare followed
the general pattern of a staff study—a statement of the “problem” with
specific suggestions relating to its solution. It contained an eloquent
plea for the importation of additional MFA&A personnel to assume
responsibility for the project and called attention to acute shortages
in packing materials and transportation facilities. It also pointed out
that the advisability of moving fragile objects across the ocean would be
balanced against the advantages of leaving them in the Central Collecting
Points, all three of which had been made weatherproof months before and
were now provided with sufficient coal to prevent deterioration of the
objects during the winter months.

Nothing came of our recommendations. Within two weeks, Colonel Harry
McBride, administrator of the National Gallery in Washington, arrived
in Berlin to expedite the first shipment. He flew down to Frankfurt two
days later to discuss ways and means with Major La Farge. We learned
from him that General Clay’s recommendation for immediate removal had
been approved by the highest national authority. The General was now
in Washington. The futility of protest was obvious. Bancel told the
colonel that our Monuments officers were strongly opposed to the project.
He said that some of them might request transfer rather than comply
with the order. The colonel replied that such requests would, in all
probability, be refused. The only other alternative—open defiance of the
order—could have but one consequence, a court-martial. And, assuming
that our officers elected to face court-martial, what would be gained?
Nothing, according to the colonel; the order would still be carried out.
If trained MFA&A personnel were not available, then the work would have
to be done by such officers and men as might be obtainable, experienced
or not. Bancel realized that his primary duty was the “protection and
salvage” of art works. If he deliberately left them at the mercy of
whatever troops might be available to do the packing, then he would be
guilty of dereliction of duty. This interpretation afforded him some
consolation.

As Bancel had predicted, our Monuments officers lost no time in
registering their disapproval. They expressed their sentiments as
follows:

             U. S. FORCES, EUROPEAN THEATER[4] GERMANY

                                                    7 November 1945

    1. We, the undersigned Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives
    Specialist Officers of the Armed Forces of the United States,
    wish to make known our convictions regarding the transportation
    to the United States of works of art, the property of German
    institutions or nationals, for purposes of protective custody.

    2. a. We are unanimously agreed that the transportation of
    those works of art, undertaken by the United States Army, upon
    direction from the highest national authority, establishes a
    precedent which is neither morally tenable nor trustworthy.

    b. Since the beginning of United States participation in the
    war, it has been the declared policy of the Allied Forces, so
    far as military necessity would permit, to protect and preserve
    from deterioration consequent upon the processes of war, all
    monuments, documents, or other objects of historic, artistic,
    cultural, or archaeological value. The war is at an end and no
    doctrine of “military necessity” can now be invoked for the
    further protection of the objects to be moved, for the reason
    that depots and personnel, both fully competent for their
    protection, have been inaugurated and are functioning.

    c. The Allied nations are at present preparing to prosecute
    individuals for the crime of sequestering, under pretext of
    “protective custody,” the cultural treasures of German-occupied
    countries. A major part of the indictment follows upon the
    reasoning that even though these individuals were acting under
    military orders, the dictates of a higher ethical law made it
    incumbent upon them to refuse to take part in, or countenance,
    the fulfillment of these orders. We, the undersigned, feel it
    our duty to point out that, though as members of the armed
    forces, we will carry out the orders we receive, we are thus
    put before any candid eyes as no less culpable than those whose
    prosecution we affect to sanction.

    3. We wish to state that from our own knowledge, no historical
    grievance will rankle so long, or be the cause of so much
    justified bitterness, as the removal, for any reason, of a
    part of the heritage of any nation, even if that heritage be
    interpreted as a prize of war. And though this removal may be
    done with every intention of altruism, we are none the less
    convinced that it is our duty, individually and collectively,
    to protest against it, and that though our obligations are to
    the nation to which we owe allegiance, there are yet further
    obligations to common justice, decency, and the establishment
    of the power of right, not might, among civilized nations.

This document was drafted and signed by a small group of Monuments
officers at the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden. Before being
submitted to Major La Farge for whatever action he deemed appropriate,
it was signed by twenty-four of the thirty-two Monuments officers in the
American Zone. The remaining eight chose either to submit individual
letters expressing similar views, or orally to express like sentiments.
The document came to be known as the “Wiesbaden Manifesto.” Army
regulations forbade the publication of such a statement; hence its
submission to Major La Farge as Chief of the MFA&A Section.

Further protests against the policy which prompted the Wiesbaden
Manifesto appeared in the United States a few months later. The action
of our Government was sharply criticized and vigorously defended in the
press. Letters to and from the State Department and a petition submitted
to the President concerning the issue appear in the Appendix to this book.

Preparations for the shipment—appropriately nicknamed “Westward Ho”—took
precedence over all other activities of the MFA&A office during the
next three weeks. Its size was determined soon after Colonel McBride’s
arrival. General Clay cabled from Washington requesting this information
and the shipping date. After hastily consulting us, our Berlin office
replied that two hundred paintings could be made ready for removal within
ten days.

The next problem was to decide how the selection was to be made. Should
the pictures be chosen from the three Central Collecting Points—Munich,
Wiesbaden and Marburg? Time was short. It would be preferable to take
them from one depot. Wiesbaden was decided upon. Quality had been
stressed. The best of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum pictures were at
Wiesbaden.

The decision to confine the selection to the one Central Collecting
Point had the additional advantage of avoiding the disruption of MFA&A
work at the other two depots, Munich and Marburg. Craig Smyth had long
been apprehensive about “Westward Ho,” feeling that any incursion on the
Bavarian State Collections would be disastrous to his organization at the
Munich Collecting Point. He said that his entire staff of non-Nazi museum
specialists would walk out. This would seriously impede the restitution
program in the Eastern Military District.

So far as Marburg was concerned, I had been in the office the day Bancel
told Walker Hancock of the decision to take German-owned works of art to
America. Walker looked at Bancel as though he hadn’t understood him. Then
he said simply, “In that case I can’t go back to Marburg. Everything that
we were able to accomplish was possible because I had the confidence of
certain people. I can’t go back and tell them that I have betrayed them.”

And he hadn’t gone back to Marburg. Instead he went to Heidelberg for
two days without telling anyone where he was going. When he finally
returned, it was only to close up his work at Marburg, in the course of
which he undertook to explain as best he could to Professor Hamann, the
distinguished old German scholar with whom he had been associated, the
decision concerning the removal of the pictures. “I quoted the official
statement,” Walker said, “about the paintings being held in trust for the
German people and added that there was no reason to doubt it. Very slowly
he said, ‘If they take our old art, we must try to create a fine new
art.’ Then, after a long pause, he added,’I never thought they would take
them.’”

Once it had been decided to limit selection of the paintings to the
Wiesbaden Collecting Point, there arose the question of appointing an
officer properly qualified to handle the job. It called for speed,
discrimination and an expert knowledge of packing. There was a ten-day
deadline to be met. Two hundred pictures had to be chosen. And the
packing would have to be done with meticulous care. We considered
the possibilities. Captain Walter Farmer couldn’t be spared from his
duties as director of the Collecting Point. Lieutenant Samuel Ratensky,
Monuments officer for Greater Hesse, was an architect, not a museum man.
Captain Joseph Kelleher was one of our ablest officers; but he was just
out of the hospital where he had been laid up for three months with a
broken hip. The doctor had released him on condition that he be given
easy assignments for the next few weeks.

At this critical juncture, Lamont Moore telephoned from Munich. He and
Steve had just completed the evacuation of the mine at Alt Aussee. Lamont
said that they were coming up to Frankfurt. Steve had enough points to
go home—enough and to spare. Lamont thought he’d take some leave. Bancel
signaled from the opposite desk. I told Lamont to forget about the leave;
that we had a job for him. Bancel sighed with relief. Lamont’s was a
different kind of sigh.

Lamont’s arrival was providential. Aside from his obvious qualifications
for the Wiesbaden assignment, he and Colonel McBride were old friends
from the National Gallery where, as I have mentioned before, Lamont had
been director of the educational program. The colonel was content to
leave everything in his hands. Lamont and I spent an evening together
studying a list of the pictures stored at Wiesbaden. He typed out a
tentative selection. The next day he and the colonel went over to the
Collecting Point for a preliminary inspection.

Steve was momentarily tempted by the prospect of having a part in
the undertaking. But when I told him there was a chance of his being
included in a draft of officers scheduled for immediate redeployment,
he decided that he’d had his share of packing. Maybe he’d come back in
the spring, if there was work still to be done. His parting gift was the
Mercedes-Benz, a temporary legacy, as it turned out: two weeks later
the car was stolen from the motor pool where I had left it for minor
repairs. Steve didn’t like the idea of having to wait at a processing
center before proceeding to his port of embarkation. He cheered up when
he learned that he was headed for one near Marburg. He went off in high
spirits at the prospect of seeing his old friend Walker Hancock again.

Under Lamont’s skillful supervision, preparations for the shipment
proceeded according to schedule. Lamont chose Captain Kelleher as his
assistant. Together they located the cases from Captain Farmer’s records.
Only a few of the Kaiser Friedrich pictures had been taken out of the
cases in which they had been originally packed for removal from Berlin to
the Merkers mine. The larger cases contained as many as a dozen pictures.
It was slow work opening the cases and withdrawing a particular canvas
for repacking. Seldom were any two of the specified two hundred paintings
in a single case. When they were all finally assembled, each one was
photographed. In the midst of the proceedings, the supply of film and
paper ran out. The nearest replacements were at Mannheim. A day was lost
in obtaining the necessary authorization to requisition fresh supplies.
It took the better part of another day to make the trip to Mannheim and
back. Thanks to Lamont’s careful calculations, maximum use was made
of the original cases in repacking the two hundred paintings after a
photographic record had been made of their condition.

While these operations were in progress, detailed plans for the actual
shipment of the paintings had to be worked out. Colonel McBride and
Bancel took up the matter of shipping space with General Ross, Chief of
Transportation. Sailing schedules were consulted. An Army transport, the
_James Parker_, was selected. As an alternative, temporary consideration
was given to the idea of trucking the pictures to Bremen and sending
them by a Naval vessel from there. But the Bremen sailing schedules were
unsatisfactory. A special metal car was requisitioned to transport the
cases from Frankfurt, by way of Paris, to Le Havre. A twenty-four-hour
guard detail was appointed to accompany the car from Frankfurt to the
ship. Trucks and escort vehicles were procured for the twenty-five-mile
trip from Wiesbaden to the Frankfurt rail yards.

It was decided that Lamont should be responsible for delivering the
pictures to the National Gallery in Washington where they were to be
placed in storage. Bancel drafted the orders. He worked on them a full
day. It took two more days to have them cut. They were unique in one
respect: Lamont, a second lieutenant, was appointed officer-in-charge.
His designated assistant was a commander in the Navy. This was Commander
Keith Merrill, an old friend of Colonel McBride’s, who happened to be
in Frankfurt. He offered his services to the colonel and subsequently
crossed on the _James Parker_ with Lamont and the pictures.

Lamont and Joe Kelleher finished the packing one day ahead of schedule.
The forty-five cases, lined with waterproof paper, were delivered to the
Frankfurt rail yards and loaded onto the car. From there the car was
switched to the station and attached to the night train for Paris.

Bancel and I returned to the office to take up where we had left off.
As usual, Edith Standen had taken care of everything while we had been
preoccupied with the “Westward Ho” shipment. There had been no major
crises. Judging from the weekly field reports, restitution to the Dutch
and the French was proceeding without interruption. Edith produced a
stack of miscellaneous notations: The Belgian representative had arrived
in Munich. The Stockholm Museum had offered a supply of lumber to be used
in repairing war-damaged German buildings of cultural importance. There
had been two inquiries concerning a modification of Law 52 (the Military
Government regulation which forbade trafficking in works of art). A
report from Würzburg indicated that emergency repairs to the roof of the
Residenz were nearing completion. Lieutenant Rorimer had called from
Heidelberg about the books at Offenbach.

Of all the problems which confronted the MFA&A Section, none was more
baffling than that of the books at Offenbach. There were more than two
million of them. They had been assembled from Jewish libraries throughout
Europe by the _Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage_—Institute for
the Investigation of the Jewish Question—at Frankfurt. At the close of
the war, a small part of the collection was found in a large private
house in Frankfurt. The rest was discovered in a repository to the north
of the city, at Hungen. The house in Frankfurt had been bombed, leaving
undamaged only the books stored in the cellar. One hundred and twenty
thousand volumes were removed from the damp cellar to the Rothschild
Library, which, though damaged, was still intact. Examination of this
portion of the collection revealed that it contained more than sixty
libraries looted from occupied countries. Subsequently, the rest of
the collection was transferred from Hungen to an enormous warehouse at
Offenbach, across the river from Frankfurt. The ultimate disposition
of this library—probably the greatest of its kind in the world—was the
subject of heated discussions, both written and oral. Several leading
Jewish scholars had expressed the hope that it could be kept together
and eventually established in some center of international study. Our
immediate responsibility was the care of the books in their two present
locations. That alone was exceedingly difficult. It would take months,
perhaps years, to make an inventory.

Judge Samuel Rifkind, General Clay’s Adviser on Jewish Affairs, had
requested that twenty-five thousand volumes be made available for
distribution among the DP camps. I referred the request to the two
archivists who had recently joined our staff, Paul Vanderbilt and Edgar
Breitenbach. While I sympathized with the tragic plight of the Jewish
DPs, there were the unidentified legal owners of the books to be taken
into account. One of our archivists felt that we should accede to the
judge’s request; the other disagreed. The matter was referred to Berlin
for a decision. After several weeks, we received word from Berlin that no
books were to be released. The judge persisted. Ten days later, Berlin
reconsidered. The books could be released—that is, twenty-five thousand
of them—on condition that no rare or irreplaceable volumes were included
in the selection. Also, the volumes chosen were to be listed on a custody
receipt. Up to the time of my departure from Frankfurt, no books had been
released.

During the latter part of November, we concentrated on future personnel
requirements for the MFA&A program in the American Zone. Current
directives indicated that drastic reductions in Military Government
installations throughout the Zone could be expected in the course of the
next six or eight months. Already we had begun to feel the impact of the
Army’s accelerated redeployment program. Bancel and I took stock of our
present resources. We had lost four officers and three enlisted men since
the first of the month. To offset them, we had gained two civilians; but
they were archivists, urgently needed in a specialized field of our work.
We couldn’t count on them as replacements.

We drew up a chart showing the principal MFA&A offices and depots in each
of the three _Länder_. In Bavaria, for example, there were at Munich
the _Land_ office and the Central Collecting Point; a newly-established
Archival Collecting Point at Oberammergau and the auxiliary collecting
point at Bamberg; and two secondary offices, one in Upper Bavaria,
another in Lower Bavaria. In Greater Hesse, there were the _Land_ office
and the Central Collecting Point at Wiesbaden; the offices at Frankfurt
and Kassel; and the Collecting Points at Offenbach and Marburg. In
Württemberg-Baden, the smallest of the three _Länder_, the _Land_ office
was at Stuttgart. There was a secondary one at Karlsruhe. The principal
repositories, requiring MFA&A supervision, were the great mines at
Heilbronn and Kochendorf.

We hoped that certain of these establishments could be closed out in a
few months; others would continue to operate for an indefinite period. We
regarded the _Land_ offices as permanent; likewise the Collecting Points,
with the exception of Marburg. And Marburg would have to be maintained
until it had been thoroughly sifted for loot, or until we received
authorization to effect interzonal transfers. Most of the Rhineland
museums were in the British Zone, but the collections were at Marburg.
The British had requested their return. Until our Berlin office approved
the request, we could do nothing.

It was impossible to make an accurate forecast of our personnel
needs. Nevertheless we entered on the chart tentative reductions
with accompanying dates. The chart would serve as a basic guide in
the allocation of civilian positions when the conversion program got
seriously under way. A number of our officers had already signified their
intentions of converting to civilian status, if the promised program ever
materialized.

Early in December, Bancel went home on thirty-days’ leave. Allowing two
weeks for transportation each way, he would be gone about two months.
In his absence, I was Acting Chief of the Section. Under the Navy’s new
point system, I had been eligible for release on the first of November,
but had requested an extension of active duty in anticipation of Bancel’s
departure. I was not looking forward with enthusiasm to the period of his
absence, because of the personnel problems which lay ahead.

My apprehensions were justified. Our chart, based on a realistic concept
of the work yet to be done, was rejected by the Personnel Section. I was
told that each _Land_ would draw up its own T.O. (Table of Organization).
Perhaps there could be some co-ordination at a later date. Even the T.O.
of our own office at USFET was thrown back at us with the discouraging
comment that the proposed civil service ratings would have to be
downgraded. During the next eight weeks there must have been a dozen
personnel conferences between the top brass of USFET and the Military
Governors of the three _Länder_, and between them and the moguls of the
Group Control Council. Not once, to my knowledge, was the MFA&A Section
consulted. For a while I exhorted applicants for civilian MFA&A jobs to
be patient; but as the weeks went by and the job allocations failed to
materialize, applications were withdrawn. _Stars and Stripes_ contributed
to my discomfort with glittering forecasts of Military Government jobs
paying from seven to ten thousand dollars a year. There were positions
which paid such salaries, but _Stars and Stripes_ might have stressed
the fact that there were many more which paid less. I remember one mousy
little sergeant who applied for a job with us. In civilian life he had
received a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. On his application
blank he stipulated, as the minimum he would accept, the sum of six
thousand dollars.

Fortunately there were diversions from these endless personnel problems.
Edith and I fell into the habit of going over to Wiesbaden on Saturday
afternoons. It was a relief to escape from the impersonal life at our
headquarters to the friendly country atmosphere of the _Land_ and City
Detachments. We were particularly fond of our Monuments officers there.

They were a dissimilar trio—Captain Farmer, Lieutenant Ratensky and
Captain Kelleher. Walter Farmer presided over the Collecting Point.
Walter seldom relaxed. He was an intense fellow, jumpy in his movements,
and unconsciously brusque in conversation. He was an excellent host,
loved showing us about the Collecting Point—particularly his “Treasure
Room” with its wonderful medieval objects—and, at the end of a tour,
invariably produced a bottle of Tokay in his office.

Sam Ratensky, MFA&A officer for the _Land_, was short, slender and had
red hair. In civilian life he had been associated with Frank Lloyd Wright
and was deeply interested in city-planning. Sam usually looked harassed,
but his patience and understanding were inexhaustible. He was accurate in
his appraisals of people and had a quiet sense of humor.

Joe Kelleher, Sam’s deputy, was a “black Irishman.” The war had
temporarily interrupted his brilliant career in the Fine Arts department
at Princeton. At twenty-eight, Joe had the poise, balance and tolerance
of a man twice that age. With wit and charm added to these soberer
qualities, he was a dangerously persuasive character. On one occasion,
during Bancel’s absence, he all but succeeded in hypnotizing our office
into assigning a disproportionate number of our best officers to the
MFA&A activities of Greater Hesse. When Sam Ratensky went home in
February, Joe succeeded him as MFA&A officer for the _Land_. He held
this post until his own release several months later. His intelligent
supervision of the work was a significant contribution to the success of
the American fine arts program in Germany.

Another Monuments officer whose visits to Wiesbaden rivaled Edith’s and
mine in frequency was Captain Everett Parker Lesley, Jr. He disliked his
given name and preferred to be called “Bill.” Lesley had been in Europe
since the invasion. He was known as the “stormy petrel” of MFA&A. And
with good reason. He was brilliant and unpredictable. A master of oral
and written invective, he was terrible in his denunciation of stupidity
and incompetence. During the fall months, Bill was attached to the
Fifteenth Army with headquarters at Bad Nauheim. This was the “paper”
army, so called because its function was the compilation of a history of
the war. Bill was writing a report of MFA&A activities during combat. He
was a virtuoso of the limerick. I was proud of my own repertoire, but
Bill knew all of mine and fifty more of his own composing. He usually
telephoned me at the office when he had turned out a particularly good
one.

Upon the completion of his report for Fifteenth Army, Lesley was
appointed MFA&A Officer at Frankfurt. As a part of his duties, he assumed
responsibility for the two million books at Offenbach and the Rothschild
Library. Within a week he had submitted a report on the two depots and
drafted practical plans for their effective reorganization.

While Walter Farmer was on leave in England before Christmas, Joe
Kelleher took charge of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point. The Dutch and
French restitution representatives had gone home for the holidays. Joe
had the spare time to examine some of the unopened cases. He asked Edith
and me to come over one evening. He said that he might have a surprise
for us. I said we’d come and asked if I might bring Colonel Kluss,
Chief of the Restitution Control Branch. The colonel had never seen the
Collecting Point.

We drove over in the colonel’s car. After early dinner with Joe at the
City Detachment, we went down to the Collecting Point. Joe unlocked the
“Treasure Room” and switched on the lights. The colonel whistled when he
looked around the room.

“Those are the Polish church treasures which the Nazis swiped,” said Joe,
pointing casually to the gold and silver objects stacked on shelves and
tables. “There’s something a lot more exciting in that box.”

He walked over to a packing case about five feet square which stood in
the center of the room. The lid had been unscrewed but was still in
place. It was marked in black letters: “Kiste 28, Aegypt. Abteilung—Bunte
Königin—Tel-el-Amarna—NICHT KIPPEN!”—Case 28, Egyptian Department—Painted
Queen—Tel-el-Amarna—DON’T TILT! Joe grinned with satisfaction as I read
the markings. The Painted Queen—Queen Nefertete. This celebrated head,
the most beautiful piece of Egyptian sculpture in the world, had been one
of the great treasures of the Berlin Museum. It was a momentous occasion.
There was every reason to believe that the German museum authorities
had packed the head with proper care. Even so, the case had been moved
around a good deal in the meantime, first from the Merkers mine to
the vaults of the Reichsbank in Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to
Wiesbaden. There was not much point in speculating about that now. We’d
know the worst in a few minutes.

Joe and I laid the lid aside. The box was filled with a white packing
material. At first I thought it was cotton, but it wasn’t. It was glass
wool. In the very center of the box lay the head, swathed in silk paper.
Gingerly we lifted her from the case and placed her on a table. We
unwound the silk paper. Nefertete was unharmed, and as bewitching as
ever. She was well named: “The beautiful one is here.”

While we studied her from every angle, Joe recounted the story of the
Nefertete, her discovery and subsequent abduction to Berlin. She was the
wife of Akhnaton, enlightened Pharaoh of the fourteenth century B.C.
This portrait of her was excavated in the winter of 1912 by Dr. Ludwig
Borchardt, famous German Egyptologist, on the site of Tel-el-Amarna,
Akhnaton’s capital. In compliance with the regulations of the Egyptian
Government, Borchardt submitted a list of his finds at Tel-el-Amarna to
M. Maspero of the Cairo Museum. According to the story, Maspero merely
glanced at the list, to make certain that a fifty-fifty division had
been made, and did not actually examine the items. The head was taken to
Berlin and placed in storage until after the first World War. When it was
placed on exhibition in 1920, the Egyptian Government protested loudly
that Dr. Borchardt had deceived the authorities of the Cairo Museum and
demanded the immediate return of the head. (The Egyptian Government was
again pressing its claim in March 1946.)

After replacing Nefertete in her case, Joe showed the colonel the
collection of rare medieval treasures, including those of the Guelph
Family—patens, chalices and reliquaries of exquisite workmanship dating
from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With a fine sense of showmanship
he saved the most spectacular piece till the last: the famous Crown of
St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, crowned by the Pope
in the year 1000. It was adorned with enamel plaques, bordered with
pearls and studded with great uncut gems. Joe said there was a difference
of opinion among scholars as to the exact date and provenance of the
enamels. The crown was surmounted by a bent gold cross. According to
Joe, the cross had been bent for four hundred years and would never be
straightened. During the sixteenth century, the safety of the crown was
endangered. It was entrusted to the care of a Hungarian noblewoman,
who concealed it in a compartment under the seat of her carriage. The
space was small and when the lid was closed and weighted down by the
occupant of the carriage, the cross got bent. The Hungarian coronation
regalia included three other pieces: a sword, an orb, and a scepter. The
scepter was extremely beautiful. The stalk was of rich gold filigree and
terminated in a spherical ornament of carved rock crystal. The regalia
was kept in a specially constructed iron trunk with three locks, the keys
to which were entrusted to three different nobles. At the close of the
present war, American troops apprehended a Hungarian officer with the
trunk. Perhaps he was trying to safeguard the regalia as his predecessor
in the sixteenth century had done. In any case, the American authorities
thought they’d better relieve him of that grave responsibility.

[Illustration: The Hungarian Crown Jewels. _Left_, the scepter. _Center_,
the celebrated Crown of St. Stephen. _Right_, the sword. These priceless
treasures fell into the hands of the American authorities in Germany at
the war’s close.]

[Illustration: View of the Treasure Room at the Central Collecting Point,
Wiesbaden, showing treasures stolen from Polish churches.]

[Illustration: The celebrated Egyptian sculpture, Queen Nefertete,
formerly in the Berlin Museum, discovered in the Merkers salt mine.]

A few days after our visit to Wiesbaden with Colonel Kluss, I received a
letter from home enclosing a clipping from the December 7 edition of the
New York _Times_. The clipping read as follows:

    $80,000,000 PAINTINGS ARRIVE FROM EUROPE ON ARMY TRANSPORT

    A valuable store of art, said to consist entirely of paintings
    worth upward of $80,000,000, arrived here last night from
    Europe in the holds of the Army transport _James Parker_.

    Where the paintings came from and where they are going was a
    mystery, and no Army officer on the pier at Forty-fourth Street
    and North River, where the _Parker_ docked with 2,483 service
    passengers, would discuss the shipment, or even admit it was on
    board. It was learned elsewhere that a special detail of Army
    officers was on the ship during the night to take charge of the
    consignment, which will be unloaded today.

    Unusual precautions were taken to keep the arrival of the
    paintings secret. The canvases were included in more than forty
    crates and were left untouched during the night under lock and
    key.

    Presumably the shipment was gathered at sites in Europe where
    priceless stores of paintings and art objects stolen by the
    Nazis from the countries they overran were discovered when
    Allied forces broke through into Germany and the dominated
    countries.

    The White House announced in Washington two months ago that
    shipments of art would be brought here for safekeeping, to
    be kept in “trust” for the rightful owners, and the National
    Gallery of Art, through its chairman, Chief Justice Harlan
    Fiske Stone, was asked to provide storage and protection for
    the works while they are in this country. The gallery is
    equipped with controlled ventilation and expert personnel for
    the storage and handling of such works.

    The White House announcement gave no listing of the paintings,
    but it is known that among the vast stores seized, including
    caches in Italy as well as Germany, and Hermann Goering’s
    famous $200,000,000 art collection, [were] included many of the
    world’s art treasures and works of the masters.

By coincidence, I received that same day a copy of the New York _Times
Overseas Weekly_ edition of December 9, which carried substantially the
same story, except for the fact that it stated unequivocally that the
paintings shipped to America were Nazi loot.

Edith and I were gravely disturbed by the inaccuracy of the statements in
these articles. Our concern was increased by the fact that the articles
had appeared in so reliable a publication as the _Times_. What could
have happened to the official press release on the subject issued on the
twenty-fourth of November when the _James Parker_ was ready to sail?[5]
And why all the mystery? I reread the December 7 clipping. To me there
was the implication that we were shipping loot in wholesale lots to the
United States. That would be alarming news to the countries whose stolen
art works we were already returning as rapidly as possible.

The _Times_ story most emphatically called for a correction. But if
a statement from our office were sent through channels, it probably
wouldn’t reach New York before Easter. Edith looked up from her work.
There was a glint in her eye. She asked, “Will you do me a favor? I’d
like to write the letter of correction.”

I told her to go ahead. Ten minutes later she showed me the rough draft.
It covered all the points. I reworked a phrase here and there but made
no important changes and, as soon as it was typed and cleared, I signed
and mailed it. As published in the New York _Times_ two weeks later, on
January 2, 1946, the letter read as follows:

                TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

    On Dec. 7 _The Times_ printed a report to the effect that
    $80,000,000 worth of paintings, presumably from the stores of
    art objects stolen by the Nazis, had arrived from Europe in the
    Army transport James Parker. Your Overseas Weekly edition of
    Dec. 9 repeated this information but stated categorically that
    the paintings were Nazi loot.

    It is true that the James Parker brought to America some 200
    paintings of inestimable value, but none of them is loot or
    of dubious ownership. They are the property of the Kaiser
    Friedrich Museum in Berlin. A press release from the Office
    of Military Government for Germany (U.S.), dated Nov. 24,
    states that these “priceless German-owned paintings, which
    might suffer irreparable damage if left in Germany through
    the winter, have been selected for temporary storage in the
    United States. These paintings have been gathered from various
    wartime repositories in the United States Zone of Germany and
    are being shipped to Washington to insure their safety and to
    hold them in trust for the people of Germany. The United States
    Government has promised their return to the German people.”

    It cannot be stated too emphatically that the policy of the
    American Military Government is to return all looted works
    of art to their owner nations with the greatest possible
    speed. Since the restitution in August of the famous van Eyck
    altarpiece, “The Mystic Lamb,” to Belgium, a steady stream of
    paintings, sculpture, fine furniture and other art objects
    has poured from the highly organized collecting points of the
    United States Zone to the liberated countries. Few, if any,
    looted works of art of any importance are of unknown origin;
    and though, among the vast masses of material taken from the
    Jews and other “enemies of the state” for what was always
    described as “safekeeping” there will undoubtedly be many
    pieces whose ownership will be difficult to determine, it
    appears unlikely that these will be found to be of great value.

    The shipment of German-owned paintings to the United States is
    thus a project entirely separate from the main objectives of
    the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Office
    of Military Government—namely, the restitution of loot and
    the re-establishment of the German museums and other cultural
    organizations. To confuse this shipment, which was directed by
    the highest national authority, with what is now the routine
    work of preservation, identification and restitution performed
    by trained specialist personnel is to mislead our Allies
    and to underrate the accomplishments of a small group of
    disinterested and hard-working Americans.

                                                 Thomas C. Howe Jr.

                        Lieut. Comdr., USNR, Deputy Chief; Director
                                 on Leave, California Palace of the
                                    Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

                                   European Theatre, Dec. 18, 1945.

The main objectives of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of
American Military Government in Germany were defined in my letter to the
New York _Times_ as “the restitution of loot and the re-establishment
of the German museums and other cultural institutions.” Honorable and
constructive objectives. And, as expressed in that letter, unequivocal
and reassuring both to the liberated countries of Europe and to the
Germans. Yet how difficult of attainment! How difficult even to keep
those objectives clearly in mind when confronted simultaneously—as our
officers often were—with a dozen problems of equal urgency!

At close range it was impossible to look objectively at the overall
record of our accomplishments. But homeward bound in February I had that
opportunity. The pieces of the puzzle began to fit together and the
picture took shape. It was possible to determine to what extent we have
realized our objectives.

So far as restitution is concerned, the record has been a success. During
the summer months our energies were devoted to obvious preliminary
preparations. They included the establishment of Central Collecting
Points at Munich, Marburg and Wiesbaden. Immediately thereafter, the
contents of art repositories in the American Zone were removed to those
central depots. The Central Collecting Points, organized and directed by
Monuments officers with museum experience, were staffed with trained
personnel from German museums. The one at Munich was primarily reserved
for looted art, since the majority of the cultural booty was found in
Bavaria. The Collecting Points at Wiesbaden and Marburg, on the other
hand, housed German-owned collections brought from repositories in which
storage conditions were unsatisfactory.

The process of actual restitution was inaugurated by token restitutions
in the name of General Eisenhower to Belgium, Holland, France and
Czechoslovakia. Circumstances beyond our control postponed similar
gestures of good will to Poland and Greece. Representatives of the
liberated countries were invited to the American Zone to identify and
remove the loot from the collecting points. According to late reports,
the restitution of loot was continuing without interruption.

Shortly after my return, there were disquieting rumors of drastic
reductions in American personnel connected with cultural restitution in
Germany. I earnestly hope that these rumors are without foundation. Such
reductions would be disastrous to the completion of a program which has
reflected so creditably on our government.

The re-establishment of German museums and other cultural
institutions—our second main objective—has been, to a large extent,
sacrificed in the interests of restitution. This brings up again the
urgent need for the immediate replenishment of our dwindling Fine Arts
personnel in Germany. Our moral responsibility for the continuation of
this phase of the MFA&A program is a grave one. It was understandably
neglected during the first six months of our occupation in Germany.
And it would be unfair to argue that the British have far outdistanced
us in this field. That they have done so is undeniably true. However,
the British found but little loot in their zone. Consequently, they
have been able to make rapid strides in the reconstitution of German
collections and cultural institutions, while we have been preoccupied
with restitution.

Notwithstanding that preoccupation, our Monuments officers were
instrumental in arranging a series of impressive exhibitions of
German-owned masterpieces. The first of these was held at Marburg in
November 1945. A second and more ambitious show, which included many of
the finest treasures of the Bavarian State Galleries, opened at Munich
in January 1946. A third, comprising paintings and sculptures from the
museums of Berlin and Frankfurt, was presented at Wiesbaden in February.

All these exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues with German and
English texts. Those of Munich and Wiesbaden were lavishly illustrated.
The Munich catalogue contained several plates showing the rooms in which
the exhibition was held—lofty, spacious galleries recalling the marble
halls of our own National Gallery at Washington.

At the time of my departure from Germany, little was known of French
and Russian procedures with regard to cultural rehabilitation in their
respective zones of occupation. Their Military Governments have made
provisions for personnel capable of carrying on work similar to ours and
that of the British.

The caliber of the men drawn into the project from all branches of
our Armed Forces has been cited as an important factor in the success
of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program. I would like to
cite another factor which I consider equally important: There was no
arbitrary drafting of personnel; participation was voluntary. The
resulting spontaneity and its value to the spirit of the work cannot be
exaggerated.




APPENDIX




APPENDIX


The following is the complete list of the paintings transferred from
Germany and now stored at the National Gallery, according to its News
Release of December 14, 1945:

Albrecht Altdorfer: _Rest on the Flight into Egypt_

Albrecht Altdorfer: _Landscape with Satyr Family_

Albrecht Altdorfer: _Nativity_

Albrecht Altdorfer: _Christ’s Farewell to His Apostles_

Christoph Amberger: _Cosmographer Sebastian Münster_

Jacopo Amigioni: _Lady as Diana_

Fra Angelico: _Last Judgment_

Austrian Master (ca. 1400): _Christ, Madonna, St. John_

Austrian Master (ca. 1410): _Crucifixion_

Hans Baldung Grien: _Altar of Halle_

Hans Baldung Grien: _Graf von Löwenstein_

Hans Baldung Grien: _Pietà_

Hans Baldung Grien: _Pyramus and Thisbe_

Giovanni Bellini: _The Resurrection_

Bohemian (ca. 1350): _Glatyer Madonna_

Hieronymus Bosch: _St. John on Patmos_

Botticelli: _Giuliano de Medici_, and frame

Botticelli: _Madonna of the Lilies_

Botticelli: _St. Sebastian_

Botticelli: _Simonetta Vespucci_

Botticelli: _Venus_

Dirk Bouts: _Madonna and Child_

Dirk Bouts: _Virgin in Adoration_

Peter Breughel: _Dutch Proverbs_

Peter Breughel: _Two Monkeys_

Angelo Bronzino: _Portrait of a Young Man_

Angelo Bronzino: _Portrait of a Young Man_

Angelo Bronzino: _Ugolino Martelli_

Hans Burgkmair: _Holy Family_

Giovanni Battista Caracciolo: _Cosmos and Damian_

Caravaggio: _Cupid as Victor_

Vittore Carpaccio: _Entombment of Christ_

Andrea del Castagno: _Assumption of the Virgin_

Chardin: _The Draughtsman_

Chardin: _Still Life_

Petrus Christus: _Portrait of a Girl_

Petrus Christus: _St. Barbara and a Carthusian Monk_

Joos van Cleve: _Young Man_

Cologne Master (ca. 1400): _Life of Christ_

Cologne Master (ca. 1350): _Madonna Enthroned, Crucifixion_

Correggio: _Leda and the Swan_

Francesco Cossa: _Allegory of Autumn_

Lucas Cranach, the Elder: _Frau Reuss_

Lucas Cranach, the Elder: _Lucretia_

Lucas Cranach, the Elder: _Rest on the Flight into Egypt_

Daumier: _Don Quixote_

Piero di Cosimo: _Mars, Venus and Cupid_

Lorenzo di Credi: _Young Girl_

Albrecht Dürer: _Madonna_

Albrecht Dürer: _Madonna with the Goldfinch_

Albrecht Dürer: _Young Woman_

Albrecht Dürer: _Hieronymus Holzschuher_

Albrecht Dürer: _Cover for Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher_

Adam Elsheimer: _The Drunkenness of Noah_

Adam Elsheimer: _Holy Family_

Adam Elsheimer: _Landscape with the Weeping Magdalene_

Adam Elsheimer: _St. Christopher_

Jean Fouquet: _Etienne Chevalier with St. Stephen_

French (ca. 1400): _Coronation of the Virgin_

French Master (ca. 1400): _Triptych_

Geertgen tot Sint Jans: _John the Baptist_

Geertgen tot Sint Jans: _Madonna_

Giorgione: _Portrait of a Young Man_

Giotto: _Death of the Virgin_

Jan Gossaert: _Baudouin de Bourbon_

Jan Gossaert: _Christ on the Mount of Olives_

Francesco Guardi: _The Balloon Ascension_

Francesco Guardi: _St. Mark’s Piazza in Venice_

Francesco Guardi: _Piazzetta in Venice_

Frans Hals: _Hille Bobbe_

Frans Hals: _Nurse and Child_

Frans Hals: _Portrait of a Young Man_

Frans Hals: _Portrait of a Young Woman_

Frans Hals: _Singing Boy_

Frans Hals: _Tyman Oosdorp_

Meindert Hobbema: _Landscape_

Hans Holbein: _George Giesze_

Hans Holbein: _Old Man_

Hans Holbein: _Portrait of a Man_

Pieter de Hooch: _The Mother_

Pieter de Hooch: _Party of Officers and Ladies_

Willem Kalf: _Still Life_

Willem Kalf: _Still Life_

Philips Konninck: _Dutch Landscape_

Georges de la Tour: _St. Sebastian_

Filippino Lippi: _Allegory of Music_

Fra Filippo Lippi: _Adoration of the Child_

Pietro Lorenzetti: _St. Humilitas Raises a Nun_

Pietro Lorenzetti: _Death of St. Humilitas_

Claude Lorrain: _Italian Coast Scene_

Lorenzo Lotto: _Christ’s Farewell to His Mother_

Bastiano Mainardi: _Portrait of a Man_

Manet: _In the Winter Garden_

Andrea Mantegna: _Cardinal Mezzarota_

Andrea Mantegna: _Presentation in the Temple_

Simon Mannion: _Altar of St. Omer_ (two panels)

Simone Martini: _Burial of Christ_

Masaccio: _Birth Platter_

Masaccio: _Three Predelle_

Masaccio: _Four Saints_

Quentin Massys: _The Magdalene_

Master of the Darmstadt Passion: _Altar Wings_

Master of Flémalle: _Crucifixion_

Master of Flémalle: _Portrait of a Man_

Master of the Virgo inter Virgines: _Adoration of the Kings_

Hans Memling: _Madonna Enthroned with Angels_

Hans Memling: _Madonna Enthroned_

Hans Memling: _Madonna and Child_

Lippo Memmi: _Madonna and Child_

Antonello da Messina: _Portrait of a Man_

Jan Mostaert: _Portrait of a Man_

Aelbert Ouwater: _Raising of Lazarus_

Palma Vecchio: _Portrait of a Man_

Palma Vecchio: _Young Woman_

Giovanni Paolo Pannini: _Colosseum_.

Giovanni di Paolo: _Christ on the Cross_

Giovanni di Paolo: _Legend of St. Clara_

Joachim Patinir: _Rest on the Flight into Egypt_

Sebastiano del Piombo: _Roman Matron_

Sebastiano del Piombo: _Knight of the Order of St. James_

Antonio Pollaiuolo: _David_

Nicolas Poussin: _St. Matthew_

Nicolas Poussin: _Amaltea_

Raphael: _Madonna Diotalevi_

Raphael: _Madonna Terranova_

Raphael: _Solly Madonna_

Rembrandt: _Landscape with Bridge_

Rembrandt: _John the Baptist_

Rembrandt: _Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife_

Rembrandt: _Vision of Daniel_

Rembrandt: _Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law_

Rembrandt: _Susanna and the Elders_

Rembrandt: _Tobias and the Angel_

Rembrandt: _Minerva_

Rembrandt: _Rape of Proserpina_

Rembrandt: _Self Portrait_

Rembrandt: _Hendrickje Stoffels_

Rembrandt: _Man with Gold Helmet_

Rembrandt: _Old Man with Red Hat_

Rembrandt: _Rabbi_

Rembrandt: _Saskia_

Rubens: _Landscape (shipwreck of Aeneas)_

Rubens: _St. Cecilia_

Rubens: _Madonna Enthroned with Saints_

Rubens: _Andromeda_

Rubens: _Perseus and Andromeda_

Rubens: _Isabella Brandt_

Jacob van Ruysdael: _View of Haarlem_

Andrea Sacchi(?): _Allesandro del Boro_

Sassetta: _Legend of St. Francis_

Sassetta: _Mass of St. Francis_

Martin Schongauer: _Nativity_

Seghers: _Landscape_

Luca Signorelli: _Three Saints_ (altar wing)

Luca Signorelli: _Three Saints_ (altar wing)

Luca Signorelli: _Portrait of a Man_

Francesco Squarcione: _Madonna and Child_

Jan Steen: _Inn Garden_

Jan Steen: _The Christening_

Bernardo Strozzi: _Judith_

Gerard Terborch: _The Concert_

Gerard Terborch: _Paternal Advice_

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: _Carrying of the Cross_

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: _St. Agatha_

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: _Rinaldo and Armida_

Tintoretto: _Doge Mocenigo_

Tintoretto: _Old Man_

Titian: _Venus with Organ Player_

Titian: _Self Portrait_

Titian: _Lavinia_

Titian: _Portrait of a Young Man_

Titian: _Child of the Strozzi Family_

Cosma Tura: _St. Christopher_

Cosma Tura: _St. Sebastian_

Adriaen van der Velde: _The Farm_

Roger Van der Weyden: _Altar with Scenes from the Life of Mary_

Roger Van der Weyden: _Johannes-alter Altar with Scenes from the Life of
John the Baptist_

Roger Van der Weyden: _Bladelin Altar_

Roger Van der Weyden: _Portrait of a Woman_

Roger Van der Weyden: _Charles the Bold_

Jan Van Eyck: _Crucifixion_

Jan Van Eyck: _Madonna in the Church_

Jan Van Eyck: _Giovanni Arnolfini_

Jan Van Eyck: _Man with a Pink_

Jan Van Eyck: _Knight of the Golden Fleece_

Lucas van Leyden: _Chess Players_

Lucas van Leyden: _Madonna and Child_

Velásquez: _Countess Olivares_

Domenico Veneziano: _Adoration of the Kings_

Domenico Veneziano: _Martyrdom of St. Lucy_

Domenico Veneziano: _Portrait of a Young Woman_

Vermeer: _Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace_

Vermeer: _Man and Woman Drinking Wine_

Andrea del Verrocchio: _Madonna and Child_

Andrea del Verrocchio: _Madonna and Child_

Watteau: _Fête Champêtre_

Watteau: _French Comedians_

Watteau: _Italian Comedians_

Westphalian Master (ca. 1250): _Triptych_

Konrad Witz: _Crucifixion_

Konrad Witz: _Allegory of Redemption_

On January 15, 1946, Mr. Rensselaer W. Lee, President of the College Art
Association of America, sent the following letter to the Secretary of
State:

    My dear Mr. Secretary:

    The members of the College Art Association of America,
    a constituent member of the American Council of Learned
    Societies, have been disturbed by the removal to this country
    of works of art from Berlin museums.

    Information that we have received from abroad leads us to
    believe that the integrity of United States policy has been
    questioned as a result of this action. We have also been
    informed that adequate facilities and American personnel now
    exist in the American zone in Germany to assure the proper care
    of art treasures in that area.

    We would therefore urge that the department of State clarify
    this action, and would strongly recommend that assurances be
    given that no further shipments are contemplated.

Copies of this letter were sent to members of the American Commission
for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War
Areas.

The State Department replied on January 25:

    My Dear Mr. Lee:

    Your letter of January 15, urging the Department to clarify the
    action taken in removing to the United States certain works of
    art from German museums, has been received. In the absence of
    the Secretary, I am replying to your letter and am glad to give
    you additional information on this question.

    The decision to remove these works of art to this country
    was made on the basis of a statement by General Clay that he
    did not have adequate facilities and personnel to safeguard
    German art treasures and that he could not undertake the
    responsibility of their proper care.

    You indicated in your letter that you have been informed that
    adequate facilities and personnel now exist in the American
    zone for the protection of these art treasures. I must
    inform you that our information, based upon three separate
    investigations, is precisely to the contrary. The redeployment
    program has, as you no doubt realize, reduced American
    personnel in Germany and this reduction is applied to arts and
    monuments and this personnel as well as to other branches.

    The coal situation in Germany is critical and has made it
    impossible to provide heat for the museums. General Clay cannot
    be expected to provide heat for the museums if that means
    taking it away from American forces, from hospitals, or from
    essential utility needs.

    We are furthermore advised that the security situation was not
    such as to ensure adequate protection in Germany. In short, the
    Department’s information is such that it cannot agree with your
    premise.

    It was realized that the “integrity of United States policy”
    might be questioned by some if these works of art were removed
    to this country. After a careful review of the facts, it was
    decided that the most important aspect was to safeguard these
    priceless treasures by bringing them to this country where they
    could be properly cared for. It was hoped that the President’s
    pledge that they would be returned to Germany would satisfy
    those who might be critical of this Government’s motives.

                         Sincerely yours,

                                 For the Acting Secretary of State:
                                 James W. Riddleberger
                                 Chief, Division of
                                 Central European Affairs[6]

In April the author of this book received from Frederick Mortimer
Clapp, director of the Frick Collection, New York, the following letter
regarding the removal of German-owned works of art to this country. A
copy of the resolution which accompanied this letter and a list of those
who subsequently signed the resolution are also printed below.

                                              1 East 70th Street
                                              New York 21, New York
                                              April 24, 1946

    Dear

    Since we believe that it is impossible to defend on technical,
    political or moral grounds the decision to ship to this country
    two hundred internationally known and extremely valuable
    pictures belonging indisputably, by prewar gift or purchase,
    to German institutions, notably the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of
    Berlin, we propose to memorialize the President in a resolution
    to be signed by a group of like-minded people interested in or
    associated with the arts.

    We also intend to point out that no reason can be found for
    even temporarily alienating these works of art from the country
    to which legally they belong.

    We represent no organized movement or institution. We merely
    wish as American citizens to go on record by appealing to our
    government to set right an ill considered action arising from
    an error of judgment which, however disinterested in intention,
    has already done much to weaken our national condemnation of
    German sequestrations of the artistic heritage or possessions
    of other nations under the subterfuge of “protective custody,”
    or openly as loot.

    The moral foundations of our war effort and final victories
    will be subtly undermined if we, who understand the
    implications, pass over in silence an action taken by our
    own officials that, in outward appearance at least cannot be
    distinguished from those, detestable to all right thinking
    people, which the Nazis’ policy of pillage inspired and
    condoned.

    The Monuments Officers attached to our armed forces with
    their specialized knowledge of the practical risks involved
    unanimously condemned the decision. Those Americans whose
    profession it is to study and preserve old paintings deplore
    it. On ethical grounds it is disapproved by the opinion of
    enlightened laymen.

    We therefore consider the protest we will make to be our plain
    and simple duty, for it is our considered judgment that no
    explanation or excuse acceptable to the public conscience can
    be found for sending fragile old masters across the sea to this
    country. The physical hazards, the momentous responsibilities
    and the intellectual ambiguities inherent in such an act are
    only too grossly evident. The historical repercussions that
    will follow it can be imagined in the light of past situations
    of a similar kind. It is well known that the Nazis inculcated
    in the German mind a fanatical belief that we are destructive
    barbarians. All future deterioration of these pictures will
    now, rightly or wrongly, be laid at our door.

    We should be glad if you would care to join us and others, who
    have already expressed to us their sense of the unjustified
    impropriety of the action to which we refer in demanding the
    immediate return to Germany of these panels and canvasses,
    the cancellation of all plans to exhibit them in this country
    and the countermanding at once of any contemplated further
    shipments.

    The text of the proposed resolution is enclosed. As one of the
    principal reasons for submitting it to our government is to
    forestall further action of a similar kind with reference to
    pictures or objects of art belonging to German museums, as well
    as to rectify the existing situation, may I earnestly request
    you to signify your approval, if you are so minded, by signing
    the resolution and returning it to me before May 6.

                         Sincerely yours,

                                  Signed: FREDERICK MORTIMER CLAPP.

On May 9, 1946, Dr. Clapp and Mrs. Juliana Force, director of the Whitney
Museum, sent President Truman the following resolution, a copy of which
was enclosed with the above letter:

                            RESOLUTION

    WHEREAS in all civilized countries one of the most significant
    public reactions during the recent war was the horrified
    indignation caused by the surreptitious or brazen looting
    of works of art by German officials in countries they had
    conquered;

    AND WHEREAS that indignation and abhorrence on the part of free
    peoples was a powerful ingredient in the ardor and unanimity
    of their support of the war effort of democratically governed
    states in which the private opinions of citizens are the source
    and controlling directive of official action;

    AND WHEREAS two hundred important and valuable pictures
    belonging to the Kaiser Friedrich and other Berlin museums have
    been removed from Germany and sent to this country on the still
    unestablished ground of ensuring their safety;

    AND WHEREAS it is apparent that disinterested and intelligent
    people believe that this action cannot be justified on
    technical, political or moral grounds and that many, including
    the Germans themselves, may find it hard to distinguish between
    the resultant situation and the “protective custody” used by
    the Nazis as a camouflage for the sequestration of the artistic
    treasures of other countries;

    BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, respectfully
    request the President to order the immediate safe return to
    Germany of the aforesaid paintings, the cancellation of any
    plans that may have been made to exhibit them in this country
    and the countermanding without delay of any further shipments
    of the kind that may have been contemplated.

    This resolution was signed by:

        Abbott, Jere
          Director
          Smith College Museum of Art
          Northampton, Mass.

        Abbott, John E.
          Executive Vice-President
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N.Y.

        Adams, Philip R.
          Director
          Cincinnati Museum
          Cincinnati, Ohio

        Barber, Professor Leila
          Vassar College
          Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

        Baker, C. H. Collins
          Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
          San Marino, Calif.

        Barr, Alfred H.
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Barzun, Jacques
          History Department
          Columbia University
          New York, N. Y.

        Baur, John I. H.
          Curator of Painting
          Brooklyn Museum
          Brooklyn, N. Y.

        Biebel, Franklin
          Assistant to Director
          Frick Collection
          New York, N.Y.

        Breeskin, Mrs. Adelyn
          Acting Director
          Baltimore Museum of Art
          Baltimore, Md.

        Burdell, Dr. Edwin S.
          Director
          The Cooper Union
          New York, N. Y.

        Chase, Elizabeth
          Editor “Bulletin”
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Claflin, Professor Agnes Rindge
          Vassar College
          Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

        Clapp, Frederick Mortimer
          Director
          Frick Collection
          New York, N. Y.

        Cole, Grover
          Instructor in Ceramics
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Cook, Walter W. S.
          Chairman
          Institute of Fine Arts
          New York University, N. Y.

        Courier, Miss Elodie
          Dir. of Circulating Exhibitions
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Crosby, Dr. Sumner
          Assistant Professor, History of Art
          Yale University
          New Haven, Conn.

        Cunningham, Charles C.
          Director
          Wadsworth Atheneum
          Hartford, Conn.

        Dawson, John P.
          Professor of Law
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Faisan, Professor Lane, Jr.
          Williams College
          Williamstown, Mass.

        Faunce, Wayne M.
          Vice-Director
          American Museum of Natural History
          New York, N. Y.

        Fisher, H. H.
          Hoover Library
          Stanford University
          Palo Alto, Calif.

        Force, Mrs. Juliana
          Director
          Whitney Museum of American Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Goodrich, Lloyd
          Research Curator
          Whitney Museum of American Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Gores, Walter J.
          Professor and Chairman of Design
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Haight, Mary N.
          Assistant Curator of Ancient Art
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Hamilton, George Heard
          Curator of Paintings
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Hamlin, Talbot F.
          Librarian, Avery Architectural Library
          Columbia University
          New York, N.Y.

        Hammett, Ralph W.
          Professor of Architecture
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Hancock, Walter
          Director of Sculpture
          Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
          Philadelphia, Pa.

        Hayes, Bartlett H., Jr.
          Director
          Addison Gallery of American Art
          Andover, Mass.

        Hebran, Jean
          Professor of Architecture
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Helm, Miss Florence
          Old Merchant’s House
          New York, N. Y.

        Howe, Thomas Carr, Jr.
          Director
          California Palace of the Legion of Honor
          San Francisco, Calif.

        Hudnut, Joseph
          Dean
          Graduate School of Architecture
          Harvard University
          Cambridge, Mass.

        Hume, Samuel J.
          Director
          Berkeley Art Association
          Berkeley, Calif.

        Ivins, William M., Jr.
          Counselor and Curator of Prints
          The Metropolitan Museum of Art
          New York, N.Y.

        Janson, H. W.
          Assistant Professor
          Department of Art and Archaeology
          Washington University
          St. Louis, Mo.

        Jewell, Henry A.
          Department of Art and Archaeology
          Princeton University
          Princeton, N. J.

        Kaufmann, Edgar
          Curator of Industrial Art
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N.Y.

        Keck, Sheldon
          Restorer
          The Brooklyn Museum
          Brooklyn, N. Y.

        Kirby, John C.
          Assistant Administrator
          Walters Gallery
          Baltimore, Md.

        Kirstein, Lincoln
          New York, N. Y.

        Kubler, Professor George
          Yale University
          New Haven, Conn.

        Lee, Rensselaer W.
          Princeton, N. J.

        Marceau, Henri
          Assistant Director
          Philadelphia Museum of Art
          Philadelphia, Pa.

        Mcllhenny, Henry
          Curator of Decorative Arts
          Philadelphia Museum of Art
          Philadelphia, Pa.

        McMahon, A. Philip
          Chairman
          Fine Arts Department
          Washington Square College
          New York University
          New York, N. Y.

        Meeks, Everett V.
          Dean
          Yale School of the Fine Arts
          New Haven, Conn.

        Meiss, Millard
          Professor
          Columbia University
          New York, N. Y.

        Miner, Miss Dorothy E.
          Librarian
          Walters Gallery
          Baltimore, Md.

        More, Hermon
          Curator
          Whitney Museum of American Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Morley, Dr. Grace McCann
          Director
          San Francisco Museum of Art
          San Francisco, Calif.

        Morse, John D.
          Editor
          Magazine of Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Myer, John Walden
          Assistant Director
          Museum of the City of New York
          New York, N. Y.

        Myers, George Hewitt
          President
          Textile Museum of the District of Columbia
          Washington, D. C.

        Nagel, Charles, Jr.
          Director
          The Brooklyn Museum
          Brooklyn, N. Y.

        O’Connor, John, Jr.
          Assistant Director
          Carnegie Institute
          Pittsburgh, Pa.

        Packard, Miss Elizabeth G.
          Walters Gallery
          Baltimore, Md.

        Parker, Thomas C.
          Director
          American Federation of Arts
          Washington, D. C.

        Peat, Wilbur D.
          Director
          John Herron Art Institute
          Indianapolis, Ind.

        Phillips, John Marshall
          Assistant Director and Curator of the Garvan Collections
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Poland, Reginald
          Director
          Fine Arts Society of San Diego
          San Diego, Calif.

        Porter, Allen
          Secretary
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Porter, Vernon
          Director
          Riverside Museum
          New York, N. Y.

        Post, Chandler
          Fogg Museum of Art
          Harvard University
          Cambridge, Mass.

        Rathbone, Perry T.
          Director
          City Art Museum of St. Louis
          St. Louis, Mo.

        Reed, Henry Hope
          New York, N. Y.

        Rich, Daniel Catton
          Director
          The Art Institute of Chicago
          Chicago, Ill.

        Riefstahl, Mrs. Elizabeth
          Librarian
          Wilbour Egyptological Library
          The Brooklyn Museum
          Brooklyn, N. Y.

        Ritchie, Andrew C.
          Director
          Albright Art Gallery
          Buffalo, N. Y.

        Robinson, Professor David M.
          Department of Art and Archaeology
          Johns Hopkins University
          Baltimore, Md.

        Ross, Marvin Chauncey
          Curator of Medieval Art
          Walters Gallery
          Baltimore, Md.

        Rowe, Margaret T. J.
          Curator
          Hobart Moore Memorial Collection
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Saint-Gaudens, Homer
          Director
          Carnegie Institute
          Pittsburgh, Pa.

        Scholle, Hardinge
          Director
          Museum of the City of New York
          New York, N.Y.

        Setze, Josephine
          Assistant Curator of American Art
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Sexton, Eric
          Camden, Me.

        Shelley, Donald A.
          Curator of Paintings
          New York Historical Society
          New York, N. Y.

        Sizer, Theodore
          Director
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Slusser, Jean Paul
          Professor of Painting and Drawing
          University of Michigan
          Ann Arbor, Mich.

        Smith, Professor E. Baldwin
          Department of Art and Archaeology
          Princeton University
          Princeton, N. J.

        Soby, James Thrall
          New York, N. Y.

        Spinden, Dr. Herbert J.
          Curator
          Indian Art and Primitive Cultures
          The Brooklyn Museum
          Brooklyn, N. Y.

        Sweeney, James Johnson
          Director
          Department of Painting and Sculpture
          The Museum of Modern Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Sweet, Frederick
          Associate Curator, Painting and Sculpture
          The Art Institute of Chicago
          Chicago, Ill.

        Tee Van, John
          Department of Tropical Research and Special Events
          New York Zoological Park
          Bronx, N. Y.

        Vail, R. W. G.
          Director
          New York Historical Society
          New York, N. Y.

        Walker, Hudson D.
          President
          American Federation of Arts
          New York, N.Y.

        Wall, Alexander J.
          New York Historical Society
          New York, N. Y.

        Washburn, Gordon
          Director
          Museum of Art
          Rhode Island School of Design
          Providence, R. I.

        Weissman, Miss Polaire
          Museum of Costume Art
          New York, N. Y.

        Wissler, Dr. Clark
          American Museum of Natural History
          New York, N. Y.

        Wind, Edgar
          Smith College
          Northampton, Mass.

        York, Lewis E.
          Chairman
          Department of Painting
          Yale University Art Gallery
          New Haven, Conn.

        Zigrosser, Carl
          Curator of Prints and Drawings
          Philadelphia Museum of Art
          Philadelphia, Pa.

        Stoddard, Whitney S.
          Assistant Professor of History and Art
          Williams College
          Williamstown, Mass.

Dr. Clapp and Mrs. Force subsequently announced that they had received
eight additional signatures which arrived too late to be affixed
to the original copy of the resolution. They included: Frances A.
Comstock, Donald Drew Egbert, Henry A. Judd, Sherley W. Morgan, Richard
Stillwell—all of Princeton University; Robert Tyler Davis, Portland
Museum, Portland, Maine; Frederick Hartt, Acting Director, Smith College
Museum of Art; and George Rowley, Princeton Museum of Historic Art.

    STATEMENT BY THE AMERICAN COMMISSION FOR THE PROTECTION AND
     SALVAGE OF ARTISTIC AND HISTORIC MONUMENTS IN WAR AREAS,
                    OWEN J. ROBERTS, CHAIRMAN.

    National Gallery of Art, Washington 25, D. C.

    WASHINGTON, May 14, 1946: The members of the Commission have
    received copies of a resolution signed by Dr. Frederick M.
    Clapp, Director of the Frick Collection; Mrs. Juliana Force,
    Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and others
    who criticize the action of the United States Government,
    taken at the Direction of the President and the United States
    Army Command in Germany, in bringing to this country certain
    paintings from German museums for safekeeping until conditions
    in Germany warrant their return. The Clapp resolution compares
    the action taken by the United States Government to looting
    operations carried on by the Nazis during the war.

    The Commission has also noted the statements issued by the
    White House on September 26, 1945, and by the War Department
    on December 6, 1945, that the works of art of bona fide
    German ownership, which may be brought to this country for
    safekeeping, will be kept in trust for the German people and
    will be returned to Germany when conditions there warrant.

    The Commission has also noted the statement issued by the
    late Chief Justice Stone, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
    of the National Gallery of Art, on December 14, 1945, that
    the Trustees of the National Gallery, at the request of the
    Secretary of State, had agreed to arrange for the storage space
    for such paintings as might be brought to this country by
    the United States Army for safekeeping, and that he felt the
    Army “deserved the highest praise for the care exercised in
    salvaging these great works of art and in making provisions for
    their safety until they can be returned to Germany.”

    The Commission accepts without reservation the promise of the
    United States Government, as voiced by its highest officials,
    that the works of art belonging to German museums and brought
    to this country for safekeeping, will be returned to Germany
    when conditions there warrant.

    The Commission is strongly of the opinion that the resolution
    sponsored by Dr. Clapp, Mrs. Force, and others is without
    justification and is to be deplored.

        Hon. Owen J. Roberts, Chairman
          Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

        David E. Finley, Vice Chairman
          Director, National Gallery of Art
          Washington, D.C.

        Huntington Cairns, Secretary
          Secretary, National Gallery of Art
          Washington, D.C.

        Dr. William Bell Dinsmoor
           Columbia University, New York

        Hon. Herbert H. Lehman
          New York

        Paul J. Sachs
          Professor of Fine Arts, Harvard University
          Cambridge, Massachusetts

        Francis Cardinal Spellman
          Archbishop of New York

        Francis Henry Taylor
          Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art
          New York

The following letters were released on June 10, 1946:

                          THE WHITE HOUSE

                                                       Washington
                                                       May 22, 1946

    Dear Mrs. Force:

    This is in acknowledgment of the letter to the President,
    signed by yourself and Dr. Frederick M. Clapp, Director, The
    Frick Collection, with which you enclosed a resolution signed
    by ninety-five of your colleagues in connection with the two
    hundred valuable paintings removed from Germany to this country
    for safekeeping.

    These paintings were removed to this country last year on the
    basis of information to the effect that adequate facilities and
    personnel to ensure their safekeeping did not exist in Germany.
    Our military authorities did not feel that they could take the
    responsibility of safeguarding them under such conditions and
    it was therefore decided that they would have to be shipped to
    this country until such time as they could safely be returned
    to Germany. It was realized at the time that this action might
    lead to criticism but it was taken, nevertheless, because it
    was considered that the most important aspect was to safeguard
    these priceless treasures. It was hoped that the President’s
    pledge that they would be returned to Germany, contained in a
    White House press release on September 26, 1945, would satisfy
    those who might be critical of this Government’s motives.

    I know of no plans to make any further shipments of art objects
    from Germany to the United States nor of any plans for the
    exhibition of the two hundred paintings now in this country.
    While a definite date for the return of these pictures has not
    as yet been set, I can assure you that this Government will
    honor its pledge to effect their return as soon as conditions
    warrant.

                       Very sincerely yours,

                                        (signed) William D. Hassett
                                        Secretary to the President.

                        DEPARTMENT OF STATE

                                                       Washington
                                                       May 22, 1946

    My dear Mrs. Force and Dr. Clapp:

    I have received your letter of May 9, 1946, and its enclosed
    resolution, signed by 95 of your colleagues, urging the
    President to order the immediate safe return to Germany of the
    200 paintings which were brought to this country last year.

    When these paintings were found by our forces in southern
    Germany every effort was made to assure their preservation. It
    soon became evident that adequate facilities and personnel to
    ensure their safe keeping could not be guaranteed. Consequently
    our military authorities, realizing the magnitude of their
    responsibility in preserving these priceless treasures,
    requested that they be relieved of this heavy responsibility
    and that the paintings be shipped to this country where they
    could be properly cared for. This Government reluctantly gave
    its approval to this request, knowing that such action would
    lead to criticism of its motives. The decision was taken
    because there seemed no other way to ensure preservation of
    these unique works of art. In order to dispel doubts as to the
    reasons for this action the White House released a statement to
    the press on September 26, 1945, which explained the situation
    and included a pledge that the paintings would be returned to
    their rightful owners. That pledge still holds good and while
    a definite date for the return of the paintings to Germany has
    not as yet been set, you may rest assured that this will be
    done as soon as conditions warrant.

    The resolution also recommended that plans to exhibit
    these paintings in this country be cancelled and that
    further shipments of German works of art to this country
    be countermanded. I have never heard of any plans to make
    additional shipments of works of art from Germany to the United
    States nor do I know of any plans to exhibit the paintings
    which are now in this country.

                         Sincerely yours,

                                        For the Secretary of State:
                                              (signed) Dean Acheson
                                                   Under Secretary.

Following are Dr. Clapp’s and Mrs. Force’s replies, also released on June
10:

                                                       June 3, 1946

    My dear Mr. President:

    Permit us to thank you for your kind attention to the
    resolution, signed by us and ninety-five of our colleagues
    prominent on the staffs of museums or experts in the history
    and preservation of art, relative to the shipment to this
    country of two hundred famous paintings formerly in the Kaiser
    Friedrich and other museums of Berlin.

    In addressing the resolution in question to you we felt that
    we were following the time-honored American custom of bringing
    to our government’s attention a consensus of opinion on the
    part of those who have special practical familiarity with
    old pictures and personal, sometimes long, acquaintance with
    European history and culture in its emotional and intellectual
    aspects.

    Should you, in the course of events, undertake further
    inquiries into the problem created by the shipment referred to
    in our resolution, we shall be happy to be so informed.

                        Respectfully yours,

                                                       June 3, 1946

    Dear Mr. Hassett:

    In reply to your letter of the twenty-second permit us to say
    that should the President make further inquiries into the
    subject covered by our resolution with reference to two hundred
    pictures selected chiefly from the collections of the Kaiser
    Friedrich Museum and brought to this country, we should be
    pleased to be kept informed.

    We, and our ninety-five colleagues in museums and universities
    who have had long experience with old paintings and are
    interested in the history and preservation of works of art,
    would also be glad to know when the pictures referred to are
    returned to Germany since we are as yet uninformed whether the
    conditions which are held not to warrant their return are of a
    practical or a political nature.

    This question obviously cannot but be uppermost in our minds
    in view of the fact that present conditions in Germany are
    apparently such as to warrant leaving there thousands of
    German-owned works of art of great moment which belong not only
    to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum but to the museums of other
    cities in the American zone, including the great collection
    of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, where under satisfactory
    conditions and auspices an exhibition of early German art,
    including masterpieces by Dürer, Grünewald and others, is now
    being held.

    It is in fact one of our perplexities that we have never been
    told why our officials discriminated against important pictures
    and art objects (many times the number of those urgently
    transported to this country for safekeeping) which were also
    formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich and other museums, not
    forgetting those which were in South German churches. Were they
    just left to their fate?

    If it were convenient at any time to pass on to the President
    our continued anxieties on these important points we should be
    happy to have you do so.

                         Sincerely yours,

                                                       June 3, 1946

    Dear Mr. Acheson:

    In reply to your letter of the twenty-second with reference to
    our resolution supported by the signatures of ninety-five of
    our colleagues prominent in museums or experts in the history
    and preservation of old masters and other works of art, permit
    us to say that, in the absence of Secretary Byrnes, we took the
    liberty of sending you the resolution.

    We are aware of the statement released by the White House on
    September 26, 1945 explaining the situation and promising to
    return the pictures to Germany when conditions there should
    warrant such action. We are, however, still uninformed why the
    unanimous advice of the monuments officers, who had special
    training and technical knowledge not only of the conditions
    required for the preservation of old masters but of the certain
    dangers to which journeys subject them, was disregarded.

    We have also never been told whether the conditions believed
    to jeopardize the safety of these important pictures were of a
    practical or of a political nature. Neither do we know why, out
    of the great and extensive collections of the Kaiser Friedrich
    only two hundred pictures were selected nor by whom the
    selection was made. More serious still no official mention has
    ever been made of the fact that there were in the possession
    of the other museums of Berlin and other cities, including the
    famous collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, as well as
    in the churches of the American Zone, art objects and pictures
    many times more numerous than the paintings actually brought
    to this country for safekeeping. One cannot but ask: Were
    satisfactory conditions found for them or were they merely left
    to their fate?

    These are questions that have given and still give rise to
    rumors, unhappy conjectures and ambiguous interpretations which
    we deplore. Unreasonably or otherwise the whole situation is
    confused by implications that we feel will not be laid until
    the pictures deposited in Washington have been sent back with
    the least possible delay to their rightful owners on whom
    devolves an unequivocable responsibility for their care and
    preservation.

                         Sincerely yours,





FOOTNOTES


[1] E(insatzstab) R(eichsleiter) R(osenberg)—Reichsleiter meaning realm
leader. The Rosenberg Task Force was commonly referred to by these
initials.

[2] See article “German Paintings in the National Gallery: A Protest,”
by Charles L. Kuhn, in _College Art Journal_, January 1946. This and
subsequent references printed by permission.

[3] See article “German Paintings in the National Gallery: A Protest,” by
Charles L. Kuhn, in _College Art Journal_, January 1946.

[4] As printed by Kuhn in _College Art Journal_, January 1946, p. 81;
also in _Magazine of Art_, February 1946, and New York _Times_, February
7, 1946.

[5] See in this connection the statements released to the press by the
White House on September 26, 1945, and by the War Department on December
6, 1945. They are printed in _Magazine of Art_ for February, 1946.

[6] These letters are printed on pages 83 and 84 of _College Art Journal_
for January 1946; in _Magazine of Art_ for February 1946, and in the New
York _Times_ of February 7, 1946.




INDEX




INDEX


  Aachen crown jewels, 119

  Abbey of Monte Cassino, 152

  Adams, Capt. Edward, 240

  Adcock, Maj. Gen. C. L, 272

  Administration Building, 64, 65

  _Adoration of the Magi_, Master of the Holy Kinship, 206

  _Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, The_, van Eyck, 144, 146, 243, 291.
    _See also_ Ghent altarpiece

  _Adulteress, The_, _see_ “Vermeer” fake

  Akhnaton, 287

  Allen, Maj., 125

  Allied air attacks over Germany, 48

  Allied Forces, 274

  Allied Group Control Council for Germany, 15, 49

  Almanach de Gotha, 27

  Almelo, 195

  “Alpine Specials,” 161

  Alt Aussee, evacuation of pictures at, 130-170;
    last ten days at, 171_ff._;
    other trips to, 178, 258;
    Goudstikker pictures, 267;
    mentioned, 58, 107, 118, 177, 184, 186, 192, 202, 204, 210, 213,
        217, 225

  Alt Aussee mine, evacuation of pictures, 65, 130-170, 240, 254,
        269, 271, 277;
    team arrives, 128;
    mentioned, 176, 207, 244, 251

  Altdorfer, Albrecht, 161

  Altdorfer panels, 162, 165

  Alte Pinakothek, 255

  Alte Post, 237

  Amalienburg, 215

  American Embassy, London, 20

  American Embassy, Paris, 265

  American Fine Arts program, 235

  American Military Government (AMG), 195, 259, 292

  American Occupied Zone, 196, 243, 246, 260, 262, 268, 272, 275, 282,
        291, 292, 293

  Amsterdam, 149, 154, 257, 259, 261, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270

  Anderson, Lt. George, 84, 85, 86, 102, 112, 190

  Anderson, Maj. Harry, 180, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 222, 225

  Angerer, ⸺, 219

  _Annunciation_, Lippi, 152

  Annunzio, Gabriele d’, 64

  _Arabian Nights, The_, 20

  Archival Collecting Point, Oberammergau, 282

  Army Engineers, 38, 148

  Army Museum at Prague, 271

  Army redeployment program, 282

  Arnhem, 266

  Arnold, Gen. H. H., 191

  _Artist’s Sister_, Rembrandt, 194

  “Art Objects in the U. S. Zone,” 230

  Aschaffenburg, Germany, 48

  ATC, 18

  Austria, 59, 62, 193, 236, 251

  Austrian collections, 173

  Austrian Government, 253

  Autobahn, 31, 46, 71, 72, 76, 81, 83, 102, 109, 111, 203, 213, 214,
        236

  Azores, 16


  Bad Aussee, 128, 131, 158, 181

  Bad Brückenau, 40, 41, 42, 46

  Baden-Baden, 242

  Bad Homburg, 28, 29, 32, 54, 139, 231, 258

  Bad Ischl, 128, 131, 147, 161, 162, 165, 187

  Bad Nauheim, 285

  Bad Reichenhall, 81

  Bad Tölz, 214

  Baillie-Grohman, Vice-Adm., 109

  Bamberg, 247, 248, 250, 271, 282

  Barbarossa, Frederick, 116

  Barbizon, 49

  Barboza, Lt., 158, 187

  Barrett, Elizabeth, 19

  Battle of Jutland, 120

  Bauhaus, Dessau, 35

  Bavaria, 24, 32, 33, 52, 55, 127, 193, 214, 237, 246, 247, 250, 269

  “Bavarian Bible,” 214

  Bavarian State Collections, 276

  Bavarian State Galleries, 294

  Bavarian State Museums, 146

  _Bearded Old Man_, Rembrandt, 194

  Belgium, 145, 153, 243, 255, 256, 261, 291, 293

  Bellegambe, Jean, 207

  Bellotto, ⸺, 251

  Berchtesgaden, Frau Hofer at, 133;
    transfer to, 168, 175, 176, 178, 179, 183, 185, 187;
    operations at, 187-226;
    mentioned, 81, 180

  Berchtesgadener Hof, 188, 222

  Berghof, Berchtesgaden, 146, 192, 222

  Berlin, 146, 148, 154, 190, 229, 259, 260, 261, 262, 273, 278, 281,
        287, 291

  Berlin Gallery, 255

  Berlin Museum, 50, 119, 145, 261, 286

  Berlin Patent Office, 50

  Berlin Print Room, 50

  Berlin Reichsbank, 147

  Berlin state museums, 32, 234, 246, 294

  Berlitz School, 74

  Bernterode, 119, 137

  Beuningen, Van, Rotterdam collector, 200

  Biblioteca Herziana, 150

  Biddle, Col. Anthony, 261, 268

  Big 3 Conference, 1945, 230

  Birdcage Walk, 21

  Black, Col. Ira W., 268

  _Blind Leading the Blind_, Breughel, 152

  Blyth, Capt., 61

  Bohemia, 100

  Bois, the, 21

  Bomb Disposal Unit, 216

  Bonaparte, Pauline, 93

  Bonn, 118

  Bonnard, M., 146

  Bonney, Miss ⸺, 21, 22

  Borchardt, Dr. Ludwig, 287

  Bordone, Paris, 166

  Bormann, Martin, 155, 192

  Boucher, François, 133, 163, 164

  Boucher panels, 197

  Bouillon, Godefroy de, 116

  Bouts, Dirk, 255

  Bovingdon, England, 19

  Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, 199, 200, 202

  Braun Haus, 64

  Brecker, Maj., 96

  Bredius, Dr., 199, 200

  Breitenbach, Edgar, 281

  Bremen, 279

  Brenner Pass, 109

  Breslau, 254

  Brest, France, 17

  Breughel, Pieter, 24, 150, 168

  Brienner-Strasse, 63, 71, 258

  Brigade Headquarters, 203, 219, 225

  British Zone, 266, 282

  Brixlegg, 109

  Brooklyn Museum, 232

  Brown, John Nicholas, 49, 106, 108, 121, 262

  Browning, Robert, 19

  Bruges, 149, 255

  Bruges, Bishop of, 143

  Brussels, 244, 256, 261

  Brye, Capt. Hubert de, 240, 256

  Buchman, Lt. Julius, 35, 37, 38, 40, 53

  Büchner, Dr. Ernst, 146

  Buckingham Palace, 21

  Budapest Museum, 68, 73

  Budweis, 113

  Buffalo Museum, 251

  Buxheim, 215


  Cairo Museum, 287

  California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 15, 166

  Calvados, 77

  Cambridge, Mass., 50

  Cambridge University, 18, 25

  Canada, 270

  Canadians, 266

  Canova, 93

  Caravaggio, 143

  Carolinen Platz, 63

  Carthusian Monastery, Buxheim, 215

  Casino at Frankfurt, 235

  Cassidy, ⸺, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271

  Castle at Posen, 151

  Castle of Neuschwanstein, _see_ Schloss Neuschwanstein

  Cathedral at Cologne, 119

  Cathedral of Metz, 27, 233

  Cathedral of St. Bavon, Ghent, 145

  Central Collecting Point, Frankfurt, 247, 248

  Central Collecting Point, Marburg, 276, 282, 292, 293

  Central Collecting Point, Munich, 77, 127, 196, 207, 214, 216, 220,
        222, 227, 231, 236, 244, 245, 251, 256, 258, 261, 271, 276,
        282, 292, 293

  Central Collecting Point, Wiesbaden, 275, 276, 277, 278, 282, 286,
        292, 293

  “C.G.R.,” _see_ Dutch Restitution Commission

  Chamberlain, Neville, 65

  Champs Élysées, 18

  Channel Islands, 16

  Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, 143

  Chardin, Jean Baptiste Siméon, 245

  Château of Pau, 145

  “Chicken,” 57-58

  Chiemsee, 81, 126, 179

  Chiemsee Lake, Bavaria, 72

  Chinesisches Kabinett from Schönbrunn, 144

  _Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery_, Vermeer, 198

  _Christ Appearing to Mary_, Master of the Holy Kinship, 206

  _Christ at Emmaus_, Vermeer, 199, 200, 201

  Church of Notre Dame, 143

  Church of St. Mary, Cracow, 252

  Church of St. Pierre, 255

  Church of Santa Maria im Kapitol, 119

  “CIC boys,” 221

  City Detachment, Wiesbaden, 286

  City Detachments, 284

  Clark, Gen. Mark, 59, 169, 176, 186

  “Class C” works of art, 230

  Clay, Gen. Lucius D., 230, 262, 273, 275, 281

  Coburg, 248, 249, 250, 251

  Coburg Detachment, 249

  Coin Room, _see_ Münz Kabinett

  _College Art Journal_, 230, 262, 274_n._

  Cologne, 233, 266

  Cologne school, 206

  _Commission de Récupération Artistique_, 196, 264, 266

  _Commission de Récupération Générale_, 196

  Conrad, Emperor, 252

  _Cook, The_, Chardin, 234

  Copper mine, Westphalia, 118

  Coremans, Dr. Paul, 256

  Coulter, Hamilton, rehabilitation of Verwaltungsbau, 64;
    described, 66-67;
    Rothschild jewels, 177;
    “Bavarian Bible,” 214;
    accompanies token restitution to Paris, 245-246;
    rehabilitation of Führerbau, 256;
    transports panels from Munich, 271;
    mentioned, 68, 106, 127

  Courbet landscapes, 198

  Coypel painting, 205

  Cracow, 254

  Cracow, Archbishop of, 263

  Cracow, altarpiece, 252

  Cracow, tapestries, 151

  Cranach, Lucas, 182, 235

  Cranachs, the, 202

  C rations, 79, 126

  Crosby, Sumner, 20

  “Crown of Charlemagne,” 252

  Crown of St. Stephen, 287

  _Crucifixion_, Bellegambe, 206

  _Crucifixion_, Van Dyck, 152

  Crusaders’ Hall, 115

  Csanky, Dr., 73, 74, 75, 76

  Csanky, (son of Dr.), 74

  Czech government, 164, 271

  Czechoslovakia, 85, 87, 196, 271, 272, 293

  Czechs, 89, 112, 113, 117, 123

  Czernin, Count, 152

  Czernin family, the, 152

  “Czernin Vermeer,” 152


  Dachau, 54, 63

  Dalferes, Col. Roy, 251, 254

  _Danaë_, Titian, 152

  Danube River, 86, 87, 112, 117, 125, 151

  Darmstadt, 229, 250

  Daumier, Honoré, 232

  David, Gerard, 143

  David-Weill, M., 239, 240, 266

  David-Weill Collection, 239

  Davitt, Lt. Col. Harold S., 131, 168, 169, 170, 183, 184, 185, 225

  del Garbo, Raffaellino, 208

  Della Robbia plaques, 90, 99, 114

  del Robbia, Luca, 92

  Dérain, André, 241

  Dessau, 35

  Dewald, Col., 251, 254

  Displaced Persons, _see_ DPs

  Döbler, Herr, 127

  Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, 165

  “Double Roger,” _see_ Roget, Roger

  DP camps, 281

  DPs (Displaced Persons), 63, 248, 281

  Dresden, 254

  Dresden Gallery, 163, 250

  Dreyfus, M., 265

  Duisburg, 266

  Dunn, Capt., 49, 50, 51

  Dürer, Albrecht, 252

  Dutch Government, 200, 202, 257

  _Dutch Interior_, Pieter de Hooch, 198

  Dutch Restitution Commission (CGR), 196, 267, 270


  Eagle’s Nest, 192, 193, 195, 205, 217

  Eastern Military District (of American Zone), 246, 260, 276

  ECAD Headquarters, 28, 30, 231

  Eder, Max, 140, 141, 184, 185

  Edinburgh, Duke of, 249

  Edward VII, 29

  Eggebrecht, Dr. William, 250

  Egyptian tomb figures, 151

  Ehrenbreitstein, 146

  Ehrentempel, 64

  80th Infantry Division, 147

  Eigruber, Gauleiter, 155

  _Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg_ (E.R.R.), 22, 23_n._, 24, 149,
        183, 215, 227, 237, 238, 241

  Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D., 49, 154, 243, 244, 270, 271, 293

  11th Armored Division, 61, 125, 131, 159

  Elkins Park, 51

  Ellenlittay, Madame, 75, 76

  Embankment, the, 21

  Emerich, 266

  Erhardt, Gregor, 205

  E.R.R., _see_ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg

  Essen, 232

  Essen pictures, 232

  Estreicher, Maj. Charles, 272

  Étoile, 18

  European Civil Affairs Division, 28

  Excelsior, the, 226

  Exposition Building, 259

  Eyck, Hubert van, 144

  Eyck, Jan van, 144


  Faison, Lt. Lane, 177, 179, 181

  Farben, I. G., 29, 38, 229, 259

  Farmer, Capt. Walter, 247, 277, 278, 284, 286

  Featherstone, Col. W. B., 176

  Feldherren-Halle, 56

  Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 164

  Feste Coburg, 248

  Fest-Saal, 238

  Fifteen Army (U. S.), 285

  Fifth Army (U. S.), 169, 176

  Fine Arts Commission, 196

  First Army (U. S.), 118, 232

  Fogg Museum, Harvard University, 31, 51

  Forchheim, 253

  44th AAA Brigade, 179, 203

  Fourth of July, 113, 114, 117

  Fragonard, Jean Honoré, 240

  France, 16, 145, 153, 232, 245, 256, 261, 264, 265, 293

  Franconia, 46

  Frank (Nazi Governor of Poland), 249, 251

  Frankfurt, Howe assigned to, 35-53;
    trips to, 168, 227, 229, 232, 235, 251, 264, 277;
    Naval Headquarters, 236;
    Reichsbank at, 246, 287;
    Collecting Point, 247;
    USFET Headquarters, 255, 259, 272;
    _Land_ office in, 282;
    mentioned, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 58, 67, 161, 244, 249, 254, 258,
        261, 263, 266, 271, 273, 279, 281, 285

  Franklin, James, 35

  Franz Josef, Emperor, 93, 131

  Frauenkirche, 55, 63

  Frederick the Great, 119, 234

  Frederick William, 119

  Freedberg, ⸺, 213, 214

  French collections, 238, 245

  French Committee for Fine Arts, 24

  French Military Government, 294

  French National Museums, 145

  French Resistance Movement, 69

  French Zone, 242

  Führerbau, 65, 77, 256

  Führer-museum, Linz, 93, 144, 151

  Füssen, 237, 240

  Fuschl See, Lake, 130, 186


  Gablerbräu, 187

  Gasthaus Sonne, 233

  Gelder, Dr. van, 200

  Gelnhausen, Germany, 40

  German Occupation of Netherlands, 267

  Gersaint, M., 234

  _Gersaint’s Signboard_, Watteau, 234

  G-5, 58

  Ghent altarpiece, 27, 144-146, 159, 161, 255, 256, 291.
    _See also_ _Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, The_

  Giessen, 231

  Gipsmühle, 241

  Glinz, ⸺, 154

  Glyptothek (museum), 64

  Göring, Frau Emmy, 191, 206

  Göring, Hermann, supports Rosenberg, 22;
    choice of treasures, 23;
    and Hofer, 132;
    search for Ghent altarpiece, 146-147;
    Italian works of art, 152-153;
    “Vermeer,” 182, 191, 192, 198-201, 270;
    taste in pictures, 182, 207;
    special train, 190;
    Renders Collection, 191;
    pictures from Karinhall, 204;
    swords, 209, 210;
    plans for museum, 210;
    and Görnnert, 219, 220;
    search at Berchtesgaden, 225;
    negotiates with Louvre, 234;
    and Rochlitz, 241, 242

  Göring Collection, 132, 133, 168, 171, 180, 194, 195, 207, 218, 222,
        225, 239, 256, 267, 270, 289

  Görnnert, Frau, 219

  Görnnert, Fritz, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223

  Gogh, Vincent van, 232, 250

  Goisern, 131, 171

  Golden Madonna, 233

  “Gold Room,” 188, 208, 210

  Golowine, Princess, 78

  Goudstikker, ⸺, 151, 267

  Goudstikker house, 267, 269

  Goyen, Jan van, 235

  Grandes Écuries, 21

  Grand Parc Hotel, 30, 34

  Grassau, 73, 76, 79

  Greater Hesse, 246, 277, 282, 285

  Greece, 196, 293

  Greek government, 144

  Greek sarcophagus from Salonika, 144, 160

  Grosvenor Square, 19

  Group CC, _see_ U. S. Group Control Council

  Group Control Council, _see_ U. S. Group Control Council

  Gründlsee, 139

  Grundmann, Dr., 249, 250

  G-2, 219

  Guelph family, 288

  Guiscard, Robert, 116

  Gutmann Collection, 151


  Haagen, van, 268

  Hague, The, 200, 261

  Hals, Frans, 78, 150, 245, 250, 270

  Hamann, Prof. Richard, 234, 276

  Hamilton, Lt. Col. William, 59, 62

  Hammond, Maj. Mason, 49, 50, 52, 106, 108, 121

  Hanau, Germany, 29, 54

  Hancock, Walter, 118, 119, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 276, 277, 278

  Harvard University, 25, 31, 49, 50

  Haus der Deutschen Kunst, 55, 64, 92, 166

  Havre, Le, 279

  Hearst Collection (at Gimbel’s), 91

  Heerengracht, 267

  Heidelberg, 179, 260, 269, 276, 280

  Heilbronn mine, 282

  Heller, Lt. Col. Homer K., 176, 178

  Henraux, ⸺, 266

  Herculaneum, 152

  Hermann Göring Division, 152

  Herrenchiemsee, 215

  Hess, Rudolf, 91

  Hesse, Province of, 231

  Hesse family, 40

  Hesse-Nassau, 55

  Hindenburg, Paul von, 119

  Hintersee, 224, 225

  Hitler, Adolf, choice of treasure, 23;
    Götterdämmerung idea, 24;
    Haus der Deutschen Kunst, 55;
    taste, 61, 136, 151;
    D’Annunzio’s villa, 63;
    offices, 65;
    Lanckoroncki Collection, 78;
    love for Linz, 83;
    Weinzinger, 84;
    presents _Ungaria_ to Horthy, 86;
    Hohenfurth monastery, 89, 91;
    Canova statue, 93;
    Czernin Vermeer, 152;
    approves destruction of Alt Aussee mine, 155;
    approves pictures for museums, 162, 163;
    Robert _Landscape_, 184, 185;
    Eagle’s Nest, 192, 193, 194;
    cognac from Berghof stock, 222;
    pictures at St. Agatha, 223, 225

  Höchst, 229, 259, 260, 261, 272

  Hoechst, Germany, 49

  Hofer, Frau, 133

  Hofer, Walter Andreas, 132, 133, 181, 182, 199, 200

  Hohenfurth, arrangements for evacuation, 78, 79, 82, 84, 86;
    Howe’s first trip to, 87-100;
    second trip to, 104-129;
    mentioned, 135, 216, 240

  Hohenfurth altarpiece, 151, 271

  Hohenfurth monastery, 62, 66, 87-100, 104-129, 240

  Hohenschwangau, 241

  Hohenzollerns, the, 235

  Holbein, Hans, 250

  Holland, 153, 154, 194, 258, 261, 293

  Holy Roman Empire, 27, 252

  Holzinger, Dr., 44

  Holzinger, Frau, 44, 45

  Horn, Lt. Walter, 253, 271

  Hornbeck, Stanley, 268

  Horthy, Adm., 86

  House, 71, 128, 132, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 210

  Houses of Parliament, 21

  Howe, Francesca, 15

  Hümmel, Dr. Helmut von, 163

  Hungen, 280, 281


  Imperial Treasure Room, _see_ Schatzkammer

  Iname, Baron von, 110

  Iname, Fräulein von, 110

  Innsbruck, 109

  Innsbruck Museum, 110

  Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question, _see_
        Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage

  _Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage_, 280

  Isar River, 57, 71

  Italy, 109, 153, 193, 289


  Jaffé, Lt. Hans, 269

  _James Parker_, the, 279, 289, 290, 291

  Japan, 168, 233

  _Jesus Confounding the Doctors_, Van Meegeren, 201

  Jeu de Paume, 24

  Jewish art collections, 22, 195, 241, 246

  Jewish libraries, 280

  Jubiläumsbau (Jubilee Building), 234, 235

  Jubilee Building, _see_ Jubiläumsbau


  Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 34, 49, 276, 278, 291

  Kaiser Josef chamber, 159

  Kaiser Josef mine, 142, 144

  Kaiser Saal, 48

  Kammergrafen, 150, 151, 153, 162, 163, 164, 166, 173

  Kapelle, the, 160, 164, 165

  Karinhall, 146, 190, 204, 210

  Karlsruhe, 282

  Karlstadt-on-the-Main, 46

  Kassel, 231, 282

  Kassel Museum, 137

  Katz, Dutch dealer, 194

  Katz Collection, 198

  Keck, Sheldon, 232

  Keegan, Col. Charles, 67

  Keitel, Gen., 203

  Kelleher, Capt. Joseph, 277, 278, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288

  Kirstein, Lincoln, 58, 59, 61, 66, 68, 105, 108, 117, 147, 177, 178,
        184, 214, 251

  _Kloster_, 89

  Kluss, Col. Walter, 263, 264, 271, 286, 288

  _Knights of Christ_, van Eyck, 145

  Kochendorf, 282

  Königsplatz, 63, 65, 68, 71, 80, 102, 177, 244

  Königssee, 180

  Konopischt Collection, 165

  Kopernikus-Strasse, 66

  Kovalyak, Lt. Steve, identified, 118;
    introduced, 135, 136, 137-138;
    Alt Aussee operations, 139-140, 148, 149, 156, 158, 159, 162, 164,
        165, 169, 171, 172, 173;
    Rothschild jewels, 175;
    Steyr truck, 183, 186, 224-225;
    and Kress, 210-211, 226;
    loading at Berchtesgaden, 212, 213, 216, 217, 218;
    Görnnert house, 221;
    trip to Frankfurt, 227-229;
    to Marburg, 231-232;
    Neuschwanstein operations, 239-242, 266;
    Belgian restitution, 244;
    Stoss altarpiece, 253;
    Team split, 254-255, 256;
    back to Alt Aussee, 258, 277;
    redeployment, 278;
    mentioned, 180, 182, 187, 189, 203, 204, 207, 222, 223, 251, 259

  K rations, 70, 77, 79, 125, 226

  Kress, ⸺, 137, 183, 204, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 221, 225, 226, 239

  Krummau, 96, 100, 101, 114

  Kufstein, 109

  Kuhn, Lt. Charles, USNR, Webb’s deputy, 18, 24;
    meeting with Howe, 25, 26;
    at Frankfurt, 38;
    mission to Bad Brückenau and Schloss Rossbach, 40-45;
    and Merkers mine, 48-51;
    sends Howe to Munich, 52-53, 58;
    and removal of art works to the United States, 229, 230, 262;
    helps form Special Evacuation Team, 231, 236;
    transfer of Berlin collections to Wiesbaden, 246-247;
    to Frankfurt, 251;
    released from active duty, 255;
    mentioned, 19, 27, 228, 264

  Kurhaus, Frankfurt, 30

  Kurhaus, Wiesbaden, 31


  La Bretesche, Col. A. J. de, 263

  Lacy, Capt. George, 256

  _Länder_, 55, 282, 283

  La Farge, Maj. Bancel, advance office of MFA&A, 31;
    Howe meets, 32-33;
    at Berchtesgaden, 192;
    restitutions, 195-196, 244, 245, 256, 261, 263, 267;
    problem of removal of art works to the United States, 229, 230,
        262, 272-285;
    Special Evacuation Team, 231;
    new assignments, 254;
    at Höchst, 259;
    MFA&A policies, 260, 264;
    and Lovegrove, 265;
    mentioned, 37, 62, 202, 228, 251, 271

  Lambach, 102, 125

  Lanckoroncki Collection, 78

  Lancret, Nicolas, 150, 198, 245

  Landesmuseum, 246

  _Land_ offices, 282

  _Landscape_, Lorraine, 152

  _Landscape_, Robert, 184

  Lanz Collection, 149

  Last Supper, 253

  Laufen, 131, 167

  Laufen salt mine, 24

  Law, 52, 280

  Leclancher, ⸺, 69, 70, 74, 76, 77, 80, 82, 83, 88, 94, 95, 98, 101,
        123

  _Lederhosen_, 80, 138

  Léhar, Franz, 165

  Lenbach, 78

  Leonfelden, 86, 87

  Leopold, King of Belgium, 165

  Lesley, Capt. Everett Parker, Jr., 285

  Limburg, 266

  Lindbergh, Charles, 14

  Linz, 78, 82, 83, 87, 101, 102, 111, 113, 117, 123, 124, 125, 128,
        151, 161

  Linz Collections, 163

  Linz Museum, 160, 162, 164

  List of Protected Monuments, 248

  Loggia dei Lanzi, 56

  London, England, 17, 19, 20, 267

  London Naval Headquarters, 19

  Longchamps, 21

  Longuy, Lt. Pierre, 256

  Loser, Mt., 138

  Louvain, 255

  Louvre, 145, 205, 206, 207, 234, 239

  Lovegrove, Lt. William, 264, 265, 266

  Lower Bavaria, 282

  Lucienne, 36

  “Lucky Rear,” 53, 56

  Ludwig, Prince of Hesse, 249, 250

  Ludwig bridge, 57

  Ludwig I, 56

  Ludwigsburg, 229

  Ludwig II, 215, 237, 238

  _Ludwigs of Bavaria, The_, Channon, 214

  Ludwig-Strasse, 56

  Luftwaffe, 22, 180, 204

  Luithlen, Dr. Victor, 167

  Luxembourg, 147


  McBride, Col. Harry, 273, 275, 278, 279

  Macmillan Committee, 20

  “Mad King” of Bavaria, _see_ Ludwig II

  _Madonna and Child_, Florentine sculpture, 92

  _Madonna and Child_ (Madonna from Bruges), Michelangelo, 27, 142,
        143, 144, 149, 159, 161, 164, 207, 223, 224, 255

  _Madonna of Bürgermeister Meyer_, Holbein, 250

  _Madonna of the Divine Love_, Raphael, 152

  Magdalene, statue, 205

  Main River, 46

  Mainzer Landstrasse, 29

  Manet, Édouard, 232

  Mannheim, 229, 279

  Mannheimer Collection, 91, 92, 106, 151

  _Man with a Turban_, Rembrandt, 194, 195

  Marburg, 32, 118, 231, 235, 278, 283, 294

  Margarethe, Landgräfin of Hesse, 40, 249

  Maria, 139, 165

  Maria-Elisa, Princess of Lucca, 93

  Marienberg fortress, 46

  Marseilles, 195

  Maspero, M., 287

  Master of the Holy Kinship, 206

  Mathilde-Strasse, 226

  Matisse, Henri, 241

  Mauritshuis (museum), 200

  Medical Office, 20

  Mediterranean Sea, 42

  Meegeren, Henrik Van, 201, 202

  Meer, Capt. ter, 267, 268

  _Mein Kampf_, Hitler, 152

  Mellon, Andrew, 148, 152

  _Mercury and Venus_, Boucher, 234

  Merkers, Germany, 16

  Merkers mine, 32, 49, 119, 278, 287

  Merrill, Comm. Keith, 279

  “Merry Widow Waltz,” 165

  MFA&A, _see_ Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of U. S.
        Forces, European Theater

  Michel, Dr. Hermann, 183

  Michelangelo, 143.
    _See also_ _Madonna and Child_

  Miedl, ⸺, 267

  Military Government Detachments, 33, 35, 40, 66, 103, 127, 139, 176,
        236, 237, 248, 249

  Miller, Maj. Luther, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224

  Miller, Maj. Paul, 189

  Millionen Zimmer, 144

  Mineral Kabinett, 144, 148, 160

  Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences (Holland), 202

  Ministry of Fine Arts (Belgium), 256

  Moldau River, 100, 114

  Monastery of St. Florian, 161

  Mondsberg chamber, 166

  Monte Cassino, 152, 153

  Mont St. Martin, church of, 58

  Mont St. Michel, 17

  Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of U. S. Forces, European
        Theater, Howe assigned to, 15;
    Webb heads at SHAEF, 18;
    offices at Versailles, 21;
    Kuhn in, 25;
    and SHAEF, 28;
    La Farge with, 31;
    at Munich, 58-59;
    work of, 118;
    Walker inspects, 192;
    official position, 195-196;
    Ritchie joins, 251;
    Howe as Deputy Chief, 255;
    personnel problems, 257, 273, 283-284, 293, 294;
    headquarters transferred, 259;
    restitution, 264;
    removal of art works to United States, 272, 275-292;
    mentioned, 40, 135, 254

  Monuments of Middle Ages, 61

  Moore, Lt. Lamont, described, 105-106, 107;
    Howe meets, 116, 117;
    previous work, 118-120;
    Canova Muse, 121;
    to Linz, 123, 125;
    to Munich, 126, 127;
    to Alt Aussee, 128, 129, 130;
    operations at Alt Aussee, 131-171, 173-177;
    and Kirstein, 177-178;
    to Berchtesgaden, 179, 180, 185, 186, 187;
    and Hofer, 181-182;
    and Dr. Michel, 183-184;
    and Göring Collection, 189-213, 219;
    trip to Munich, 213-214;
    to St. Agatha, 224-225;
    to Frankfurt, 227-229;
    Special Team, 228, 231, 256;
    and Walker Hancock, 232;
    at Neuschwanstein, 239-240, 266;
    Rochlitz, 241;
    Belgian restitution, 244;
    trip to Coburg, 247, 249, 251;
    resumes evacuation at Alt Aussee, 254, 255, 258, 277;
    assigned to Wiesbaden, 278, 279;
    mentioned, 114, 216, 221, 223, 253, 259, 269

  Mouscron brothers of Bruges, 143

  Mozartplatz, 82, 187

  Münz Kabinett, 160, 164

  Munich, Smyth assigned to, 32, 33;
    Howe to fly to, 52, 53;
    field work begins, 54-79;
    back to, 93, 96, 98, 99, 102;
    Stout visits, 106;
    exhibitions, 151;
    convoy to, 159, 218, 236;
    trips to, 161, 162, 213, 217, 272;
    Haus de Deutschen Kunst in, 166;
    Rothschild jewels, 174;
    Central Collecting Point, 196, 220, 222, 231, 244, 251, 271, 282;
    museums of, 238;
    to Paris, 245;
    Third Army Headquarters, 246, 260;
    return to, 254;
    last operations in, 255;
    convoys from Amsterdam, 257;
    French representative in, 264;
    plane from, 268;
    Vorenkamp’s work, 269;
    Belgium representative in, 280;
    _et passim_

  Munich Pact of 1938, 65

  _Muse_, Canova, 121

  Musée du Jeu de Paume, 23, 245, 264, 265, 266

  Mussolini, Benito, 55, 184, 185, 209, 210, 223, 225

  Mutter, Dr., 89-99, 102, 113, 114, 116, 121-124

  Mutter family, 124

  Myers, Capt., 125

  _Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, The_, David, 197


  Naarden, 270

  Naples Museum, 152

  Napoleon, 93

  National Gallery, Edinburgh, 199

  National Gallery of Art, 16, 105, 192, 273, 278, 279, 289, 294

  Nattier, ⸺, 150

  Netherlands Government, 270

  _Neue Residenz_, 247, 248

  Neue Staatsgalerie, 64

  Neumann, Johann Balthasar, 47

  Neuschwanstein, _see_ Schloss Neuschwanstein

  Newark Museum, 105

  New York _Times_, 274_n._, 288, 290, 292

  New York _Times Overseas Weekly_, 289, 290

  _Night Watch_, Rembrandt, 270

  1923 beer-hall “putsch,” 64

  Ninth Army Headquarters, 118

  North Sea, 42

  Nürnberg, 236, 243-258, 272

  Nunnery on the Mathilde-Strasse, 226


  Oberammergau, 215, 282

  Ober-Donau, 154

  Obersalzberg, 192, 223

  Offenbach, 280, 281, 282, 285

  Office of Military Government for Germany (U. S.), 291

  Olympus and the Four Continents, 47

  101st Airborne Division, 180, 190, 209, 210, 222

  Ooley, Capt. Wyman, 35, 36

  Opera House, Frankfurt, 29, 35

  Opera House, Wiesbaden, 31

  Oppenheim, E. Phillips, 20

  Orly field, 17, 19, 21, 28

  Ortenburg, Countess of, 250

  OSS, 20, 128, 241, 249

  Ottobeuren, 215

  Oud Bussum, 270


  Pacher, Michael, 165

  _Painted Queen, The, see_ Queen Nefertete

  Palace at Darmstadt, 250

  Palace of Versailles, 115

  Palais Edinburgh, 249

  Pannini, 185

  Pannwitz, Mme. Catalina van, 194

  Pannwitz, Van, Collection, 194

  Paris, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 37, 148, 167, 194, 195, 199, 215, 223,
        227, 239, 241, 245, 264, 265, 279, 280

  Paris Naval Headquarters, 19, 26

  Parkhurst, Lt. (jg) Charles, 240

  Passau, 113, 117

  _Passion of Christ_, altarpiece, 206

  Patton, Gen. George, 57, 228

  Patuxent airport, 13

  Pau Museum, 146

  Peck, Sgt. Edward, 188, 189, 202, 204, 208, 212, 222

  Pelz, Lt. Milton A., 249

  Petites Écuries, 21

  Philip of Hesse, 40, 249

  “Photo Marburg,” 234

  Picasso, Pablo, 241, 242

  Pilsen, 254

  Place de la Concorde, 18, 23

  Place Vendôme, 17

  Platter Hof, 192

  Plaut, Lt. Jim, 20, 128, 131, 132, 133, 179, 181, 184, 241

  Pötschen Pass, 131, 171, 184

  Poland, 50, 196, 252, 254, 260, 272, 293

  Poland, King of, 252

  Polis, Lt. Col. H., 267

  _Polnische Grausamkeit, Die_ (_The Polish Atrocity_), 224

  Polyhymnia, statue by Canova, 93

  Pompeii, 152

  _Portrait of a Lady Sealing a Letter_, Chardin, 234

  _Portrait of a Young Woman_, Bordone, 166

  _Portrait of Pope Clement VII_, Sebastiano del Piombo, 152

  _Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_, Vermeer, 151

  _Portrait of the Artist’s Mother_, Whistler, 232

  Posey, Capt. Robert, Third Army Monuments Officer, 58, 59;
    described, 60, 67;
    sends Howe to Grassau, 68;
    Hohenfurth evacuation, 104, 105, 107, 108;
    Howe to Alt Aussee, 128;
    and Ghent altarpiece, 147, 148;
    Bormann letter, 155;
    Rothschild jewels, 175;
    instructions to Howe, 178, 179;
    and Michel, 184;
    plans, 215;
    St. Agatha pictures, 223;
    sends team to Hohenfurth, 227;
    Belgian restitution, 244, 245;
    demobilized, 246;
    mentioned, 62, 75, 78, 85, 103, 112, 139, 177, 213, 214, 219, 225,
        236

  Posse, Dr. Hans, 163

  Posthumus-Meyjes, Col. W. C., 270

  Poulard, Mère, 17

  Prague, 254

  _Presentation in the Temple_, Master of the Holy Kinship, 206

  Prien, 72, 73

  Prince-Bishops of Würzburg, 46, 47

  Prince Regent of Belgium, 244

  Prinz Karl Palais, 55

  Prinz Regenten-Strasse, 55, 57

  Prinz-Regenten Theater, 66

  Property Control, 63

  Prussia, King of, 145

  Punxsutawney, Pa., 118

  Putnam, Capt., 204

  PX rations, 129, 256


  Queen Nefertete, statue, 50, 286, 287


  Rackham, Arthur, 80

  Rae, Capt. Edwin, 50, 51, 53, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 253, 254,
        261, 271

  Raphael, 262

  Ratensky, Lt. Samuel, 277, 284, 285

  “Raven, The,” Poe, 167

  Red Cross Club, 18, 31, 266

  Reeds, Cpl. James, 259, 261, 263

  Regional Military Government office, Munich, 33

  Regnitz River, 248

  Reichsbank, Frankfurt, 32, 48, 51, 52, 53, 108, 246, 261, 287

  Reichskanzlei, Berlin, 151

  Reichszeugmeisterei (Quartermaster Corps buildings), 57

  Rembrandt, 44, 150, 151, 153, 262

  Renders, M., 191

  Renders Collection at Brussels, 191

  René, 36

  Reparations, Deliveries and Restitution Division of the U. S. Group
        Control Council, 195.
    _See also_ Group Control Council

  Residenz, at Würzburg, 47, 48, 280

  Restitution Commission, 270

  Restitution Control Branch of the Economics Division, 259, 263, 264

  “Return of the Old Masters, The,” Exhibition, 270

  Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 150

  Rhineland museums, 32, 118

  Rhine River, 266

  Ribbentrop, von, 130

  Ribera, 185

  _Richmond, Duke of_, Van Dyck, 198

  Rifkind, Judge Samuel, 281

  Rijksmuseum, 154, 267, 269, 270

  _Ring of the Nibelung_, Wagner, 66

  Ritchie, Andrew, 251

  Robert, Hubert, 172, 185

  Roberts, Justice, 15

  Roberts Commission, 15, 20, 25, 31, 192, 262

  Rochlitz, Gustav, 241, 242

  Roel, Jonkheer, 267

  Roget, Roger, 71, 81, 82, 83, 95, 96, 98, 101, 134

  Rollin, Armand, 232

  Rorimer, Lt. James, 105, 238, 280

  Rosenberg, Alfred, 22, 100, 101, 114, 149

  Rosenberg, castle of, 114

  Rosenberg, Dukes of, 100

  Rosenberg Task Force, _see_ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg

  Rosenheim, 102, 109, 128

  Rosenheimer-Strasse, 57, 71

  Ross, Gen., 279

  Rothschild, Baron Édouard de, 198

  Rothschild Collection, 91, 106, 151

  Rothschild jewels, 174-175, 177

  Rothschild Library, 281, 286

  Rothschild treasures, 239

  Rothschilds, of Paris, 205

  Rothschilds, of Vienna, 151

  Rousseau, Lt. Ted, 128, 131, 132, 133, 179, 181, 183, 184, 241

  Royal Monceau (hotel), 18, 19, 21, 223

  Rubens, Peter Paul, 78, 150, 153, 172, 182, 198, 199, 235, 245

  Rudolf, of Mayerling, 93

  Rue Berthier, 27, 30

  Rue Castiglione, 17

  Rue de Rivoli, 17

  Rue Presbourg, 19

  Russian Ballet, 167

  Russian Military Government, 294

  Russian Zone of Occupied Germany, 248, 249

  Ruysdael, Jacob, 235


  Sachs, Prof., 50

  _Sacra Conversazione_, Vecchio, 152

  St. Agatha, 131, 184, 223, 225

  St. Barbara, statues, 207, 224

  St. George and the Dragon statues, 207

  St. Gilgen, 128, 130

  St. John, 148, 253

  St. John Nepomuk, 100

  _St. John the Baptist_, panel, 145

  St. Paul, 253

  St. Paul’s, London, 21

  St. Peter, 253

  St. Wolfgang, 128, 165

  St. Wolfgang See, 130

  Salonika, 144, 160

  Salzburg, 24, 25, 59, 61, 68, 81, 83, 102, 111, 113, 125, 128, 130,
        162, 168, 171, 175, 176, 178, 182, 187, 192

  “Sammlung Berta,” 151

  San Francisco, Calif., 14, 15, 166, 240, 257

  _Saskia_, Rembrandt, 194

  Sattler, Dietrich, 256

  Saxony, 55

  Schatzkammer, 252, 253

  Schiller, von, 186

  Schiphol airport, 267, 268, 271

  Schloss Banz, 250, 271

  Schloss Friedrichshof, 40

  Schloss Konopischt, 164, 165

  Schloss Kronberg, 38

  Schloss Lichtwert, 110

  Schloss Linderhof, 215

  Schloss Marzoll, 225

  Schloss Matzen, 109, 110

  Schloss Neuschwanstein, 148, 215, 219, 227, 236, 237-242, 266

  Schloss Rossbach, 42, 44

  Schloss Stauffeneck-Tiereck, 225

  Schloss Tambach, 249, 250, 251

  Schloss Wiesenthau, 253

  Schmedes, von, 109

  Schönborn family, the, 47

  Schuvalov, Prince, 78

  Schwannenstadt, 125

  _Seduction_, Boucher, 197

  _Self-Portrait_, Rembrandt, 233

  Seligmann, Paris art dealer, 206

  Seventh Army (U. S.), 105, 228, 238, 260, 269

  “Seven Wonders of Bavaria,” 215

  SHAEF, 15, 18, 21, 49, 59, 195, 248

  SHAEF Headquarters, 28, 29, 38

  Sheehan, Lt. Col. John R., 86, 87, 89, 93, 99, 102, 113

  Shrady, Lt. Frederick, 135, 136, 139, 140, 148, 156, 162, 165, 167,
        179, 182, 183

  Siberechts, Jan, 185

  Sieber, Karl, German restorer, 136, 140;
    and mine train, 141, 142;
    Ghent altarpiece, 148;
    evacuation of Alt Aussee, 149, 150;
    described, 154;
    Hitler’s plans for destruction of mine, 155-156;
    in the Kammergrafen, 162-163, 173-174;
    mentioned, 153, 183, 184, 185

  Siegen, Westphalia, 32, 119

  Siegen mine, 107, 118, 232

  Sigismund, Emperor, 252

  Silesia, 250

  Sinn River, 42

  Sisley portrait, Renoir, 232

  “_Sittenbilder_,” 163

  65th Infantry Division, 82

  Slade Professor of Art, 18

  Smith, Col. Hayden, 272

  Smith College, 257

  Smyth, Lt. Craig, to France, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21;
    at Versailles, 26, 27;
    assigned to Munich, 33, 34;
    need for guards, 62, 63;
    at Verwaltungsbau, 64, 65;
    Howe stays with, 66, 67;
    inspects pictures, 77-78;
    lends packers to Howe, 80, 81;
    Rothschild jewels, 177;
    visits Berchtesgaden, 216, 217;
    Belgian restitution, 243, 245;
    “Westward Ho” shipment, 276;
    mentioned, 54, 127, 214, 254, 258

  Soldier King, _see_ Frederick William

  Solly, Edward, 145

  Special Evacuation Team, 228, 236, 247, 254, 256

  Speisesaal (of Prinz Regenten Theater), 66

  Spitzweg, 78

  Springerwerke, 148, 149, 153, 166

  Staatsarchiv, 231, 233, 235

  Staedelsches Kunstinstitut, 44

  Standen, Lt. Edith, 50, 51, 246, 259, 261, 263, 264, 272, 280, 285,
        290

  _Stars and Stripes_, 284

  Staedel, the, 44

  Steinbergwerke, 134

  Stettin Museum, 249, 250

  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 269

  Stevensville, Newfoundland, 16

  _Still Life with Dead Peacocks_, Rembrandt, 269

  Stockholm Museum, 280

  Stokowski, Leopold, 182

  Stone, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske, 289

  Stoss, Veit, 252

  Stoss altarpiece, 27, 253, 263, 272

  Stout, Lt. George, USNR, described, 31;
    plans for repositories, 32;
    visits to Munich, 58, 59, 61-62, 106-107;
    advises Siegen evacuation, 118;
    as part of team, 128;
    introduces Howe and Moore to Alt Aussee mine, 134-144;
    opinion of Sieber, 154;
    loading techniques, 156-161;
    leaves for Pacific, 167-170, 178;
    on the “old masters,” 208;
    on removal of art works to the United States, 262;
    mentioned, 53, 66, 68, 77, 131, 149, 162, 180, 212, 245, 263

  Stradivarius violins at Innsbruck, 110

  Strasbourg Cathedral, 27

  Strigel, Bernhard, 198

  Strobl, 131

  Stuttgart, 228, 229, 282

  Sudetenland, 89

  Suk, Capt. Egon, 271

  Sverdlik, Dr., 95, 96

  “Swan country,” 237

  Switzerland, 44, 146, 179, 194


  Table of Organization, 231, 283

  Taunus Anlage, 29

  Taunus mountains, 31, 266

  Tel-el-Amarna, 286, 287

  Ten Cate Collection, 195

  “Teppich-Beisser, Der,” _see_ Hitler, Adolf

  Terceira, 16

  Thacher, Major Coleman W., 87, 99, 101, 120

  Theatinerkirche, 56

  Third Army (U. S.), 57, 59, 62, 104, 110, 129, 147, 169, 176, 186,
        222, 226, 228, 247, 251, 260, 271

  Third Army Headquarters, 53, 66, 68, 76, 103, 107, 112, 177, 210,
        214, 219, 226, 236, 238, 245, 246

  Thoma, 78

  Throne Room, 238

  Thüngen, Baron and Baroness, 43

  Thuringia, 32

  Tiepolo, 47, 78

  Tiffany’s, 238

  Tintoretto, 150, 153

  “Tiny,” 217

  Titian, 24, 150, 153, 168

  _Titus_, Rembrandt, 194

  T.O., _see_ Table of Organization

  Transient Officers’ Mess, 126

  Transportation Office, 32

  Traunstein, 81, 179

  “Treasure Room” of Walter Farmer, 284, 286

  Treppenhaus, the, 47

  Trianon Palace Hotel, 27

  Trier, 147

  True Cross, 253

  Truman, Pres. Harry S., 230, 275

  Tuileries Gardens, 23

  12th Army Group Headquarters, 31

  26th Division (Yankee), 100, 126

  263rd Field Artillery Battalion, 86, 87

  Tyrol, the, 108, 109


  Ulm, 228

  _Ungaria_, the, 86

  UNRRA, 248

  United States Forces, Austria (USFA), 247, 251

  United States Forces, European Theater (USFET), 229, 231, 235, 251,
        252, 255, 259, 260, 263, 264, 271, 272, 283

  U. S. Group Control Council, 49, 106, 229, 230, 259, 261, 283

  United States Zone of Germany, _see_ American Zone

  University of California, 253

  University of Frankfurt, 37, 53

  University of Munich, 225

  Unterstein, 180, 187, 224

  Upper Bavaria, 282

  Upper Franconia, 247

  Urfahr, 87, 124

  USFET, _see_ United States Forces, European Theater

  USFET Mission at The Hague, 268

  USFET Mission to France, 265

  Utrecht, 266


  Valland, Rose, 23, 24, 264

  Vanderbilt, Paul, 281

  Van Dyck, 143, 150, 153, 172, 185, 235, 245

  Van Meegeren, 270

  Van Meegeren fake, 199

  Van Pannwitz collection, 194

  Vassalle, Capt. Rudolph, 40, 41

  Vatican, the, 152

  VE-Day, 17, 118

  Veitschöchheim, Germany, 46

  Veit Stoss altarpiece, _see_ Stoss altarpiece

  Velásquez, Diego Rodríguez, 24, 168

  Vermeer, Jan, 182, 201, 270

  “Vermeer” fake, 182, 191, 192, 198-201, 270

  Verona, 176

  Veronese, Paul, 153, 172

  Versailles, 18, 21, 24, 25, 27, 49, 58, 63, 128, 229

  Versailles Treaty, 145, 255

  Verwaltungsbau, 64, 65, 70, 105, 216

  Vichy Ministry of Fine Arts, 146

  Vienna, 25, 26, 83, 93, 140, 151, 152, 167, 176, 247, 251, 252, 253

  Vienna Museum, 24, 167, 168, 175

  Vierzehnheiligen, 215

  _View of the Piazza San Marco_, Canaletto, 198

  Vigée-Lebrun, Mme., 78

  Villacoublay, 28

  VJ-Day, 235

  Volkwang Museum, 232

  Voltaire, portrait of, Houdon, 246

  Vorenkamp, Lt. Col. Alphonse, 256, 258, 261, 267, 269, 270, 271

  Voss, Dr. Hermann, 163

  Vrečko, Lt. Col. František, 271

  Vries, Capt. Robert de, 267

  Vroom, Nicolaes, 267

  Vysi Brod, 89


  Waffenraum, Schloss Kronberg, 39, 249

  Wagner, Richard, 237

  Walker, John, 119, 192, 202

  Wallraf-Richartz Museum of Cologne, 233

  Warsaw, 249, 250, 251

  Washington, D. C., 17, 273, 275, 279, 289

  Webb, Lt. Col. Geoffrey, 18, 21, 24, 26, 28, 38

  Wehrmacht, the, 121, 157

  Weimar, 232

  “Weinzinger,” 84

  Weisser Saal, 48

  Weltenburg, 215

  Wendland, Swiss art dealer, 195, 197

  Wesel, 266

  Western Military District (of American Zone), 246, 260, 269

  Western Sea Frontier Headquarters, 14

  Westminster Abbey, 21

  Westphalia, 32, 107

  “Westward Ho” shipment, 275, 276, 280

  Whistler’s _Mother_, 232

  White House, the, 289, 290_n._

  _White Roses_, Van Gogh, 232

  Whittemore, Maj. Lewis W., 89, 94, 114

  Widener Collection, 50, 262

  Widener house, 51

  Wies, 215

  Wiesbaden, 31, 33, 62, 156, 247, 259, 263, 275, 278, 279, 282, 285,
        287, 288, 294

  Wiesbaden Manifesto, 275

  Wiesbaden Museum, 247

  _Wilhelm Tell_, 186

  Williams College, 177

  Wimpole Street, 19

  Windischgrätz, Princess, 93

  Windsor, Duke, of, 131

  Wolfsgarten, 250

  Woolley, Col. Sir Leonard, 20

  World War I, 37, 39, 70, 164, 287

  Wright, Frank Lloyd, 284

  Württemberg, 229

  Württemberg-Baden, 246, 282

  Würzburg, 46, 48, 236, 280

  Würzburg Residenz, 215


  “Yankee Division,” _see_ 26th Division


  Zell am See, 191