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ordered withdrawn from circulation at that time.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.