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.