Chapter X: Part 10

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.

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)