The Rape of Europa

by Lynn H. Nicholas

  Frederick Hartt’s map of the complicated travels of the Florentine works

  While this group was en route, another SS colonel by the name of Baumann, utterly uninformed in art matters but aware of Wolff’s orders, had arrived in Florence and told Poggi that all the Florentine treasures including those in the city were to be moved. The unlikely duo of Poggi and the German consul were able to put him off by saying that everything except a number of huge sculptures had already left, and with straight faces toured the hapless Nazi around the biggest and least movable things they could find, showing him such large works as Cellini’s Perseus and the bronze doors of the Baptistry. They did not bother to show him the more movable Uffizi drawings collection, or the masterpieces from all over Tuscany which had been hidden in secret passages beneath the museum.39

  But Poggi could not fob off Langsdorff as he had Baumann, and when the Kunstschutz chief arrived the Superintendent was forced to brief him on which ricoveri were in the greatest danger. Study of the military situation immediately indicated the sculpture deposit at Dicomano. Without allowing his men any sleep, Langsdorff ordered them to drive to the deserted little town, where the only building still standing was the oratory in which the works were stored. The next three days were spent cramming the heavy statues onto the trucks with whatever machinery could be devised. It was not easy duty: the presence of the convoy attracted air strikes which constantly interrupted the work, and the drivers were forced to live on vegetables foraged from abandoned gardens, which they cooked into a sort of stew in a pot found in the wreckage of a house.

  On the evening of July 30 the loaded convoy headed not back to Florence but to Wolff’s headquarters at Verona. As the trucks crossed the Po on a rickety pontoon bridge in the dark of night, Allied bombs split open the cab of one and wounded its driver. Doggedly they continued on, using back roads to avoid further raids, and arrived at Verona at dawn on August 4.

  The Fascist government, meanwhile, worried by this behavior on the part of its “allies,” began to press for the return of the Florentine objects to their custody. But Wolff was determined to keep them under his control, and on August 5 Langsdorff was told that the Gauleiter of the new “Gau Tirol” had been ordered to find storage for the wandering masterpieces near Bolzano, well within the northern areas annexed to the Reich. The Gauleiter was carefully instructed not to choose a site near the Swiss border lest Mussolini somehow manage to whisk the works across it into neutral territory.

  While the Dicomano shipment continued its journey up to Bolzano, Langsdorff ordered his assistants to return to Marano sul Panaro to arrange transport for the 291 pictures abandoned there previously, and these, also unbeknowst to the Italians, followed the sculptures toward Bolzano on August 10. It was none too soon. Perhaps tired of war, an officer of the unit protecting Marano had been entertaining the locals by driving several truckloads of the paintings around, “improvising shows here and there, in the open air, under the porticoes and in villas. The last halt… was at Villa Taroni, where a ball was given, with torchlight illuminations, while the paintings, a Titian among them, decorated the rooms. And sad to say, some well known Italian families, who were spending the summer in that neighborhood, came to the ball.”40

  An interim attempt to take the cache from the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, eleven miles northwest of Florence, on August 8, had been abandoned when Langsdorff, accompanied by SS General Wolff’s aide-decamp, was driven back by artillery fire. On August 19 Langsdorff’s deputy Reidemeister was able to return to Poggio, where he found the castle full of refugees who were using the cases of paintings as bedsteads and cooking among them on alcohol stoves. Evidence that the lull in the artillery barrage was not entirely coincidental is provided by a bizarre telegram sent at the exact same time from the German legation in Bern (via the Swiss Foreign Office) to the Department of State in Washington:

  German authorities Italy have stored in Villa Reale Poggio at Caiano … valuable artistic collections and archives concerning Tuscan Renaissance works…. German Government states there are no (repeat no) German troops in neighborhood Villa Reale and villa itself not used (repeat not) used for military purpose…. German Government desires inform American and British Governments it desires avoid bombardment or destruction Villa Reale.41

  This was reinforced by similar announcements on the radio. Two days later, on August 23, thirty cases were finally removed from Poggio in the midst of renewed shellfire and taken off toward Bologna over the pitted roads. On their way back to base, not wanting to miss anything, the Germans collected forty-one pictures discovered by troops at the Villa Podere di Trefiano; these were instantly recognized by Langsdorff as being from the collection of Goering’s erstwhile dealer friend, Count Contini Bonacossi.

  At the same time other units had moved 196 more pictures and 69 cases of sculpture, among them Donatello’s St. George and David, Michelangelo’s Bacchus, and the Medici Venus, from the Villa Bocci and Castello Poppi near Bibbiena. The latter pickup had all the trappings of a Grade B movie: after a series of harassments and threats the townspeople were ordered at gunpoint to remain in their cellars while the town was mined and searches were made for hidden arms. While the citizens huddled miserably in total darkness, the Germans broke into the ricovero, tore open cases, and loaded what seemed to be a random selection into a single truck. In fact, the paintings jammed into the vehicle were carefully chosen and ran heavily to the northern schools so beloved of Hitler. Three Raphaels, two Botticellis, and Titian’s Concert plus a Watteau and a del Sarto or two were thrown in for good measure. What was left behind was more amazing: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi, and Michelangelo’s Doni Madonna were scattered in the wide-open castle among the litter of the violated packing cases. Before they departed the Germans apologized to the mayor for not being able to take everything away, told him to protect the villa, and blew up the town gate and the only access road to the village.

  By September 7 twenty-two truckloads containing 532 paintings and 153 sculptures, representing nearly half of the best Florence had to offer, had finally reached their mountain refuges. Arrangements at the arrival end had not been much easier to make than those in the battle areas around Florence. Dr. Reidemeister had arrived with the first shipment at the assigned storage area, only to find that the entrances were so narrow that the trucks could not get in. This was just as well, as no one had noticed the presence of a major ammunition dump next door to the damp premises. The Gauleiter of the Tirol suggested that they continue on to the safety of Innsbruck or Bavaria, but Reidemeister later claimed that he had refused to do so as “it was the Führer’s wish to safeguard these valuables on Italian soil, so that no one abroad should accuse them of looting.”

  Germans unloading Uffizi pictures at San Leonardo (Kunstschutz photo)

  An alternative site was not easily thought of; the area was full of Italian Partisans and Allied bombing was intense. Leaving the truckloads of art behind, and knowing that more were en route, Reidemeister, Dr. Josef Ringler of the Ahnenerbe’s South Tirol Culture Commission, and the local Fine Arts Superintendent rushed off to look for another refuge in the remote mountain passes. The mayor of San Leonardo in Passiria showed them an abandoned jail which was perfect, but too small to hold everything. They rejected an old paper mill and one château half full of agricultural tools, offered by a kindly countess. But a coach house at the Schloss Neumelans in Sand at Campo Tures, offered by another lady, proved ideal, and Reidemeister arranged for the trucks from Dicomano to be unloaded there on August 11.

  On August 27 another shipment, which contained the famous Cranach Adam and Eve, got as far as an Army barracks in Bolzano and then ran out of gas. Rushing down to deal with this latest crisis, Ringler was shocked to find that the paintings had been loaded into the trucks without any packing materials or protection. On September 1, the quest for fuel having been unsuccessful, Ringler received the following telegram from General Wolff’s headquarters:
“Please load the five truckloads onto closed furniture vans, harness with horses or oxen, and convey to deposits.” This being patently impossible, the search for gasoline went on. Ringler was of course competing with the retreat of the entire German Army across the Apennines. Five hundred fifty liters were finally produced on personal orders of General Wolff, but by now the weather was so bad that the convoy had to spend yet another day on the road before it was unloaded at Schloss Neumelans on September 5. Two days later, five more loads containing confiscated Jewish collections and the Contini pictures, all packed in excelsior taken out of fruit baskets found in a convent, went up to join the rest. The unloading took days, and the refuges were now full to bursting.

  The remarkable and hasty evacuation of these works to the north coincided exactly with the Allied advance on Florence, which had never been formally declared an open city by either side. Allied reluctance was due to the very mixed signals being received from the Germans: on the one hand, Hitler had declared Florence to be “the jewel of Europe” and on several occasions had reaffirmed his desire that it remain unharmed. But on the other, he had again on July 3 exhorted his troops and Kesselring to hold the Arno line, to which Florence was just as pivotal as Monte Cassino had been to the Gustav line.

  Florence, unquestionably an important communications and transportation center that would be useful to both armies, remained crammed full of German troops despite Hitler’s declarations. Kesselring had left Rome and its bridges intact, thereby facilitating the rapid advance of Allied troops through the city, an act which Hitler now regretted. There was no question in Kesselring’s mind that the situation in Florence would be the same. By mid-July tough retreating German paratroop divisions were taking up defensive positions south of the city, where on the nineteenth Hitler again ordered them to make a stand. According to one witness at Hitler’s headquarters, he specifically declared that Florence itself was not to be a battleground, a statement which was communicated to the Allies through the Vatican, and he confirmed this in conversations with Mussolini the next day.

  But the next day was not an ordinary one. It was July 20, 1944, the day of the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life. Kesselring, whom Allied propaganda broadcasts had frequently suggested was not a strong Hitler supporter, and who had indeed often disagreed with the Führer, could not now afford to be seen as sympathetic to negotiations with the Allies or to be relaxing the defense of Italy. But even at this juncture the Allies, military and press alike, were sure that the Germans would leave Florence as quickly as they had Rome.

  This confidence was not shared by those in the city. The German consul had been shocked to see a map showing plans for a large demolition area covering the central Florentine bridges, including the beautiful Santa Trinità (said to have been designed by Michelangelo) and the banks on either side. Only the Ponte Vecchio, Hitler’s favorite, was to be spared. The consul protested to Ambassador Rahn, as did his Swiss and Romanian colleagues. They were told that the demolition “depended on the behavior of the Allies.”

  The latter, meanwhile, had made a public relations error of major proportions. On the morning of July 29 General Alexander had broadcast a message to the Florentines exhorting them to defend their city’s utilities, prevent the enemy from exploding mines, and protect rail communications. Most of these instructions were already moot, the Germans having destroyed these facilities some days before, and the only effect was to endanger anyone walking about. The message ended with the fatal statement that “it is vital for Allied troops to cross Florence without delay in order to complete the destruction of German forces on their retreat northwards.”42 In case everyone had not heard the broadcast, the message was printed on leaflets and showered over the city.

  During the next two days the Germans evacuated some fifty thousand citizens from the bridge areas. On August 3 the populace was ordered to close itself inside and stay away from the windows. At about ten that night Bernard Berenson, watching from his secret hiding place outside Florence, and unaware that a considerable portion of his own collection had just been destroyed, saw “a Neronian spectacle of a huge fire … a great explosion burst from the heart of Florence: it threw up a serpentine jet of smoke that reached the sky.”43 At the Pitti, glass rained down on displaced householders camping in the courtyard. It took three tries to destroy the beloved bridge of Santa Trinità. The next morning British troops entered the southern sections of the city. As in the case of Monte Cassino, controversy as to who was to blame for these events went on for years. Suffice it to say that it was a logical military act for Kesselring, surely approved by Hitler, to delay his enemy’s advance, and indeed the Allies did not gain control of the north bank of the Arno for almost two more weeks.

  Dr. Fasola (center, with glasses) and colleagues retrieving works from Montegufoni

  With Florence in the center of the battle zone, museum officials had little idea of what had happened to their works of art. Inspection of the ricoveri was dangerous, but on July 20, Professor Cesare Fasola, librarian of the Uffizi, bravely set off on foot toward the front lines to check the depositories. Arriving at the Villa Bossi-Pucci at Montagnana, Fasola was amazed to find it already deserted and nearly empty: “The doors and windows were wide open and wrenched off their hinges. … I entered through an indescribable state of disorder only to find that an almost total clearance had been effected … there still remained a few priceless pictures: Perugino’s Crucifixion lying on the ground in the midst of rubbish and debris….” The library books had all been thrown down and trampled upon.

  In the twilight Fasola walked on to Montegufoni, a villa owned by the eccentric Sitwell family, where he found comparable disorder and filth. The cases of the pictures had all been opened and moved, some “piled up in a dark corridor where a fetid smell left no doubt as to the use that had been made of this passage,” but few seemed to have been taken. According to the caretakers, the disorder had been caused by the front-line parachutists and SS troops who still held it. The chaos and danger to the collections was increased by nomadic groups of refugees who constantly passed through. For days Fasola acted as a one-man police force, begging and pleading for his pictures with the troops:

  The best thing to do was to try to be present everywhere. Whenever soldiers appeared I went and met them, I greeted them, I talked to them, and I accompanied them on their visit to the Castle, as if it were a Museum. Sometimes I managed to lead them right to the other end of the building and to show them out. What a relief! In the meantime I tried to explain to them that it was a question of important works, admired by the Führer.44

  After a dramatic night in the cellars (“The rattling of the machine guns draws near, it becomes lacerating and crashes against the doors of our shelter”) the Germans were replaced by New Zealanders, and Fasola’s educational measures were begun anew. Soon after came the press; “Great was their surprise and equally great their joy when they found themselves face to face with our masterpieces,” he later wrote. This was quite an understatement. Two British reporters, Vaughn Thomas and Erik Linklater, had entered the castle to interview Indian troops and indeed come face to face with Botticelli’s Primavera. Looking around they saw more and more familiar pictures, among them such greats as the Rucellai Madonna. All were unboxed and surrounded by soldiers making tea. Outside, less than half a mile away, they could see a line of German tanks, their guns aiming at the villa.45

  The four Allied Monuments officers assigned to Florence, waiting impatiently behind the lines near Lake Trasimeno for the liberation of the city, heard this news on the morning BBC broadcast. First Lieutenant Frederick Hartt immediately set off in another of the few and legendary Monuments jeeps, which had begun its career in North Africa and gone on through Sicily and Sardinia. Skirting ruined towns and frequently blocked by artillery activity, Hartt took all day to make the ninety-mile trip north.

  The next morning, with shells still screaming by, he inspected the many rooms of stacked pictures at Montegufoni, no
w carefully guarded by the Indian regiment. Most were unharmed, but some, such as Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Magi, which Fasola had discovered being used as a table by the Germans, had suffered considerably. The sight of Montagnana and other refuges still under fire brought home the enormous potential losses. Skipping the normal channels, Hartt asked BBC-man Thomas to take a message directly to the Eighth Army commander and ask for extra guards for these and future deposits. The discovery of the ricoveri had caused such excitement that General Alexander himself, the Supreme Commander for Italy, came to visit the scene on August 3, to the immense gratification of Professor Fasola, to whom he seemed a “Homeric hero.”

  Hartt, now assisted by various colleagues grouped at Montegufoni, spent the next days driving and climbing to the other ricoveri to check their contents and post guards where he could. There was no question of moving anything in this constantly shifting battlefield, especially as Florence itself was not secured. Hartt and Langsdorff must have been nearly in sight of one another on more than one occasion as the extraordinary minuet of the masterpieces proceeded. For the Allied Monuments officers, encounters with great works in strange places were often overwhelming. Opening a storeroom which had also been used by the Germans as a garage at Torre a Cona, Hartt saw “in the sudden sunlight which streamed through the outer doors … the colossal statues by Donatello and Michelangelo … still in their protecting crates. Unable to suppress an exclamation of shock and wonder I climbed over the crates, identifying with great emotion one after another until I found myself gazing through the bars of a crate into the agonized face of Michelangelo’s Dawn, every tragic lineament disclosed by the light from the door.”46