The Rape of Europa

by Lynn H. Nicholas

  Rorimer and Hathaway rushed back to Berchtesgaden, where they learned that the day after Rorimer’s previous visit officers of the 101st had indeed found Hofer, who had told them about the train, and Goering’s housekeeper, who said that she had heard that things had been hidden in the passages under the houses. After some persuasion a German maintenance engineer had taken the officers to the walled-up bunker room, from which the dripping contents were taken to a small house at Unterstein. Then the 101st had started to unload the train. The news of these discoveries had never reached the MFAA officers.

  While Rorimer was discussing the finds with Captain Harry Anderson, the officer in charge, Hofer and his wife (who had once worked in New York) walked up as if nothing in the world had happened, presented themselves, and asked about mutual acquaintances in America. After these politesses, they all examined the pictures gathered so far and then went on to the Goering villa. The della Robbias were still there, smashed to bits, as the Intelligence officer who had been instructed to put them in a safe place had disagreed with Met curator Rorimer’s attribution and left them on the ground.

  Later, back at the little house to which the contents of the train had been taken, from Hofer began to flow the provenances of Goering’s acquisitions. Rorimer and Hathaway recognized one well-known collector or dealer’s name after another as Hofer unabashedly worked through the stacks of pictures. Here, in total disorder, were the Louvre’s fifteenth-century sculpture La Belle Allemande; a Rubens which had once belonged to Richelieu from the Koenigs collection; a Masolino bought from Contini in Florence; and hundreds more. Inside and outside the train itself they found all Goering’s art records, rifled and in terrible confusion. Hathaway worked through the night to put them in some order, after which the 101st, overreacting to their custodial responsibilities, refused to let him take them to MFAA headquarters for analysis. In the National Archives today, the muddy footprints of World War II boots still adorn these documents of greed.

  Taking care of Goering’s Berchtesgaden cache was a curator’s nightmare. More than a thousand paintings and sculptures were scattered in at least six different structures, and it was most urgent to consolidate them in one place which could be guarded. The town was deluged with the curious. With great reluctance Rorimer agreed to let the 101st, which had put up a sign reading, “Hermann Goering’s Art Collection Through the Courtesy of the 101st Airborne Division” over the door of the storage area, show a few items to the press. Hofer, who by now had been put under house arrest by Rorimer, but who was essential to the ordering of the collection, nearly stole the show, carelessly picking up and waving about Rembrandts and Rubens as he held forth to the media. When Rorimer warned him to be more careful, Hofer murmured, “If the Herr Leutnant will forgive me, I will be responsible for the Goering Treasures.” Rorimer, who knew rather more than the reporters of the unsavory background of the collection, unceremoniously corrected Hofer’s assumption. But the wily curator had had his little triumph. Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune reported that Hofer, in showing off the $500 million worth of paintings, had insisted that every one had been “legally paid for.” He even boasted, she said, “with a twinkle in his eye,” about outbidding Hitler’s agent for a Rembrandt. There was no mention of confiscations.20

  The story, complete with many photographs, made Life and Time the next week. Time’s correspondent had clearly talked a bit more to the MFAA men, for he did cast doubt on Hofer’s statements on legality, which included the extraordinarily blatant one that “everything taken from the Rothschild collection (which he said was ‘collected’) was later appraised by French experts and a price paid to the French state which of course was considerably in debt to Germany.” The reporter gave a number of details about forced and otherwise dubious sales, noting that “there is considerable mention of the ‘Task Force Rosenberg,’ which as far as I could figure out went around France, Holland and Belgium, confiscating art collections.”21 None of the articles mentioned the MFAA officers at all.

  Art professionals looked at the collection from a different perspective. National Gallery chief curator Walker, who inspected it on July 21, wrote that Goering “was obviously swindled during the years he was buying pictures, but he had excellent advice when it was a matter of looting. Superb paintings from the Rothschild, Koenigs, Goudstikker, Paul Rosenberg, Wildenstein and other private collections and dealers. His famous Vermeer is a fake which must have been painted four years ago for him.”22

  Walter Andreas Hofer meets the press at Berchtesgaden.

  Hofer’s performance was topped by that of his former boss, who in the first days of his incarceration sent his valet, with an American escort, to see Frau Emmy and bring some clean laundry and, to while away the prison hours, an accordion. He also told his man to bring him the tiny Memling Madonna from the Rothschild collection, which was part of his wife’s “nest egg.” Piously stating that it did not belong to him, but was “from the Louvre,” he presented it to one of his American jailers. The valet later testified that Goering had told him that the intended recipient was “a German-born naturalized American citizen who had migrated to America in 1928 and that he was the son of a Prussian Security Police master musician.” The issue of this rather unusually talented father spoke German fluently with a Berlin accent, and “Goering frequently visited this officer’s billet, usually returning from these visits in the early morning hours and in a fairly intoxicated state.” The Reichsmarschall had sadly misjudged the appeal both of the old country and bribery to his now thoroughly American captor. The painting, with a certain amount of fuss, was returned to the 101st Airborne, and Frau Emmy was relieved of her remaining insurance pictures.23

  In all these goings-on before the collection could be completely secured, two of the four little Memling Angels from the Goudstikker collection, which had also been taken from Frau Emmy and put with the rest, a Cranach, and two small van Goyen landscapes disappeared, as did a tiny painting of Madame de Pompadour attributed to Boucher. An American officer had found it lying somewhere in Berchtesgaden. On his next furlough he took it to Paris and presented it, in a paper bag, to a lady friend serving in an American agency. She liked it, but thought nothing of it, and eventually brought it home. A few years later she married someone else, and hung it in a corner. It was not until much later that someone remarked that it looked like a good painting. Investigation revealed not only the attribution but that it had been confiscated from a branch of the French Rothschilds, who had long since collected their insurance and did not wish to revive old problems. The chance owners still have it, now rather more prominently displayed, in their drawing room.

  After the first excitement, the tedious work of inventorying began. Lists had to be made of what was in American hands, and compared to other lists gleaned from interrogations and Goering’s records. Only then would the officers know what was missing. An appeal to the good burghers of Berchtesgaden to turn in “found objects” did not get much response. Later their depredations would be more carefully investigated, but for now the MFAA had more than enough to handle: on May 8 Third Army had reached Alt Aussee, which by its sheer magnitude would eclipse every other find.

  The arrival of the American presence had not been very dramatic. Commanded by Major Ralph Pearson, two jeeps and a truck full of soldiers of the Eightieth U.S. Infantry crept carefully up the steep roads to the mine head to check on the reputed repository. They were especially alert because they were entering the heart of the “Alpine Redoubt,” which was supposed to be the last bastion of the fanatic core of the Nazi establishment, and they were not sure if word of Germany’s surrender had reached this remote region, or that it would be honored even if it had. Not only was there no resistance: the machine-gun-toting guards sent by Eigruber surrendered like lambs, and Major Pearson was soon overwhelmed by helpful mine and cultural officials who fell all over themselves in their desire to claim credit for having saved the works of art.24 The Americans were shown the famous bombs, a
nd a folksy group photograph of mine workers, GIs, and art guardians was duly taken. (This image, which was widely distributed, identified the whole group as “Austrian Resistance Movement miners.”) For the time being the Americans remained unaware of the exact roles of the Alt-Aussee personnel; they were more concerned with establishing order in the town and protecting the vast mine.

  Posey and Kirstein, called to inspect, were delayed at the foot of the steep road up to Alt Aussee for hours by still fully armed but cheerful elements of the German Sixth Army and their camp followers, who were descending to the prisoner-of-war cages near Salzburg to surrender. Once at the minehead, it did not take architect Posey long to open an access through the blocks in the main shaft. In the second room they entered, “resting a foot off the ground, upon four empty cardboard boxes, quite unwrapped, were eight panels of The Adoration of the Lamb.” They had found the Ghent altarpiece. To Kirstein “the miraculous jewels of the Crowned Virgin seemed to attract the light from our flickering acetylene lamps.” Farther on was the Bruges Madonna, still on her sordid old mattress, covered with a sheet of asphalt paper.25

  The Ghent altarpiece at Alt Aussee

  The ancient, labyrinthine mine, in which chambers could be approached from various levels and directions, was extremely difficult to secure. Moreover, it was impossible to tell who could be trusted, as the stories of those involved in Alt Aussee’s operations were equally labyrinthine. Kirstein wrote that “factions among the mine personnel were at each other’s throats, each claiming the credit for having uniquely, and against the others, saved the mine.”26 Scholz of the ERR, who had made good his promise to send armed men to the mine (immediately arrested by the Americans), sent Posey a long report which, he pompously wrote, “supplements in detail the information that I had already given to Dr. Lincoln Kirstein” and was “a true account of the part played by the Special Staff, Fine Arts [ERR] in the measures taken for the prevention of this act of terror.”27 Posey, unimpressed, had the most obvious Nazis arrested and set the rest to work. But George Stout was repelled, and wrote: “I am sick of all schemers, of all the vain crawling toads who now try to edge into positions of advantage and look for selfish gain or selfish glory from all this suffering.”28 The task before them would eclipse these emotions.

  On his first visit to Alt Aussee, Stout, using available records, estimated the contents as follows: “6,577 paintings, 2,300 drawings and watercolors, 954 prints, 137 pieces of sculpture, 129 pieces of arms and armor, 122 tapestries, 78 pieces of furniture, 79 baskets objects, 484 cases thought to be archives, 181 cases books, 1,200—1,700 cases apparently books or similar, 283 cases contents completely unknown.”29 This did not include the Vienna holdings at Lauffen. Stout went back to Third Army headquarters to report on his findings. He felt the things in Alt Aussee would be safe, from the conservators’ point of view, for years, and that careful plans for the safe removal and storage of the objects should be prepared. He calculated that it would take at least six weeks to “get out the bulk of the important holdings.”30

  On the day Stout had gone up to Alt Aussee, Calvin Hathaway, busily planning his next foray at Seventh Army headquarters in Augsburg, received an intriguing call from the German Army’s liaison office at Zell am See, not far from the big mine. The German Supreme Command, he was told, “is in possession of valuable works of art which it wishes to transfer to the custody of the civil administration at Innsbruck.” The caller did not say where or what the works were. Hathaway dropped everything and went to Zell am See, where he learned with some effort that the works were the hijacked pictures from the Vienna Kunsthistorisches and that they were now in Sankt Johann in the Tirol. At the American Forty-second Division Intelligence office in Kitzbühel, where he next proceeded in order to make arrangements to retrieve what was essentially the cream of the Vienna collection, he was forced to endure a little “lecture on the triviality and unimportance of works of art” from the commanding officer, who nonetheless did provide the required help.

  In the little ski town of Sankt Johann, Hathaway’s party was directed to the Golden Lion Inn, where “the preliminary reluctance of female owner and English speaking niece to admit any knowledge of works of art on premises was brought to nought by Emil God, guest of the house.” God (no relation) took them next door to his house and down to a damp basement with puddles on the floor, where they found thirty-two uncrated pictures, forty-nine sacks of tapestries, and nine opened wooden packing cases. God claimed that the Germans who had left the cases there had said they contained food, and that he himself had opened them to get some. The pictures had not been unpacked. Interrogations in the little town produced numerous versions of the arrival of the objects and of their concealment. God said SS officers had threatened him and tried to take some of the works. He whispered to Hathaway that he was sure Cellini’s famous Salt Cellar, the only known work from the master’s hand, was in one of the boxes, which does not seem to have been the case. Hathaway recommended that God be questioned further if it did not turn up. The mayor said he had not told the constantly changing American units about the cases because he “felt no confidence in American interest” and feared the objects would end up in Germany.

  The Forty-second Division, noticeably more enthusiastic when apprised of the value of the little cache, now agreed to post guards and move the pictures upstairs to God’s sitting room. There was the usual scramble for protective blankets and packing materials, during which the CO fiercely offered to take the former “from the beds of the Nazis of the town,” which proved unnecessary when a quantity was found in a German military hospital. The pictures were taken to safe storage in the Mozarteum in Salzburg.31 It later appeared that little Sankt Johann had been pretty busy in the last days of war: in a barn belonging to the Chief Forester, CIC agents found $2 million worth of various foreign currencies, and several sacks of gold bars, jewelry, and coins, which were to have taken care of SS chief Himmler in future years.32

  There were other hard-core Nazis who had made careful preparations for the future. No one had been harder-core than Mayor Liebl of Nuremberg, who had so assiduously procured and protected the greatest Germanic treasures for his city. The elaborate bunkers built under the eleventh-century Kaiserburg, which extended underground well out under the streets, were a marvel of construction and climate control. In them he had put the Veit Stoss altarpiece and the Holy Roman regalia, along with Nuremberg’s more legitimate collections. One access to the bunker was through a secret entrance disguised to look like a plain little shop on a small side street. From there a long concrete ramp, blocked at intervals by ten-foot-high steel doors, led to the foundations of the castle.

  Despite his faith in the Führer, the thin wedge of doubt had eventually penetrated even the mayor’s mind. After heavy air raids in October 1944, Liebl, having consulted Himmler, ordered special copper containers to be made for five pieces of the Holy Roman regalia: the crown, Imperial sword, sceptre, Imperial globe, and the sword of St. Maurice. The pieces were unpacked from their original cases and put in the new ones, which were soldered shut. The boxes were then, in greatest secrecy, walled up by Liebl and two city officials, Drs. Friese and Lincke, in one of the passages in the bunker complex on March 31, 1944. Liebl and the top SS leadership then concocted a cover story to the effect that the regalia had been taken off by the SS and sunk in Lake Zell in Austria. To make the story convincing, a removal was actually staged with the help of two local SS men. Alas, Liebl, his faith shattered, burned his papers and committed suicide on April 19, as Allied troops poured into his Germanic city. The intact bunkers, to which cooperative city officials provided keys, were discovered and put under guard.

  Not until June did rumors begin to circulate indicating that something might be missing. Eberhard Lutze, director of the German Museum, was taken to Ellingen for interrogation and mentioned the SS removal. The same story had been heard from the notorious SS General Josef Spacil, who was being questioned by the Allies in connection with the
money caches being found in Austria. Conversations between SS officials reported by the interrogators revealed that the missing crown jewels “were slated by the chief of the German security service to become the symbols of the future German resistance movement.” This was not considered to be a good thing.

  Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-speaking MFAA officer reserved for special investigations, was sent to Nuremberg. Liebl’s assistant Friese swore that the copper boxes had been taken off in a car by unknown SS men. Horn was not convinced. Friese was arrested and taken to the theater interrogation center, not a cheery place, in order to confront Spacil. Before the meeting Horn questioned Friese a bit more and “under the effect of a night of solitary confinement and the pressure of a short interrogation which preceded the confrontation,” Friese’s Nazi loyalty evaporated and he confessed. A few days later he led a little party to the hiding place in a small room in the tunnels eighty feet below the surface of the Panier Platz. The missing objects were unearthed and put together with the rest, which had been found intact in the main storage area.33

  Dealing with the gigantic finds of Alt Aussee, Berchtesgaden, and Siegen was only part of a field officer’s endless day. In Würzburg, Monuments officer John Skilton performed one of the miracles of the occupation when he managed to build a protective roof over the shattered central vault of the baroque Residenz palace. The vault, one of the world’s biggest, decorated with Tiepolo’s Olympus and the Four Continents, had been open to the elements since a twenty-three-minute bombing raid by the Allies in March. By the time Skilton arrived in June, rain was rapidly dissolving the elaborate white rococo plaster decoration of the palace. For weeks he and his assistant scoured the countryside for wood and tar paper. By purest chance Skilton found hundreds of newly cut logs stuck in a tributary of the Main River at Ochsenfurt, and, turning lumberjack, managed to float them down to Würzburg. Later he was called upon to retrieve a barge full of medieval manuscripts which had been seen floating down the Rhine. This was found just downriver from Castle Rothenfels, which was being used to quarantine typhus cases. Giving the castle a wide berth, Skilton secured the barge. In it was the largest number of books he had ever seen in one place, which required two weeks of effort to bring to safety.34