Stealing the Mystic Lamb (23 page)

In the weeks leading up to the Armistice, there was German concern that the peace terms would include not only financial reparations but also the surrender of German artworks. The precedent for such exactions had been formalized by Napoleon, whose price for cease-fire always included a further payoff in artworks. Adding to the German fears, an article published in the Parisian newspaper
Lectures pour Tous
in August 1918 listed works of art in German museums that the defeated empire would have to pay to France, by way of indemnity for a “wantonly inflicted war.”

This list was divided into two categories. The first group comprised works to be surrendered on historic grounds, including everything that had been stolen by Napoleon and repatriated after his defeat in 1815, as well as trophies stolen by the French during the Franco-Prussian War. For the French author of this article, anything that a Frenchman had stolen was to be considered the rightful property of France.

The second group of artworks was simply an art historian’s wish list of the most important and beautiful pieces in German collections. No rationale, however porous, was given. Cologne should offer up its extensive wealth in medieval art. Dresden had some lovely paintings by Poussin, Rubens, and Claude Lorrain. Berlin and Munich had far too
many works by French masters and should surrender them all. While they were at it, they should send over their Italian collections and the choicest German masterpieces. This article could only have been designed to twist the knife, to inspire fear in once-fearsome Germany.

The Ghent Altarpiece
, which had been so brazenly demanded in that ill-received 1915 article in
Die Kunst
, was once more in a position to be reunited—but this time Berlin would have to give up its portion. The unification would be in
The Lamb
’s birthplace.

It was coming home.

The truce terms came shortly before the peace treaty in 1918. Article 19 of the Treaty of Versailles made concrete the fears fueled by the article in
Lectures pour Tous
. The French wanted to recover all of the art that had been in France, even if it had been there only because the French had stolen it. At one sitting of the truce commission, the French representative warned that Germany would be required to auction off artworks. Germany would pay twofold: It would pay financial reparations, but this money would come through forced sales of its cultural heritage. The commission excused this decision on the basis that they had heard a rumor that the ex-kaiser had accepted an offer from a group of art dealers that included the sale of art that had been rightfully stolen by the French before the war. That sale would run against Article 19, and the Germans would be punished for it.

Another French article, this time published in early 1919 in
Revue des Deux Mondes
, demanded additional forfeits of art. This time it was the
Bamberg Rider
, the first equestrian statue of the Middle Ages, and effigies from Naumberg and Magdeburg cathedrals. No rationale was given. Perhaps the author felt that none was necessary. Or perhaps it was a test: How far could the victors go to exploit the situation and enrich their national holdings?

The French were not the only opportunists. The Italians seized pictures and manuscripts from Vienna at the time of the truce. As they had encountered little opposition in doing so, they made another demand in early 1919, just before the signing of the peace treaty that would codify
all reparations and limit such exploitation. This demand included manuscripts, armor from the Austrian Army Museum, and twenty-seven of the finest paintings from the Vienna Gallery, most of them by Italian artists. In response, the Vienna Gallery director, Dr. E. Leisching, wrote:

Melodramatic though it may sound, the sentiment expressed by Dr. Leisching was genuine and heartfelt.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles laid out the final terms and brought an end to speculation and wish lists. Articles 245-247 dealt extensively with art and reparations for art. A look at each article reveals the fate of the Berlin wings of
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
.

France was taking the opportunity to undo its losses from not only this war but a previous war. Article 245 dealt with reparations to France of looted objects from the Franco-Prussian war, as well:

Article 247 dictated the reparations for the destruction at Louvain and the fate of
The Ghent Altarpiece
.

The reparations would reunite the dismembered limbs of
The Ghent Altarpiece
.

One other treaty was pertinent to the fate of art in the wake of the First World War. The Treaty of Saint Germain, signed 2 September 1919, dealt with the dissection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the fate of its possessions, distinct from the war. Article 196 dealt with the dreaded reparations in the currency of artworks, beyond what was destroyed or looted. How much of Germany’s punishment would come in the form of cultural bloodletting?

The treaty essentially deferred to further negotiations with individual countries the exact nature and constitution of distributed Austrian possessions, with the provision that objects may only be distributed that “form a part of the intellectual patrimony of the ceded districts,” and that the distribution would be in “terms of reciprocity.” There was no fire sale included in the Treaty of Saint Germain, a point that must have disappointed some French and Italian scholars. The phrasing of the treaty seemed lenient to Austria. Its enactment was less so.

The treaty’s requirements were not enforced until 1921, when a conference was held in Rome among the succession states of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire. The location of this meeting, in the former Austrian embassy in Rome, was designed to highlight all that Austria had lost. The Austrians present at the conference reported that Austria was told its fate without room for discussion. The country and citizens of Austria would be punished for the actions of the warlords.

The Austrian report from the meetings sheds light on the psychology of the reparation demands: “It may be asked how Austria ever got into the position of having such extensive claims made on her cultural possessions. It was due in the first place to the attitude of the conqueror to the conquered and the wish to take from Austria what she valued most in what was left her, her cultural heritage.” The seizure of art was designed to humiliate the defeated. But there was another element noted by the Austrian delegation: one of national enrichment, normally the goal of the invader. In this case, when the defender proved victorious, he would exact the same penalties: “To this must be added the definite aim of the Succession States to outdo dethroned Vienna by enriching their own institutions, archives, and museum, and to exalt their own institutions,
archives, and museums, and to exalt their own national status by recovering whatever could be described as belonging to their own past.”

The Austrian report goes on to say that “these destructive aims were energetically opposed by the great Western Powers.” As they saw it, the “Succession States” were seizing a once-in-history opportunity to rob their old overlords and fatten their comparatively diminutive holdings.

At first, Italy tried to overstep legitimate demands and requested major reparations, but backed off completely at the first sign of argument. Poland was singled out for praise for not taking advantage of the situation. Czechoslovakia made “exorbitant demands for the reparation of injustices suffered from the Habsburgs,” seeking recompense without regard to the provision in the treaty that only goods of “intellectual patrimony” could be sought. Their demands were rejected completely by the commission. Hungary sought the most and gained the most. But the complications of the Hungarian negotiation required a separate agreement reached only in September 1927 and signed in November 1932. In the end, Austria yielded to Hungary 180 works, of which 18 were deemed “of outstanding importance.”

Belgium tried and failed to convince the committee to force Austria to return two of its artistic treasures that had been legally purchased for Austrian collections: the gold jewelry that comprised the treasure of the Burgundian military Order of the Golden Fleece, the chivalric order founded in 1430 by van Eyck’s patron, Duke Philip the Good, and the
Ildefonso Altarpiece
by Rubens.

In the end, the Treaty of Versailles was more lenient with respect to the return of works of art than historical precedent, particularly as set by Napoleon. It sought to usher in a new era, one that would exclude artworks and cultural heritage from war reparations. This enlightened policy was in harmony with the scholarly discourse at the beginning of the First World War, on the privileged position of art. With the prominent exception of
The Ghent Altarpiece
wings, which had been purchased, it was claimed, in good faith on their way to the Berlin Museum, and the Dirk Bouts
Last Supper
taken from Louvain, the only artistic compensations in the Treaty of Versailles were for works that had been destroyed.

The Treaty of Saint Germain was phrased in similarly reasonable terms. Nevertheless, a few of the Succession States had sought to exploit the situation. But a firm committee, while leaning in the moral direction of the Succession States, all the same prevented legalized pillaging and made reasoned decisions. The major Western powers (the United States, England, and France) were intent on preserving the nucleus of Austrian culture, which had long been the historical and cultural capital of central Europe. A few outspoken French aside, France was one of the strongest proponents of saving postwar Vienna as a cultural center, once the hot wartime tempers had died down.

Of all of the 440 articles in the Treaty of Versailles, none rubbed the Germans raw as much as the forced return of the six wing panels of
The Ghent Altarpiece
. The panels had not been stolen—at least not by the Germans. They had been stolen by Vicar-General Le Surre from his own cathedral and sold first to Brussels dealer L. J. Nieuwenhuys, and then to their subsequent owner, the English collector Edward Solly. The fame of the panels made them impossible not to recognize. But by the time Solly’s entire collection was purchased by Prussia, enough time had elapsed since the original theft of the panels that the Prussians could claim that they were innocent of any complicity in the crime. So when the panels were donated to the Berlin Museum, any wrongdoing was a distant memory. The hands of the inheriting Kaiser Friedrich Museum, with reference to the Ghent panels at least, were cleaner than those of many of the world’s top museums today, with their numerous acquisitions of questionable origin.