The Monuments Men (53 page)

The Monuments Men backtracked and, by way of half-hidden, pitch-black tunnels, were able to maneuver around the bomb blast. A guide led them deep into the cold heart of the mountain, past branching passageways, to a large rock-vaulted chamber. Their torchlight, swinging into the gloom, illuminated rack after rack of plain pine boxes filled with some of the world’s great artistic masterpieces before falling, finally, on the milky white surface of Michelangelo’s
Bruges Madonna
. She was lying on her side on a filthy brown-and-white-striped mattress, almost assuredly the very same mattress onto which she had been pushed just days before British Monuments Man Ronald Balfour had arrived in Bruges eight months earlier. Monuments Man Thomas Carr Howe Jr. (who arrived in June) would later write, “the light of our lamps played over the soft folds of the Madonna’s robe, the delicate modeling of her face. Her grave eyes looked down, seemed only half aware of the sturdy Child nestling close against her, one hand firmly held in hers.”
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A few days later, in a deep chamber, the Monuments Men discovered the remaining four panels of the Ghent Altarpiece, Vermeer’s
The Artist’s Studio,
and, farther into the dark recesses of the chamber, the Rothschild family’s Vermeer,
The Astronomer
.

On May 18, with the size of the find slowly coming into focus, Lincoln Kirstein was sent back to headquarters to pick up “an expert in air, humidity and paint chemistry so we could see what the pictures have been in for. The expert,” he wrote, “is always George Stout, who is perhaps the nicest man in the world.”
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The indispensable Stout arrived at Altaussee on May 21. His first action was to dutifully record the known contents of the mine, which had been summarized in a report by mine personnel staff Karl Sieber and Max Eder and handed over to Stout by the solicitous Dr. Michel:
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6577 paintings

230 drawings or watercolors

954 prints

137 pieces sculpture

129 pieces arms and armor

79 baskets of objects

484 cases objects thought to be archives

78 pieces furniture

122 tapestries

181 cases books

1200-1700 cases apparently books or similar

283 cases contents completely unknown

He then set about interviewing the mine personnel and inspecting the chambers. “It was fascinating,” Kirstein wrote, “to hear him compare American methods of determining absolute, or relative, or some kind of humidity with the Austrian methods used by the Professor of Mineralogy from the University of Vienna [the notorious Dr. Michel], who had always been at the depot, and who showed us his credentials from the Austrian Resistance Movement.”
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After three days of study, Stout declared the artwork in the mine safe for another year. Then, leaving the mine in Posey’s command, he traveled to Third Army rear to press for a war crimes investigation of what had happened in the remote salt mine in the Austrian Alps. No investigation ever took place.

On June 14, George Stout returned to Altaussee with Lieutenant Steve Kovalyak, his new disciple from Bernterode. The mine passageways were finally cleared the next day and all “palsied” tunnels reopened. The effort had taken 253 work shifts by the miners, who had removed 879 cartloads of debris.

Ten days later, on June 25, Stout received grave news. President Harry Truman had knuckled under to Stalin. The Western Allies would not be holding their conquered territory, but instead falling back to the postwar boundaries determined by the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) at the Yalta Conference in February. Altaussee, as well as numerous other repositories, would be in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Everything left in the mine, Stout realized, would be handed over to Stalin. The Allies would not have a year to remove the treasures from Altaussee, as Stout had assumed. They had until July 1. Four days.

Stout cracked the whip. Karl Sieber and Stout’s two new assistants, Monuments Men Thomas Carr Howe Jr. and Lamont Moore, were sent deep into the mine to select the most important pieces for priority removal. Stout had brought with him the German sheepskin coats he had used to wrap artwork at Merkers; they were now used for the same purpose at Altaussee. Once wrapped and crated, the artwork was placed on the small trolley carts (referred to as “mine dogs”) that wound on narrow tracks throughout the mine. The miners walked beside the mine dogs as a small engine pulled them toward the surface. Outside, the artwork was loaded onto trucks and, accompanied by two half-tracks, driven down the hazardous mountain roads to an MFAA art collecting center, known as the Munich Collecting Point, established by James Rorimer. There, the trucks were unloaded and the sheepskin coats—as well as any crates or other packing material available—driven back to Altaussee to be used for the next shipment.

Conditions deteriorated quickly. Behind schedule, Stout implemented a sixteen-hour workday, from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Outside, it rained incessantly, complicating the loading of trucks and making even walking to the bunkhouse miserable. Inside, the mine’s electrical and lighting systems, knocked out by Pöchmüller’s explosions, still didn’t work. There weren’t enough places to sleep; food was scarce; communication with the outside world almost nonexistent. Stout scraped his knuckles on the salty mine walls and got an infection; every night, he had to soak his fingers for hours in a helmet filled with hot water to keep the swelling down. “All hands grumbling,” he wrote in his diary, in typical understated fashion.
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They missed their July 1 deadline. Fortunately, there was disagreement in high political circles over whether the deadline applied only to Germany, or to Austria as well. The men kept working. At breakfast on July 10, George Stout announced, “This looks like a good day for the gold-seal products.”
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He had spent several days with Steve Kovalyak wrapping the
Bruges Madonna
with coats, paper, and rope until it looked, in the words of Stout’s assistant Thomas Carr Howe Jr., “like a trussed ham.”
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A one-ton trussed ham, that is, on which even a tiny scratch would be forever noticed by the world. But Stout was confident. Using a specially devised rope and pulley system, he carefully lifted the statue onto a waiting mine dog, declaring, “I think we could bounce her from Alp to Alp, all the way to Munich, without doing her any harm.”
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He then proceeded to personally walk the mine dog and statue to the mine entrance.

The Ghent Altarpiece, each panel already carefully loaded into its own crate, came next. The truck was prepared in a similar manner to the dozens that had already carried other priceless cultural artifacts from the mine. First, the bed was lined with waterproof paper, which had been intended as protection for the Wehrmacht against gas attacks. A strip of felt was laid over the paper, then “sausages” placed on the felt. These were essentially eighteen-inch-wide pillows fashioned by George Stout from ecru curtain material found in the mine. In the case of the altarpiece, the crates were then lashed upright on the sausages, with stowing cases on either side for balance and shock absorption. When all twelve panels were standing parallel to each other on the truck, more felt and waterproof paper was layered over the top, and the whole load lashed firmly to the sides.

The packing of the
Bruges Madonna
and the Ghent Altarpiece, undertaken with extraordinary care, consumed an entire day. The next morning, with George Stout in the lead and half-tracks following behind, two of Europe’s great masterpieces wound their way 150 miles down the steep Alpine mountains to Munich. Their journey home had begun.

Less than a month later, on August 6, 1945, George Stout left Europe. He too was on his way home: forty-seven years old, tired, but none the worse for wear. In a little more than thirteen months, he had discovered, analyzed, and packed tens of thousands of pieces of artwork, including eighty truckloads from Altaussee alone. He had organized the MFAA field officers at Normandy, pushed SHAEF to expand and support the monuments effort, mentored the other Monuments Men across France and Germany, interrogated many of the important Nazi art officials, and inspected most of the Nazi repositories south of Berlin and east of the Rhine. It would be no exaggeration to guess he put 50,000 miles on his old captured VW and visited nearly every area of action in U.S. Twelfth Army Group territory. And during his entire tour of duty on the continent, he had taken exactly one and a half days off.
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Letter from James Rorimer To his wife, Katherine

May 17, 1945

You may indeed complain about not having heard from me these past days. I have never in my life worked at a more exciting pace and with more results than during these past two or three weeks where I have covered our area which has taken me to Salzburg and Füssen [the closest town to Neuschwanstein Castle] twice each, battered Munich, Worms, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Heidelberg, and dozens of smaller places. By now you will guess that we are permitted to mention locations as has not been possible since I left home over a year ago, and more. I am stationed at Augsburg for the moment, but have scarcely had a chance to see the town as I have been very much on the run when I was not actually doing things at Headquarters. I have run down the most exciting Information and documents on the wholesale looting of art in Europe by the Nazis and have been working with the Nazi big-wigs of the past and checking clues and finding art treasures such as I have rarely expected to find. [Monuments Men] Kuhn and Lt. Col. McDonnell were here again to see some of the things I have discovered. I have found some of the key culprits in the racket, and information which is making the headlines of the world press if I am not mistaken. Go to the News Reels and see for yourself. My contact with the world press will have to be through you.

Göring’s art collector, his private train, his house in Berchtesgaden as well as Hitler’s and the Braunhaus in Munich and the castles at Füssen [Neuschwanstein] and the Monasteries which were used for hiding things have been the scenes of my work. I am way behind in my reporting, but my diary is up to date. What exciting stories I can now write in the book I hope to publish. Now I really can say that I have played my part in the war effort. I had a pleasant interview with Maj-Gen. Taylor of the 101 Airborne who sent for me the other day. I go to see him again on Sunday. Harry Anderson of the Amer. Institute is taking charge of the Göring things under my supervision so to speak. He is a captain. I expect to have another officer to help me in a few days. [Monuments Man] Calvin Hathaway is still here and he is a great help. Skilton is also here and certain enlisted personnel will no doubt help—what a life for a first Lt. I think that I was finally released from Paris after the non-concurrence of 2 generals. I am glad indeed to be here. Train loads of art are being reported all the time. I just cannot collect my thoughts these days.…

I have not as yet seen news announcements of my activity which has included getting the backbone people, information and works of art of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. That was my personal ambition when I joined the army, when I went into Civil Affairs, when I told the board at the American School Center at Shrivenham and when I worked at other matters during eight months in Paris. I almost didn’t get to Germany. I cannot explain how I was so lucky as to have our army go to these places which with two important exceptions are the most important…. Now my fervent desires are to finish up my military career and get back to civilian life.

Do not bother to send me anything…. At the moment nothing is much use to me as I am living out of a barracks bag. Where we go next I do not know, but I have to keep on the move all the time.

Now I must go back to work. Love and more when things quiet down.

Jim

CHAPTER 53

The Journey Home

Heilbronn, Germany

September–November 1945

T
he end of active hostilities was not the end of the Monuments Men’s work. Not by far. As the situation at Altaussee demonstrated, finding looted Nazi treasures was just the first step of a very long process. The treasures had to be inspected and catalogued, then packed and shipped out of the mines, castles, monasteries, or simple holes in the ground where they had been stored. Almost every site contained Nazi archives, which also had to be transported so that researchers could determine where the artwork had come from and who was the rightful owner. The archives inevitably led to the discovery of other repositories, as did interviews with the Nazis now being rounded up in the collapsed German-Austrian state. And almost every day, army units stumbled upon unfathomable treasures hidden in basements, traincars, food caches, and oil barrels.

By June 4, less than a month since the end of hostilities, 175 repositories had been found in U.S. Seventh Army territory alone. The MFAA was adding officers and enlisted men as quickly as possible—a vast majority of the almost 350 men and women who served in the multinational MFAA effort would join after the end of combat—but still only a handful of those mines and castles had been emptied. And every piece that was brought out of a hole had to be taken somewhere. Fortunately, the industrious and insightful James Rorimer had managed to secure the most coveted buildings in Munich: the former Nazi Party headquarters complex. Soon, artwork and other stolen cultural items were pouring into the buildings, now known as the Munich Collecting Point, from all over southern Germany and Austria. By July, the usable space was almost full, so Rorimer secured another building of almost equal size in Wiesbaden. A few weeks later, a building at Marburg University was requisitioned for the collection of archives. Walker Hancock, the optimistic Monuments Man for U.S. First Army, was placed in charge.