The Monuments Men (58 page)

After his tour in Japan, Stout returned briefly to Harvard’s Fogg Museum. In 1947, he became director of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, where he served until becoming director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The Gardner Museum, which had a static collection, was the ideal job for George Stout.

By the time Stout retired in 1970, he was considered one of the giants in the field of art conservation. He published an article on his early years at the Fogg—heralded by then as “America’s first department of art conservation”—in 1977. In 1978, he was hailed in the trade journals, along with his friend the chemist John Gettens, as one of the “two significant Fogg Founding Fathers” who had ushered in the modern era of conservation.
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His legacy, another journal proclaimed, was his reconciliation of new technologies with “the aesthetic sensibilities of traditional art restoration and historical scholarship.”
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He was a modernizer, in other words, who never forgot the importance of the individual people behind the machines.

His service in World War II, meanwhile, remained almost completely unknown. One major reason was that Stout rarely discussed it. When the Smithsonian came to interview him in early 1978 for its Archives of American Art interview collection, Stout simply told the interviewer, in typical understated fashion, that he was drafted for Monuments work and fulfilled his duty like any soldier. He made no mention of the fact that he had, more than any other person, created and shaped the Monuments mission. When George Stout died in Menlo Park, California, in July 1978, his obituary mentioned only that he was “known internationally as an expert and author on art restoration” and that, during World War II, he had helped develop camouflage techniques and “later was assigned to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s command as a member of the General’s staff on monuments, fine arts and archives.”
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Those who knew him, though, were unequivocal about the significance of his contribution to the MFAA and the preservation of European culture. The military, in its official report, noted that “motivated by the urgency of his task, he spent almost all of his time alone in the field, disregarding comfort and personal convenience… his relationship with the many tactical units with whom he worked were managed with unfailing tact and skillful staff work.”
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It’s also worth repeating the assessment of Monuments Man Craig Hugh Smyth, who worked with Stout near the end of his tour of duty in Europe: “Stout was a leader—quiet, unselfish, modest, yet very strong, very thoughtful and remarkably innovative. Whether speaking or writing, he was economical with words, precise, vivid. One believed what he said; one wanted to do what he proposed.”

Neither really gets to the truth of Stout’s contributions, or to the esteem and love his fellow Monuments Men felt for him. Their letters and memoirs were full of praise for this tireless, efficient, and likable officer, but Lincoln Kirstein put it best because he put it most bluntly. “[George Stout] was the greatest war hero of all time—he actually saved all the art that everybody else talked about.”
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Nonetheless, it is not surprising that George Stout’s contribution to the MFAA was never truly appreciated because, in the decades following the war, the MFAA section and its work was itself lost in the fog of history. Part of this was circumstance. The Monuments Men were typical of “the Greatest Generation” and tended to downplay their roles in the war. Since they did not serve as a unit, there was no official history. A few of the men developed and maintained strong ties, but most didn’t know each other well or at all. There turned out to be no single leader who would become emblematic of these self-effacing cultural experts, much less speak of their accomplishments.

Perhaps because of this, the army essentially forgot about the monuments conservation effort. In 1957, Robert Posey volunteered to reenter the army so that he could serve as a Monuments Man in the Korean War. It’s not surprising the army turned him down since he was fifty-three years old and retired from the reserves. But the fact remained that, even if he had been accepted, there was no place for him. There was no dedicated unit equivalent to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section in the Korean War, and there hasn’t been one in any war since.

The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives legacy was immortalized by the words of Monuments officer Edith Standen, who stated that “it is not enough to be virtuous, we must also appear to be so.”
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Standen understood, just as President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower before her, that first impressions carry lasting significance. All countries ignore the Monuments Men’s legacy at their own peril. For example, several years ago I spoke with one of the key officers in charge of tracking down some of the 15,000 works of art looted from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad during and following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. He acknowledged that he had never heard of the Monuments Men.

Today, dedicated Civil Affairs officers and soldiers along with civilian experts, including Colonel Matthew Bogdanos (ret.), Major Corine Wegener (ret.), and Professor John Russell, have gallantly and tirelessly attempted to repair the damage to this great museum, including finding and returning about half of the missing items to date. They also conduct training seminars for troops serving in the Civil Affairs section. But despite their efforts the first impressions of the United States’ experience with handling the aftermath of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq remain indelibly etched in the minds of the public worldwide.

More remarkable, perhaps, even the art community has for decades overlooked the achievements of these extraordinary men and women. After the war, the Monuments Men returned to their home countries and assumed leading roles in major cultural institutions. In the United States, these included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, National Gallery of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Frick Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, Yale University Art Gallery, Worcester Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum, and Library of Congress, among others. Monuments Men and their wartime advisors were integral to the creation of two of the most powerful cultural organizations in the nation: the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. In fact, search the leadership rolls of any major U.S. cultural institution during the 1950s and 1960s and you are almost sure to find a former member of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section of the U.S. Army. And yet when I speak to these organizations, few of them are aware that one of their former directors or curators helped to preserve the world’s cultural heritage during and after the Second World War.

Even when the quest to discover and repatriate Nazi-stolen works of art began anew in the 1990s, the Monuments Men and their incredible achievements were mostly overlooked. Occasionally, one was asked to attend a conference, but only if their specific experience was sought. To paraphrase a major player in the restitution movement who attended these conferences, even his dedicated and knowledgeable colleagues failed to notice the treasures standing before them: not the billions of dollars of unrecovered works of art, not the hundreds of thousands of still missing items, but the 350 or so stoop-shouldered veterans of the MFAA section. Even today, news accounts about the recovery or restitution of major works of art almost without exception focus on the dollar value and include the token line “returned after the war by Allied Forces.” In fact, it was the work of the Monuments Men that, time and time again, enabled these restitutions to occur.

In 2007, the Monuments Men finally began to receive a small portion of the recognition they deserve. On June 6, 2007, the sixty-third anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, resolutions in both houses of the United States Congress officially acknowledged for the first time the contributions of the Monuments Men and women of thirteen nations. The resolutions, sponsored by both conservative and liberal members of the House and Senate, passed unanimously.

Soon after, the Monuments Men and their primary advocacy group, the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, were awarded the 2007 National Humanities Medal, which some say is the United States’ equivalent of “knighthood.” Four of the twelve living Monuments Men were able to travel to Washington, D.C., to attend the ceremony, including a spry, eighty-one-year-old Harry Ettlinger. As an enlisted private just out of high school, Harry was twenty years younger than most of the other Monuments Men who served in the war zone.

Unlike almost all the other Monuments Men, Harry Ettlinger did not pursue a career in the arts after the war. He was discharged in August 1946, and upon returning to New Jersey attended college on the GI Bill. He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and took a job overseeing the manufacture of Singer sewing machine motors. In the mid-1950s, he switched to the defense industry, eventually working on flight indicators, portable radar systems, sonars, and finally as a deputy program director in the development and production of the guidance system for the submarine-launched Triton missile.

He was also active in veterans groups and Jewish causes. It was from fellow members of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, in fact, that Harry learned about the work of Raoul Wallenberg, the wealthy Swedish diplomat of Lutheran faith. In 1944, Wallenberg inspired others to help him save the lives of 100,000 Hungarian Jews. In January 1945, he and his chauffeur were taken by the Soviets and were never seen again. After retiring in 1992, Harry co-led a committee raising funds for a sculpture honoring Wallenberg and then cofounded the Wallenberg Foundation of New Jersey to recognize students who emulate his character, thus leading to a better, more compassionate world. It was in this capacity that Harry learned another story about the mines in Heilbronn and Kochendorf.

The lower levels of the mine, Harry knew, had been used as factories. The sixty-foot-wide by forty-foot-high chambers had been lined with concrete floors and electric lines to power the machinery. In the Kochendorf mine, one or more chambers had been designed as secret manufacturing centers for the mass production of a crucial Nazi invention: the jet engine. If the Nazis could have gotten the factory at Heilbronn running—they were supposedly just weeks away when the Americans arrived—it might have radically changed the war. This may have been the reason for the defiant stand of the Wehrmacht in the hills above Heilbronn.

In 2001, Harry learned what took place in that Kochendorf mine from two of the few survivors of those terrible days. The physical work at the mine, such as the expansion of the underground chambers, had been performed by fifteen hundred Hungarian Jewish slave laborers sent from Auschwitz to Germany. In September 1944, the British bombed Heilbronn to smithereens, knocking out the power plant and plunging the region into silence and darkness. As the roar of the planes retreated, a chant rose mysteriously from the black belly of the mine. First, it was barely audible. Then it was repeated louder, then a third time louder still, clearly audible this time in the surface world beyond the mine. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the Hungarian Jews were chanting the prayer of Kol Nidre. For almost all of them, it was the last time. In March 1945, less than a month before the arrival of the Americans, the slave laborers were shipped to Dachau. Most froze to death during the five-day journey. The others were sent directly to the gas chamber.

Today, Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger lives in a condominium in northwest New Jersey. He remains active in Wallenberg Foundation activities; veterans’ organizations on local, state, and national levels; and Holocaust and other Jewish-related affairs. His grandfather’s beloved art collection has been scattered among his descendants, but Harry still owns the largest share. He admits most of it is in his closet. Even the print of the Rembrandt is hung inconspicuously, although he’ll move it to the place of honor above the sofa if requested.

The only visible memento of Harry’s war years is a small photograph on a nearby end table. Taken in the Heilbronn mine in early 1946, it shows Monuments officer Lieutenant Dale Ford and (recently promoted) Sergeant Harry Ettlinger staring down at a self-portrait by Rembrandt. The painting is perched on a mine cart, with the rock walls and steel rails of the mine clearly visible. In 1946, the photograph was used by the army for promotional purposes and reprinted around the world. The caption simply said, “American soldiers with a Rembrandt.” No one seemed interested in the fact that the painting was the Rembrandt from the museum in Karlsruhe, and that the nineteen-year-old soldier standing next to it was a German Jew who had grown up three blocks from that museum, and by chance had descended seven hundred feet into a mine to behold, for the first time, a painting he had always heard about, but never had the right to see.