Salt mines and castles: The discovery and restitution of looted European art - 1

SALT MINES AND CASTLES

The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak, Moore and Howe, who removed the Göring Collection from Berchtesgaden to Munich, were photographed in the Luftwaffe Rest House at Unterstein.

Hermann Göring, his daughter Edda, Frau Göring and Adolf Hitler. This photograph was taken at Karinhall, the Reichmarschall’s estate near Berlin.

Salt Mines
and
Castles

The Discovery and Restitution of
Looted European Art

By
THOMAS CARR HOWE, JR.

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
INDIANAPOLIS · NEW YORK

First Edition

To My Mother

NOTE

From May 1945 until February 1946, I served as a Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Officer in Germany. During the first four months of this assignment, I was engaged in field work which included the recovery of looted works of art from such out-of-the-way places as a monastery in Czechoslovakia, a salt mine in Austria, and a castle in Bavaria. Later, as Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, Office of Military Government, U. S. Zone, I participated in the restitution of recovered art treasures to the countries of rightful ownership.

This book is primarily an account of my own experiences in connection with these absorbing tasks; but I have also chronicled the activities of a number of my fellow officers, hoping thereby to provide the reader with a more comprehensive estimate of the work as a whole than the resumé of my own duties could have afforded.

For many helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Captain Edith A. Standen, Lieutenant Lamont Moore and Mr. David Bramble; and for invaluable photographic material, I am particularly grateful to Captain Stephen Kovalyak, Captain P. J. Kelleher, Captain Edward E. Adams and Lieutenant Craig Smyth, USNR.

For permission to reproduce three International News Service photographs, I wish to thank Mr. Clarence Lindner of the San Francisco Examiner.

Thomas Carr Howe, Jr.

San Francisco
July 1946.

CHAPTER		PAGE
1	Paris—London—Versailles	[13]
2	Assigned to Frankfurt	[35]
3	Munich and the Beginning of Field Work	[54]
4	Masterpieces in a Monastery	[80]
5	Second Trip to Hohenfurth	[104]
6	Loot Underground: The Salt Mine at Alt Aussee	[130]
7	The Rothschild Jewels; the Göring Collection	[171]
8	Looters’ Castle: Schloss Neuschwanstein	[219]
9	Hidden Treasures at Nürnberg	[243]
10	Mission to Amsterdam; the Wiesbaden Manifesto	[259]
	Appendix	[297]
	Index	[321]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak, Moore and Howe	[Frontispiece]
Hermann Göring, his daughter, Frau Göring and Hitler	[Frontispiece]
	FACING PAGE
The Residenz at Würzburg	[30]
Ruined Frankfurt. The Cathedral	[30]
The Central Collecting Point at Munich	[31]
A typical storage room in the Central Collecting Point	[31]
The bronze coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia	[40]
Canova’s life-size statue of Napoleon’s sister	[40]
The administration buildings at the Alt Aussee salt mine	[41]
Truck at the mine being loaded with paintings	[41]
Sieber and Kern view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child	[56]
The Madonna being packed for return to Bruges	[56]
The famous Ghent altarpiece	[57]
Sieber, Kern and Eder examine the altarpiece	[57]
Vermeer’s Portrait of the Artist in His Studio	[64]
One of the picture storage rooms at Alt Aussee	[64]
Panel from the Louvain altarpiece, Feast of the Passover	[65]
The Czernin Vermeer	[65]
Major Anderson supervising removal of the Göring Collection	[96]
One of the forty rooms in the Rest House	[96]
The GI Work Party which assisted the Evacuation Team	[97]
Truck loaded with sculpture from the Göring Collection	[97]
German altarpiece from the Louvre Museum	[128]
The panel, Mary Magdalene, by van Scorel	[128]
Wing of an Italian Renaissance altarpiece by del Garbo	[129]
The Magdalene, by Erhardt	[129]
Mary Magdalene, by Cranach	[160]
The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by David	[160]
Diana, by Boucher, from the Rothschild Collection	[161]
Atalanta and Meleager, by Rubens	[161]
Portrait of a Young Girl by Chardin and Young Girl with Chinese Figure by Fragonard	[192]
Christ and the Adulteress, the fraudulent Vermeer	[193]
Portrait of the Artist’s Sister by Rembrandt	[193]
Removal of treasures from Neuschwanstein	[224]
Neuschwanstein—Ludwig II’s fantastic castle	[224]
Packing looted furniture at Neuschwanstein	[225]
Typical storage room in the castle	[225]
The Albrecht Dürer house—before and after the German collapse	[256]
The Veit Stoss altarpiece from the Church of Our Lady at Cracow	[257]
The Hungarian Crown Jewels	[288]
Treasure Room at the Central Collecting Point, Wiesbaden	[289]
The celebrated sculpture, Queen Nefertete	[289]

NOTE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS