He took on his new responsibilities with quiet assurance and in a short time won the complete confidence of his superiors at Third Army Headquarters. Throughout his long tenure of office, he maintained an unruffled calm in the face of obstacles which would have exhausted a less patient man. He was responsible for all matters pertaining to the Fine Arts in the Eastern Military District of the American Zone—that is, Bavaria—an area more than twice the size of the two provinces Greater Hesse and Württemberg-Baden comprising the Western Military District of our Zone.
During the early days of Captain Rae’s regime, Charlie Kuhn paid a brief visit to Munich. He had just completed the transfer of the Berlin Museum collections from Frankfurt to the Landesmuseum at Wiesbaden. The university buildings in Frankfurt—which I had requisitioned for a Collecting Point—had proved unsuitable. The repairs, he said, would have taken months. On the other hand, the Wiesbaden Museum, though damaged, was ideal for the purpose. Of course there hadn’t been a glass left in any of the windows, and the roof had had to be repaired. But thanks to the energy and ingenuity of Walter Farmer, the building had been rehabilitated in two months. Captain Farmer was the director of the new Collecting Point. When I asked where Farmer had got the glass, Charlie was evasive. All he would say was that Captain Farmer was “wise in the ways of the Army.”
Charlie was headed for Vienna to confer with Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Dewald, Chief of the MFA&A Section at USFA Headquarters (United States Forces, Austria). Colonel Dewald wanted to complete the evacuation of the mine at Alt Aussee, which was now under his jurisdiction. For this project he hoped to obtain the services of the officers who had worked there when the mine had been Third Army’s responsibility. Captain Rae was reluctant to lend the Special Evacuation Team, because there was still so much work to be done in Bavaria. But he agreed, provided that Charlie could sell the idea to the Chief of Staff at Third Army. This Charlie succeeded in doing, and departed for Vienna a day later. Steve was crazy to see Vienna—I think his parents had been born there—so Charlie took him along.
After they had left, Captain Rae requested Lamont and me to make an inspection trip to northern Bavaria. Our first stop was Bamberg. There we examined the Neue Residenz, which Rae contemplated establishing as an auxiliary Collecting Point to house the contents of various repositories in Upper Franconia. Reports reaching his office indicated that storage conditions in that area were unsatisfactory. Either the repositories were not weatherproof, or they were not being adequately guarded.
It was also rumored that UNRRA was planning to fill the Neue Residenz with DPs—Displaced Persons. Captain Rae was determined to put a stop to that, because the building, a fine example of late seventeenth century architecture, was on the SHAEF List of Protected Monuments. This fact should have guaranteed its immunity from such a hazard. Even during combat, the SHAEF list had been a great protection to monuments of historic and artistic importance. Now that no “doctrine of military necessity” could be invoked to justify improper use of the building, Rae did not propose to countenance its occupancy by DPs.
The Neue Residenz contained dozens of empty, brocaded rooms—but no plumbing. We decided that it would do for a Collecting Point and agreed with Rae that the DPs should be housed elsewhere if possible. The officer from the local MG Detachment, who was showing us around, confirmed the report that UNRRA intended to move in. He didn’t think they would relinquish the building without a protest. The influx of refugees from the Russian Zone had doubled the town’s normal population of sixty thousand.
It was a disappointment to find that the superb sculpture in the cathedral across the square was still bricked up. The shelters had proved a needless precaution, for Bamberg had not been bombed. Only the bridge over the Regnitz had been blown up, and the Germans had done that themselves.
From Bamberg we drove north to Coburg, where we had a twofold mission. First we were to obtain specific information about ten cases which contained a collection of art objects belonging to a prince of Hesse. The cases were said to be stored in Feste Coburg, the walled castle above the town. If they were the property of Philip of Hesse, then they would probably be taken into custody by the American authorities. We had been told that he was in prison. His art dealings during the past few years were being reviewed by the OSS officers charged with the special investigation of Nazi art-looting activities. Philip was the son of the Landgräfin of Hesse. It was in the flower-filled Waffenraum of her castle near Frankfurt that I had seen the family tombs months before.
If, on the other hand, the cases belonged to a different prince of Hesse—one whose political record was clean—and storage conditions were satisfactory, we would simply leave them where they were for the time being.
Our second objective was Schloss Tambach, a few kilometers from Coburg. Paintings stolen by Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, from the palace at Warsaw were stored there. Schloss Tambach also contained pictures from the Stettin Museum. Stettin was now in the Russian Zone of Occupied Germany.