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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Bancel and I took the seven o’clock bus over to Frankfurt that evening. We had dinner at the Officers’ Mess in the Casino behind USFET Headquarters. We were joined there by Lieutenant William Lovegrove, the officer whom Bancel had selected as our representative at Paris in connection with the restitution of looted art works to the French. With the arrival of the French representative in Munich, regular shipments would soon be departing for France. Their destination in Paris was to be the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which was now the headquarters of the Commission de Récupération Artistique, the commission composed of officials from the French museums charged with the task of sorting and distributing the plundered treasures. Among the officials selected to assist in this work was Captain Rose Valland, the courageous Frenchwoman who, as I mentioned earlier, had spied on the Nazi thieves in that same museum during the Occupation.

We had roughly estimated that it would require from three to six months to send back the main bulk of the French loot from Germany. Mass evacuation, as I have mentioned before, had the advantage of accelerating restitution. It had the disadvantage of rendering difficult our procedure of evaluating and photographing objects before they were returned. It was our intention that Lieutenant Lovegrove should obtain the desired photographs and appraisals. American military establishments in France were being drastically reduced, but we planned to attach him to the USFET Mission to France. We had been told that the Mission would be withdrawn in the early spring. If Lovegrove’s work weren’t finished by that time, Bancel thought it might be possible to attach him to our Paris Embassy when the Mission folded.

When Bancel introduced me to Lovegrove that evening at the Casino, I thought he would be very much at home in an embassy. He was of medium height, bald, had a pink and white complexion and wore a small mustache. He was self-possessed without being blasé. Lovegrove was a sculptor and had lived in Paris for many years before the war. Bancel said that he spoke a more perfect French than most Frenchmen.

Subsequent developments proved the wisdom of Bancel’s choice. Lovegrove was exceedingly popular with his French associates at the Musée du Jeu de Paume. His extraordinary tact and his capacity for hard work were equally remarkable.

I particularly remember our last meeting. It was in February, when I was stopping briefly in Paris on my way home from Germany. By that time hundreds of carloads of stolen art had been received at the Jeu de Paume. There were one or two final matters which I wished to take up with M. Henraux and M. Dreyfus, members of the Commission de Récupération Artistique. When Lovegrove and I arrived at the museum, we found these two charming, elderly gentlemen in their office. With them was M. David-Weill. He was examining a fine gold snuffbox. The office was littered with gold and silver objects. They were part of the fabulous collection which Lamont, Steve and I had packed by candlelight in the Castle of Neuschwanstein six months before.

During the second week of October, I left for Amsterdam. It was a three-hundred-mile drive from Frankfurt. Cassidy, the driver of the jeep, was a New Jersey farm boy who, unlike most drivers, preferred long trips to short local runs. The foothills of the Taunus Mountains were bright with fall coloring along the back road to Limburg. From there we turned west to the Rhine. Then, skirting the east bank of the river, we crossed over into the British Zone at Cologne. From Cologne—where we lunched at a British mess—our road led through Duisburg, Wesel and the skeleton of Emerich.

We crossed the Dutch frontier at five and continued through battered Arnhem to Utrecht. Utrecht was full of exuberant Canadians. I stopped at the headquarters of the local Town Major to inquire about a mess for transient officers. A friendly lieutenant, a blonde Dutch girl on his arm, was on his way to supper and suggested that I join them. He said that Cassidy could eat at a Red Cross Club.

The dining room in the officers’ hotel was noisy and crowded. Most of the officers, the lieutenant explained, were going home in a few days. It was good to be in a city which, superficially at least, showed no scars of battle.

We reached Amsterdam about nine-thirty. At night the canals were confusing. Cassidy and I looked in vain for the Town Major. Finally we found a Canadian “leave hotel.” The enlisted man on duty at the desk dispensed with the formality of the billet permit I should have obtained from the Town Major, and assigned us rooms on the same floor. Cassidy decided that the Canadians were a democratic outfit.

Bancel had instructed me to inform the Dutch Restitution Commission, known as the “C.G.R.,” that Lieutenant Colonel Vorenkamp was scheduled to reach Amsterdam at noon on the day following my arrival, so the next morning I went to the headquarters of the commission to deliver Major La Farge’s message. The commission occupied the stately old Goudstikker house on the Heerengracht. Before the war, Goudstikker had been a great Dutch art dealer. In the galleries of this house had been held many fine exhibitions of Dutch painting. During the German Occupation of the Netherlands, an unscrupulous Nazi named Miedl had “acquired” the entire Goudstikker stock from the dealer’s widow. We had found many of the Goudstikker pictures at Alt Aussee and in the Göring collection.