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

by Thomas Carr Howe

This document was drafted and signed by a small group of Monuments officers at the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden. Before being submitted to Major La Farge for whatever action he deemed appropriate, it was signed by twenty-four of the thirty-two Monuments officers in the American Zone. The remaining eight chose either to submit individual letters expressing similar views, or orally to express like sentiments. The document came to be known as the “Wiesbaden Manifesto.” Army regulations forbade the publication of such a statement; hence its submission to Major La Farge as Chief of the MFA&A Section.

Further protests against the policy which prompted the Wiesbaden Manifesto appeared in the United States a few months later. The action of our Government was sharply criticized and vigorously defended in the press. Letters to and from the State Department and a petition submitted to the President concerning the issue appear in the Appendix to this book.

Preparations for the shipment—appropriately nicknamed “Westward Ho”—took precedence over all other activities of the MFA&A office during the next three weeks. Its size was determined soon after Colonel McBride’s arrival. General Clay cabled from Washington requesting this information and the shipping date. After hastily consulting us, our Berlin office replied that two hundred paintings could be made ready for removal within ten days.

The next problem was to decide how the selection was to be made. Should the pictures be chosen from the three Central Collecting Points—Munich, Wiesbaden and Marburg? Time was short. It would be preferable to take them from one depot. Wiesbaden was decided upon. Quality had been stressed. The best of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum pictures were at Wiesbaden.

The decision to confine the selection to the one Central Collecting Point had the additional advantage of avoiding the disruption of MFA&A work at the other two depots, Munich and Marburg. Craig Smyth had long been apprehensive about “Westward Ho,” feeling that any incursion on the Bavarian State Collections would be disastrous to his organization at the Munich Collecting Point. He said that his entire staff of non-Nazi museum specialists would walk out. This would seriously impede the restitution program in the Eastern Military District.

So far as Marburg was concerned, I had been in the office the day Bancel told Walker Hancock of the decision to take German-owned works of art to America. Walker looked at Bancel as though he hadn’t understood him. Then he said simply, “In that case I can’t go back to Marburg. Everything that we were able to accomplish was possible because I had the confidence of certain people. I can’t go back and tell them that I have betrayed them.”

And he hadn’t gone back to Marburg. Instead he went to Heidelberg for two days without telling anyone where he was going. When he finally returned, it was only to close up his work at Marburg, in the course of which he undertook to explain as best he could to Professor Hamann, the distinguished old German scholar with whom he had been associated, the decision concerning the removal of the pictures. “I quoted the official statement,” Walker said, “about the paintings being held in trust for the German people and added that there was no reason to doubt it. Very slowly he said, ‘If they take our old art, we must try to create a fine new art.’ Then, after a long pause, he added,’I never thought they would take them.’”

Once it had been decided to limit selection of the paintings to the Wiesbaden Collecting Point, there arose the question of appointing an officer properly qualified to handle the job. It called for speed, discrimination and an expert knowledge of packing. There was a ten-day deadline to be met. Two hundred pictures had to be chosen. And the packing would have to be done with meticulous care. We considered the possibilities. Captain Walter Farmer couldn’t be spared from his duties as director of the Collecting Point. Lieutenant Samuel Ratensky, Monuments officer for Greater Hesse, was an architect, not a museum man. Captain Joseph Kelleher was one of our ablest officers; but he was just out of the hospital where he had been laid up for three months with a broken hip. The doctor had released him on condition that he be given easy assignments for the next few weeks.

At this critical juncture, Lamont Moore telephoned from Munich. He and Steve had just completed the evacuation of the mine at Alt Aussee. Lamont said that they were coming up to Frankfurt. Steve had enough points to go home—enough and to spare. Lamont thought he’d take some leave. Bancel signaled from the opposite desk. I told Lamont to forget about the leave; that we had a job for him. Bancel sighed with relief. Lamont’s was a different kind of sigh.

Lamont’s arrival was providential. Aside from his obvious qualifications for the Wiesbaden assignment, he and Colonel McBride were old friends from the National Gallery where, as I have mentioned before, Lamont had been director of the educational program. The colonel was content to leave everything in his hands. Lamont and I spent an evening together studying a list of the pictures stored at Wiesbaden. He typed out a tentative selection. The next day he and the colonel went over to the Collecting Point for a preliminary inspection.