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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Upon the completion of his report for Fifteenth Army, Lesley was appointed MFA&A Officer at Frankfurt. As a part of his duties, he assumed responsibility for the two million books at Offenbach and the Rothschild Library. Within a week he had submitted a report on the two depots and drafted practical plans for their effective reorganization.

While Walter Farmer was on leave in England before Christmas, Joe Kelleher took charge of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point. The Dutch and French restitution representatives had gone home for the holidays. Joe had the spare time to examine some of the unopened cases. He asked Edith and me to come over one evening. He said that he might have a surprise for us. I said we’d come and asked if I might bring Colonel Kluss, Chief of the Restitution Control Branch. The colonel had never seen the Collecting Point.

We drove over in the colonel’s car. After early dinner with Joe at the City Detachment, we went down to the Collecting Point. Joe unlocked the “Treasure Room” and switched on the lights. The colonel whistled when he looked around the room.

“Those are the Polish church treasures which the Nazis swiped,” said Joe, pointing casually to the gold and silver objects stacked on shelves and tables. “There’s something a lot more exciting in that box.”

He walked over to a packing case about five feet square which stood in the center of the room. The lid had been unscrewed but was still in place. It was marked in black letters: “Kiste 28, Aegypt. Abteilung—Bunte Königin—Tel-el-Amarna—NICHT KIPPEN!”—Case 28, Egyptian Department—Painted Queen—Tel-el-Amarna—DON’T TILT! Joe grinned with satisfaction as I read the markings. The Painted Queen—Queen Nefertete. This celebrated head, the most beautiful piece of Egyptian sculpture in the world, had been one of the great treasures of the Berlin Museum. It was a momentous occasion. There was every reason to believe that the German museum authorities had packed the head with proper care. Even so, the case had been moved around a good deal in the meantime, first from the Merkers mine to the vaults of the Reichsbank in Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden. There was not much point in speculating about that now. We’d know the worst in a few minutes.

Joe and I laid the lid aside. The box was filled with a white packing material. At first I thought it was cotton, but it wasn’t. It was glass wool. In the very center of the box lay the head, swathed in silk paper. Gingerly we lifted her from the case and placed her on a table. We unwound the silk paper. Nefertete was unharmed, and as bewitching as ever. She was well named: “The beautiful one is here.”

While we studied her from every angle, Joe recounted the story of the Nefertete, her discovery and subsequent abduction to Berlin. She was the wife of Akhnaton, enlightened Pharaoh of the fourteenth century B.C. This portrait of her was excavated in the winter of 1912 by Dr. Ludwig Borchardt, famous German Egyptologist, on the site of Tel-el-Amarna, Akhnaton’s capital. In compliance with the regulations of the Egyptian Government, Borchardt submitted a list of his finds at Tel-el-Amarna to M. Maspero of the Cairo Museum. According to the story, Maspero merely glanced at the list, to make certain that a fifty-fifty division had been made, and did not actually examine the items. The head was taken to Berlin and placed in storage until after the first World War. When it was placed on exhibition in 1920, the Egyptian Government protested loudly that Dr. Borchardt had deceived the authorities of the Cairo Museum and demanded the immediate return of the head. (The Egyptian Government was again pressing its claim in March 1946.)

After replacing Nefertete in her case, Joe showed the colonel the collection of rare medieval treasures, including those of the Guelph Family—patens, chalices and reliquaries of exquisite workmanship dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With a fine sense of showmanship he saved the most spectacular piece till the last: the famous Crown of St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, crowned by the Pope in the year 1000. It was adorned with enamel plaques, bordered with pearls and studded with great uncut gems. Joe said there was a difference of opinion among scholars as to the exact date and provenance of the enamels. The crown was surmounted by a bent gold cross. According to Joe, the cross had been bent for four hundred years and would never be straightened. During the sixteenth century, the safety of the crown was endangered. It was entrusted to the care of a Hungarian noblewoman, who concealed it in a compartment under the seat of her carriage. The space was small and when the lid was closed and weighted down by the occupant of the carriage, the cross got bent. The Hungarian coronation regalia included three other pieces: a sword, an orb, and a scepter. The scepter was extremely beautiful. The stalk was of rich gold filigree and terminated in a spherical ornament of carved rock crystal. The regalia was kept in a specially constructed iron trunk with three locks, the keys to which were entrusted to three different nobles. At the close of the present war, American troops apprehended a Hungarian officer with the trunk. Perhaps he was trying to safeguard the regalia as his predecessor in the sixteenth century had done. In any case, the American authorities thought they’d better relieve him of that grave responsibility.

The Hungarian Crown Jewels. Left, the scepter. Center, the celebrated Crown of St. Stephen. Right, the sword. These priceless treasures fell into the hands of the American authorities in Germany at the war’s close.