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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Just as Craig and I were finishing our inspection of the Führerbau, a convoy of six trucks, escorted by two half-tracks, pulled into the parking space behind the building. The convoy leader had a letter for me. It was the one George Stout had mentioned on the telephone. Lincoln was right. The repository George had in mind was the monastery at Hohenfurth. In his letter he stressed the fact that the evacuation should be undertaken at once. He suggested that I try to persuade Posey to send Lincoln along to help me.

Craig had a comfortable billet in the Kopernikus-Strasse, a four-room flat on the fourth floor of a modern apartment building. The back windows looked onto a garden. Over the tops of the poplar trees beyond, one could see the roof of the Prinz Regenten Theater where, back in the twenties, I had seen my first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring. Craig told me that the theater was undamaged except for the Speisesaal where, in prewar days, lavish refreshments were served during intermissions. That one room had caught a bomb.

I accepted Craig’s invitation to share the apartment with him while in Munich and made myself at home in the dining room. It had a couch, and there was a sideboard which I could use as a chest of drawers. The bathroom was across the hall and he said that the supply of hot water was inexhaustible. By comparison, the officers’ billets at Third Army Headquarters were tenements.

Ham Coulter had similar quarters on the ground floor. We stopped there for a drink on our way to supper at the Military Government Detachment. “Civilized” was the word that best described Ham. He was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with sleek black hair, finely-chiseled features and keen, gray eyes. When he smiled, his mouth crinkled up at the corners, producing an agreeably sarcastic expression. Ham poured out the drinks with an elegance the ordinary German cognac didn’t deserve. They should have been dry martinis. I liked him at once that first evening, and when I came to know him better I found him the wittiest and most amiable of companions. He and Craig were a wonderful combination. They had the greatest admiration and respect for each other, and during the many months of their work together there was not the slightest disagreement between them.

The officers’ dining room that evening was a noisy place. The clatter of knives and forks and the babble of voices mingled with the rasping strains of popular American tunes pounded out by a Bavarian band. As we were about to sit down, the music stopped abruptly and a second later struck up the current favorite, “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time.” Colonel Charles Keegan, the commanding officer, had entered the dining hall. I was puzzled by this until Ham told me that it happened every night. This particular piece was the colonel’s favorite tune and he had ordered it to be played whenever he came in to dinner. The colonel was a colorful character—short and florid, with a shock of white hair. He had figured prominently in New York politics and would again, it was said. He had already helped Craig over a couple of rough spots and if some of his antics amused the MFA&A boys, they seemed to be genuinely fond of him.

While we were at dinner, three officers came and took their places at a near-by table. Craig identified one of them as Captain Posey. I had been told that he was in his middle thirties, but he looked younger than that. He had a boyish face and I noticed that he laughed a great deal as he talked with his two companions. When he wasn’t smiling, there was a stubborn expression about his mouth, and I remembered that Lincoln had said something about his “deceptively gentle manner.” On our way out I introduced myself to him. He was very affable and seemed pleased at my arrival. But he was tired after the long drive from Frankfurt, so, as soon as I had arranged to meet him at his office the next day, I joined Ham and Craig back at the apartment.

I got out to Third Army Headquarters early the following morning and found Captain Posey already at his desk, going through the papers which had accumulated during his absence. We discussed George’s letter at considerable length, and I was disappointed to find that he did not intend to act on it at once. Somehow it had never occurred to me that anyone would question a proposal of George’s.

For one thing, Captain Posey said, he couldn’t spare Lincoln; and for another, there was a very pressing job much nearer Munich which he wanted me to handle. He then proceeded to tell me of a small village on the road to Salzburg where I would find a house in which were stored some eighty cases of paintings and sculpture from the Budapest Museum. He showed me the place on the map and explained how I was to go about locating the exact house upon arrival. I was to see a certain officer at Third Army Headquarters without delay and make arrangements for trucks. He thought I would need about five. It shouldn’t take more than half a day to do the job if all went well. After this preliminary briefing, I was on my own.

My first move was to get hold of the officer about the trucks. How many did I need? When did I want them and where should he tell them to report? I said I’d like to have five trucks at the Königsplatz the following morning at eight-thirty. The officer explained that the drivers would be French, as Third Army was using a number of foreign trucking companies to relieve the existing shortage in transportation.

Later in the day I had a talk with Lincoln about my plans and he gave me a piece of advice which proved exceedingly valuable—that I should go myself to the trucking company which was to provide the vehicles, and personally confirm the arrangements. So, after lunch I struck out in a jeep for the west side of Munich, a distance of some seven or eight miles.