The explanation was soon forthcoming. The sergeant found Dr. Mutter in a small room adjoining the library. He was a lanky, studious individual with a shock of snow-white hair, prominent teeth and a gentle manner which just missed being fawning. Hohenfurth’s Uriah Heep, I thought unkindly. The moment he began to speak in halting English, I revised my estimate of him. He was neither crafty nor vicious. On the contrary, he was just a timid, and, at the moment, frightened victim of circumstance. What German I know has an Austrian flavor, and when I trotted this out he was so embarrassingly happy that I wished I had kept my tongue in my head. But it served to establish an entente cordiale which proved valuable during the next few days. They were to be more hectic than I had even faintly imagined.
After a little introductory palaver, I explained that I had come to remove the collections which had been brought to the monastery by the Germans, and that I would like to make a preliminary tour of inspection. I suggested that we look first at the paintings.
“Paintings?” he asked doubtfully. “You mean the modern pictures? They are not very good—just the work of some of the Nazi artists. They were brought here—and quite a lot of sculpture too—when it was announced that Hitler was coming to Hohenfurth to see the really important things.”
Then I learned what he meant by the “really important things”—room after room, corridor after corridor, all crammed with furniture and sculpture, methodically looted from two fabulous collections, the Rothschild of Vienna and the Mannheimer of Amsterdam. By comparison, the Hearst collection at Gimbel’s was trifling. The things I had seen in the library were only a small part of this mélange. In an adjoining chamber—a vaulted gallery, fifty feet long—there were a dozen pieces of French and Dutch marquetry. And stacked against the walls were entire paneled rooms, coffered ceilings and innumerable marble busts. Next to that was a room crowded with more of the same sort of thing, except that the pieces were small and more delicate. In one corner I saw an extraordinary table made entirely of tortoise shell and mounted with exquisite ormolu.
It was an antique-hunter’s paradise, but for me quite the reverse. How was I going to move all of this stuff? Dr. Mutter could see that I was perplexed, and apologetically added that I had seen only a part of the collections. Remembering that I had asked to see the pictures, he took me to a corner room containing approximately a hundred canvases. As he had said, they were a thoroughly dull lot—portraits of Hitler, Hess and some of the other Nazi leaders, tiresome allegorical scenes, a few battle subjects and a group of landscapes. The labels pasted on the backs indicated that they had all been shown at one time or another in exhibitions at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich. While I was looking at them, Dr. Mutter shyly confessed that he was a painter but that he didn’t admire this kind of work.
On the floor below, there was a forest of contemporary German sculpture—plaster casts, for the most part, all patinated to resemble bronze. In addition there were a few portrait busts in bronze and one or two pieces in glazed terra cotta. The terra-cotta pieces had some merit. The sculpture occupied one entire side of a broad corridor which ran around the four sides of a charming inner garden. The corridor had originally been open but the archways were now glassed in. Turning a corner, we came upon a jumble of architectural fragments—carved Gothic pinnacles, sections of delicately chiseled moldings, colonnettes, Florentine well-heads and wall fountains. At one end was a pair of elaborate gilded wrought-iron doors and at either side were handsome wall lanterns, also of wrought iron. These too were Mannheimer, Dr. Mutter replied, when I hopefully asked if they were not a part of the monastery fittings.
As final proof of the looters’ thorough methods, I was shown a vaulted reception hall, into the walls of which had been set a large and magnificent relief by Luca della Robbia, a smaller but also very beautiful relief of the Madonna and Child by some Florentine sculptor of the fifteenth century, and an enormous carved stone fireplace of Renaissance workmanship. The hall was stacked with huge cases as yet unpacked, and from the ceiling were suspended two marvelous Venetian glass chandeliers—exotic accents against a background of chaste plaster walls.
This partial tour of inspection ended with a smaller room across from the reception hall where Dr. Mutter proudly exhibited what he considered the finest thing of all—a life-sized, seated marble portrait by Canova. It was indeed a distinguished piece of work. Hitler had bought the statue in Vienna, so Dr. Mutter said, from the Princess Windischgrätz. It had been destined for the Führer Museum at Linz.
I learned afterward that the statue had belonged at one time to the Austrian emperor, Franz Josef. Canova began the statue in 1812 as a portrait of Maria-Elisa, Princess of Lucca—a sister of Napoleon. The sculptor’s more celebrated portrait of Napoleon’s sister Pauline had been carved a few years earlier. When Maria-Elisa lost her throne and fortune, she was unable to pay for the portrait. But Canova was resourceful: he changed the portrait into a statue of Polyhymnia, the Muse of poetry and song. He accomplished this metamorphosis by idealizing the head and adding the appropriate attributes of the Muse. Later the statue was given to Franz Josef. Eventually it passed into the collection of his granddaughter—the daughter of Rudolf, who died at Mayerling—the Princess Windischgrätz.
The statue was one of the most delicate and graceful examples of the great neoclassic master’s style, and I marveled both at its cold perfection and the fact that it had come through its travels completely unscathed. For all her airy elegance, the Muse must weigh at least a ton and a half, I calculated—suddenly coming down to earth with the realization that I would be expected to take her back to Munich!