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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Over Dr. Mutter’s protest that I had not yet seen everything, I said that I should get my men started. There was no time to be lost. Colonel Sheehan provided eight men and, after cautioning them about the value and fragility of the objects, I detailed Dr. Mutter to supervise their work. The first job was to bring some of the furniture down to the ground floor. As yet we had no packing materials, so we could do no actual loading. The next step was to show the packers what we were up against. At first they went from room to room shaking their heads and muttering, but after I had explained that we would only select certain things, they cheered up and set to work. Luckily, some of the furniture had a fair amount of protective padding—paper stuffed with excelsior—and that could be used until we were able to get more. We had enough, they agreed, to figure on perhaps two truckloads. Leaving them to mull over that, I went off to round up a couple of the trucks. Here was another problem. Not only did the furniture have to be brought down a long flight of stone stairs, but to reach the stairs in the first place it had to be carried a distance of two hundred yards. Once down the stairs it had to be carried another two hundred yards down a long sloping ramp to the only doorway opening onto the courtyard. I told Leclancher to bring one of the trucks around to that doorway and then took off in search of paper, excelsior, rope and blankets. In one of the near-by sheds I found only a small supply of paper and some twine. We would need much more.

Major Whittemore came to the rescue and drove me to a lumber and paper mill several kilometers away. As we drove along he told me that he had been having trouble with the German managers of the mill, but they knew now that he meant business, so I was not to ask for what I wanted, I was to tell them. At the mill I got a generous supply of paper, excelsior and rope and, on my return to the monastery, sent one of the trucks back to pick it up. But there wasn’t a spare blanket to be had in all of Hohenfurth.

When I got back, it looked like moving day. The ramp was already lined with tables, chairs and chests. Dr. Mutter was running back and forth, cautioning one GI not to drop a delicate cabinet, helping another with an overambitious armful of equal rarity and all the while trying in vain to check the numbers marked on the pieces as they flowed down the stairs in a steady stream. Meanwhile, my two packers trudged up and down the ramp, lugging heavy chests and monstrous panels which looked more than a match for men twice their size.

In spite of their concerted efforts, we didn’t have anything like enough help, so I appealed to Leclancher. With discouraging independence, he indicated that his men were drivers, not furniture movers, and that he couldn’t order them to help. But he would put it up to them. After a serious conference with them, Leclancher reported that they had agreed to join the work party. Now, with a crew of twenty, things moved along at a faster pace. With a couple of the GIs, the two packers and I set to work loading the first truck. Here was where the little Rackhamites shone. In half an hour the first truck was packed and ready to be driven back to its place beside the chapel wall. The second truck was brought up and before long joined its groaning companion, snugly parked against a buttress.

Presently, the eight GIs trooped out into the courtyard. It was half past five and time for chow. The Frenchmen knocked off too, leaving Dr. Mutter, the two packers and me to take stock of the afternoon’s accomplishment. While we were thus engaged, Leclancher came to tell me that my driver, the one I called “Double Roger,” was feeling sick and wanted to see a doctor. In the confusion of the afternoon’s work I hadn’t noticed that he was not about. We found him curled up in the back of the truck and feeling thoroughly miserable. I drove him down to the Medical Office in the village and there Dr. Sverdlik, the Battalion Surgeon, examined him. Roger’s complaint was a severe pain in the midriff and the doctor suggested heat treatments. He said that the German surgeon up at the monastery hospital had the necessary equipment.

That seemed simple enough, since the drivers were billeted in rooms adjoining the hospital wing. But I reckoned without Roger. What? Be treated by a German doctor? He was terrified at the prospect, and it required all my powers of persuasion to talk him into it. Finally he agreed, but only after Dr. Sverdlik had telephoned to the hospital doctor and given explicit instructions. I also had to promise to stand by while the doctor ministered to him.

The German, Major Brecker, was methodical and thorough. He found that Roger had a kidney infection and recommended that he be taken to a hospital as soon as possible. I explained that we would not be returning to Munich for at least two days and asked if the delay would be dangerous. He said that he thought not. In the meantime he would keep Roger under a “heat basket.” Roger eyed this device with suspicion but truculently allowed it to be applied. When I went off to my supper, twenty minutes later, he was sleeping peacefully—but not alone. Three of his fellow drivers were sprawled on cots near by, just in case that Boche had any intentions of playing tricks on their comrade. Maybe not, but they were taking no chances! What a lot of children they were, I thought, as I walked wearily down to supper.

That evening I asked the colonel if I could get hold of some PWs to help out with the work the following day. He said that there was a large camp between Hohenfurth and Krummau and that I could have as many as I wanted. So I put in a bid for sixteen. After arranging for them to be at the monastery at eight the next morning, I went to my own quarters which were in a house just across the way.

At the Rest House at Unterstein near Berchtesgaden, Major Harry Anderson supervises the removal of the Göring Collection, brought from Karinhall, near Berlin.