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

by Thomas Carr Howe

“Walter Hancock was the officer in charge of the evacuation,” said Lamont. “Like Siegen, it was a deep-shaft mine, so the contents had to be brought up by an elevator. It was a hell of a job to get the elevator back in working order. The dramatic thing about Bernterode was the discovery of a small chapel, or shrine, constructed in one of the mine chambers and then completely walled up.

“In this concealed shrine, the Nazis had placed the bronze sarcophagi of Frederick the Great, Frederick William—the Soldier King—and those of Von Hindenburg and his wife. On the coffins had been laid wreaths, ribbons and various insignia of the Party. Around and about them were some two hundred regimental banners, many of them dating from the early Prussian wars.

“When Walker was ready to take the coffins out of the mine, he found they were so large and heavy that they’d have to come up one at a time. He was standing at the top of the shaft as the coffin of Frederick the Great rose slowly from the depths. As it neared the level, a radio in the distance blared forth the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ And just as the coffin came into view, the radio band struck up ‘God Save the King.’ The date,” Lamont added significantly, “was May the eighth.”

If I thought I was going to get much sleep that night, I reckoned without the patriotic officers of the Yankee Division, who were hell-bent on making it a really Glorious Fourth. It had been my mistake in the first place to move into quarters directly over the recreation room. It wasn’t much of a bedroom anyway—just an alcove with an eighteenth century settee for a bed. I was resting precariously on this spindly collector’s item when the door was flung open and Major Thacher shouted that I was wanted below. I told him to go away. To my surprise he did—but only to return a few minutes later with reinforcements. I must come down at once—colonel’s orders, and if I wouldn’t come quietly, they’d carry me down. Before I could get off my settee, it was pitched forward and I sprawled on the floor. What fun it was for everybody—except me! I put on a dressing gown and was marched down the stairs. I had been called in, as a naval officer, to settle an argument: Who had won the Battle of Jutland? The Battle of Jutland, of all things! At that moment I wasn’t at all sure in what war it had been fought, let alone who had won it. But assuming an assurance I was far from feeling I declared that it had been a draw. My luck was with me that night after all, for that had been the colonel’s contention. So I was allowed to return to my makeshift bed.

Lamont took some of the wind out of my sails by assuring me the next morning that the British had defeated the German fleet at Jutland in 1916.

But we were having our own battle of Hohenfurth that morning, so I was too preoccupied to give Jutland more than a passing thought. Just before noon, as we finished our fourth truck, John Nicholas Brown and Mason Hammond arrived. Mason, as was his custom when traveling about Germany, was bundled up in a great sheepskin coat—the kind used by the Wehrmacht on the Russian front—and looked like something out of Nanook of the North. John, less arctically attired, hailed us gaily from the back seat of the command car.

Lamont and I suspended operations to show them around. We were pleased by their comments on our work—how admirably it was being handled and so on—but we struck a snag when we showed them Canova’s marble Muse. Lamont and I had just about decided to leave her where she was. Our two visitors thought that would be a pity, a downright shame. We pointed out that to transport the statue would be a hazardous business, even if we succeeded in getting it onto a truck in the first place. We had no equipment with which to hoist anything so heavy. On our inspection tour they kept coming back to the subject of the Canova, and Lamont gave me an irritated look for having called their attention to it at all.

At lunch, which we had with the colonel, they fixed us. When the subject of the statue was brought up, the colonel instantly agreed to provide us with a winch and also two extra trucks. We needed the trucks all right, but we weren’t particularly happy about the winch.

As soon as we got back to the monastery, we broke the news to Dr. Mutter. The Muse was about to take a trip. He held up his hands in dismay and said it would take us half a day to get the statue loaded. When we told the German packers what we had in mind, they made a few clucking noises, and then began the necessary preparations. The first thing they did was to get hold of two logs, each about six feet in length and five inches in diameter. With the help of a dozen PWs, they got them placed beneath the base of the statue. From that point on, it was a matter of slowly rolling the statue as the logs rolled. It was arduous work. A distance of well over four hundred yards was involved, and the last half of it was along a sloping ramp where it was particularly difficult to keep the heavy marble under control.

Once the truck was reached, it was necessary to set up a stout runway from the ground to the bed of the truck. This done, the next move was to place heavy pads around the base of the statue, so that the cable of the winch would not scratch the surface of the marble. It was a tense moment. Would the winch be strong enough to drag its heavy burden up the runway? It began to grind, and slowly the Muse slid up the boards, paused for a quivering instant and then glided majestically along the bed of the truck. There were cheers from the PWs who had gathered around the truck to watch. We all sighed with relief, and then congratulated the little packers who had engineered the whole operation. Dr. Mutter kept shaking his head in disbelief. He told us that when the statue had been brought to the monastery in the first place, it had taken three hours to unload it. The present operation had taken forty-five minutes.