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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Lamont and I agreed that they should be taken to Munich without delay. There they could be stored in a vault. Furthermore we decided to deliver them ourselves. It wouldn’t do to risk such precious objects with the regular convoy. We admonished Sieber to say nothing about our find. In the meantime we would keep the two boxes under lock and key in our room.

That night we told Steve we had a special surprise for him. After barring the door against unexpected visitors, we emptied the boxes onto one of the beds. We told him not to look until we were ready. We arranged each piece with the greatest care, straightening out the links of the necklaces, adjusting the great baroque pearls of the pendants, balancing one piece with another, until the whole glittering collection was spread out on the white counterpane. Then we signaled to Steve to turn around.

“God Almighty, where did you find those?” he asked.

While we were telling him how we had happened onto the two cartons that afternoon, he kept shaking his head, and when we had finished, said solemnly, “They’re beyond my apprehension.” The expression stuck and from that time on we invoked it whenever we were confronted with an unexpected problem.

Early the following morning we stowed the jewels in the back seat of our command car and set out for Munich. Halfway to Salzburg we encountered Captain Posey, headed in the opposite direction. He was surprised to see us, and still more surprised when we told him what we had in the car. He was on his way to the mine. There were some things he wanted to tell us about our next job—at Berchtesgaden—but if we would come to his office the next day that would be time enough. He wasn’t going to stay at the mine more than a couple of hours. He should be back in Munich before midnight. He said there was one thing we could do when we reached Salzburg—call on the Property Control Officer and arrange for clearance on the removal of the Vienna Museum pictures to the Munich depot. This was an important part of the plan which George had outlined, so we said that we’d see what we could do.

We had some difficulty finding the right office. There were two Military Government Detachments in Salzburg—one for the city, and the other for the region. They were on opposite sides of the river. We caught Lieutenant Colonel Homer K. Heller, the Property Control Officer, as he was leaving for lunch. I explained that it was our intention to call for the paintings and tapestries on our way to Berchtesgaden the following week. He said he could not authorize the removal; that we would have to see Colonel W. B. Featherstone at the headquarters across the river. If the colonel gave his O.K., it would be all right with him. He didn’t think that the colonel would take kindly to the idea. This was a surprise. Who would have the temerity to question the authority of Third Army? Lamont was amused. He told me I could have the pleasure of tackling Colonel Featherstone alone.

It was after two o’clock before the colonel was free. Nothing doing on the Vienna pictures. That would require an O.K. from Verona. Why Verona, I asked? “General Clark’s headquarters,” was the answer. Didn’t I know that the Fifth Army was taking over the area very shortly? Then the colonel, in accents tinged with sarcasm, expressed his satisfaction at finally meeting one of the Monuments officers of the Third Army. He had heard such a lot about them and the wide territory they had covered. He had been told that a group of them was working at the Alt Aussee mine, but I was the first one he had laid eyes on.

I gathered that he was mildly nettled by Third Army in general and by me in particular. As a matter of fact, the colonel’s attitude about the Vienna pictures was logical: why move them out of Austria? If, as he supposed, they were to be returned to Vienna eventually, why take them all the way to Munich? I had no answer to that and took refuge in the old “I only work here” excuse. He found it rather droll that the Navy should be mixed up in this high-class van and storage business. I had too, once, but the novelty had worn off. I rejoined Lamont and the jewels. I wondered what Captain Posey would have to say to all this.

We reached Munich too late that afternoon to see Craig at the depot, so we took the jewels with us to his quarters. I had not seen him since my departure for Alt Aussee some weeks before. In the interim, there had been a tightening up on billeting facilities. As a result he and Ham Coulter were now sharing a single apartment. I was the only one adversely affected by this arrangement. Craig no longer had a spare couch for chance guests.

When Lamont and I walked in, we found them talking with a newly arrived naval lieutenant. He was Lane Faison, who had been around Harvard in my day. In recent years he had been teaching at Williams and was at present in OSS. After we had been there a little while, Lamont asked very casually, “Would you boys care to see the Rothschild jewels?”