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

by Thomas Carr Howe

I was getting bored with this chatterbox when he suddenly began to talk about Göring and his pictures. We asked him the obvious question: What did Göring really like when it came to paintings? Well, he was fond of Cranach. Yes, we knew that. And Rubens; he had greatly admired Rubens. And many of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. But according to Hofer it was he who had directed the Reichsmarschall’s taste. Then, to my surprise, he mentioned Vermeer. Did we know about the Vermeer which Göring had bought? After that he went into a lengthy account of the purchase, leading up to it with an involved story of the secrecy surrounding the transaction, which had many confusing details. When we pulled up before House 71, Hofer was still going strong. Lamont and I were worn out.

Shrady departed the following morning in compliance with the orders I had brought him. He left the Mercedes-Benz behind. If I could have foreseen the trouble that car was going to cause us, nothing could have tempted me to add it to our equipment. Even then Lamont eyed it with suspicion, but we were both talked out of our misgivings by Steve, who rubbed his hands with satisfaction at the prospect of the éclat it would lend our future operations.

With Shrady’s going, we fell heir to his duties. During our last three days at the mine they complicated our lives considerably. There were records to be put in order, reports to be finished, pay accounts to be adjusted, ration books to be extended for the skeleton crew which would remain at the mine. In addition, I had to see Colonel Davitt about the reduction and reorganization of the guard, and make provision for different billeting and messing facilities.

In the midst of these preparations, Ted Rousseau telephoned from House 71. Were we planning to take Kress, the photographer, with us to Berchtesgaden? We certainly were. Steve would sooner have parted with his right eye. Well, they wanted to interrogate him before we left. How long would they need him? A few days. I suggested they start right away. We’d be needing him too. Steve was wild when he heard about it. I agreed that it was a nuisance but that we’d have to oblige. The OSS boys came for Kress that afternoon. Steve watched them, balefully, as they drove off down the mountain. Then he resumed the work he had been doing on his big Steyr truck. This was a cumbersome vehicle which he and Kress had been putting in order. It had belonged originally to the Einsatzstab Rosenberg and was part of Kress’ photographic unit. He and Steve were refitting it to serve our purposes in a similar capacity. It was a fine idea, but so far they hadn’t been able to get it in running order. Steve had had it painted. When he had nothing better to do, he tinkered with the dead motor. Next to Kress, the truck was his most prized possession.

I returned to Shrady’s old office where I found Lamont in conversation with Dr. Hermann Michel. Michel was a shadowy figure who had been working at the mine with Sieber and Eder throughout our stay. When Posey and Lincoln Kirstein had arrived at Alt Aussee in May, he had identified himself as one of the ringleaders of the Austrian resistance movement and vociferously claimed the credit of saving the mine. Since then he had been working in the mine office. Captain Posey had given him permission to make a routine check of the books and archives stored there. He was such a talkative fellow that we kept out of his way as much as possible. And we didn’t like his habit of praising himself at the expense of others. He was forever running to Plaut and Rousseau at House 71 with written and oral reports, warning them to beware of this or that man in the mine organization.

Lamont looked decidedly harassed when I walked in. Michel was protesting our demands for a complete set of the records. We were to leave them in Colonel Davitt’s care when we closed the mine. Michel had taken the opportunity to say a few unpleasant things about Sieber. We finally made it clear to him that there would be no nonsense about the records, and also that what we did about Sieber was our business. We finally packed him off still protesting and shaking his head.

The afternoon before our departure Lamont and I had to go over to St. Agatha. The little village lay in the valley on the other side of the Pötschen Pass. We were to verify the report that a small but important group of paintings was stored in an old inn there. A fine Hubert Robert Landscape, given to Hitler by Mussolini, was said to be among them.

We went first to the Bürgermeister who had the key. He drove with us to the inn. It was an attractive Gasthaus, built in the early eighteenth century. The walls were frescoed and a wrought-iron sign hung over the doorway. When we arrived the proprietress was washing clothes in the arched passageway through the center of the building.

She took us to a large corner room on the second floor. There were some fifty pictures, all of them enormous and unframed. The Bürgermeister helped us shift the unwieldy canvases about, so that we could properly examine them. They were, for the most part, of indifferent quality—sentimental landscapes by obscure German painters of the nineteenth century.

But we did find five that were fine: the mammoth landscape with classical ruins by Hubert Robert, the eighteenth century French master—this was the one Mussolini had given the Führer; an excellent panel by Pannini—it too a landscape; a Van Dyck portrait; a large figure composition by Jan Siberechts, the seventeenth century Flemish painter; and a painting by Ribera, the seventeenth century Spanish artist. We set them aside and said we’d return for them in a few days.