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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Another important Dutch private collection, that of Ten Cate at Almelo, had “contributed” the Man with a Turban. And the Bearded Old Man had been bought from the Swiss dealer, Wendland, who had agents in Paris. He had allegedly discovered the painting in Marseilles.

These five pictures posed an interesting problem in restitution. To whom should they be returned? Who were the rightful owners—as of the summer of 1945?

At the time we were beginning our work on the Göring collection, definite plans for the restitution of works of art were being formulated by the American Military Government. They were an important part of the general restitution program then being planned by the Reparations, Deliveries and Restitution Division of the U. S. Group Control Council. Pending the implementation of the program, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of U. S. Forces, European Theater, was the technical custodian of all art works eventually to be restituted.

Bancel La Farge, who became Chief of the Section when SHAEF dissolved, had outlined the plans to us on our way back from the Eagle’s Nest that afternoon. There were two main categories of works of art slated for prompt restitution to the overrun countries from which they had been taken. The first included all art objects easily identifiable as loot—the great Jewish collections and the property of other “enemies of the state” which had been seized by the Nazis. The second embraced all art works not readily identifiable as loot, but for which some compensation was known or believed to have been paid by the Nazis.

The actual restitution was to be made on a wholesale scale. Works of art were to be returned en bloc to the claimant nations, not to individual claimants of those nations. To expedite this “mass evacuation” country by country, properly qualified art representatives would be invited to the American Occupied Zone, specifically to the Central Collecting Point at Munich, where they could present their claims. Once their claims were substantiated—either by documents in their possession or by records at the Collecting Point—the representatives would be responsible for the actual removal.

We asked Bancel how the various representatives were to be selected. He explained that several of the overrun countries had set up special Fine Arts Commissions. The one in France was called the Commission de Récupération Artistique. The one in Holland had an unpronounceable name, so it was known simply as “C.G.R.”—the initials stood for the name translated into French, Commission de Récupération Générale. And the one in Belgium had such a long name that he couldn’t remember it offhand. Czechoslovakia, Poland and Greece would probably establish similar committees before long. Each commission would choose a representative and submit his name to the MFA&A Section for approval. Once the names were approved and the necessary military clearances obtained, the representatives could enter the American Zone, proceed to Munich and start to work.

Bancel said that each representative would have to sign a receipt in the name of his country before he could remove any works of art from the Collecting Point. The receipt would release our government from all further responsibility for the objects concerned—as of the time they left the Collecting Point. Furthermore, it would contain a clause binding the receiving nation to rectify any mistakes in restitution. For example, if the Dutch representative inadvertently included a painting which later turned out to be the property of a Belgian, then, by the provisions of the receipt, Holland would be obligated to return that painting to Belgium. The chief merit of this system of fine arts restitution lay in the fact that it relieved American personnel of the heavy burden of settling individual claims. From the point of view of our government, this was an extremely important consideration because of the limited number of men available for so formidable an undertaking. And from the point of view of the receiving nations, the system had the advantage of accelerating the recovery of their looted treasures.

In the room where Lamont and I had seen the Rembrandts, we found a pair of panels by Boucher, the great French master of the eighteenth century. Each represented an ardent youth making amorous advances to a coy and but half-protesting maiden in a rustic setting. They were appropriately entitled Seduction and were said to have been painted for the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour. According to the inventory, the panels had been bought from Wendland, the dealer of Paris and Lucerne.

These slightly prurient canvases flanked one of the most beautiful fifteenth century Flemish paintings I had ever seen, The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine by Gerard David. The Madonna with the Child on her lap was portrayed against a landscape background, St. Catherine kneeling at her right, dressed in russet velvet. Round about were grouped five other female saints, each richly gowned in a different color. It was not a large composition, measuring only about twenty-five inches square, but it possessed the dignity and monumentality of a great altarpiece. The authenticity of its sentiment put to shame the facile virtuosity of the two Bouchers which stood on either side.