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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Concealed beneath the tapestries were ten cases, each one about two feet square and a foot high. Major Miller hadn’t seen these before. On each one was stenciled in Gothic letters: “Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.” They contained a magnificent collection of Oriental weapons.

In a room which Görnnert had apparently used for a study we found six handsome leather portfolios filled with Old Master drawings. The drawings were by Dutch and French artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

There was a possibility that all of these things, with the exception of the weapon collection, which Göring had probably entrusted to Görnnert, were the legitimate property of the tenants. It was equally possible that they had been illegally acquired. In the circumstances, Major Miller wished me to take charge of them. I said that I could take them to the Central Collecting Point at Munich where they would be held in safekeeping until ownership had been determined.

The house had been thoroughly ransacked. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents disarranged. Closet doors stood open and the clothing on the hangers had been gone over. The beds were rumpled, for even the mattresses had been searched. Despite the topsy-turvy look of things, there was no evidence of wanton destruction. The search had been thorough and methodical. I asked the major what his men had been looking for, but his answer was noncommittal. He did say, though, that the discovery of documents hidden in a false partition in the living room had prompted the search.

The following morning Steve, Lamont and I went to the Görnnert house in the command car. It would have been difficult to take a large truck up the narrow winding road. In any case, I thought we could probably load all of the stuff in the command car. Major Miller had sent one of his officers ahead with the key. The house had been searched again. This time it looked as though a cyclone had struck it. Pillows had been ripped open; drawers had been emptied on the floor; clothes were scattered all over the bedrooms. I was relieved to find that the things which we had come to take away had not been tampered with. I asked the lieutenant with the key what had been going on in the house, and he muttered something about “those CIC boys.” I seemed to have touched on a sore subject, so I didn’t pursue the matter. Lamont, who knew the ways of the Army far better than I, said that probably there had been a “jurisdictional dispute” over who had the right to search the place and that perhaps two different outfits had taken a crack at it. I was glad that Major Miller’s emissary was there to bear witness to our behavior.

We bundled up the rugs, tapestries and textiles and got out as quickly as possible. They completely filled the command car. Lamont and Steve sat in front with the driver. I wedged myself in between the top of the pile and the canvas top of the car. There was no room for the ten cases of weapons, so I sent a message to Major Miller to have one of his men deliver them to us later in the day.

When we got back to the rest house, Kress had dismantled his darkroom and after lunch we loaded the photographic equipment onto the one truck we had held over for that purpose. There was ample space for the things from the Görnnert house. Before packing them we had to make a complete list of the items. There were two hundred and thirteen church vestments, eighty-one mounted textiles, twenty rugs and eleven tapestries. It was suppertime when we finished. As the ten cases of weapons hadn’t arrived, we decided to wait till morning and load everything at once.

That evening Major Anderson of the 101st Airborne came over with the official receipt which I was to sign. It was an elaborate document comprising Sergeant Peck’s seventy-page inventory and a covering letter from the C.O. of the 101st Airborne Division to the Commanding General of the Third Army stating that I had received from Major Anderson the entire Göring collection for delivery to the Central Collecting Point at Munich. Having discharged his responsibility, the major was free to go home to the U.S.A. That called for a celebration and he had brought a bottle of cognac. It was sixty years old. He said that it came from Hitler’s private stock at the Berghof. Even Steve, who had harbored a slight grudge toward Anderson since the night of our arrival in Berchtesgaden, relented and the four of us toasted the successful evacuation of the Göring treasures.

The major had another surprise for us: he had engaged a room at the Berchtesgadener Hof. He insisted that the three of us move over from the rest house. The next day was Sunday. What would be the point of going up to Munich? We had been working hard for two weeks. Why not take life easy for a day or two?

The Berchtesgadener Hof was a luxurious resort hotel. Its appointments were modern and lavish. In the days of the Nazi regime, it had been patronized by all visiting dignitaries, save the chosen few who had been invited to stay at the Berghof or the small hotel at Obersalzberg. It was now being used by the Army as a “leave hotel.” We had an enormous double room with twin beds and a couch. We had our own private terrace. The room faced south with a wonderful view of the mountains. We even had a telephone which worked. I hadn’t seen such magnificence since the Royal Monceau in Paris. There was a room for our driver on the top floor. The final de luxe touch was the schedule of meal hours; breakfast wasn’t even served until eight-thirty. It was hard to believe that we were in Germany.