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

by Thomas Carr Howe

Among the treasures stored in the Jubiläumsbau were some of the choicest masterpieces from the Berlin state museums. Perhaps the most famous were the twin canvases by Watteau entitled Gersaint’s Signboard. Regarded by many as the supreme work of the greatest painter of the French Rococo period, the two pictures had been the prized possessions of Frederick the Great. Painted to hang side by side forming a continuous composition, they represented the shop of M. Gersaint, dealer in works of art. It is said that the paintings were finished in eight days. They were painted in the year 1732 when the artist was at the height of his career. I was told that, during the early years of the war, Göring made overtures to the Louvre for one of its finest Watteaus. According to the story, the negotiations ended abruptly when the museum signified its willingness to part with the painting in exchange for Gersaint’s Signboard.

The brilliant French school of the eighteenth century was further represented at the Jubiläumsbau by a superb Boucher—the subject, Mercury and Venus—and two exquisite Chardins: The Cook, one of his most enchanting scenes of everyday life, and the Portrait of a Lady Sealing a Letter, an unusually large composition for this unpretentious painter whose canvases are today worth a king’s ransom.

There were masterpieces of the German school; the great series of Cranachs which had belonged to the Hohenzollerns filled one entire room. Excellent examples of Rubens and Van Dyck represented the Flemish school; Ruysdael and Van Goyen, the Dutch. The high quality of every picture attested to the taste and connoisseurship of German collectors.

Walker said that he hoped to arrange a public exhibition of the pictures. Marburg had been neglected by our bombers. Only one or two bombs had fallen in the city and the resulting damage had been slight. Concussion had blasted the windows of the Staatsarchiv, but the Jubiläumsbau was untouched. Perhaps he would put on a series of small exhibitions, say fifty pictures at a time. The members of his local German committee were enthusiastic about the project. It would be an important first step in the rehabilitation of German cultural institutions which was an avowed part of the American Fine Arts program. Thanks to the hesitancy of an officer at higher headquarters who was exasperatingly “security-conscious,” Walker did not realize his ambition until three months later, on the eve of his departure for the United States.

We celebrated VJ-Day on our return to Frankfurt that evening. The big Casino, behind USFET headquarters, was the scene of the principal festivities. Drinks were on the house until the bar closed at ten. It was a warm summer night and the broad terrace over the main entrance was crowded. An Army band blared noisily inside. Civilian attendants skulked in the background, avidly collecting cigarette butts from the ash trays and the terrace floor. They reaped a rich harvest that night.

The Mercedes-Benz presented a problem. Its status was a dubious one. Since it was still registered with an MG Detachment in Austria, I felt uncomfortable about driving it around Germany. At Charlie Kuhn’s suggestion we filed a request with the Naval headquarters in Frankfurt for assignment of the vehicle to our Special Evacuation Team. The request was couched in impressive legal language which Charlie thought would do the trick. Armed with a copy of this request, I felt confident that we would not be molested by inquisitive MPs on our trip back to Munich.

We didn’t get started until late afternoon, having wasted two hours dickering with the Transportation Officer at the Frankfurt MG Detachment for a spare tire. We returned by way of Würzburg and Nürnberg. It was dark when we reached Nürnberg, but the light of the full moon was sufficient to reveal the ruined walls and towers of the old, inner city. As we struck south of the city to the Autobahn, we could see the outlines of the vast unfinished stadium, designed to seat one hundred and forty thousand people. We had to proceed cautiously since many of the bridges had been destroyed and detours were frequent. As a result it was midnight when we reached Munich. The transient hotel was full, so we had to be content with makeshift quarters at the Central Collecting Point.

In our absence the transportation situation had eased up a little. Captain Posey told us the next morning that six trucks would be available in the early afternoon. We decided to keep the command car for the trip to Neuschwanstein and leave the Mercedes-Benz in Munich to be painted. In anticipation of registration papers from the Navy, we thought it would be appropriate to have the car painted battleship gray and stenciled with white letters reading “U. S. Navy.” One of the mechanics in the garage at the Central Collecting Point agreed to do this for us in exchange for a bottle of rum and half a bottle of Scotch. Officers at Third Army Headquarters had bar privileges plus a liquor ration, but the enlisted men didn’t fare so well.

Our base of operations for the evacuation of the Castle of Neuschwanstein was the picturesque little town of Füssen, some eighty miles south of Munich, in the heart of the “Swan country.” This region of southern Bavaria, celebrated for its association with the name of Richard Wagner, is one of the most beautiful in all Germany. The mountains rise sharply from the floor of the level green valley. The turreted castle, perched on top of one of the lower peaks, at an elevation of a thousand feet, is visible for miles. Built in the eighteen-seventies by Ludwig II, the “Mad King” of Bavaria, it was the most fantastic creation of that exotic monarch whose passion for building nearly bankrupted his kingdom. When we saw the castle rising majestically from its pine-covered mountaintop, we were struck by the incongruity of our six-truck convoy lumbering through the romantic countryside.

We presented our credentials to a swarthy major who was the commanding officer of the small MG Detachment at Füssen. He arranged for our billets at the Alte Post, the hotel where officers of the Detachment were quartered, and, after we had deposited our gear in a room on the fourth floor, conducted us to the Schloss.