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

by Thomas Carr Howe

The famous panels had been reposing in the Central Collecting Point at Munich since we had removed them from the salt mine at Alt Aussee. A special plane had been chartered to fly them to Brussels. The Belgian Government had signified approval of air transportation. Direct rail communication between Munich and Brussels had not been resumed, and the highways were not in the best of condition. By truck, it would be a rough two-day trip; by air, a matter of three hours.

Bancel La Farge had already flown from Frankfurt to Brussels, where plans had been made for an appropriate ceremony on the arrival of the altarpiece. The American Ambassador was to present the panels to the Prince Regent on behalf of General Eisenhower. It was to be an historic occasion.

I went out to the airport to confirm the arrangements for the C-54. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from the Königsplatz to the field. I was also to check on the condition of the streets: they were in good shape all the way.

The plane was to take off at noon. Lamont, Steve and I supervised the loading of the ten precious cases. We led off in a jeep. The truck followed with the panels. Four of the civilian packers went along to load the cases onto the plane. Captain Posey was to escort the altarpiece to Brussels.

When we got to the airport we learned that the plane had not arrived. There would be a two-hour delay. At the end of two hours, we were informed that there was bad weather south of Brussels. All flights had been canceled for the day. We drove back to the Collecting Point at the Königsplatz and had just finished unloading the panels when a message came from the field. The weather had cleared. The plane would be taking off in half an hour. I caught Captain Posey as he was leaving the building for his office at Third Army Headquarters. The cases were reloaded and we were on our way to the field in fifteen minutes.

The truck was driven onto the field where the big C-54 stood waiting. In another quarter of an hour the panels were aboard and lashed securely to metal supports in the forepart of the passenger compartment. Captain Posey, the only passenger, waved jauntily as the doors swung shut. Enviously we watched the giant plane roll down the field, lift waveringly from the airstrip and swing off to the northwest. The altarpiece was on the last lap of an extraordinary journey. We wished George Stout could have been in on this.

The plane reached Brussels without mishap. The return of the great national treasure was celebrated throughout the country. Encouraged by the success of this first “token restitution,” Major La Farge directed that a similar gesture be made to France. At the Collecting Point Craig selected seventy-one masterpieces looted from French private collections. The group included Fragonard, Chardin, Lancret, Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals, and a large number of seventeenth century Dutch masters. Only examples of the highest quality were chosen.

Ham Coulter, the naval officer who worked with Craig at the “Bau,” was the emissary appointed to accompany the paintings to Paris. It was decided to return them by truck, inasmuch as it would have been impracticable to attempt shipping uncrated pictures by air. The convoy consisted of two trucks—one for the pictures, the other for extra gasoline. It was a hard two-day trip from Munich to Paris. Ham got through safely, but reported on his return that the roads had been extremely rough a good part of the way. He had delivered the pictures in Paris to the Musée du Jeu de Paume, the little museum which the Germans had used during the Occupation as the clearinghouse for their methodical plundering of the Jewish collections. His expedition had been marred by only one minor incident. When the paintings were being unloaded at the museum, one of the women attendants watching the operation noticed that some of the canvases were unframed. She had asked, “And where are the frames?” This was too much for Coulter. In perfect French, the courteous lieutenant told her precisely what she could do about the frames.

Shortly after the return of the Ghent altarpiece, Captain Posey was demobilized. His duties as MFA&A Officer at Third Army Headquarters in Munich were assumed by Captain Edwin Rae. I had not seen Rae since the early summer when he and Lieutenant Edith Standen had been assigned to assist me in inventorying the collections of the Berlin museums in the vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfurt. Edwin was a meticulous fellow, gentle but determined. Although by no means lacking in a sense of humor, he resented joking references to a fancied resemblance to Houdon’s well known portrait of Voltaire, and I didn’t blame him.