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058-071 War and Cultural Property.Qxd WAR AND CULTURAL PROPERTY ments and assessing the looting of art by the Nazis in World War II. He also participated in MODERATOR: what probably is the only case of insubordina- tion from an occupying army. This insubordi- HECTOR FELICIANO, Author, “The Lost nation was known as the Wiesbaden Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the Manifesto, by a group of U.S. Army officers World’s Greatest Works of Art” who protested the eventual transfer of art from German museums to American museums. PANELISTS: War and Cultural Property War PARKHURST: What follows will be an KONSTANTIN AKINSHA, Author, abbreviated recounting of a World War II “Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of episode verging on the “insubordination” Europe’s Art Treasures” referred to by the moderator in his introduc- tion. Its culminating event, the drafting of a ELIZABETH BECKER, Pentagon letter of protest, took place on November 7, Correspondent, The New York Times; Author, 1945, within an art-collecting depot of the “When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section Khmer Rouge Revolution” (MFA&A) of the United States Military Government. The letter was produced and CHARLES PARKHURST, Retired Art signed by Monuments officers gathered in the Historian, Former U.S. Army Officer, Landesmuseum at Wiesbaden, which at the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives time served as a collecting point for retrieved Division, Allied Military Government art. The only signed copy of the letter was sent to the head office of MFA&A at General PETER MCCLOSKEY, Office of the Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters, called Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal SHAEF. for Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands I shall begin by reading an excerpt from what FELICIANO: In any given country, in times I believe was the first notice of this matter by of peace, cultural property can be legally the press, printed in The New Yorker for bought, sold, or even looted. It can be shown November 17, 1945, as part of a “Letter from and admired and serve as an element of the Rhineland,” from its correspondent, national identity. ‘Genet,’ the pen name of Janet Flanner, who wrote: But in times of war, cultural property can be destroyed, disfigured and looted. This destruc- “In Frankfurt-am-Main, there is an tion and loot can live on, either randomly or important relic of a badly damaged prin- systematically. Cultural property or patrimony cipal art museum—three now-ironic is almost always victim to war, and it will nat- words are carved above its portico: urally be one-sided because of what it repre- Wahr/Schön/Gut. Wiesbaden, Marburg sents or who it represents, whether it applies and Frankfurt are the Rhineland’s three to Nazi loot, to Soviet loot, to Cambodia, and most important centers for our Army’s to Yugoslavia. Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives sub- commission, whose war-and-peace duty it I will now give the microphone to Charles has been to save beauty from destruction, Parkhurst, who was a U.S. Navy officer who and disinterestedly to guard art works was in charge of seizing and protecting monu- until they have been returned to their cor- 58 Who Owns Culture? War and Cultural Property War rect owner, whether the owner is SHAEF (plus a dose of youthful idealism)— Germany or looted Poland or France. most of us understood to be our charge. “A couple of days ago, the monuments Unofficial art rescue as an activity within the men in Wiesbaden received official word American forces had taken place in to ship from their depository to the Normandy, after the landings. I mention only United States four hundred of its finest Corporal John Skilton’s personal efforts to sal- German pictures. This export project, vage damaged calvaires along the road through casually suggested by American officials at Brittany as he advanced. After the Rhine Potsdam, perhaps as a well-meaning crossing, officers George Stout, Walker attempt to keep the pictures warm this Hancock, Sheldon Keck, Walter winter in the steam-heated United States, Huchthausen, and a few others, during com- is already regarded in liberated Europe as bat, saved what art they could from under the shockingly similar to the practice of the tracks of war through Northern Germany. As Einsatzstab Rosenberg, or Minister of possible, they returned it whence it came, or Nazi Kultur Rosenberg’s Foreign Art Loot to improvised safe havens. By the time I Bureau. arrived in Europe in 1945, after naval duty at sea as a gunnery officer, the battle in Germany “It has been precisely the task of our mon- was over, the MFA&A was a reality, and two uments men to undo what we Americans or three Central Collecting Points were in had disdained Rosenberg and the Nazis operation. I was indoctrinated at SHAEF and for doing, and what it was supposedly our sent to assist Lieutenant James Rorimer, who policy never to imitate. Of the many had been on the job early, and had already errors in occupation we have committed compiled much information through interro- in Germany, nabbing German art à la gation; scouted out “the lay of the land” in the Nazi will most certainly make the empti- American Zone, and made plans for that area ness of the battered museum’s slogan— before many of us had arrived. Corporal ‘the True, the Beautiful, the Good’—as Skilton had been his assistant, but now had applicable to us as it is to the citizens of gone to Würzburg where he almost single- Frankfurt.” handedly saved the Residenz Palace and its glorious Tiepolo frescoes from destruction. A more complete story is told by Lynn H. Nicholas, in “The Rape of Europa” (Knopf, Rorimer and I were to work largely in south- New York, 1994), a splendidly researched west Germany, where we pinpointed 1,036 art account of the fate of Europe’s treasures in the repositories. At each repository, as needed, we Third Reich and the Second World War, with provided for local security, listed the contents, unsparing details in two final chapters about and noted available information about owner- those things of which I shall speak here. First, I ship. Subsequently, personnel from one of our shall provide some background for what Janet Central Collecting Points retrieved the art for Flanner and the MFA&A officers were in a flap further research and eventual restitution to about, then read to you the document known rightful owners, or we shipped it back directly as the “Wiesbaden Manifesto,” an instrument to the country of ownership. Among these devised by monuments officers to protest repositories was the castle of Neuschwanstein, orders that they, like Flanner, viewed as wrong- where had been found all the records of headed and venal, and contrary to what—by Hitler’s art-looting task force, the Einsatzstab reason of professional training, instinct, and Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). In this site, indoctrination by our superior officers at also, was a vast amount of art seized by ERR 59 National Arts Journalism Program from Jewish collections in Paris, for the repa- picious of the motivation for the order. These triation of which a special task force was creat- pictures, it seemed to us, fitted nicely into the ed under Captain Edward Adams. Its careful collections of the National Gallery of Art, work over the better part of a year was to whose curators had compiled earlier lists for identify, pack, and ship to Paris, 49 freight the Roberts Commission, the membership of cars chock-a-block with art. which included several officers of the Gallery. But works of art on these first lists were drawn All this labor was now being put at risk, from all over Germany. When it was explained wrongly, we believed. The Nazis had taken art by our officers (hoping to delay matters) that War and Cultural Property War as “spoils” or “loot,” which we now sought to it was not feasible to locate and transport such process for restitution to rightful owners or widely scattered objects to Wiesbaden, the trustees. But some of us feared that other commission quickly substituted a list of 202 objectives for our labor might lie hidden from paintings, almost entirely from the Kaiser us. And so an alarm sounded on or about Friedrich Museum in Berlin. By that time November 5, 1945, when an uncalled-for these paintings had been moved into the notion of protective custody was implied in a Wiesbaden collecting point. cable received by Captain Walter Farmer at Wiesbaden, presumably from the American Although, indeed, this cabled order led some Commission for the Protection and Salvage of of us to question motivation, suspicion is not Artistic and Historic Monuments in War proof; it is not even evidence. Nevertheless, it Areas, at Washington (also known as the made us wary. The “operation” that ensued was Roberts Commission). The cable read: bitingly encoded by one of us as “Westward “Higher headquarters desires that immediate Ho, Watteau!”, and we immediately began our preparations be made for prompt shipment to protest. It was November 7, 1945. the UNITEK [US] of a selection of at least two zero zero German works of art of greatest Not all officers could get to Wiesbaden on importance. Most of these are now in Art short notice, but of the 25 who did, all but Collecting Point Wiesbaden. Selections will be one signed the protest, which was written then made by personnel from Headquarters and there by one of us, a gifted writer, European Theater who will assist in packing Captain E. Parker (Bill) Lesley, and signed as and shipment by motor transport to Bremen.” drafted, with only a short prudential clause (Nicholas, p.
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