Smithsonian 02/08: Monumental Mission

One of my favorite WW2 movies is The Train, with Burt Lancaster and Jeanne Moreau from 1964. The private art loot of a Nazi Col. being moved out of France on trains and the citizens who stop it from happening~ more for the hate of the Nazi’s than the love of art and antiquities. As always, the true story is so much better.Harry Ettlinger sat shivering in the back of a truck bound from France to the Battle of the Bulge. A sergeant ran to the truck and said, “The following three guys get off the truck and come with me”. His name called, he got off and felt very lucky, and it was his 19^th birthday. The Army needed interpreters for the Nuremburg trials and Ettlinger spoke like a native. He was, one of the lucky German Jews who escaped with his parents in 1938, just before Kristallnacht or the Night of the Broken Glass, that night that made the Jews future clear under Hitler. His Nuremburg mission evaporated, without explanation, and he found himself assigned to the “Monuments Men”.

This group of 350 unsung heroes, a mixture of art historians, museum curators, professors and regular soldiers and sailors made up the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section. They had a simple task, find, secure and return millions of pieces, looted by the Nazis and hidden all over. The “Venus men”, as their scoffing comrades called them, learned to hustle , be sneaky, “appropriate” as needed~ in short become part pirate and part Robin Hood. Entire churches stained glass windows, alter pieces, bells, paintings, tapestries, ceramics, statues, coins, Torahs, entire libraries and even furniture were missing. The Versailles palace furniture was easy enough to find, Gen. Eisenhower’s staff was decorating with it. James Rorimer famously demanded it back and got it, thereby becoming the pattern, fearless and inventive for the monument men who followed him.

There are only 12 known survivors of the “Monument Men” and they are finally being honored and recognized, collectively having returned around 5 million cultural items between 1945 and 1951. The shame is the stories these few left tell are so inspiring, more is the pity for those who died with their stories. One, Kenneth Lindsay, tells of the moment the 18^th Dynasty “Painted Queen Nefertiti” is removed from her crate, some 3,000 years old, and “every man in the room fell in love with her”. One tells of the orphan room, the room he could not pass without shuddering. That room contained what the Nazis planned use to build their museum “on the Jewish Question”. Hundreds of Torahs, other religious items, mountains of archival material, and personal letters…”You knew what circumstances brought these thing to that room”. Another “Venus Man” Seymour Pomrenze, responsible for 2 million items of paper that found their way to their home countries, says, “There was something mournful about these volumes”….as if hope whispering, had been obliterated. Bernard Taper was left the job of finding what the German citizens had looted from the Nazis at the wars end. He often took to the countryside, disguised as a peasant and hiding behind a pipe that shrouded his identity, to root out those pieces. He still dreams of Raphael’s Portrait of a young Man that was never recovered. The painting is always in color, even though all he had was a small black and white photograph. He takes a long pause and says “I still think I should have found that d*** thing”.

We owe a retired Texas oilman a debt for it was he, Robert M. Edsel, who made it his mission to see these men honored. He has petitioned Congress to pass a resolution honoring their service, has written a book Rescuing Da Vinci and made a documentary The Rape of Europe. The philanthropist established the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art to safeguard artistic treasures during times of war. As one generation dies more art emerges from attics, Russia has confirmed items the nation “saved”, including the so-called Trojan Gold of King Piram. One hopes for Raphael’s young man to return, in all it’s color.

Peace as always and in all ways~sage

Black and White Photos courtesy of the Smithsonian Collection.Please click the link for a wonderful article and pictorial history of the work of these men.

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