One of the seemingly great contradictions about the Nazi leadership during the Third Reich was how leaders who instituted such barbaric policies as the Holocaust, not to mention world war, could at the same time have passionate interest in the fine arts.
Of course, such a contradiction is not uncommon: Many of Europe's museums are stocked at least in part by the booty of war and conquest. But the Nazis took art looting to a whole new level, and indeed, sytemmatized and conflated the persecution of Jews and other victims with the theft of their possessions: No sooner would a prominent Jewish family be "resettled" to a concentration camp than officials would inspect their homes and remove possessions of value, particularly works of art.
Perhaps it's not entirely unexpected: Adolf Hitler was, after all, a failed art student. But for whatever reasons, the members of the Nazi leadership seemed to compete with each other as to who could collect the finest paintings, Not surprisingly, those in the highest positions -- Goebbels, Goring, and above all, Hitler -- had the best collections.
Looting Art During World War II
Like so many other of their crimes, the Nazis made art theft something of a science. Logs were kept of the known possessions of wealthy Jewish families. In the early years of the Third Reich, even before the mass deportations to the concentration camps had begun, looting was carried out with under a veil of commerce, fueled by economic necessity. Many Jews, unable to work in their former occupations, sold family possessions to get by. For art work, there was always a willing government official ready to pay 10 pfennigs on the mark. Or less. Later, once the mass deportations began, the possessions of Jewish families were simply stolen.
In either case, the paintings were available for sale first at bargain prices to high ranking Nazis. For example, under the German occupation of Paris, rooms in the Louvre's Jeu de Paume museum were set aside to display recently looted art to Nazi officials, who were allowed to purchase the art at deflated prices. While many of the paintings were destined for private collections (which in and of themselves, would rival the collections of most municipal museums), the paintings allocated to Hitler were intended for a different destination.
Hitler's Dream: The Linz Museum
Hitler intended to build a museum of art in his home town of Linz, Austria. The museum had been designed by architect Albert Speer, the Nazi architect who was later responsible for designing and maintaining some of the transportation and industrial infrastructure pertaining to slave labor. Speer was later convicted of war crimes in Nurenberg.
The contents of the proposed but never-built Linz Museum were to comprise the best collection of art in European history. And indeed, some of the art intended for the collection was bought legitimately, from willing sellers at fair prices. More was bought at deflated prices under pressure, or given as "gifts" under threat. And much of it was looted from private collections, from museums and even from churches in occupied countries.
For example, when Belgium was occupied, its famous fifteenth-century Altarpiece of Ghent was taken from its cathedral and stored for safekeeping in the town of Pau in the French Pyrenees. But the famed polyptych, considered one of the world's most important art treasures, had been specifically requested for the Linz Museum, so it was seized by the Nazis and stored in a salt mine, along with other paintings destined for Hitler's collection.
The Art in the Salt Mines
As the war continued, the Nazis made efforts to store the looted art work in places where it would be safe from bombs. Neuschwanstein Castle, in Bavaria, (the famous "Disney" castle) was one of the repositories. The castle, with its hundreds of rooms, was neither a military target, nor located near any reasonable bombing targets, and it was enormous. Hundreds of rooms were stuffed so full of paintings that the doors could barely be closed.
Other collections were stored in salt mines in the Austrian Alps. The salt mines were not only underground, but had stable temperatures and humidity, which made them an ideal storage place for the paintings. In Alt Aussee, Austria, more than 6,500 paintings were stored in one mine alone, one stacked against the other like so much cord wood -- including the Altarpiece of Ghent.
When it became clear that the Nazi's would lose the war, Hitler gave order to destroy the salt mines. Miners, perhaps motivated as much by the loss of their livelihoods as by their love of fine art, conspired with the Resistance operatives to save the mines by setting a series of small explosions of harmless bombs that made it impossible to get inside the mines to set up the larger bombs designed to bring down the mines and flood them.
As the Allied troops moved into Germany and Austria, they discovered the hidden repositories of art. The Allied forces sent in its dedicated Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Commission, a commission that had been set up specifically to protect Europe's cultural treasures from the ravages of war. The MFA&A had been traveling with the Allied Expeditionary forces since the first days of the invasion of Normandy. Now, they assisted with the removal of literally priceless artwork from the mines -- works by the greatest artists in western history -- and became responsible for protecting it from further damage, preventing theft, and for restoring it to rightful owners who could be identified and who were still alive.
As for Hitler's dream of an Art Museum in Linz: it died with him. But the story is not yet over. Today, thousands of paintings remain missing. But every once in a while, a masterwork long thought lost re-emerges and is sometimes claimed by and restored to the heirs of its rightful owners.
Sources
- James Rorimer: Survival: the Salvage and Protection of Art in War, Abelard press, 1950.
- de Jaeger, Charles: The Linz File:Hitler's Plunder of Europe's Art, John Wiley and Sons, 1981
- Edsel, Robert M.: Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Preface Publishing, 2009
Karen Berger - Karen Berger is the author of 15 books. Please click on her name to read her full bio.
