The Rape of Europa (13 page)

The “extermination of the nobility” was not such a simple matter. Many of the great families of Poland were related to those of Germany. They could not, therefore, exactly be considered
“Untermenschen.”
The SS and Gestapo constantly watched and interrogated them, punishing the slightest suspicion of resistance with imprisonment, but many in the upper echelons of the more aristocratic Wehrmacht often simply ignored Hitler’s harangues. This was particularly true in the Generalgouvernement, where Frank managed to keep Himmler at bay. As had been the custom in past wars, the Germans billeted themselves in the best apartments in Poland’s castles, forcing the occupants into lesser quarters or throwing them out altogether. Occasionally they could be helpful: officers taking over Rodka, the house of Jadwiga Potocki—who had returned triumphant from Warsaw with her mother-in-law’s jewels—warned her that the Russians would soon arrive, and urged the family to leave. In two horsedrawn carts the Potockis fled to Cracow, taking with them the jewels and numerous bundles which, they were horrified to find later, contained no other valuables: the servants, ordered to “pack up everything,” had brought only the children’s clothes, assuming that it would be a trip like any other. In Cracow they moved into the top floor of a family town house, the lower floors having been requisitioned as offices for the administration of the Generalgouvernement. Thomas Potocki, a small boy at the time, remembers spitting down on the helmets of the Nazi guards outside. There they existed, selling a bit of jewelry from time to time.

Desperate and frightened families such as this were at the mercy of all sorts of entrepreneurs. A man calling himself a Dutch diplomat convinced the Countess Radziwill to let him take a large quantity of jewelry to her cousins in the West. Alas, the “diplomat” sold most of it, but by a miracle, a few pieces, one of them a diamond-and-emerald tiara, were recovered after the war. With this the family, who escaped from Cracow in Swiss Red Cross trucks in 1945, was able to buy a house in London.

Another Potocki, Count Alfred, whose great palace at Lancut was only a few miles from the line separating the Russian and German Zones, managed much better. As in World War I, the palace was occupied by a constant stream of German generals and their staffs, including the military administrator of Poland, Field Marshal von Rundstedt. The Count, a godson of Kaiser Wilhelm I and a well-known member of international café society, had entertained von Ribbentrop at Lancut in 1935 (and remarked that his golfing style “lacked rhythm”). He was generally treated with respect by the Wehrmacht, but the Gestapo, always ready to pounce, twice took him off to be questioned about Resistance activities, which were indeed going on in various hidden corners of the estate. Their agents searched the family archives and inventoried the contents of the castle. Twenty-two works, among them a
Portrait of a Man
by Makkart, one of Hitler’s favorite artists, were later listed in a Nazi catalogue of “safeguarded” objects but never actually removed. Potocki attributed this to the intervention of Wehrmacht General von Metz, who had been billeted at Lancut.

Fear and hatred of the Red armies sometimes created bonds between the German occupiers and the Poles. After the Germans had taken Lvov from the Russians in 1941, the chief of the Nazi confiscation organization himself came to reassure Potocki that collections he had left there were intact, and the Count was driven to Lvov in a German military car to inspect damage to his estates. This was not pure altruism: testimony after the war revealed that Hitler himself had ordered that the Alfred Potocki collections should “remain in their place,” perhaps a result of the fact that Potocki’s mother had so charmed the Führer from afar, at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, that he had asked to meet her, a request she could hardly refuse.
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The ruins of Warsaw were still smoking when the SS and other Nazi agencies and individuals began zealously carrying out Hitler’s exhortation to “eliminate” Polish culture. While the museums, buildings, libraries, and palaces of the city clearly could be called “Polish,” much of their contents were patently not. Since Poland was no longer recognized as a nation, its collections were there for the taking. But with the experiences of Austria
and Czechoslovakia behind them, Hitler and Goering knew that the “safeguarding” of confiscated art works had to be carefully controlled. Goering quickly recognized the need to have his own man on the spot. Acting in his role as head of the Four-Year Economic Plan, which allowed the requisition and exploitation of whatever assets could be removed from conquered territory for the improvement of the Reich, Goering appointed the former Austrian art commissioner Kajetan Mühlmann Special Commissioner for the Protection of Works of Art in the Occupied Territories.

Governor General Hans Frank and Kajetan Mühlmann confer at Cracow Castle. (Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann)

Mühlmann was greatly pleased at this opportunity, his recent disagreements with the Gauleiter of Vienna and his dismissal by that gentleman in June 1939 having led to visions of combat duty. Upon hearing of the appointment Hitler apparently remarked: “Mühlmann—you are sending him there? I had to kick him out of Vienna … he did not want to let anything be taken out…. Beware that he does not carry everything to Vienna.”
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His job now was to inventory the thousands of works of art being jammed into repositories at the National Museum in Warsaw, and the Wawel in Cracow, classify them according to quality, and take the best to safe storage areas so that Hitler could decide what he wanted.

Mühlmann arrived on October 6, one day after the surrender, to find that much—such as the Veit Stoss altarpiece, as we have seen—had already been moved. Even worse, the ruins of the Royal Palace in Warsaw had become a sort of open bazaar for German officials. Governor General Frank himself, on his first tour of the castle with a large entourage, had not set the best example when he tore silver eagles off the canopy over a throne and pocketed them. Furniture, silver services, and other useful objects
were being sorted out for removal to the residences of high officials and their wives. The frantic efforts of Polish architects and curators, many working as volunteers, to repair bomb damage and protect the panelling and ceilings by means of a temporary roof were halted on October 18. In early November engineers drilled holes for dynamite charges all around the castle, and German police, using forced Jewish labor, began to tear out the interior fittings of the state rooms. The painted ceiling by Bacciarelli in the Audience Chamber was thrown down into the courtyard. By January only bare walls remained. But the Germans did not use their dynamite in 1940. Later they would find a better reason.

Other collections were faring no better. An eyewitness described the emptying of the Zacheta—the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts:

Today I was the witness of a scene particularly painful to me. Passing the Zacheta … I saw a long row of lorries standing outside. Workmen were shifting about some heavy objects on the pavement. Through the wide open windows I could see the golden glimmer of picture frames. Although I knew it was a very foolish thing to do, I went closer to see what was happening. Something was being thrown out through the window, something which shone with all the colours of the rainbow in the bright light of the sun. Those bits and pieces were pictures, there was my beloved
Barbara Radziwillowna
dropping in front of me. The workmen apathetically lifted those treasures of Polish art and threw them into the waiting lorries. Soon afterwards they were driving away to an unknown destination … it seemed like seeing old friends being murdered.
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Bringing all this under control was no easy assignment. An order from Frank’s office gave Mühlmann’s office sole authority for further “safeguarding” in the Generalgouvernement. Soon he was so busy he had to bring his half-brother Josef in to assist him. Josef, unfortunately, had to be fired when it was discovered that he was giving his mistress confiscated objects, but he was a great help for a time.

On October 19 a Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (Central Trustees Office, East) was set up in Berlin by Goering to organize the whole process. SS operatives, who had been in charge of “safeguarding” procedures since mid-September, did not appreciate the appearance of this agency and wrote furious letters to headquarters urging that objects of interest to the SS be immediately shipped to their own storage places in Germany. But on November 10 Himmler sent a long memo to all agencies ordering them to cooperate with Mühlmann. The SS obeyed, but made constant efforts to
monopolize the confiscation of valuables all through the rest of the occupation. These attempts were quashed at regular intervals by reissuance of Himmler’s decree and by sharp reminders by such luminaries as Rudolf Hess and Bormann of Hitler and Goering’s exclusive rights to all safeguarded objects.
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By the winter of 1940, with the help of a phalanx of distinguished German art historians, Mühlmann had gathered together the most important works in the Generalgouvernement, sequestered them in Cracow, and published an elegant catalogue, complete with photographs and the provenance of each object. Second-class works were simply stored, while third-class objects were made available to Frank’s interior decorators and architects for the refurbishment of offices and residences.

It was not long before Hitler’s art deputy arrived to have a look. Posse made an inspection trip in late November 1939; his report to Bormann gives us an excellent picture of Mühlmann’s operations and of his own adherence to the highest standards for Linz. It also makes clear his low opinion of the Polish collections, which would not fill many of the gaps in his wish list, and his assumption that the Führer’s eastern ambitions would not stop with Poland:

In Krakau and Warsaw I succeeded in visiting public and private collections as well as church property. The inspection confirmed my supposition that, except for the higher class works of art already known to us in Germany (e.g. the Veit Stoss altar and the panels by Hans von Kulmbach from the Marienkirche in Krakau, the Raphael, Leonardo and Rembrandt from the Czartoryski collection) and several works of the National Museum in Warsaw, there is not very much which could enlarge the German stock of great art. The Polish store of applied art is richer and more varied….

I should like to propose now that the three pictures of the Czartoryski collection … which are at present located in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, be reserved for the Art Museum in Linz….

I further beg to point out that together with the Lvov Museum, a series of beautiful drawings by Dürer and other German masters fell into Russian hands. Perhaps it will be possible later on to salvage for Germany the twenty-seven sheets by Dürer.
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The Czartoryski “Big Three” were indeed already in Berlin. Mühlmann had rushed them there in mid-October and presented them to Goering, who, in his capacity as Prime Minister of Prussia, put them in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum.
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Governor General Frank was unhappy at the loss of
“his” greatest masterpieces, and Mühlmann was ordered to bring them back so that Frank could hang them in his baronial apartments in the Wawel Castle, along with the Rembrandt
Portrait of Martin Soolmans
, from the Lazienski collection, given to him as a present by the Gestapo. Frank was new to collecting, and Mühlmann was later forced to reprimand him for hanging the delicate Leonardo over a radiator. Goering was furious about this loss; perhaps to appease him Mühlmann brought him a nice Watteau,
The Pretty Polish Girl
, also from the Lazienski collection. “For reasons of safety” the three Czartoryski pictures were returned to the Reich capital just before the Germans attacked Russia. By late 1942 they were on the road east again, this time to escape the increasingly heavy bombing of Berlin. When one considers the air-conditioned crates and armored escorts used to transport such sister paintings as the
Ginevra de Benci
and the
Mona Lisa
today, one can only marvel at the survival of the
Lady with the Ermine
, though Mühlmann did later testify that he always carried it himself on the train between Berlin and Cracow.

Mühlmann was soon able to fulfill Posse’s wish for control of the twenty-seven Dürer drawings, which he had been ordered by Frank and Goering to secure at the earliest opportunity. The drawings, removed in a distinctly illegal manner by Napoleon’s chief confiscator from the Albertina in Vienna in the early 1800s and sold to dealers, were considered by Hitler to be unequivocally part of the German patrimony. Only six days after the German attack on Russia in late June 1941, while combat was still raging in the area, Mühlmann went to Lvov and brought the Dürers back to Cracow. On Goering’s express orders he continued on to Berlin that same night and handed the drawings over to the Reichsmarschall at Carinhall. By the late afternoon they were in Hitler’s possession. These drawings were among the few works of art which he always kept at hand. He even took them with him to his Eastern Front field headquarters. In September 1941, visiting the HQ on other art business, Mühlmann mentioned to Hitler that he was worried about the drawings, as they were technically his responsibility. Hitler replied, “I have personally relieved you of this responsibility. Here … they are as safe as they would be in Cracow, and besides, I can see them more often.”
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