The Rape of Europa (23 page)

Just who would be in charge of the French museum collections and what their fate might be in this fragmented situation was still an open question. Within the Wehrmacht command was re-created the very correct World War I art and monuments protection office known as the Kunstschutz, which Dagobert Frey had hoped to head in Poland. This was put under the command of Count Franz Wolff-Metternich, a distinguished art historian, who had most recently been Provincial Curator of Rhineland-Westphalia. The Count, descendant of the famous statesman of the same name so instrumental in the restructuring of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, was a Francophile with many relations in France. During preliminary interviews in the winter of 1939–1940 he had been led to believe that he would be in charge of the monuments of western Germany, and was surprised to find that his job in fact concerned those countries in western Europe to be placed under military government. He was to remain a civilian and be responsible not to local commanders but to the Supreme Command.

The protection of monuments and works of art was included in Wehrmacht directives, and the rules of The Hague Convention of 1907 regarding private property were to be observed by fighting forces. Metternich felt it was his duty to enforce these international regulations to the letter. In this spirit he and his staff immediately began to put historic buildings off limits to the billeting of troops and patrol others that had been taken over. Lists of protected structures were compiled. Château owners
were advised to close up valuable furniture in certain rooms, and efforts were begun to help local authorities move objects to safety and repair damage caused during the fighting, which was major in such cities as Louvain and Beauvais. German troops helped Belgian officials take down the stained glass windows of the Cathedral of St. Gudule in Brussels, and build a protective wall around the great Rubens
Descent from the Cross
in Antwerp. In France, Metternich was soon in touch with the Duke de Noailles, head of the Demeures Historiques, and Jacques Jaujard of the Direction des Musées.
¹²
Within days he and his assistants had inspected Chambord and Cheverny, both carefully guarded by German riflemen. The desperately worried custodians, reassured by these art-historian officers who spoke perfect French, were amazed to find that one, a Dr. Bunjes, had even been a student of Louvre sculpture curator Marcel Aubert.
¹³

But others had received instructions less compatible with international custom which to them were very specific. On June 30 Hitler had ordered that all objects of art, public, private, and especially Jewish-owned, should be “safeguarded.” In sending out the directive to the Wehrmacht, Supreme Commander Keitel explained that things were not being expropriated, but would be “transferred to our care as security for the peace negotiations.”
¹⁴
The responsibility for this project was entrusted to Ambassador Abetz by Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, who had apparently not forgotten that one of his own supposed ancestors, a very Prussian official who had been commissioned by Blücher to oversee the return of works looted from his country by Napoleon, had been outsmarted in the process by the director of the Louvre.
¹⁵

Abetz took up this task with quick if somewhat excessive enthusiasm. Having been in Hitler’s entourage at the fall of Warsaw, he expected no problems from the Army and arrogantly announced to them that the embassy had been “charged with the seizure of French works of art owned by the State and cities, in the museums of Paris and the provinces … and with the listing and seizure of works owned by Jews.”
¹⁶
The most valuable objects should be transferred to the embassy in the rue de Lille, for which task he required military transport.

But the Army had also received Hitler’s June 30 directive and had interpreted it quite differently. With equal dispatch the commander of the occupation forces had on July 15 issued his own orders stating that in order to insure the safety of the “safeguarded” works, nothing should be moved from its present location without specific permission from him. This document did not distinguish between Jewish-owned and other works.
¹⁷
The stage was now set for a major struggle. The high-handed actions of Abetz vis-à-vis the newly victorious Army were so surprising
that the Supreme Command telephoned von Ribbentrop on July 23 to check on the ambassador’s claims of authority, which were confirmed on August 3.
¹⁸

Abetz, his mandate clear, got to work right away. He was sent a Baron von Kunsberg, chief of a special commando unit assigned to the Foreign Minister, to assist with the seizures. Metternich and his colleagues were supposed to cooperate with this organization. Lists were to be made of all the works of art in France and “the Führer and the Minister of Foreign Affairs would decide if the objects remain in France or if they are to be transferred to Germany.”
¹⁹
The military command would be kept informed, and supply all transportation. It would all be terribly efficient. Two embassy officials were immediately sent to tour the repositories with Jacques Jaujard.

Neither the French nor the German military authorities knew that Dr. Otto Kümmel, director of the Berlin Museums, and several assistants had already been dispatched to Paris by personal order of Propaganda Minister Goebbels to do some fast research on just what would be brought back. Luckily the work was well under way. In 1939, after Hitler had repossessed the Rhineland, two art historians had begun this immense project and published a volume entitled
Memorandum and Lists of Art Looted by the French in the Rhineland in 1794.
Sworn to secrecy, they had toiled in the French museums and libraries, posing as researchers on far different subjects.
²⁰
They were now required to list all “works of art and valuable objects which since 1500 have been transferred to foreign ownership, either without our consent or by questionable legal transactions” from all of Germany. It must include books, manuscripts, maps, musical instruments, archives, military trophies, and weapons, in addition to the more usual painting, sculpture, and decorative arts.

The three-hundred-page list which was finally produced could, according to its authors, only be considered a very preliminary overview of everything that had been robbed from, or destroyed by, foreign wars in Germany for the last four hundred years. The inventory happened to include a Dürer
Self-Portrait
and several Rembrandts badly needed by Posse to fill his Linz gaps. It claimed collections taken from Alsatian aristocrats in the French Revolution, works “smuggled” out of Germany after 1919 by dealers, jewelry melted down in various wars, and “many things, not actually proven to be lost, whose absence is still to be deplored.” One section even gave an analysis of “French Looting Psychology,” and in an extraordinary example of rationalization, stated that German Jews resident in France, whose possessions had been sequestered and sold in France in World War I, were to be considered “as if they were German” for the purposes
of the report. A convenient wish list of works located in France and the Low Countries suitable for replacement of any irretrievably lost German ones would soon be prepared.

The authors modestly pointed out that they could only suggest what measures could be taken “against France, the principal culprit, and other countries who have fought against Germany and find themselves, or will find themselves, in our power.” At the end of the top secret report, of which only five typewritten copies were produced, Dr. Kümmel stated that “it is questionable, if the entire French patrimony will suffice to replace these losses” and that “the French can basically not object to the legitimacy of these claims.”
²¹

This devastating document, so illustrative of Nazi planning, was in fact only one more barrage in a series of claims, counterclaims, and chauvinist insults which had been exchanged by France and Germany since the days of Napoleon. Until 1940 Napoleon was the unquestioned record holder in the field of carrying off confiscated art. Previous conquerors had simply taken things away which were later retrieved or not, as the case might be, in subsequent conflicts. Napoleon complicated this traditional process by making the defeated agree to his confiscations in the humiliating peace treaties they were required to sign.

Under the supervision of Baron Vivant Denon, who could be termed Napoleon’s chief curator, collections blossomed in almost every field and were installed in the Palace of the Louvre. The new acquisitions, which included such familiar gems as Rubens’s
Descent from the Cross
from Antwerp, the Ghent altarpiece, Veronese’s enormous
Wedding at Cana
, and the horses from San Marco in Venice, were paraded before the Paris populace in triumphal processions. Before long the French had convinced themselves that only they were worthy to preserve the great art of mankind, and when, after Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington insisted on the return of this loot, there were riots around the Louvre and the Prussians (von Ribbentrop was quite right) were only able to retrieve a portion of their belongings, and that by a show of force.

Thanks to all the commotion, and considerable stalling on the part of Denon, much was left behind in French hands. Other quantities went back to the wrong places, as fast deals were made by some of the noble heads of state. A large number of pictures from Kassel which had formed part of the Empress Josephine’s private collection were sold to the Czar instead of going home, and the Crown Prince of Bavaria bought a group of sculptures taken from Rome for the Glyphtothek in Munich. (The
Wedding at Cana
was left in Paris because it was too big to move back to Italy.) Nor, despite their altruism, did the British mention such artifacts as the Rosetta
Stone, which they had captured from the French as the latter were shipping it from Egypt to the Louvre.

The Germans had never given up on their missing items, nor had the more extreme elements in France given up the idea of reconstituting the Napoleonic collections. Indeed, during the First World War, the French had drawn up lists remarkably similar to the Kümmel Report, which included all the French works in Germany, as well as such major items as Dürer’s
Four Apostles
from Munich, which were to be claimed as “reparations.” The claims were accompanied by negative comments on the artistic taste of the Germans. In the end, these grandiose claims were much reduced and the only major works to change hands after the Treaty of Versailles were two panels from the Ghent altarpiece, which Berlin had bought quite legitimately, and the wings of the Bouts
Triptych of the Last Supper
in Louvain, also legally owned by Berlin and Munich. The lists of claims once more gathered dust. But no one forgot.
²²

None of these documents, lists, or decrees was shared with Count Metternich. He was told of Baron von Kunsberg’s appointment by one of Dr. Kümmel’s assistants. Outraged, he determined to resist. It was not that Metternich entirely disapproved of the principle of retrieving certain works which had once belonged to Germany. He thought at first that Kümmel had been sent solely for the purpose of drawing up a list to be used “at the Peace Conference by a full agreement between peoples with equal rights.” After the war he wrote that he “certainly would have liked to see the works of art which once adorned German churches and collections returned to Germany in a legal way. But I had not so much a one sided claim in mind as an exchange of works of art with the aim of improving by the addition of a few first rate works, German art, which was badly represented in French national museums.”
²³

To Metternich the honor of the Army was at stake. Through channels he sent a report to Chief of Staff von Brauchitsch in Berlin stating that “certain agencies” were planning “special actions” to remove French-owned works of art without the knowledge and authorization of the military commander in France, which was a violation of Hitler’s order to safeguard them. Von Brauchitsch replied that lists could be made, but that nothing was to be taken to Germany except by explicit permission of the Führer. Unaware of this, Abetz had met with Dr. Kümmel on August 12. Here it was proposed that a large number of works from Chambord be brought to Paris as they were “in danger of being damaged.” This would include not only things “robbed” from Germany but some nineteenth-century works with no relation to past conflicts. The next day Abetz informed Metternich
of this plan, but when he could produce no written order from the Führer, the Army refused to move anything.

The ambassador did not give up. The next week he tried to have twenty-five works moved to Paris. Again von Brauchitsch supported Metternich. Meanwhile, Louvre officials were compiling the desired lists of what was in occupied France with the greatest care, the whole process, they complained, being slowed down by the terrible difficulties imposed by the division of the country into two zones. Abetz and von Kunsberg got so frustrated that they sent out assistants who forced curators at the depots to open cases at gunpoint, and tore the incomplete lists from files at the office of the Direction des Musées. This, the indefatigable Metternich again reported, “led the French to believe that they had something other than protection in mind.” Accusations of “malicious” delaying followed from Abetz. Metternich replied that Abetz not only had damaged the image of the German Army in France but had provoked reports in the American press referring to “German Art Looting.” The lists finally went to Berlin on August 31, but without the support of the Army nothing could move. For the time being, the repositories remained undisturbed, under Wehrmacht guard. No one wanted to challenge an army that might soon be sent to conquer Britain.
²⁴