Stealing the Mystic Lamb (21 page)

One incident particularly raised German hackles. In the autumn of 1914, the Russian army seized and displaced the contents of the Ossolinski Museum in Lemberg, bringing its treasures to Saint Petersburg. This museum was on the recently won Russian side of the frontier with the German Empire. Russians claimed to have removed the art in order to protect it from future conflict. Germans called it plunder. The numbers of objects confiscated from that one museum were staggering:

These Polish treasures were never returned.

The majority opinion at this time was that art merited better protection from the damages of war than did human beings. In this discussion the French and Belgians declared that no historical building would be endangered by their soldiery, even if the enemy were concealed within or behind it, irrespective of military advantage or loss of life. Through their writings, they competed for the role of protector of cultural artistic heritage during the First World War.

In an issue of the respected art journal
Die Kunst
, scholar Georg Swarzenski, the director of the Frankfurt Museum of Art who would
later direct the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1939, when he escaped Nazi Germany, until 1957, wrote:

It sounded good, but in the heat of the war, would German actions match the high-minded banter in the press and in academic journals? All wars involve casualties, whether intentional or not. But only in rare cases had there been incidental battle damage to art before the First World War. During the Medici reclamation of Florence in 1512, Michelangelo had frantically gathered mattresses to buttress the wonderful frescoes of San Miniato al Monte, which were put at risk by the vibrations from a cannon placed in the church bell tower to shower Florence with shells. The Akropolis in Athens was damaged in an explosion from a Venetian bombardment in 1687, aggravated by the fact that the occupying Ottoman forces used the Parthenon as a powder magazine. Notable exceptions aside, historical monuments had not suffered accidental subsidiary damage in past wars. Art was either targeted for destruction, looted, or left intact.

This war, however, was different. Advances in military capability presented new threats to monuments and historic buildings. The firepower involved, the use of airplanes, and the skirmishes throughout Europe’s landscape, not restricted to open battlefields and besieged city walls, meant that historical buildings were commandeered by soldiers, and errant
bombs and artillery would cause unintended cultural casualties. An early example in the Great War was the 1914 destruction of the Belgian city of Louvain, including its richly endowed university library.

From 25 to 30 August 1914, the small city that sat between Brussels and Liège was almost completely destroyed. The tragedy of the situation was that Louvain had surrendered to the German First Army on August 19. The city was intact, and peaceably accepted the German occupation for six days, before the German army was attacked by a Belgian relief force that had come from Antwerp, just outside the city. The army units withdrew into Louvain, causing a panic among the other soldiers in the city, who fell victim to the rumor that the Allies were launching a major attack. When the Germans realized that this was not the case, the occupying leaders convinced themselves that the confusion of their own soldiers had been sown by local citizens. In reprisal, the Germans looted and burned Louvain for five days. Hundreds of citizens were executed. The University of Louvain’s library of ancient manuscripts, the cathedral of Saint Pierre, and more than one-fifth of the buildings in the city were destroyed. The German army saw the ravaging of Louvain as a useful tool to intimidate the rest of Belgium into quick submission.

This incident horrified the world, igniting the very fears that so much righteous preservationist dialogue had sought to quell. International headlines unified the general public against German barbarism and sent dread of another Napoleonic art earthquake coursing throughout the rest of Europe.

To excuse the destruction of the library at Louvain,
Kunstchronik
, another internationally read German art journal, wrote: “Implicit confidence may be placed in our Army Command, which will never forget its duty to civilization even in the heat of battle. Yet even these duties have their limits. All possible sacrifices must be made for the preservation of precious legacies of the past. But where the whole is at stake, their protection cannot be guaranteed.” The First World War consumed one-third of the population of Europe. When the strategies of generals paid little heed to the lives of soldiers, it reads as ironic that so much ink was spilt in demanding
the protection of artworks. And yet art was seen as the eternal heritage of any civilization. It had outlived, would outlive, must outlive every human who played a part in the war.

In the first years of the Great War, the theory held that war was a matter of weapons and armies and that monuments and artworks should be protected from conflict. Article 27 of the 1907 Hague Convention declares:

As the war continued, however, the hopeful ideology of preservation, which proved increasingly difficult to assure, fell by the wayside. In the heat of battle, contingencies arose as monuments fell. Louvain was only the first victim.

At the outset of the war, despite the preservationist dialogue in art publications, there was a justified fear that the German army was willing to destroy art and monuments if they stood to gain strategically. In these early days of the war, the rules of engagement, if any rules were to be actually implemented, were as yet unknown. But the German army had looted not only in Louvain but also in Malines, setting an initial standard of destruction despite their publications to the contrary.

When the first bullets of the First World War cut through the air, the twelve panels of
The Ghent Altarpiece
were scattered. But
The Lamb
’s wild ride had just begun.

When Germany invaded Belgium, the officials of Ghent and Brussels feared that their respective panels from
The Lamb
would become targets.
After all, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin already had the wings, thanks to the nocturnal opportunism of Vicar-General Le Surre and subsequent sales. It was an easy step for the German imperialists to seize the panels still in Belgium and reunite one of the world’s greatest masterpieces in Berlin.

An unlikely hero stepped forward to protect the altarpiece during the Great War: Canon Gabriel van den Gheyn of Saint Bavo Cathedral. In addition to his ecclesiastical duties, Canon van den Gheyn was custodian of the cathedral treasures. This suited him well, as his true passion was archaeology. When asked, he described himself as an archaeologist and historian first, a cathedral canon second.

Gabriel van den Gheyn had a boyish face, accentuated by the close-cropped haircut smoothed flat on either side of a central part that gave him an air of a local newspaper boy hiding inside a corpulent body. His infectious enthusiasm for history, art, and, in particular, Catholic mysticism shone through, despite the gently downward-sloping eyes of a man sadder and wiser than his age suggested. The young canon would prove to be a central figure in the story of
The Ghent Altarpiece
in both world wars and in the infamous theft of one panel in 1934. But for the time being, the greatest worry was for the safety of the altarpiece in the face of the fast-approaching German army at the start of the First World War.

With genuine concerns about the safety of the central panels of the altarpiece, Canon van den Gheyn met with the bishop and the burgomaster, or principal magistrate, of Ghent to decide on a plan. Portly, rose-cheeked, almost Rubenesque, Burgomaster Baron Emile Braun was given the affectionate nickname
Miele Zoetekoeke
, “sweet cake,” by his constituents. Emile-Jan Seghers was the twenty-sixth bishop of the diocese of Ghent. Wise and wily, the bishop was willing to hear out the canon’s plan, even to risk death to protect the treasures of his church. To do nothing but wait for the German army to arrive was unacceptable. The three men determined
that
The Lamb
should be smuggled out of Ghent and hidden until the war ended.

But time was short. The German advance had been so rapid, the army would be on them any day. There was also the fear of German repercussions upon the discovery that the trophy of the city of Ghent had been denied them. It was so certain that the Germans would resort to torture and wanton destruction in retaliation for having been denied the treasure they sought that Burgomaster Braun refused to take any action. Better to hand over
The Lamb
intact and appease the German dragon than risk retributive death and destruction by attempting to hide it. Bishop Seghers was torn. Only Canon van den Gheyn firmly believed that
The Lamb
could, and must, be saved.

There were patriotic and symbolic reasons to preserve the Belgian national treasure, beyond any artistic interest.
The Lamb
had long been a symbol of the highest artistic achievement of Belgian culture, the rock of their patrimony. In times of war, such a treasure became a battle standard.
The Lamb
was for Belgium what Michelangelo’s
David
might be for Italy, Delacroix’s
Liberty Leading the People
for France, the Brandenburg Gates for Germany. Should it fall into enemy hands, the impotence of the country, unable to defend it, would be brought to the fore. The flag would be gone.

The canon believed that
The Lamb
must be defended. And what he lacked in might, he made up for in cunning. He convinced Bishop Seghers to agree, in secret, to at least passively aide him in the hiding of
The Lamb
. The condition was that the bishop should never know any details about it, as he would certainly be the first one questioned.

With the Burgomaster of Ghent bowing out of operations, the canon then turned to a Belgian cabinet minister, whose name has remained secret. The minister agreed that
The Lamb
should be protected, but what could he do? It was too late and too dangerous to have it shipped abroad.

The canon had a plan. During lunch hour, when the cathedral was closed, he and four Ghent residents took the panels from the archives of Saint Bavo into the Episcopal Palace, which adjoined. The names of these
four friends, whose help was so essential, have not been preserved—wartime heroism is often cloaked in anonymity. Because of the turbulence of the times, fear and confusion at the impending German occupation, and the panels’ having been kept in the archive, several days passed before any of the cathedral staff noticed that
The Lamb
was missing. There was a brief panic among the staff, who feared that it had been looted already. The canon assured them that
The Lamb
was safe, and invented the white lie that it had been taken abroad for safekeeping. This was designed to protect his staff against interrogation.

How to move the altarpiece from the Episcopal Palace out of town? The canon and his colleagues prepared four large wooden cases in which to transport the altarpiece. The cases had to be brought to the palace in pieces and assembled there, so as not to arouse suspicion. The difficulty in hiding cases large enough to fit
The Lamb
, even subdivided into more portable panels, cannot be exaggerated. They must have felt the eyes of the city upon them. If anyone saw the cases being brought to the bishop’s residence, they would have guessed that
The Lamb
was inside, and the operation would have been blown. Possible German collaborators lurked everywhere.

By night in the Episcopal Palace, against the glow of lamplight, they cleaned
The Lamb
of dust and moisture, wrapped it in blankets, and sealed it inside the wooden cases. But how could they move four enormous cases containing a painting the size of a barn wall and the weight of an elephant? The canon had an idea.