Stealing the Mystic Lamb (33 page)

Rosenberg had initially employed art historians in the ERR to compile lists of important monuments. These same art historians were now charged with overseeing the confiscation of artworks and documents, sometimes shamelessly out in the open, sometimes under the thinly veiled excuse of protecting the art from the turmoil and damages of war.

Hitler’s and Göring’s personal accumulation, through their own special agents, made even Alfred Rosenberg uneasy. When Hitler or Göring
wanted one of the confiscated artworks, it would for all intents and purposes disappear. Rosenberg began to insist that members of his staff obtain receipts from the agents of Hitler and Göring for any seized artworks that they, in turn, confiscated from the Einsatzstab Rosenberg.

In France alone, from 1940 to 1944, twenty-nine shipments of art were brought to Germany in 137 freight cars packed with 4,174 crates of art. And in a report dated 3 October 1942, Alfred Rosenberg reported to Hitler that, to date, he had overseen the confiscation and shipping to Germany of 40,000 tons of fine furniture.

The full extent of the Nazi art looting may never be known, but its spectacular breadth is indicated by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg inventories. As early as 20 March 1941, Rosenberg penned a cheerful, chatty report to the führer describing his successful looting of Paris, particularly the belongings of a who’s who of leading Jewish art dealers.

Two years later, in April 1943, the inventory had grown to include 9,455 artworks. On 16 April 1943 Rosenberg sent Hitler another telling letter, which accompanied albums of photographs of stolen art destined for the Führermuseum at Linz.

It would be the first of many albums created by the ERR. The official Rosenberg report, as of 15 July 1944, consisted of thirty-nine typed volumes, including 2,500 photographs, documenting a total of 21,903 looted artworks. These included:

This inventory did not include works confiscated by Hitler and Göring, which had been appropriated from the ERR.

Frequently Göring and Hitler sought the same works of art. Although the ERR had been established in a directive by Hitler, it was unofficially commandeered by Göring and used as a personal tool. Officially Göring had to defer to Hitler, but he showed a dexterous sleight of hand, particularly in Paris, siphoning off the cream of the looted collections and sending the rest back to Berlin. Confiscated artworks were shown first to Göring, who decided what he would take and then what would be sent on to Hitler or stored.

In an order from Göring that dates 5 November 1940, the ERR would be permitted to seize all “ownerless” artworks—those belonging to Jewish families (since Jews were not considered citizens, their property was ceded to the state). Göring would personally examine the works confiscated. Before this date, these responsibilities had fallen to the German military commander in chief in France and the German embassy in Paris. With this order, Göring had wrested power from the armed forces and placed himself as a filter between the stolen art and Hitler. Perhaps in direct reaction, thirteen days later Hitler issued an order that all confiscated works were to be sent directly to Germany and placed at his disposal. This tug-of-war between Hitler and Göring over the choicest loot would continue throughout the war.

The Allied report on the ERR, formulated after the war on 15 August 1945 at one of the major stolen art depots, Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, explained that the important operations of the ERR were dominated by Göring. His control of the fruits of the ERR’s labors was in formal contradiction to Hitler’s order of 18 November 1940, and for the
next two years the ERR was Göring’s tool. Rosenberg, while feeling obliged to stick to Hitler’s orders, was not a strong enough political figure to say no to Göring. Göring was further aided by his control of the Luftwaffe, which could supply the ERR with much-needed security and transportation supplies that were hard to come by through over-the-table bureaucratic means.

Göring’s mobility and wiles gave him the upper hand over Hitler, who watched, stewed, and relayed communications by messenger from Berlin. In fact, Göring visited the Paris confiscated art collection point, the Jeu de Paume Museum, on twenty occasions between 1940 and 1942, each time giving only forty-eight hours’ notice of his arrival. These visits had no strategic military value. They were solely for him to select looted art for his personal collection.

Hitler played his cards close to his chest, with regard to his Linz Führermuseum and the seizure of artworks from across conquered Europe. In 1940 the extent of Hitler’s plans for art confiscation was unknown to many in the military. Even high-up officials in the army, such as Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, the art protection deputy for the chief of military administration in occupied France, did not know of the plan or of the false façade that the Art Protection Division represented. The following is an excerpt from Wolff-Metternich’s written account:

Count Wolff-Metternich was unaware of the existence of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, with its mission of stealing art and bringing it to Berlin.

He was one of a small group of Germans to emerge from the smoke and mist of Nazi art looting as a hero. A professor at University of Bonn with a passion for Renaissance architecture of the Rhineland (northwestern Germany), Wolff-Metternich was an internationally renowned and respected architectural historian, an aristocrat with roots in the Prussia of Emperor Frederick Wilhelm. He rose to become head of the Kunstchutz, Germany’s cultural conservation program that had been established during the First World War as a military art protection unit. The Kunstchutz was reestablished in 1940 as a branch of the Nazi occupational government in Belgium and France. Placing Wolff-Metternich at its helm would lend a sense of legitimacy and good intention to the Nazi occupation.

According to Jacques Jaujard, Wolff-Metternich confronted the Nazi ambassador to Paris, Otto Abetz, after the ambassador ordered the seizure of artworks from the collections of fifteen major art dealers in Paris, ostensibly for “safeguarding” in 1941. Wolff-Metternich was a staunch adherent to the Hague Convention’s protection of cultural property during war. He would write: “The protection of cultural material is
an undisputed obligation which is equally binding on any European nation at war. I could imagine no better way of serving my own country than by making myself responsible for the proper observation of this principle.” While others made similar such statements, Wolff-Metternich was one of the few whose actions matched the rhetoric. Wolff-Metternich intervened above his rank in approaching the ambassador, with the result that the German military prevented the embassy from commandeering any other works of art from French citizens. It was be a brief triumph, but one that showed Wolff-Metternich to be an honorable man who thwarted Hitler’s desires, although he was acting before Hitler had made the true extent of his desires clear. For the first years of the war, Hitler did not state his plans overtly but rather played his special divisions against his army in order to steal what he wanted to steal, beneath the veneer of honorable policies enforced by the army. Wolff-Metternich’s actions made a strong impression on the helpless Jaujard, who later told Monuments officer Lieutenant James Rorimer that Wolff-Metternich had “risked his position, maybe even his life.”

Count Wolff-Metternich finally received an order from the führer, near the end of 1940, stating that the Einsatzstab was free to act by direct command of Hitler himself and was outside the jurisdiction of military administration. Thoroughly dismayed by the situation, Wolff-Metternich made one final effort, giving perhaps too much benefit of the doubt to the Nazi officials. He met with Göring in Paris in February 1941. Of this, he wrote:

Officially, Göring’s control of the ERR ended with a directive from Hitler, expressed in a letter from Rosenberg dated 18 June 1942. Rosenberg explained to Göring that it would no longer be possible for the ERR to make confiscated artworks available for Göring’s personal collection. Had Hitler realized what was happening? In spite of this letter, the ERR director in France, Colonel Baron Kurt von Behr, continued to supply Göring with looted art, although Göring no longer made visits to Paris to select for himself.

Von Behr was actually not a colonel—he had no official position beyond, incongruous as it may seem, being the head of the local branch of the Red Cross in occupied Paris. He insisted on being addressed as colonel, though he did not even possess a proper uniform. He decorated his Red Cross uniform with a swastika, making it look something like an SS officer’s garb. A man with a glass eye, prominent cheekbones, and the nervous habit of tucking his thumbs beneath his fisted fingers, von Behr was eventually given the position of head of the Dienststelle Westen (Western Division) of the ERR, in charge of the Nazi looting operation in France, headquartered at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. The Jeu de Paume, a storehouse of French art looted by the Nazis, was also a place where Nazi officials stole the art from one another, snatching what treasures they could before a more senior officer got there. It was not until von Behr was finally removed from office on 21 April 1943 that the ERR ceased to feed Göring.

During his time as ERR puppet master, Göring selected approximately seven hundred masterpieces for his personal collection, far more than any of the world’s top museums could boast.