Stealing the Mystic Lamb (34 page)

The many stories of Second World War art theft and recovery, stories of individual and collective heroism, have filled books by themselves. Suffice to say that Ghent had reason to fear the stripping of its cultural heritage by more than one ravenous Nazi.

Jacques Jaujard was desperate to prevent the Nazi seizure of the treasures stored at Chateau de Pau. In June 1942, he obtained a written guarantee from the Germans that the art in Chateau de Pau would not be touched. This guarantee, confirmed by the Vichy Ministry of Fine Arts, specifically cited
The Lamb
. A clause ensured that it could not be moved from the chateau without three signatures: those of Jaujard, the mayor of Ghent, and Count Wolff-Metternich. Jaujard had done his conscientious best to preserve the treasures under his guard. But, as with so many Nazi promises, this too proved hollow.

On 3 August 1942, only two months later, a dismayed Jaujard learned that
The Lamb
had been seized by Dr. Ernst Buchner, director of the Bavarian state museums, and taken to Paris. Buchner, along with several officers, had arrived in Pau by truck. He demanded to be given
The Lamb
. The curator on duty stalled, insisting that he receive a confirmation telegram. He sent a message to Jaujard, but it never made it through the central switchboard at Vichy. Soon after Buchner arrived, so did an official yellow telegram from the Vichy Ministry, signed by Pierre Laval, head of the Nazi-controlled Vichy government in the south of France, requesting that the seventeen crates containing
The Lamb
be given to Buchner. The curator had no choice.

Soon after this incident, Belgian officials asked Jaujard at the Louvre if they might visit Pau to inspect
The Lamb
. When they learned of what had happened, they were outraged. Jaujard registered an official complaint with the Vichy government, but that was all he could do. Count Wolff-Metternich himself expressed his indignation and was fired from his post for doing so. At the time, no one knew who had given the orders for the removal of the painting.

It turned out that Dr. Martin Konrad, a professor in Berlin who had published three works on van Eyck, had written a letter in September 1941 to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo, suggesting that
The Ghent Altarpiece
be moved to Berlin for “safekeeping” and “analysis.”
With Himmler’s approval, Konrad had driven to Pau and then to Paris, only to be rebuffed twice by Wolff-Metternich. Himmler’s interest in the altarpiece was more mystical than art historical. He believed not only that
The Ghent Altarpiece
was a prime example of Germanic/Nordic and therefore Aryan art, but also that it might contain occult elements, which fascinated him and warranted study.

News of the Nazi art looting drifted to the Allies in the form of rumors and sporadic shards of evidence. It would not be until the Allied offensive, which cut a swath through Europe, that the true extent of the looting was recognized. In anticipation of the Allied invasion, and based on the evidence that had come his way, General Eisenhower issued a statement to the Allied army during the summer of 1944, regarding the protection of art treasures: “Shortly we will be fighting our way across the continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization. Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible.” Eisenhower’s statement was a historical first. At no other time had an army entered a war with the expressly stated intention of avoiding damage to, and proactively seeking the preservation of, cultural monuments and artworks.

Early in the war the British recognized the need for a division of officers trained in, and dedicated to, the protection of art and monuments in conflict zones. In January 1943, during a pause in the fighting near Tripoli in North Africa, Mortimer Wheeler, the director of the London Museum and a renowned archaeologist, grew concerned about the fate of three ruined ancient cities nearby, along the coast of Libya: Sabratha, Leptis Magna, and Oea (the ancient city around which Tripoli grew). With the impending defeat of the Axis in North Africa, and the chaos of the war, Wheeler worried that the ancient monuments could become “easy meat for any dog that came along.” Wheeler noted with concern that there was no system of any sort in place for the Allies to safeguard any archives, artworks, museums, or monuments in their path.

Wheeler grabbed a friend and fellow officer, a famous art historian and archaeologist in his own right, John Ward-Perkins, and they drove by jeep to the sites of Oea and Leptis Magna. Leptis Magna, birthplace of the emperor Septimius Severus, had recently been excavated by a team of Italian archaeologists under Mussolini’s orders. This meant that the marvels of the ancient architecture, and even statuary, were unearthed but had not been secured and moved to museums. When they arrived, Wheeler and Ward-Perkins were dismayed to find a Royal Air Force team setting up a radar station in the ruins, which they thought would provide good cover against enemy bombardment.

The two archaeologists pretended to have an authority they did not possess. As Ward-Perkins would later write, “we bluffed our way through a number of fairly effective measures.” They improvised “Out of Bounds” signs, which they mounted on key monuments and beside statues, and they began to provide informal lectures to troops about their surroundings, to instill a sense of respect and appreciation for the ruins and artworks around them. These measures would become standard procedure for the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Division that their actions would in part inspire.

In June 1943 Wheeler decided to use his impressive list of contacts to make something official out of their improvised policy. He was spurred on by his knowledge of the planned Allied invasion of Sicily, which Wheeler described as “a top secret to which I happened to be a party. . . . The archaeologist in me was filled with anxiety.” One of the richest places on earth archaeologically and artistically, Sicily’s treasures were in serious danger if something was not done in anticipation of the invasion. Wheeler suggested that a small, well-organized group, led by a qualified archaeologist, be established to promote the protection of monuments in Sicily. This message eventually reached Secretary of State for War Sir P.J. Grigg and Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. Agreeing with the idea, they immediately sought out an archaeologist to lead the operation.

In October 1943 the British established a division of the War Office, the Archaeological Adviser’s Branch, that would deal with the recovery
and protection of art objects in newly liberated territories. It was originally a one-man operation, run by renowned archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley, with his wife as his only assistant. Woolley liked it that way, rejecting the offer of staff. He liked to think that his uncluttered judgment was far superior to what a committee could produce, and he wanted to be able to boast of the triumphs he’d achieved ostensibly alone. In truth, he was a brilliant archaeologist and politician. The son of a clergyman, Woolley was a curator at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and was best known for leading archaeological excavations at Ur in present-day Iraq, but he had also worked alongside T. E. Lawrence in Syria in 1913. The budding novelist Agatha Christie was a great admirer of Woolley’s, particularly noting his capacity to galvanize listeners about the wonders of archaeology. (Christie spent a lot of time with Woolley—she married Woolley’s assistant from his Ur excavation in 1930.) She wrote, “Leonard Woolley saw with the eye of the imagination. . . . Wherever we happened to be, he could make it come alive. . . . It was his reconstruction of the past and he believed it, and anyone who listened believed it also.”

When the war began, Woolley corresponded with art and archaeological institutions to compile lists of artworks and monuments in the path of the fighting. Very much against his will, he eventually began to recruit personnel as it became clear that a field force would be needed to accompany Allied armies. Woolley thought that his role, and therefore the role of anyone working in the sphere of the protection of art and monuments, should be to note sites for the army to avoid and to plan the restitution of art and artifacts after the war—not to send out field officers. He wrote, “The idea that we should leave the most eminent experts who have high artistic or archaeological qualifications to walk about the battlefields for this purpose is really one which I think would not be accepted as at all suitable.” There was an element of classism in this statement—the lives of the highly educated should not be risked in combat zones—in addition to the desire to be the one and only operator in the tiny, newly founded “theater” of art and archaeological protection during war. It would take a strong American push to dislodge Woolley’s
hands-off policy and encourage Allied field work in the protection of art and monuments.

Over the course of Woolley’s operations, intelligence established that art, including the art of German citizens, was being confiscated in all Nazi-occupied territories and that stolen art, through barter and sale abroad, provided one of the largest economic assets of the Reich.

On 10 April 1944 a sister division was established, known as the Vaucher Commission or, more fully, the Commission for the Protection and Restitution of Cultural Material. It was run by Professor Paul Vaucher, the cultural attaché of the French embassy in London. Its job was to track down documentation on works that had been seized by the Nazis.

In May 1944 another, larger division was organized by direct command of Winston Churchill. Under the supervision of Lord Hugh Pattison Macmillan, the British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, Archives, and Other Material in Enemy Hands was established. This rather unwieldy nomenclature was cast aside in favor of the simpler Macmillan Committee. The Macmillan Committee would now be in charge of the planned postwar restitution of looted works of art, with Woolley acting as their civilian leader. Woolley’s motto was “We protect the arts at the lowest possible cost,” an odd banner under which to fight, but one that was, at least initially, politically necessary in order to garner support for a role that was considered of secondary importance by those who simply wanted to win the war.

Meanwhile, the United States was forming its own art protection divisions. In March 1941 the United States had established the Committee on Conservation of Cultural Resources, designed to protect and conserve art in American collections from the perceived impending threat of Japanese invasion, after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Early on during the war, certain art organizations, including the American Harvard Defense Group and the American Council of Learned Societies, worked with museums and art historians to identify European monuments and artworks that would require protection. These groups began to lobby for a national organization for the preservation of cultural
properties during times of war. Much of this was spearheaded by Paul Sachs, associate director of the Harvard Fogg Museum, and by Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who called an emergency meeting of museum directors on 20 December 1941 at the Met to determine wartime and emergency policies. This resulted in the movement of some art from museums into storage facilities. At the same time, many galleries remained open during the war, allowing civilians a respite from the turmoil that filled the newspapers. Paul Sachs’s statement following the resolution of the museum directors is a poetic testament to what art can do for a nation at war:

With these stirring sentiments in mind, and with the practical concerns of protecting art during war both in the United States, should the war cross the North American threshold, and in Europe, Taylor, Sachs, and others took their concerns to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.