Stealing the Mystic Lamb (39 page)

I was ordered to report to the reichsmarschall [Göring] for the first time on 4 February 1941 at 6:30 PM in the Quai d’Orsay, in Paris. Herr Feldführer von Behr of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg [in charge of ERR operations in France] was also there. [Göring] wanted to know details of the actual situation regarding the confiscation of Jewish art in occupied territories. He took the opportunity
to give Herr von Behr photographs of the objects the führer wished to acquire for himself, and also of those that [Göring] himself desired.

As a matter of duty I informed the reichsmarschall of the meeting to discuss the protest of the French government about the work of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. . . . The reichsmarschall said he would mention the matter to the führer. . . . On Wednesday 5 February I was summoned by the reichsmarschall to meet him in the Jeu de Paume, where he was inspecting the Jewish art treasures recently accumulated there. The reichsmarschall inspected the exhibition, escorted by myself, and made a selection of the works to be sent to the führer and those he wished to include in his own collection.

I took the opportunity of being alone with the reichsmarschall to draw his attention again to a note of protest from the French government against the activity of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, in which they referred to the clause in the Hague Convention [exempting cultural heritage from seizure in war]. . . . The reichsmarschall went into the matter thoroughly and directed me as follows, saying, “My orders are authoritative. You do exactly as I order. The works of art accumulated at the Jeu de Paume will be loaded immediately onto a special train bound for Germany. Those items which are for the führer and those which are for the reichsmarschall will be loaded into separate carriages attached to the reichsmarschall’s train on which he will return to Berlin at the beginning of next week. Herr von Behr will accompany the reichsmarschall in this special train on his journey to Berlin.”

When I objected that the lawyers might be of another opinion and that the commander in chief [of the German armed forces] in France might make protestations, the reichsmarschall replied with these words: “Dear Bunjes, leave that to me. I am the highest lawyer in the state.”

Bunjes had recognized the hypocrisy of a so-called Art Protection unit stripping Europe of its artistic treasures, but he was far from guiltless. According to the postwar Allied ERR report, on May 16, 1942, Göring asked Bunjes to prepare a paper detailing the Einsatzstab confiscations and the protests of the defeated French government. The report describes Bunjes’s active attempts to rationalize the seizure of Jewish art and to quell the French protestations.

In essence, the Bunjes paper stresses the ingratitude of the French state and the French people for the altruistic efforts of the Einsatzstab, without which the destruction and loss of invaluable cultural material would have been inevitable. The paper is a classic in the literature of political treachery. Briefly stated, Bunjes offers the following transparent legal justification for the German action: The Hague Convention of 1907, signed by Germany and France, and observed in the armistice terms of May 1940, calls in Article 46 for the inviolability, among other things, of private property. Bunjes states, however, that the Compiègne armistice of 1940 was a pact made by Germany with the French state and the French people, but not with Jews and Freemasons; that the Reich, accordingly, was not bound to respect the rights of Jewish property owners; and further, that the Jews, in company with Communists, had made innumerable attempts since the signing of the armistice on the lives and persons of Wehrmacht personnel and German civilians, so that even sterner measures had to be taken to suppress Jewish lawlessness. Bunjes contends that the basis for the French protests, and petitions for the return of ownerless Jewish property, is the desire on the part of the French government to deceive Germany and further the prosecution of subversive activity against the Reich.

Was Bunjes forced by circumstance to prepare such a report? Could he have believed what he wrote, in love as he was with French art and culture? One may only guess at his true feelings, though he must have experienced at least some conflict. Bunjes was suffering from severe depression by the time Posey and Kirstein reached him.

Then Bunjes related, for the very first time to Allied ears, the plans for Hitler’s supermuseum. Files had been found indicating the mass seizure
of artworks. Rose Valland’s reports to Jacques Jaujard had revealed the extent of the looting from France. But documentary evidence had not yet surfaced detailing the supermuseum. Bunjes described a number of Nazi art depots in castles: Neuschwanstein, which housed the collections stolen from French Jews; Tambach, filled with art looted from Poland; Baden Baden, with the art stripped from Alsace; and on. But the biggest cache of all, he said, was in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps. It had been converted into a high-tech storehouse for all of the looted art destined for Linz. It contained thousands of objects stolen from across Europe, including
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
by Jan van Eyck.

But, he warned, the SS guards of the secret salt-mine storehouse had been ordered to blow it all up if they failed to defend it against the Allies. The intelligence about which Woolley had written to Lord Macmillan was true. Hitler had released what became known as the Nero Decree on 19 March 1945, stating that everything that could be of any use to the Allies, particularly industrial and supply sites, should be destroyed if it could not be defended. It was thought that this included the looted art. Furthermore, what Bunjes could not have known is that August Eigruber, the ruthless Nazi official in charge of the Ober-Donau region of Austria, had received a personal letter from Hitler’s private secretary, closest friend, and reichsminister, Martin Bormann, instructing him to take all measures necessary to prevent the Alt Aussee treasure house from being captured by the Allies.

Eigruber’s total dedication to Hitler had seen him rise quickly through the Nazi ranks. He had been the gau director of the Nazi Party in Upper Austria and had served several months in prison when Nazism was banned there in May 1935. From 1936 until the Anschluss in 1938, when Austria officially became part of Greater Germany and Nazism was both legal and dominant, he was the leader of the underground party within that region. He joined the SS as an officer in 1938 and became the gauleiter of Oberdonau in Austria on 1 April 1940. In November 1942 he was appointed reich defense commissar, and by June 1943 he was an SS
obergruppenführer
—only one step down from Himmler himself.
There is a photograph of Eigruber, with the facial expression of an awestruck groupie, his lips thin to the point of invisibility, upper lip ever curled under his lower lip in a childish manner, enthusiastically poring over the designs for Hitler’s citywide supermuseum in Linz, with the architect, Hermann Giesler, and Hitler himself. There was an air of Charlie Chaplin to Eigruber, with his Hitler-style smudge moustache and slightly stooped stance, his shoulders curled in, though his awkward physicality belied his iron-worker strength and sociopathic determination and the confidence instilled by his quick rise through the Nazi ranks.

Eigruber interpreted the unclear order from Bormann to prevent Allied seizure of the mine’s content as an instruction to destroy the art within it. His determination to see through his own interpretation of Hitler’s orders extended beyond the artworks in his charge. He had been an enthusiastic concentration camp officer at Mauthausen-Gusen during the war, and now he arranged for the gassing of mental patients and others who had been deemed unable to work before the war began. On 8 April, he would order the execution of every political prisoner in his region awaiting trial—at least forty-six people were shot the next morning.

What Bunjes related to Posey and Kirstein was incredible. “It must have been a great exercise in discipline on Captain Posey’s part as on mine to betray no flicker of surprise or recognition,” wrote Kirstein. Bunjes apparently thought that the Allies already knew all he had to say.

Posey and Kirstein rushed back to camp and informed their commanders. Bunjes had noted the location of the salt mine on a map. It was beside the village of Alt Aussee, near the spa town Bad Aussee, outside of Salzburg. This was off the path of the Allied strike. As it was of no strategic importance, Allied armies had not planned to clear that area for many weeks to come. The region was particularly dangerous. Its densely forested, steep mountains were thick with wandering small bands of scattered SS and the remnants of the German Sixth Army, retreating over the Italian Alps. The Nazi army was disintegrating, but the remaining pockets of soldiers, acting independently with guerrilla methods, were particularly dangerous and unpredictable.

The terrain was extremely difficult. The mountains were lousy with SS and retreating German Sixth Army streaming over the Italian Alps. Two days before we had been caught, turning off from a back road, in the middle of a German motorized convoy. For ten miles we couldn’t figure out whose prisoner was whose. They must have been going somewhere to surrender, since they were armed, yet nothing happened.