J. Robert Kudelski                

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by American author Lynn H. Nicholas first appeared on US bookstore shelves in 1995. Having studied in the US, Spain and the UK, Nicholas spent many years working in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where she came face to face with the issue of the art looting which transpired during wartime. It must be said that the subject is a rather prominent one in the history of that institution and many of its personnel – such as Charles Parkhurst, David Finley, Huntington Cairns, Lamont Moore and Craig Hugh Smyth – played an active part in the rescue of Europe’s cultural property during and after the Second World War. In 1945, the National Gallery was also the destination for 202 priceless paintings from German museums which had been discovered by the Americans in an underground storehouse set up towards the end of the war. As a result, one would be hard pressed to find a better place to become acquainted with the stories surrounding the fate of cultural goods from occupied Europe. Nicholas spent a portion of the 1980s living in Belgium – a country which had bitter first-hand experience with Nazi policy concerning culture and art. It was there that the author first embarked on her decade-long project which culminated in the publication of The Rape of Europe. The book’s first Polish edition – bearing the title Grabież Europy. Losy dzieł sztuki w Trzeciej Rzeszy i podczas II wojny światowej – appeared in 1997 through the publishing house Baran i Suszczyński. It’s latest (second) edition – with corrections and supplements – arrived in 2014 courtesy of Rebis Publishing.

In all likelihood, what spurred the renewed interest in the title was the soon-to-be-released Hollywood film Monuments Men, which portrayed the work of allied forces in securing and safeguarding works of art during the Second World War. That film itself was based on a book of the same title written by Robert Edsel, who in turn credits Nicholas’s book as a source of inspiration in his research.

Lynn Nicholas begins her story on the fate of artwork during the last world war with a background on the origins and essence of Nazism. The author points out that the very first stage of Adolf Hitler’s political activity centered on efforts to introduce a new worldview and a new social order, with the sphere of art and culture being envisioned as a great product of the transformation. Very influential in the formation of new standards in this regard was one Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, who later came to be identified as one of the chief ideologues of the national socialism movement. It was his initiative that led to the establishment in the 1920s of the Militant League for German Culture (Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur), which usurped the right to act as arbiter of the value of works of art and artists.
The aims of the League were very quickly absorbed by the Nazi movement at large. When Hitler rose to power, one of the first decisions issued by his staff called for the removal of all works of art that were deemed “degenerate” (Entartete Kunst) form public museum collections. Hitler is known to have declared to his people his refusal to tolerate what he called “unfinished paintings.” Thus, his subordinates did everything in their power to cleanse public museums and galleries of works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Emil Nolde, Henri Matisse, George Braque, Raoul Dufy, Edvard Munch, Ernst Barlach, Willi Baumeister and many of their contemporaries. Within a few short years, works by the Impressionists ceased to figure in permanent exhibitions; some being destroyed and others sold at auction. Such transactions were handled by German art dealers, one of whom was Hildebrandt Gurlitt, whose son Cornelius became the focal point of scandal in 2013 when a collection of 1660 paintings of “degenerate art” was discovered in his Munich apartment and Salzburg home. One regret is that Nicholas, already having access to the archives in Washington, did not delve deeper into the subject of art dealers’ involvement in the selling off of cultural property belonging to public and private collections. American investigators did interrogate Hildebrandt Gurlitt in early 1946 and they did have at their disposal a list of paintings in his possession, many of which would become the subjects of claims put forth by families wronged by the Nazi regime.

Later in her book, Nicholas paints a vivid picture of how the obsession for collecting took hold of the highest-ranking officials of the Third Reich – people like Adolf Hitler, Herman Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, Hans Frank and Baldur von Schirach, to name but a few. After the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, possessing a private art collection became a statement of social stature and authority among members of the ruling elite. “Art was very fashionable in the new regime. In October 1933, only months after becoming Chancellor, Hitler laid the cornerstone of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, his first major public building. Only later did the fact that the ceremonial hammer broke in his hands assume significance.” In order to meet the great demand for cultural goods, Nazi officials enlisted the help of dozens of art historians and art dealers, including individuals like Maria Alias-Dietrich, Heinrich Hoffmann, Hans Posse, Hermann Voss, Kajetan Mühlmann, Hermann Bunjes, Prince Philipp of Hesse, Karl Haberstock, Eduard Plietsch and Alois Miedl. For a period of several years, this team of experts went to great lengths to keep pace with and satisfy their superiors’ appetite for art. Its members were ready to resort to any means necessary to fulfill their mission and the majority of the works they succeeded to get their hands on came from collections seized from Jewish collectors, who had been forced to sell off their possessions or renounce their ownership of them.

In the subsequent chapters of The Rape of Europa, Nicholas illustrates the consequences of Nazi policy concerning culture and art in occupied lands. Outside of Germany’s borders, the task of the Nazi officials was no longer merely to cleanse galleries and museums of anything deemed “degenerate art” but rather to strip these institutions of their most valuable holdings. The first step towards the looting of art that would soon take place on unprecedented scale was the Austrian Anschluss in March 1938. From the very first days of Nazi rule, many Jewish collectors residing in Austria were forced to hand over their collections – these included individuals like Louis and Alphonse de Rothschild as well as the Gutmann, Blocj-Bauer, Haas, Kornfeld, Goldman and Bond families. Coordinating the activities to seize Jewish property was the Central Office for Jewish Emigration headed by Karl Adolf Eichmann, who, after the war, was found to be one of the key individuals responsible for the Holocaust. The seized art collections were evaluated by Dr. Kajetan Mühlmann, who, in a year and a half, would rise to become one of the major culprits in the plunder of museum and state collections within occupied Poland. The actions taken by the Nazis in Austria – and before that, Germany – resulted in the formation of organizational structures and of an operational model for the purpose of managing seized collections. Hitler appointed a team of people to oversee the construction of a new museum in Linz while Göring surrounded himself with a group of individuals (one of them being Kajetan Mühlmann) who, from that point on, would manage the seizure of art collections in Poland, later France, Belgium and Holland, and eventually in Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. The rapaciousness of the two Nazi leaders ultimately led to millions of artworks from all over Europe being appropriated and removed from their original place of residence.

In her book, Nicholas devotes more attention and space to the fate of works of art from Western Europe, which is understandable taking into account the fact that when beginning work on The Rape of Europa in the 1980s, the author had much easier access to the archives there. Also, it is worth pointing out that the majority of works of art seized by occupying forces actually came from Western European countries. Thus, it is no coincidence that Nicholas chose to examine in more detail the events that took place in France, which was considered one of the world’s leading art markets. New organizations responsible for “securing” cultural property began operating in France – the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR) headed by Alfred Rosenberg and consisting of members like Kurt von Behr, Robert Scholz, Gerhard Utikal and Eberhard von Kunsberg; the Kunstschutz established within the German army (headed by Franz Wolff Metternich) and a special cell set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (coordinated by Otto von Abetz). Members of these institutions carried out the seizure of works of art numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Nicholas, however, fails to emphasize the fact that, after 1941, when the Rosenberg unit began operations in Eastern Europe, collections of art, books and archival materials from lands that had belonged to Poland prior to the war (which would be incorporated into Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus on the basis of decisions made during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences) became the target of looting by the ERR.

After outlining the development of the new ideology that would influence the shift in how art was perceived, and later the effects of this ideology on the art collections of Germany and occupied territories, the author of The Rape of Europa tackles another very significant issue. She points out that the Nazi’s looting of art was being carefully observed by the Allies. Already in the early stages of the war, the governments of many countries set up entities whose responsibility was to analyze intelligence data and prepare scenarios to minimize the consequences of the Nazi policy. Meanwhile, in countries that remained neutral in the first stages of the war, the situation was quite different as these nations undertook measures to ensure the safety of their own cultural legacies in the event of any potential involvement in the conflict. In March 1941, the National Resources Planning Board established by Roosevelt set up the Committee for the Conservation of Cultural Resources. One of the members of that group was George Stout – a conservator who since the 1930s had been studying cultural losses incurred during the First World War. Stout’s expertise suddenly became even more valuable when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the newly-real threat forced the Americans to devise a strategy for the protection of their own museum collections. “Fearing both air raids and possible commando attacks from submarines, curators at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts […], true sons of Paul Revere, kept lookouts on the roof and moved the best objects into three buildings provided by Williams College in the calm of western Massachusetts. The Frick Collection and Philadelphia Museum of Art used vaults beneath their own buildings. The Philips Collection in Washington sent a shipment to Kansas City, and from San Diego and San Francisco collections were removed to Colorado Springs.” In late 1942, Stout recommended to the members of the Committee for the Conservation of Cultural Resources that the scope of their efforts should be expanded to include safeguarding art in continental Europe. The conservator predicted that, much like during the First World War, the Americans would be forced to take action in Europe. His advice fell on receptive ears in Washington and, in June 1943, President Roosevelt green-lighted the establishment of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. Appointed to chair the commission was Supreme Court Justice Owen. J. Roberts, which led to the commission eventually being dubbed the Roberts Commission. The organization consisted of people from the biggest museums in the United States and its offices were located in the National Gallery of Art. It is a pity, however, that Nicholas fails to mention one person who was very influential to the shape of the newly-founded entities in charge of seeking out looted collections and their post-war restitution – Dr. Karol Estreicher, Jr., a Krakow art historian who during the war was head of the Bureau of Revindication of Cultural Losses of the Polish government in exile. His contact with members of the Western arts and culture world – in particular his several-month-long visit to the United States, during which he met with, among others, George Stout – had considerable impact on the Allies’ strategy for securing art collections plundered by the Nazis. Let us recall the words of Estreicher himself as he proudly discussed his contribution to the process. “In 1942, I was sent to America and that was when the issue of restitution started bearing fruit. It caught the attention of American scholars and people from museums and libraries, and their enthusiasm led to the establishment of the commission headed by Justice Roberts in New York. All this did not go unnoticed in the UK and soon London has their Restitution Commission chaired by Lord Macmillan.”  

In addition to academic and governmental organizations, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) also took interest in setting up structures to address the issue of protecting works of art in areas held by Allied Forces. The outcome was the establishment of a inter-allied body that would oversee the coordination of efforts in this field, with the Commission for the Protection and Restitution of Cultural Material, known as the Vaucher Commission, being formed in 1944. “The Commission aimed to create a database in London with all the information, transfer it to microfilm and distribute it.” SHAEF was aware of the fact that the Vaucher and Roberts commissions, being governmental structures, could only serve a coordination function. The next step would be the establishment of an entity which could directly work together with the troops in areas controlled by the Allies and so the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section (MFAA) was formed. Its members – referred to as monuments men – played a key part in the protection of European and world cultural property. After a short training period, MFAA members (whose civilian contingent included art historians, artists and conservation experts) were dispatched to North Africa and to Sicily, where they were to secure artworks in areas held by the Allies. From there, the monuments men followed the troops as they made their way towards northern Europe, joining the search for collections that the Nazis had removed from places like Florence, Rome and Naples. It was a race against time as Germany military leaders acted swiftly in sending art away from southern and central Italy to the north of the country and on into the heart of Germany. After the invasion of Normandy, the MFAA specialists continued their work in France and then Belgium and Holland. Next, they began efforts to secure the art collections that had been stashed in Germany and Austria. In describing this phase of the “art protectors’” work, Nicholas paints a picture not only of the scale of the looting but also of the extensiveness of the measures that the Nazis took in concealing the property they had stolen; converting existing castles, palaces, churches and numerous mines into storehouses for art. In fact, the danger of military destruction meant that mines became the preferred destination for looted art and the Germans made use of those in places like Merkers, Ransbach, Heilbronn, Grasleben, Bernterode, Siegen and Altaussee. Each of these storehouses contained tens of thousands of artworks. It was a similar scene in the chambers and cellars of various castles, palaces and monasteries converted to serve as art depots – ones in Neuschweinstein, Moos, Füssen, Buxheim, Herrenchiemsee, Fischhorn, St. Florian, Kremstmunster, Hirschberg and Callenberg. Nicholas recounts this phase of the MFAA team’s work in the chapter titled Ashes and Darkness. The meaning behind the chapter’s title is clear – these were the conditions in which the monuments men worked towards the end of the war and upon its conclusion.

Nicholas’s book is by no means the first one of its kind to be published in Poland. For more than 40 years now, there have been various books on the fate of art during the Second World War published all over the world (and especially in the USA). Many of the authors had themselves been members of the MFAA or other agencies involved in the protection of cultural property. Preceding the release of the Rape of Europa were titles like Salt Mines and Castles by T. C. Howe Jr.; Repatriation of Art from the Collecting Point in Munich after World War II by C. H. Smyth; and The Rape of Art: The Story of Hitler’s Plunder of the Great Masterpieces of Europe by D. Roxan and K. Wanstall. Let us also not forget that as early as January 1945, Francis Henry Taylor published (in The Atlantic Monthly) his work The Rape of Europa. A Report on the Fate of Arts and Monuments. The above-mentioned publications, however, tend to treat the issue of looted art in a rather selective and general way, which is likely explained by the limited access to archive materials on this subject. Nicholas, in turn, was able to systematize the existing knowledge and supplement it with analyses of the events that determined the fate of occupied Europe’s cultural property. We must also acknowledge that the author of The Rape of Europa did not shy away from controversial subjects. She writes about art looting perpetrated by Soviet troops – essentially specially-designated trophy brigades whose mission was to intercept and ship off to Russia any artifacts discovered in Germany (including now-Polish lands like Lower Silesia, East Prussia and Pomerania) and in areas occupied by the Nazis (including Greater Poland, which was incorporated into Nazi Germany during the war). It was thanks to Nicholas that many readers first learned about how the Russians pillaged Berlin’s Museum Island (a subject further explored in Konstantin Akinsha’s and Grigorii Kozlov’s book Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe’s Treasures, also from 1995) and took away anything that still had any value after the evacuation from the warzone (including a cache of gold objects collectively known as “Priam’s treasure”). But Nicholas does not limit herself to a description of the situation in Russian-occupied Berlin; she also illustrates the activity of the trophy squads – led by recognized art historians, museum workers and artists – within the Soviet-controlled territory of Germany and Austria. As a result, we learn of the fate suffered by the rich art collections sheltered in places like Weesenstein and Kranzow. The author likewise does not fail to mention crimes committed by American soldiers who took home many priceless works of art as “spoils of war.” She also describes the controversial and morally-questionable matter of the Americans’ sending to the USA those 202 of the most valuable painting from Berlin museums, which their troops had discovered in the Kaiseroda salt mine in Merkers. For several years thereafter, these priceless works of art – indisputably the property of German museums – were put on display in US galleries. This matter of how cultural objects became hostages in post-war politics and of the problems encountered by former owners in attempting to recover their collections is addressed by Nicholas in the final chapter of her book, titled The Art of the Possible: Fifty Years of Restitution and Recovery.

“Polish issues” addressed in Nicholas’s book, however, require entirely separate attention. We must note that the author dedicated one of the first chapters of her book to precisely this subject – Poland being the target of systematic art looting from September 1939. Nicholas also notices the fact that the Polish authorities were among the first to initiate procedures aiming to identify the persons and structures responsible for the plunder of artworks and to determine the destinations to which Polish museum collections had been removed. “Only one country was already prepared: the indefatigable Karol Estreicher of Poland had made such a list, not always accurate, based as it was on the rawest intelligence, but certainly impressive in its revelation of the massive dislocations of his nation’s patrimony.”Polish subjects also cropped up in other chapters – most notably in the section dealing with the search for works of art within Germany (among them Veit Stoss’s altarpiece from the Church of Our Lady in Krakow, paintings taken to Bavaria by Hans Frank and a collection of Albrecht Durer drawings from the Lubomirski Museum in Lvov which ended up in a salt mine storehouse in Altaussee). However, we must take note of the fact that Nicholas bases her treatment of “Polish issues” on documents discovered in American archives and on the memoires of members of the Polish aristocracy published in the West after the war. The book references a scant two papers on wartime losses written by Polish authors. While, admittedly, these publications were produced by leading authorities on the subject – Stanisław Lorentz, Museums and Collections in Poland. 1945-1955 and Karol Estreicher, Cultural Losses of Poland from 1944 and Nazi Kultur in Poland from 1945 – they do not provide an exhaustive analysis of the fate of Polish cultural property during the Second World War. Nicholas did not take advantage of other available resources, like the two-volume Walki o dobra kultury edited by Stanisław Lorentz published in 1972, Die Dame mit dem Hermelin written by Max and Ruth Seydewitz (published in German in 1963 with Polish translation in 1966) or the reports produced by the Central Commission for Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland and the Ministry of Culture and Art in the 1940s. The above-listed publications represent the foundation of the knowledge base on the issue of the fate of Polish cultural property during the Second World War. Their absence from Nicholas’s bibliography may suggest that the author, conducting her research in the 1980s, found access to Polish archive to be impossible, preventing the author of The Rape of Europa from being able to note (and to provide a Polish context for) several very significant facts. Nevertheless, Nicholas does present the key issues associated with the looting of art in Poland – she cites the most important documents regulating the activity of German functionaries in this pursuit; she recalls the fates of the most famous works of art seized by the Nazis (including Veit Stoss’s altarpiece, the collection of the Czartoryski Museum and the Gołuchów collection); and she identifies the main individuals responsible for the seizures (among them Kajetan Mühlmann, Wilhelm Ernst Palézieux, Gustav Barthel, Dagobert Frey, Hans Posse and Peter Paulsen). Nicholas commits only several minor inaccuracies concerning the looting of art in occupied Poland. Relating the events surrounding the removal of cultural property from Krakow towards the end of the war, she writes: “On Tuesday the twenty-third, Palezieux and his companion set out in a truck loaded with art in the direction of Frank’s villa in Neuhaus, just south of Munich. The Governor General followed two days later. Here, in a small hotel on the Schliersee, the Generalgouvernement of Poland set up its offices in much reduced circumstances.” However, there is no existing document (including the testimony of German officials and Palézieux himself) containing any information about Palézieux taking any work of art to Neuhaus in Bavaria. In fact, the person responsible for the “evacuation” of the three crates of artwork from Lower Silesia (to where it was transported from Krakow) to the new seat of the Governor General’s office in a town on the Schliersee is actually Hans Frank’s aide-de-camp, Helmut Pfaffenroth. Nicholas also writes that at the time of his arrest the Governor General was in possession of 9 paintings from Polish collections. Yet, according to surviving documents (including materials available in American archives), Frank took to Bavaria 23 canvases that had belonged to Polish collections. A similar inaccuracy concerns the activity of the Lower Silesian art conservator Prof. Günther Grundmann (Nicholas identifies him as Dr. Günther Grundmann), who, near the end of the war, was involved in safeguarding the works that had been transported from the then office of the Governor General to Lower Silesia. The author writes, “In the meantime, the unfortunate Dr. Grundmann had rushed off to check as many repositories as he could, and direct westward any cars still unloaded.” In all likelihood, Nicholas had come to such a conclusion upon reading the contents of Grundmann’s journal (a copy of which was given by Grundmann’s wife to the German historian Cay Friemuth, author of the book Die geraubte Kunst: Der dramatische Wettlauf um die Rettung der Kulturschätze nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg). However, neither the conservator’s personal notes nor his book Erlebte Jahre Widerschein. Von schönen Häusern, guten Freunden und alten Familien in Schlesien (published in 1974) contains any indication that the conservator had dispatched any trucks (to use the plural) holding works of art (Polish ones, as would be believed) to western Germany (i.e. beyond the boundaries of Lower Silesia). The surviving documentation – including the extensive testimony given by Grundmann to American investigators – attests only to the fact that he was privy to partial information concerning the decision of Governor General staffers to remove the works of art from within occupied Poland to Lower Silesia and later deeper into Germany. Source materials (the testimony of Grundmann and of officials from the German occupational authorities; reports of MFAA members) rule out the possibility of the conservator being responsible for any decisions in this area. The only event of this kind to have taken place was in mid-February 1945 – fearing the approach of Soviet forces, Grundmann decided to flee Lower Silesia for Coburg, taking along a truck filled with artwork. Among the contents of the truck were several dozen paintings from Polish collections which, near the end of January 1945 he had removed from the palace at Morawa near Strzegom for fear of their possible destruction in the impending warfare in that part on the front.

In summing up this review of The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, it must be emphasized that Nicholas produced an exceptional work. To write a book of such chronological, analytical and complex treatment of the fate of European cultural property during the Nazi era was and still is an exceptionally difficult task. The archival documents related to this matter consist of millions of pieces of correspondence, testimony, records, art inventories, etc. and to access them would require visiting archives in many countries. The selection, analysis and organization of the data in a way so as to produce a representative (and sweeping – addressing all of the countries touched by this subject) picture of the plunder of art during the Second World War must have consumed an immense amount of time. Despite the massive challenges, the author succeeded in her aim. The slight inaccuracies cannot tarnish the fact that after nearly 20 years the book remains the best and most comprehensive publication dealing with the subject of art in occupied Europe. Confirming this opinion are the many accolades bestowed on Nicholas for the effect that her work has produced. The French government awarded her with their highest national decoration – the Légion d’Honneur. The American National Book Critics Circle, which promotes and honors books written in English – singled out Nicholas’s book with their award for non-fiction writing in 1994. For her contribution to Polish-American relations, Nicholas has been distinguished with the title Amicis Poloniae. Yet, the greatest confirmation of the success of The Rape of Europa is the fact that the book has been translated into several foreign languages and has served as the inspiration for films such as the documentary The Rape of Europa from 2006 and the aforementioned Hollywood production Monuments Men from 2014.