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Missouri Humanities Council e-News | February 2010| View Online | ||||||||||
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The Monuments MenBook review by MHC board member, Wicky Sleight
One of the ten main characters in the book, Captain Walker Hancock, was born in St. Louis. He was a renowned sculptor of monumental works, including the great winged horse known as “Sacrifice” on the World War I soldiers' memorial in St. Louis. Hancock had won the prestigious Prix de Rome before the war and had designed the Army Air Medal in 1942. His romance with his wife of one month, Saima Natti, is revealed throughout the book in the letters he wrote to her while he was stationed in Europe. In 1944, the sacristan of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the Belgian city of Bruges was awakened by at least 20 German officers who ordered him to open the cathedral. They told him they had orders to take the Michelangelo to protect it from the Americans. The travels of the Bruges Madonna, eventually recovered by the monuments men in Austria and returned to the cathedral, are one of several mysteries which keep you reading. Another is the fate of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, more commonly known as the Ghent Altarpiece, which was Belgium's most important and beloved artistic treasure. It was eventually located in the Altaussee salt mine in Austria and returned to Belgium. The Ghent Altarpiece was the largest and most valuable of the 6500 paintings and thousands of other priceless drawings, prints, sculpture, furniture, tapestries, and books found in the mine. German soldiers were given orders to bomb the mine and destroy the contents when they knew the war was lost, but mineworkers were able to thwart these plans and save the art. Next to Hitler, Hermann Goering, the Reichsmarshall of Nazi Germany and the Nazis' second in command, was the most prolific and notorious art "looter." Hitler preferred 19th-century art, so he got first choice on that and Goering took the rest. Goering had fine art taken from France and other countries by the trainload. He stashed the art in his various homes and in caves and mines, such as Altaussee. Bomb shelters and mines in Berchtesgarden became the final destination for much of Goering’s artwork. The doors and openings were sealed shut with concrete and disguised with timbers to look like ceiling beams. A friend of mine, Captain Harry V. Anderson, Seventh Army, discovered the mine with what has been estimated to be a $200,000,000 collection of art works from throughout Europe. He located Goering’s former art dealer, who identified the pictures and told how most of the collection was acquired. Harry was one of the founding members, in 1931, of what is now the American Society of Interior Designers. He also founded Interior Design magazine in the 30's and was its first publishing editor. With these qualifications , he would have caught the attention of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section but it is unclear if he was a monuments man. Research and recovery of stolen art is ongoing. "Hundreds of thousands of works of art, documents, and books have yet to be found." One of the most famous of those missing is Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, which was taken from a collection in Poland. An advertisement in The New York Times, January 8, 2010, pictures an 1830 Altenberg (East Germany) Menorah. It is an "auction of antique Jewish ritual art including 184 lots of antique Judaica all hand-inspected by the world's leading antique Judaica expert. All lots guaranteed authentic as described." After viewing the documentary, The Rape of Europa, and becoming absorbed with The Monuments Men, I will always view advertisements such as this with suspicion. The lessons of World War II, especially the Holocaust—the racism, the hate, the state-sponsored murder of over 6 million Jews—must never be forgotten nor minimized. As a docent-in-training for the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, I have become acutely aware of the loss and suffering. On the other hand, as a member of the Missouri Humanities Council, I have come to realize and appreciate the importance of cultural artifacts, including fine art, to the continued viability and health of communities. The Monuments Men is an important book in the story of World War II. It is extremely well-researched (and obviously financed heavily by the Texas oilman/author), well-written, with a thorough index, footnotes, and bibliography. Highly recommended. [Return to Passages Front Page] Also in This Issue:
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 Published monthly by the Missouri Humanities Council, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization
affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal agency.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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During World War II, a little-known section of the war effort called the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA), was formed. It was made up of about 350 men and women officers from thirteen Allied nations. Their job was to try to save the cultural artifacts which had been stolen from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Italy by the Nazis. Robert Edsel's The Monuments Men; Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (Center Street, 2009) is the compelling story of these soldiers. Co-written by Bret Witter (author of Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World), it is not only a story of the war-time adventures of the monuments men, but a mystery story, and a romance as well.