Immortal mission

1945 65438+1On the cold morning of October 28th, Harry Ettlinger received the best birthday present he had ever received. The 19-year-old army soldier shivered behind a truck from France to southern Belgium. There, a month of fierce fighting has just ended, but the fighting continues. The Germans began to retreat in the New Year, and Private Ettlinger and thousands of other soldiers gathered to fight back. "We were heading east," Etlinger recalled, "when this sergeant ran out. "The next three people get your equipment and come with me," he shouted. I am one of them. I got off the bus.

Reviewing the rise and fall of the Third Reich plundering Iraq, the army needs an interpreter in the upcoming Nuremberg War trial. People noticed that Ettlinger spoke German for the same reason as the locals: he was a local. Ettlinger was born in Karlsruhe on the Rhine. He fled with his parents and other relatives in 1938, just before the shock of Christa Nacht made Hitler have a very clear understanding of Jewish families like him. The Ettlinger family settled in Newark, New Jersey, where Harry finished high school and enlisted in the army. After several weeks of basic training, he found himself back in Germany, a place he never expected, where the last chapter of the European war was written as smoke and blood.

Ettlinger's Nuremberg mission disappeared without a trace, and he was caught in a completely unexpected war. He went deep into German salt mines, castles, abandoned factories and empty museums, where he worked with Monument Man, a group of 350 art historians, museum directors, professors and other unknown soldiers and sailors in the departments of monuments, art and archives. Their task began in May 1945 during the uncertain peacetime, and it was to find, protect and return millions of looted works of art, sculptures, books, jewels, furniture, tapestries and other cultural treasures, which disappeared or were transferred due to seven years of drastic changes.

This conflict swallowed up a large number of cultural relics paintings of Vermeer, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Raphael, Da Vinci, Botticelli and other small artists. Museums and houses all over Europe have been deprived of paintings, furniture, ceramics, coins and other items, and many churches in continental Europe have also been deprived, and silver crosses, stained glass, clocks and painted altars have since disappeared; The ancient Torah disappeared from the synagogue; The whole library is crowded with trains.

"This is the biggest theft of cultural relics in history," said Charles A. Goldstein, a lawyer who organized an art restoration committee to promote the return of stolen works. I have seen all kinds of figures, but there is no doubt that the scale is astronomical.

It was at the instigation of Adolf and his imperialist Herman that the most systematic robbery took away thousands of major works of art from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Russia and other war-torn countries. In fact, the Nazis organized a special art advisory group, named Einstein stabbed the imperialist ERR, to plunder European masterpieces. The selected works were recorded in detail in about 80 volumes of leather photos, which provided guidance for the German Defence Forces before invading a country. According to this list, Hitler's army transported millions of cultural treasures back to Germany, in the words of the Fuehrer, in order to "protect the cultural treasures there". On the other hand, the Soviet Union organized a so-called trophy committee to select the best from the legal and looted collections in Germany in retaliation for the previous plunder. At the same time, national art collections all over Europe packed their precious collections away, hoping to protect them from Nazi plunder, allied bombing and Russian plunder. 1939 In September, the Mona Lisa was stuffed into an ambulance and evacuated from the Louvre. She spent most of the war running around. In a continuous country brewery, Leonardo da Vinci's socialite escaped capture by changing her address no less than six times. Nefertiti, a 3300-year-old beauty queen, was quickly transported from Berlin to the safety of the Kaiseroda potash mine in Meckel, central Germany, where thousands of boxes of potash from the National Museum were stored. Jan van eyck's Ghent altar painting, a masterpiece plundered by the Nazis from Belgium in the15th century, was transported to the mine in Altosi, Austria, where it spent the last few months of the war with other cultural treasures.

When the smoke clears, Hitler plans to dig up many such trophies and display them in his hometown of Linz, Austria. There, they will be exhibited in the new Verkhler Museum, which will be one of the best museums in the world. This project died with Hitler in 1945, when Ettlinger and other monuments found the missing works of art and provided them with asylum until they could return to their country of origin.

"That's why our war was different," recalled Ettlinger, 82, who made a policy of not sharing the spoils with the victors. The idea of returning property to its rightful owners in wartime is unprecedented. That's our job. We don't have much time to think. We just started working.

It means Ettlinger, which means that it is a long and tedious process to clean up the works of art from the Heilbronn and Koshendorf salt mines in southern Germany from 700 feet underground every day. Most of these cultural relics have not been looted, but they legally belong to museums in Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Stuttgart, Germany. 1September 1945 to1July 1946, Captain Ettlinger, Captain Dale v. Ford and German workers classified underground treasures, searched for works with suspicious ownership, and transported paintings, antique musical instruments, sculptures and other items to the upper part, and transported them to the allied collection points in the United States and Germany. At the main collection points in Wiesbaden, Munich and offenbach, other antiquities groups sorted out the items according to the country of origin, and conducted emergency maintenance and claim assessment for delegations who came to retrieve the treasures.

Perhaps Heilbronn's most famous discovery is the stained glass windows of Strasbourg Cathedral in France. Under the supervision of Ettlinger, these windows were packed in 73 boxes and transported directly home without passing through the collection point. "The window in Strasbourg was the first thing we sent back," Ettlinger said as a gesture of goodwill, according to the order of the Allied Supreme Commander General dwight eisenhower. "The window was welcomed home by a grand celebration, which not only shows that Alsace is free again after centuries of German rule, but also shows that the Allies intend to restore the fruits of civilization."

Most of Ettlinger's comrades have been trained in art history or museum work. "Not me," said Ettlinger. "I'm just a kid from New Jersey." But he works hard, it is essential to master German, and his relationship with miners is also very harmonious. He was promoted to technical sergeant. After the war, he returned to New Jersey, where he obtained a degree in engineering and business management and produced a nuclear weapon guidance system. "To be honest, I'm not as interested in these paintings as I am in other things over there," said Ettlinger, who is now retired and lives in Rockway, New Jersey.

On arriving at the Kochendorf mine, Ettlinger was shocked to learn that the Third Reich planned to use 20 yuan to turn it into an underground factory with 1 000 workers in nearby concentration camps. These plans were dashed by the allied invasion, but there was a chill over the mine. Ettlinger recalls his great wealth every day: if he hadn't fled Germany at 1938, he might have ended his life in such a camp. On the contrary, he found himself in an ironic position, supervising German laborers and cooperating with former Nazis who helped plunder French works of art. "He knows where it is," Ettlinger said. My own feelings can't blend in.

Long-term shortage of manpower and funds, these monuments were ridiculed by serving colleagues as "Venus repairmen". They quickly learned to build with few things and move like pirates. James Rorimer, curator of medieval collections in the civilian life of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is an example for all Venus revisers, who follow him in the face of authority, creative and fearless. When some assistants of General Eisenhower filled the residence of the Supreme Commander with old paintings and furniture of Versailles, Rorimmer angrily ordered them to move away, convinced that he was only defending the best civilization.

Captain Rorimay arrived in Heilbronn after ten days of fighting, because the city cut off the power supply, which led to the failure of the water pump in the mine and threatened the flood of underground treasures. He sent an urgent appeal to General Eisenhower, who forgave the officer's earlier furniture handling action, sent military engineers to the scene, started the water pump and rescued thousands of works of art from the water.

Rorimmer also faced the formidable General George S. Patton. Both of them wanted to take over the headquarters of the former Nazi Party in Barton, Munich, as the command center of the Third Army in his area, responsible for handling works of art. Somehow, Rorimmer persuaded Barton that he needed more construction, and Barton found other offices. After the war, when Rorimmer was elected as the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, few people were surprised by his performance in the action. He died in 1966.

"It makes him a little sneaky," said Ken C Lindsay, an 88-year-old Milwaukee native. Before watching Rorimmer's grades, he hated military life very much and applied for transfer from the signal army. /kloc-0 became a memorial figure in July, 945, and reported to the assembly point in Wiesbaden.

There, Sergeant Lindsay found his new boss, Captain Walter I Farmer, an interior decorator from Cincinnati. He is busy visiting the former Landesmusen Building, a 300-room building, which was the national museum before the war and the air force headquarters during the conflict. It miraculously escaped the explosion again and again, but it still shattered every window. The heating system has been paralyzed, a US military warehouse has sprung up in the former art gallery of the museum, and displaced German citizens have taken over the remaining corners and gaps of the old building. Farmer, Lindsay and other 150 German workers deposed these unauthorized residents in less than two months, lit the stove, eliminated the bomb, sealed off the surrounding area, and prepared a batch of works of art for the museum from the wartime warehouse.

"It was a nightmare," Lindsay recalled. He lives in Binghamton now. He was the head of the Department of Art History at new york State University. We must repair that old building. Ok, ok, but where can you find 2000 pieces of glass in a bombed-out city? "

Farmers themselves, deployed a crew member to steal glass from a nearby air base, and they brought back 25 tons of glass, that's all! "Lindsay said that this farmer has a tendency to steal. God bless him! My job is to let the workers install the glass, so that we can have some protection for the works of art that are about to be accepted.

1On the morning of August 20th, 945, when 57 trucks loaded with goods rumbled to the assembly point in Wiesbaden under the escort of armed tanks, Lindsay ushered in the first motorcade. Captain Jim Rorimmer rode at the front of the motorcade, like a proud monarch, and one art team after another extended for miles from Frankfurt. When the first trucks reversed to the storage area in Wiesbaden and began to unload without accident, Rorimmer turned to Lindsay. "You did a good job," he growled, and then rushed to the next crisis. Lindsay said, "This is the only compliment I have received since I joined the army."

After the cruelty of a long war, when an old friend appeared in Wiesbaden that morning, the people gathered there were particularly moved. Germans and Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the box containing Queen Nefertiti rolled onto the dock. "Here comes the queen in the painting," a worker shouted. She is safe! After fleeing Berlin, he was buried in a mine, hobbled on the bombed road to Frankfurt, and lived in seclusion on the vault of the Reichstag. This beloved statue finally came here.

She will have many companions in Wiesbaden, where a large group of trucks will keep coming for ten days. By mid-September, the building was full of antiques from the 65,438+06 Berlin National Museum, oil paintings from the Berlin National Gallery, silverware from the Polish church, * * * ceramic boxes, a pile of antique weapons and uniforms, thousands of books and an ancient Tola Mountain.

When a high-level delegation from Egypt and Germany came to inspect Nefertiti, Lindsay arranged an unveiling ceremony, which was the first time that anyone had watched the Queen of Egypt for more than a year. The worker pried open her box. Lindsay peeled off the protective tarpaulin. He came to a thick white glass fiber buffer. "I bent down to take the last piece of packaging material, and suddenly I saw Nefertiti's face," Lindsay said. She looked back at me, 3000 years old, but as beautiful as when she lived in the 18 dynasty. I took her out and put her on the pedestal in the middle of the room. At that time, every man in that place fell in love with her. I know it is.

The majestic Nefertiti, carved from limestone and painted in realistic tones, ruled Wiesbaden until 1955. She was sent back to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Today, she lives in a respectable place, attracting a new generation of admirers, including her Egyptian compatriots, who think that she was smuggled out of the country by 19 12 and should be repatriated. Although Egypt recently filed a new claim against Nafititi, Germany has been reluctant to give her up, even temporarily, for fear that she might be damaged in transit. In addition, the Germans said that according to a UNESCO convention, any works legally imported before 1972 can be kept. Yes, the Egyptians said, but nefertiti was illegally exported, so the convention does not apply.

At least Nefertiti has a home. As orphans, the cultural treasure of ending the war cannot be said so, because they have no identifiable parents and no place to go. These include hundreds of torch scrolls and other religious objects looted from European synagogues, which were rescued and used to build a Nazi museum dedicated to "Jewish issues." Many of these items were owned by individuals or groups wiped out by the Third Reich. They had their own rooms in Wiesbaden.

Walking in the corridor of the vast land museum, Lindsay feels an involuntary trembling every time she passes through the Torah room. "This is a disturbing situation," he said. We know what brought these things. Can't sleep at night.

The list of famous paintings and sculptures in Wiesbaden was cut and repatriated until 1958, but Torah and other religious objects were still unclaimed. It soon became clear that these priceless treasures still unearthed in Germany after the war needed a new collection point.

These materials will be sent to the newly established offenbach Archives near Frankfurt, where more than 3 million printed materials and important religious materials will be collected from collection points such as Wiesbaden and Munich. Offenbach factory is located in a five-storey factory building owned by I.G. Faben Company, and opened in July 1945. A few months later, when a professional officer and archivist, Captain Seymour J. Ponrenze, came to the S supervision facility, he found that the warehouse was full of books, archives and religious supplies, and it was a mess.

"This is the biggest chaos I have ever seen," recalls 9 1 Pang Lunze, who lives in riverdale, new york. Libraries stolen from France, including the precious books and documents of the Rothschild family, are mixed with books and documents from Russia and Italy, and family letters are scattered in the records of the aid society and Torah scrolls.

"The Nazis did great work. They wanted to destroy things. They didn't throw anything away," Ponrenze said. In fact, he joked that if they spent less time robbing and more time fighting, they might win the war.

He found that among the piles of files in offenbach, six German workers were wandering around, and no one knew what they were doing. "First, we need to put the bodies in before we can move these things," recalled Pang Lunze, who added 65,438+067 employees in the first month. Then, he searched the main collection and copied all the identification bookmarks and library seals, all of which pointed to a country of origin. Based on these, he made a thick reference guide for the staff to identify the collection according to the place of origin.

Pomrenze then divided the building into rooms organized by countries, which cleared the way for national representatives to determine their materials. The director of Dutch archives has collected 329,000 items, including books stolen from the University of Amsterdam and a large collection related to the Masonic Medal regarded by Germans as anti-Nazi. The French archives demanded the return of 328,000 items; The Soviets went home with 232,000 items; Italy took away 225,000 pieces; Belgium, Hungary, Poland and other places have less returns.

Every time the inventory begins to decrease as soon as Pomrenze is available, the newly discovered materials are poured into the warehouse; The paper tide continued until 1947 and 1948. "By then, we have arranged things very well," Pang Lunze said. However, even after distributing about 2 million books and other items, there are still about 6,543,800 items. Pang Lunze's successor described how to organize unclaimed materials, such as personal letters and book boxes. "There are some sad and sad things in these books, because they have been erased, so they seem to tell a story of hope in a low voice," Captain Isaac Benwitz wrote. I will find myself sorting out these books and putting them in boxes as if they belonged to my dear ones. They went to 48 libraries in the United States and Europe and the Ivo Jewish Institute in new york.

"Personally," Pang Lunze said, "this is the most prominent part of my mission in the army. I have served there for 34 years. " Pang Lunze, a retired army colonel and chief archivist, suggested that people should not ignore the role of writing in the history of civilization. "Painting is beautiful, of course, it has cultural value, but without archives, we have no history and we can't know what happened.

For Pang Lunze, a native of Kiev, it is particularly important to learn from the past. After his father was killed in the Ukrainian massacre in 19 19, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 2. "Ukrainians killed 70,000 Jews that year," said Pang Lunze, who was secretly proud that his wartime service helped achieve a balance.

The Nazis recorded their theft in a detailed account book and finally fell into the hands of officers like Captain Bernard Tapper, who joined the Monument Team on 1946. "Nazis made our work easier," Tapper said. They said where they got it. They will describe the picture and give its size. They often say where they sent the collection. So we got some good clues.

In fact, these clues are so good that Tapper's colleagues come to the conclusion that most of the high-value paintings were completed by Vermeer, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and other masters when Tapper arrived at the scene. This forced him to investigate the large-scale robbery that German citizens stole from Nazi hoards between the collapse of Germany and the arrival of the Allies.

"There may be thousands of dollars in the second wave of robberies," Tapper said, not the most famous thing, but many valuable things. We look for things on the black market, check art dealers regularly, and then go to the countryside to look for promising clues.

Taper searched the hills around Berchtesgaden near the Austrian border for Goering's large art collection, which is believed to have more than 65,438+0 works and 500 looted paintings and sculptures. In the last few days of the war, the Soviet army advanced to East Germany, and Goering enthusiastically loaded the artworks in the Kalinho hunting cabin into several trains and sent them to the bomb shelter near Berchtesgaden for safekeeping. "Goering managed to unload two cars, but he didn't unload the third car. He said that when his followers fled into the arms of the Seventh Army, the car was left on the border.

Rumor soon spread, marshal's unguarded car was full of spirits and other good things, and soon thirsty Bavarians flocked to it. "The lucky first people did get gin," Tapper said. Later, people had to be satisfied with paintings in the15th century, Gothic church sculptures and French tapestries, and other things they could find, including glasses with famous H.G. flowers and silver tableware.

The stolen goods disappeared in the green hills. The 90-year-old Tapper recalled when reading his official investigation report that year: "That country is so beautiful that it looks like Heidi's work." . He often travels with Captain Edgar Braden, a monument disguised as a farmer. He lives in Rydholsen and has a small pipe that wraps him in a circle of smoke. They found most of the spoils-Roger van de Wei Deng School, the Rimoz altar and Gothic statues in the 3rd century/kloc-and traced them to the home of a lumberjack named Ross. "Mr. Ross said he was not a thief," Tapper recalled. He said that these statues were lying on the ground in the rain and people were stepping on them. He said he felt sorry for them and took them home. "Tapper recycled them. "

Not all the goods on Goering's gin train are intact. /kloc-In the 5th century, local women wrestled on the Aubson tapestry in the melee of railway siding, until a local official proposed a solution similar to Solomon's: "Cut it in half," he urged. So they did, dividing the tapestry into four pieces and taking it away. Tapper and Braytenbah found the remains in 1947, when the gallows were separated again. "One of them is used to make curtains, and the other is used to make children's beds," Tapper said. The rest disappeared.

This is also the fate of a portrait of a young man by Raphael, one of the most important targets of Nazi plunder. This16th century oil painting disappeared in the last days of the war. Tapper had been looking for this painting for several months until 1939, when an art agent of Hitler photographed this painting for the Fuehrer, which also included the scenery of Leonardo da Vinci's wife, Mink, Rembrandt and good people. This painting has always been the pride of the Cracow Zen Museum. These three paintings were all in the winter of 1945, when the Soviets suppressed Poland from the east. In May of the same year, Frank was arrested by the allied forces near Munich. He handed over Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, but Raphael was gone. "It may have been destroyed in the battle," Tapper said, or it may have gone home with the Soviets. Or on the way from Krakow to Munich. Different from other paintings, it is on the panel, not on the canvas, so it is difficult to transport and hide. More than 60 years later, the whereabouts of T. Raphael are still unknown.

Tapper became a writer of The New Yorker and a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He still dreams of Raphael. "It's always colored. Although I only have a black and white photo, I still think I should find the damn thing.

The cone is a decreasing fraternity. Of the original 350 monuments, only no more than 65,438+02 male monuments (including dozens of female monuments) are still alive. One of the reasons is Robert, a retired Texas oil worker and philanthropist. m？ Edsel took it as his mission to arouse people's attention to their wartime deeds. "Their feat must be described as a miracle," said edsel, who wrote about Tapper, Ettlinger and their colleagues in his recent book Saving Da Vinci. * * * made a documentary, * * * Europa; And persuade congress to pass a resolution recognizing their services. He also established the Men's Foundation for the Protection of Art Monuments to protect artistic treasures during the armed conflict.

"This group is the inspiration of our times," he added, adding that we know that they returned about 5 million cultural relics between 1945 and 195 1. I guess 90% to 95% of high-value cultural relics have been found and returned. They deserve unprecedented recognition.

Meanwhile, their story continues. Thousands of cultural relics are still missing in the war. Russia has proved to have many treasures, including the so-called Trojan gold of King Preen. With the passing of a generation, ancient paintings surfaced from the attic, and long-lost works reappeared in Europe. Almost every month, it is reported that the descendants of the most brutal people in World War II have made new claims for compensation. They not only lost their lives, but also lost their heritage.

"Things will keep coming to the surface," said Charles A. Goldstein of the Art Revival Committee, and everything will eventually come to the surface.

Robert Poole, the Smithsonian's contributing editor, is studying the new history of Arlington National Cemetery.