Alford Kenneth D. Allied Looting in World War II: Thefts of Art, Manuscripts, Stamps and Jewelry in Europe
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September 22, 1972, both precious manuscripts were returned to representa-
tives of the Kassel State Library. Today these most imposing manuscripts are
on display behind shatterproof glass.
R
Unfortunately the Estelle Doheny collection was later dissolved. She was
without doubt Los Angeles’s greatest woman collector and its most zealous
collector of Bibles. Sadly, her books were also dispersed at auction, even
though, in 1940, she had established a library in memory of her husband, the
Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, at the Archdiocese of Los Ange-
les.
The archdiocese interpreted her intentions differently. By the terms of
her will, Doheny’s bequest became an unrestricted gift in 1983, some 25 years
after her death. In 1987, the archdiocese announced that it would be “rede-
ploying this asset” to endow the seminary and to modernize its library facil-
ities. A lavish color brochure presented the calculated net worth of the Doheny
collection at $20 million and explained that the cost of upkeep was so great
and the number of visiting scholars so small that the archdiocese was paying
“an effective subsidy of $1,700 per scholar.” During the next two years a series
of auction sales in London, New York, and Camarillo dispersed the Doheny
Library and gained for the Archdiocese the princely sum of $34 million, far
more than it had anticipated. The most highly valued item in the collection,
a Gutenberg Bible, went to Japan for more than $5 million, a record- breaking
price.
In the late 1940s or early 1950s, Berman established a successful clothing
manufacturing company, Bud Berman Sportswear, headquartered in the
Empire State Building in New York. By 1957 he had 12 manufacturing plants
spread out across the United States. Berman later expanded still further, with
factories in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. On June 2, 1958, he sold the
company to Cluett, Peabody & Company, which formed the Arrow Company
division to manufacture, merchandise, and advertise Arrow products through-
out the world.
In 1967, in Palm Springs, California, Bud Berman wrote, narrated, and
recorded a Vietnam protest on a long- playing 33
1
⁄3 rpm record entitled For
Too Long I Have Remained Silent: Let’s Talk About Viet Nam. This recording
was, according to the notes on the record jacket, sent gratis to 2,500 “promi-
nent Americans.” A bulleted double column list on the verso of the album
lists the 32 categories of “prominent Americans,” among them U.S. senators
and congressmen, college presidents, union leaders, doctors, and so on. In an
early statement, Berman employs the phrase “we veterans of World Wars I
and II” as a claim to the authority to make his case. The narrative spoken by
100 Part III : Plundering Priceless Manuscripts
Mr. Berman is a plea to people of influence in the United States to end the
war in Vietnam as an act of civic and moral obligation.
8
In 1977, Berman joined the Kellwood Company, a St. Louis manufacturer
of clothing, home fashions, and recreational equipment. According to the
Records of Trading of Securities by Corporative Insiders, Berman made 37
transactions involving Kellwood stock between June 11, 1986, and April 10,
1991. Records about the Proposed Sale of Unregistered Securities by Individ-
uals reported three transactions for Bud Berman, two in 1990. The largest
amount is $253,053. These are public records and merely reflect his stock
trading activities.
Berman died on March 7, 1991, in Osprey, Florida, at 74 years of age.
Except for his Vietnam protest, he maintained a low profile. In fact, his obit-
uary in the New York Times made no reference to parents, date or place of
birth. It was as enigmatic as Bud Berman’s times of yore.
12. The Papal Countess 101
Chapter 13
Other Bad Wildungen
Robberies
In 1945 there were two large repositories in Bad Wildungen; they had
no windows and the steel doors were securely locked. The buildings were
under the custodianship of Felix Pusch; therefore the U.S. Monuments, Fine
Art, and Archives (MFAA) officers had no concern regarding their safety, and
they remained at Bad Wildungen through the winter of 1945. In February
1946, they were moved to the Wiesbaden Collection Center.
One of the greatest problems at the end of World War II was the col-
lection and return of cultural objects to their countries of origin. To provide
a means of organizing and processing these cultural objects, the U.S. Army
established several collections points in the U.S. Zone of Occupation. The
two main and longest- surviving collection points were at Munich and Wies-
baden. The Munich Collection Center contained over a million objects and
the Wiesbaden Collection Center eventually housed about 700,000 objects.
1
In July 1945, the Wiesbaden Collection Center was established in a large
former Luftwaffe building. The center was under the command of Capt. Wal-
ter Farmer; during his tenure it contained great treasures from the Berlin
museums. After Farmer’s departure to the United States, the Wiesbaden Col-
lection Center was placed under the command of Capt. Edith Standen. Her
father was English and her mother a Bostonian; Edith herself was born in
Canada, but by 1945 she had become a naturalized American citizen. Educated
in England, she was later in charge of the Joseph Widener Collection, the
most noteworthy art collection of its period. When it was given to the National
Gallery in 1942, Standen found herself out of a job and joined the Women’s
Army Corps. One of the first matters Standen oversaw was the shipment of
artworks from Amorbach and Bad Wildungen.
2
Like the repository in the basement of the Goecke Hotel in Bad Wildun-
gen, in the first week of April 1945, the Amorbach Castle Depot repository
had also been looted, in this case by the Seventh Army’s 2756 Engineer Com-
102
bat Battalion. Also at this time, Lt. Sinclair Robertson “helped” Dr. Albert
Rapp, curator of the Städel Museum, remove 34 of the most valuable paintings
from Amorbach. Robertson appropriated six of these paintings in payment
for his help.
3
(The complete story is told in my book The Spoils of World War
II.)
On February 8, 1946, a total of 402 paintings of the Städel Museum
were trucked into the Wiesbaden Collection Center from Amorbach Castle
and assigned inventory numbers 2051 to 2452. Next were the works from
Bad Wildungen, which arrived on February 27 and 28. The second shipment
included some of the finest paintings ever assembled—works by Dürer, Ver-
meer, and Botticelli. Between the first shipment and May 8, a total of 13 ship-
ments of valuables were transferred from Bad Wildungen to the Wiesbaden
Collection Center.
Now, as the last paintings arrived, something strange happened. It was
discovered that 140 of the paintings that had been stored in Bad Wildungen
and Amorbach were missing. This included the six taken by Robertson. The
missing works were 93 from the Städelsches Kunstinstitute, 33 from the
Städtische Galerie, and 14 privately owned paintings. On June 28, Edith
Standen had reviewed the missing paintings and noted that the Jordaens Por-
trait of a Doctor was included among them and that it had been purchased in
Paris in 1941 for 100,000 francs. This meant that upon recovery, the Jordaens
painting would be returned to France as the country of origin, as it had been
purchased during the Nazi era.
On July 27, 1946, the missing art from the Bad Wildungen bunker
became the number one priority of investigator Bernard B. Taper, a U.S. art
intelligence officer and a young, enthusiastic, knowing, and energetic person.
Because of his further investigation into this case, however, Taper, sadly
enough, became persona non grata and was transferred to Berlin.
4
As for the 140 missing paintings, Bernard Taper began an investigation
and on July 27, 1946 wrote:
The following steps were taken by the Art Intelligence Officer in this case:
(1) Meeting with Captain Standen, Wiesbaden Collection Point in order
to study lists and photographs of missing art works 21 July.
(2) Meeting with Mr. Holzinger, director of Städel Museum, and inter-
rogation of him as to circumstances of disappearance 22 July.
The next step in this case will be conference with German district attorney
at Kassel, who has been conducting an investigation.
5
On August 25, 1946, Taper wrote:
An illustrated booklet, with photographs of the main items which are miss-
ing, has been printed and is being distributed to museums, art dealers, and
interested government agencies. The discovery of but one of these missing
13. Other Bad Wildungen Robberies 103
paintings will provide the all- important clue which may lead to the solution
of what to the present appears an almost insoluble case. The undersigned
hopes to undertake intensive investigation of this case in the near future.
And indeed a booklet titled Diebstahl von Genmälden (Stolen Paintings)
was published and distributed. The first page contained the following:
The paintings in this list belong to the Städelsches Kunstinstitute, Frankfurt
am Main, to the Städtische Galeries, Frankfurt am Main, and to private own-
ers; have been stolen out of deposits of these museums. Both museums ask
for your kind assistance in this affair.
The artists’ names in this list are given in alphabetic order; measures are
indicated in cm, first height, then breadth. As it is very likely the paintings
on canvas have been cut from their wedged frames, the measurements may
have been reduced.
6
The case went cold and sometime in 1948 all but 25 of 140 missing paint-
ings published in the booklet Diebstahl von Genmälden were found in the
basement of the Städelsches Kunstinstitute. Did someone secretly place them
there under stress? Was it a high- ranking American army general or a museum
director?
Four of the 25 paintings were eventually recovered in Germany. Those
four included two of the six paintings taken by Lt. Sinclair Robertson, one
of which was Rubens’ A Satyr and Three Nymphs Frightened by a Thunderstorm.
On February 16 and 23, 1962, Christie’s in London placed 10 of the 21 missing
paintings on auction. On August 7, 1963, and again in 1984, a private owner
sold one of the missing Städel paintings to a New York art dealer. Therefore
12 of the 21 missing paintings have surfaced.
7
In 1948 Howard B. Travis, giving his address as the YMCA, Los Angeles,
walked into the Los Angeles County Museum and asked the director whether
a small ivory diptych he had had any value. Travis told the director that his
brother had obtained this object during the war. The carved ivory represented
scenes from the passion. The left panel showed Jesus entering Jerusalem, the
washing of his feet, and Judas’ kiss. The right panel showed the Last Supper,
Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the Crucifixion. The director, William
R. Valentiner, who had been born in 1880 in Karlsruhe, Germany, recognized
the 14th- century French ivory diptych as an important museum piece. For-
tunately, he held onto the piece and turned it over to U.S. Customs. He made
several inquires and learned that the diptych belonged to the Kassel State
Museum, inventory number VI 154. It had been looted from the repository
in the basement of the Goecke Hotel in Bad Wildungen. This $5,000 object
was then returned to the Kassel Museum by the proper army authorities.
8
Two years later, another painting taken from Bad Wildungen surfaced
in Los Angeles. Capt. Jerry P. Frary had purchased Rubens’ St. Catherine, for-
104 Part III : Plundering Priceless Manuscripts
merly in the Municipal Art Gallery of Dusseldorf, in 1945 near Bad Wildun-
gen. St. Catherine was one of 16 Dusseldorf Museum paintings that had been
stolen from Bad Wildungen. Frary, then living in Encino, California, and a
police sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department, had Michael G.
Frary, his brother, take the painting to the Los Angeles County Museum for
evaluation. James B. Byrnes, the curator, immediately recognized it as a work
by Rubens and took the painting to William Valentiner, his boss, for confir-
mation. Valentiner recalled that a soldier who wished to dispose of it through
sale had brought the painting to him about a year earlier. Byrnes photographed
the painting, made a notation that it was on a wood panel 21 inches high by
17 inches wide, and labeled on the back, “St. Catherine, collection number
734.” Byrnes then returned the Rubens to Michael Frary.
9
Byrnes sent U.S. Customs a letter and photograph of the painting. The
Department of State then contacted Jerry Frary, who retained Harry S. Apster,
a lawyer, to handle the matter for him. Upon being contacted by U.S. author-
ities, Apster seemed to be totally unfamiliar with the case and did not demon-
strate great cooperation, but instead stated that he and his client were taking
the case up directly with the Department of State. A year later, Frary surren-
dered the painting to U.S. authorities.
10
At that time Frary disclosed that he had acquired a second painting from
the same person while serving as an army officer in Europe. The painting, by
B. C. Koekoek, was tentatively identified as painting number seven reported
missing from the Dusseldorf Museum. Frary delivered the Koekoek to U.S.
Customs. After they received the painting, it was discovered that it did not
match the description of the missing Dusseldorf painting.
The Department of State began to look for a home for the recovered
Koekoek. As they wrote to various museums in Germany, they received the
same response from all: “No picture by B. C. Koekoek is missing.”
In 1952, customs officials seized from Valentine Lavin of Canton, Ohio,
two more paintings that had been stolen from the Bad Wildungen reposi-
tory.
11
On November 15, 1961, two paintings unidentified as to ownership were
turned over to the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. One of the paint-
ings was Portrait of a Man in Armor, by Nicolaes Maes; the other was the
Koekoek seized from Jerry Frary.
12
13. Other Bad Wildungen Robberies 105
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Part IV
The Schwarzburg Castle
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Chapter 14
The Robbery
During World War II, 89 divisions were activated by the U.S. Army. By
comparison, Germany, with half the population of the United States, organ-
ized 313 divisions. A U.S. Army division is the smallest composite unit capable
of operating independently and at the time was composed of 14,037 soldiers.
The nucleus of a division in World War II were three regiments, totaling
9,207 soldiers. The rest of the men were primarily assigned to artillery and
tank battalions with 497 medics and, interestingly enough, 114 men assigned
to the division band. Behind the story of a division lie countless untold
achievements in supply and service branches. Working in obscurity, the men
of the Quartermaster Company, Signal Company, Medical Battalion, Ord-
nance Company, and Division Headquarters normally receive only a footnote
in the history of a division.
One of these divisions, the 102nd Infantry Division, was formed in Sep-
tember 1942. After two years of organization and training, they arrived in
Cher bourg, France, on September 22, 1944. By May 1, 1945, after 173 days
of combat in Europe it was over for the 102nd as far as actual fighting was
concerned. During the combat phase, the division saw 1,077 of its young men
killed in action.
1
Hordes of German soldiers and civilians, fleeing from the advancing
Soviet Army, crossed the Elbe River by every conceivable means to surrender
to U.S. forces. German military personnel crossed individually and by units,
but always under protection of a white flag. Because of the terms of the Geneva
Convention, there was no choice but to accept their surrender. Over 100,000
German soldiers surrendered to the 102nd Infantry Division during this
period. Many civilians also did so. Some were returned to the eastern bank
of the Elbe, but others managed to get through the lines to western Germany’s
interior. The huge influx of German prisoners clogged the evacuation channels
to the point of bringing the evacuation of prisoners to a complete standstill.
The feeding and housing problem was enormous. But with the use of army
rations, captured Wehrmacht stores, and civilian food, the prisoners were fed.
109