Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (12 page)

Each painting had its own story and legend; the Führer wanted to hear them, one by one. But Mussolini, who once proclaimed, “Italy has too much art and too few babies,” considered the tour mind-numbing. Art historian Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli later commented that “Mussolini was bored because the tour. . . . was lasting too long. He walked by me and, with a gesture as an invitation to walk faster, whispered, ‘Here, we would need a week.’ ”

Mussolini had never been a protector of his nation’s patrimony. During the early years of their relationship, the Führer and his art advisers had made special requests to purchase famous works from Italian collectors. Such pieces, designated
notificati
because of their historic importance, had been restricted from ever leaving the country.
*
Italian authorities vigorously objected to these sales, invoking the nation’s patrimony laws, which protected such works. But Mussolini considered the laws a bureaucratic formality. As Duce, he disregarded them; the sales went through.

First to go was the
Lancellotti Discobolus
, a Roman sculpture of a discus thrower dating from 140 AD, a copy of the original that the Athenian Myron sculpted in the fifth century BC. Italian cultural authorities described the piece as “an irreplaceable monument for our knowledge of the
Discobolus of Myron
and of the art of this great master, in any case among the most distinguished works of ancient art.” Naturally, they rejected the initial export request. But Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Foreign Minister—and Mussolini’s son-in-law—overrode their objections. Soon the sculpture departed for Germany. Other works quickly followed, including paintings by Hans Memling and Peter Paul Rubens.

Reichsmarschall Göring then got in on the act, shipping thirty-four cases of art to Germany in 1941 and another sixty-seven the following year. Regardless of the legality of his purchases, the Italian government should have exacted an export tax based on the market value of the works, but in both instances the fee was based on ridiculously low valuations. The crates arrived sealed; customs officials did not open them to verify the value of the contents. No matter—the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid the tax on Göring’s behalf.

With the fall of Mussolini’s Fascist government in Rome and Italy’s subsequent change of allegiance, the contents of the German libraries in Italy departed for the Fatherland on Hitler’s explicit orders, despite an international agreement stipulating they would never be removed. The haul included the Hertziana Library and its rich material on Michelangelo and Bernini, and the holdings of the German Archaeological Institute, the oldest archaeological research institute in Europe. They also evacuated Florence’s Kunsthistorisches Institut, founded by German scholars dedicated to the study of Italian art and architecture.

Wolff-Metternich and other Kunstschutz officers did liaise with their Italian counterparts to discuss general protective measures, but since Mussolini and his reconstituted government were considered an ally of Nazi Germany, not an occupied country per se, the Italians were responsible for protecting works of art located within their borders. The wanton destruction of the University of Naples by German troops was an early indication—but not the only one—of the difficulties they would confront.

On September 30, a band of German soldiers near the town of Nola, acting on orders of their commander, set fire to a villa that served as a temporary storage facility for the contents of the Filangieri Museum and the State Archives of Naples. The fire burned the museum’s priceless collection of ceramics, glassware, and enamels, as well as forty-four paintings by such artists as Van Eyck, Botticelli, del Sarto, Pontormo, and Chardin. Destruction of the State Archives—perhaps the richest collection in Italy other than that of the Vatican—saw the obliteration of eighty-five thousand archival documents, some dating from the year 1239, including manuscripts, codices, and treaties of the Kingdom of Naples; much of the archives of the ruling Bourbon and Farnese families; and the archives of the Order of Malta. These criminal acts resulted in a loss not just to Italy but to all of Western civilization.

As the Allies pushed German forces northward, up the Italian peninsula, Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring ordered his Intelligence Branch to implement procedures to protect historic buildings and movable works of art. He deployed personnel from the German Embassy in Rome, and German historians affiliated with the German Historical Institute, to aid in this effort. Without a formal Kunstschutz operation, however, the safety of Italy’s cultural treasures depended on the discretionary judgment and benevolence of each German commander. The spiteful burning of the Filangieri Museum and the State Archives contents at Nola, and the University of Naples, demonstrated the risks of this approach.

The destructive events in Nola and Naples generated considerable alarm. In late October 1943, Dr. Bernhard von Tieschowitz, head of the Kunstschutz based in Paris, received orders to report to Italy to establish an operation there. Protecting buildings and works of art became his first concern. In an effort to begin operations quickly, Tieschowitz pressed into service well-respected German art scholars in Rome and Florence. Because of their knowledge of Italy, much good work followed.

But the Kunstschutz operational structure had an inherent flaw. As events in Paris and other European cities had demonstrated, the best efforts of its most dedicated officials to protect movable works of art could be subverted by Nazi Germany’s leaders at any moment, jeopardizing if not destroying its credibility. In contrast, the mandate of the Monuments officers had been approved by President Roosevelt and endorsed by General Eisenhower. Unlike the intentions of the leaders of Nazi Germany, their efforts were single-mindedly devoted to winning the war, not stealing art.

*
Clemen had been an exchange professor at Harvard University in 1908.

*
Some were later determined to be “School of Cranach.”

*
The
notifica
is a procedure of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage that bars from export outside Italy cultural goods of any type that are recognized as having significant historic and artistic value.

8

GIFTS

OCTOBER 1943–JANUARY 1944

W
ith the liberation and consolidation of Naples complete, Allied forces set their sights on Rome. The distance, just 140 road miles, seemed tantalizingly short, but the topography and wet weather favored the defenders fighting under Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring.
*
The German commander used the terrain to his advantage, establishing a series of heavily fortified defensive lines that ran perpendicular, like ribs across the mountainous “spine” stretching the length of Italy. This slowed Allied progress to a crawl, creating costly stalemates. German troops would fight a ferocious battle, then retreat to the next line.

Three defensive lines had been built between Naples and Rome, the last of which, the Gustav Line, passed near a town named Cassino, still eighty miles southeast of Rome. Of the two paths leading to the Holy City, one—Route 7, the ancient Appian Way—hugged the coastline and passed through the flooded, malarial Pontine Marshes. The other—Route 6—provided a straight shot for the Allies from Naples to Rome, through the Liri Valley. But it first required passage through a gauntlet of rising hills, mountain ridges, and entrenched German defensive positions. As British General Sir Harold Alexander observed, “All roads lead to Rome, but all the roads are mined.” A momentous battle loomed.

German Captain Dr. Maximilian Becker understood well that no matter the victor, many men would die. As a doctor assigned to the elite, independent, and battle-hardened Hermann Göring Division, a paratroop panzer division attached to the Luftwaffe, he had seen enough battles to envision what lay ahead. But this engagement would be different, because it also threatened the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino.

Becker’s enthusiasm for medicine coexisted with his passion for art and archaeology. With a sketchbook constantly at his side, he marveled at the sight of the colossal abbey, perched regally on a rocky outcrop some 1,500 feet above the Liri Valley. The fourteenth-century white stone rectangular building, rising four stories above the summit, was admired more for its sheer size than for its beauty. But the abbey’s location and history played a notable role in the development of Western civilization. Saint Benedict, who founded the abbey in 529 AD, declared the sacred site an intellectual center, one he hoped would be protected by its location from the profane world below. Such splendid isolation served the abbey well, but it also offered an irresistible strategic position. Its walls provided a panoramic view of all troop movements in the adjacent valleys. The location—and its unique collection of ancient books, illuminated manuscripts, papal documents, and works of art—had attracted conquerors past, including Napoleon’s forces in 1799.

Without fortifying the mountain ridge surrounding the abbey, German forces would have little chance of halting the Allied drive northward. It was, simply, the preeminent defensive position south of Rome. German troops had specific orders prohibiting use of the abbey itself, but many were positioned so close to its heavily fortified walls that, to Allied forces below, it would appear they were in the building. Becker believed the abbey was doomed.

In mid-October, acting without authorization, Becker developed a plan to relocate the abbey’s treasures. It depended on logistical help from the Hermann Göring Division’s supply officer, Lieutenant Colonel Siegfried Jacobi. Without trucks, the plan couldn’t succeed. Jacobi, a policeman in Berlin before the war, offered to cooperate but then commented to Becker: “If we’re supposed to do all that, there’ll have to be something in it for us, too. . . . keep just a couple of paintings. . . . Just cut them out of the frames and roll them up.”

The following day, pondering Jacobi’s unsettling comment, Becker drove up the steep, winding road to the abbey for his first meeting with the monastery’s leader, seventy-eight-year-old Abbot Gregorio Diamare. He entered through the building’s massive wooden doors, beneath the single Latin word
PAX
(Peace), and was escorted down a long, barrel-vaulted hallway, past rows of bookshelves, glass cases, and oversize globes, before entering the abbot’s workroom. There, to his great surprise, he discovered another officer from the Hermann Göring Division named Julius Schlegel. The lieutenant colonel explained curtly that there was no need for Becker to meet with the abbot about evacuation plans because, at the directive of Jacobi, he had already handled the arrangements.

Undeterred, Becker greeted Diamare and his fellow monks, resolved to present his plan rather than rely on whatever Schlegel may have told the abbot. Speaking through an interpreter, Becker explained exactly how and why he wanted to relocate to safety as much of the abbey’s treasures and to do it as soon as possible. Diamare’s frumpish appearance, with his slumping shoulders and weighty, black-rimmed glasses, masked the cleverness and experience of someone who had survived thirty-four years of leadership of the abbey, including one world war, and the unstable politics between Italy and the Holy See. Although the meeting ended without conclusion, Becker remained hopeful, but another meeting would be required.

That evening, Becker’s suspicion of Schlegel diminished when he learned that he had owned a transport firm in his hometown of Vienna before the war. That seemed to explain why Jacobi had sent Schlegel to meet with the abbot. The following day, Becker and Schlegel drove back up the mountain for a second meeting. As they entered the abbey, a man dressed in the uniform of an Italian museum guard called out, “
Dottore, dottore!
” It took a few moments, but Becker vaguely remembered dressing a minor wound for one of the guards at Pompeii during a visit several weeks earlier. Incredibly, this man had been his patient.

Speaking in a hushed tone, the guard dropped a bombshell: he and another museum employee were secretly guarding 187 crates of artworks that Naples authorities had delivered to Monte Cassino for safekeeping on September 9, the day after the announcement of the Italian surrender. The shipment included paintings and bronzes from the Museo Nazionale, some from the ancient sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and other works of art from the Museo San Martino, the Reggia di Capodimonte, and the Mostra d’Oltremare.

Many of the most priceless works of art from Naples now resided at the abbey, including
Danaë
, by the prolific Venetian colorist Titian; Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s
The Blind Leading the Blind
; and Italian pioneer Caravaggio’s
Flagellation of Christ
, one of the canvases created by the volatile master between his flight from Rome in 1606 and his dramatic death in 1610. They were in good company, alongside paintings by Masaccio, Botticelli, Bellini, El Greco, Correggio, and the Carraccis. The Abbey of Monte Cassino had always been a repository of knowledge, but with the astonishing news about the Naples collections, Becker realized it had also become a fortress for art.

While waiting for their second meeting with Abbot Diamare to begin, Schlegel casually pointed to a nearby medieval sculpture and mentioned to Becker what a perfect addition it would be to the collection of their division’s patron, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. Schlegel’s offhand comment set the tone for the days ahead.

The abbot had many questions about Becker’s plan. Who could blame him? It had all been strung together so quickly that even Becker wasn’t sure where the abbey treasures would be taken. He could only assure Diamare that they would be headed north. “Do you mean to Germany?” asked the abbot—a reasonable question, given reports of German looting. But after listening to Becker’s and Schlegel’s professions of goodwill and personal assurances, and no doubt realizing a major battle of the war would soon be fought outside the abbey walls, Diamare reluctantly agreed.

With the abbot’s permission, the Hermann Göring Division’s plan to relocate the abbey’s extensive holdings could proceed. Monks would accompany the trucks containing property of the abbey to two Benedictine monasteries in Rome, St. Paul Outside the Walls and Sant’Anselmo. The Naples treasures, and other property belonging to the Italian State, would be held in trust at a location to be determined, awaiting transfer arrangements with Italy’s new government officials. Under no circumstances, however, would Diamare and his inner circle leave their home.

The crating operation alone was a Herculean task. The abbey’s holdings included the state-owned Library of Monuments and the Archive of the Abbey, as well as the church-owned Pauline Library, Private Library of the Monks, and Diocesan Library—including some forty thousand parchments dating from the ninth century onward; thousands of paper documents; 1,200 illuminated manuscripts from the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries; and 100,000 printed works. The abbey also contained tapestries, paintings, and jewel-encrusted religious objects. Packing these treasures would have been a daunting task during a time of peace. Given the wartime shortage of materials, it seemed impossible.

Becker and Schlegel began by relieving a nearby bottling factory of its wood, nails, and tools. German carpenters worked alongside refugees living within the abbey walls to build the crates and then load them onto trucks. Each evening, shipments departed for Rome or the undisclosed storage facility. By November 3, in just three weeks, Becker and Schlegel had overseen the transport of one hundred fully loaded trucks. It was a remarkable accomplishment.

While Schlegel completed the last of the shipments, Becker grew increasingly fearful about the disposition of the state-owned Naples treasures and decided to confront Jacobi. Without explanation, Jacobi handed Becker the file copy of a letter he had sent to Lieutenant Colonel Bernd von Brauchitsch, chief adjutant—and an adviser—to Reichsmarschall Göring.

Becker read the letter in shock. The division intended to make a gift of works of art from the Naples museums to its patron. They wanted Brauchitsch to send an art expert to Italy to make the selections. The Reichsmarschall’s birthday was in January; these unique and priceless works of art would be wonderful additions to the grand gift-giving festivities. Becker’s worst fears had been realized.

On November 10,
The New York Times
reported: “Unique Collection of Art Treasures Taken Away by Germans in Italy.” Professor Amedeo Maiuri, Curator of the Museo Nazionale in Naples, who had been injured in one of the Allied attacks on Pompeii, said, “The responsibility of the Germans before the whole civilized world will be multiplied beyond all their previous responsibility for devastations, sacking and lootings.” As Maiuri spoke, he wept, “not for himself or for Italy, but for the things that are the heritage of the world of culture.” After the deliberate destruction by German troops of the State Archives and paintings from the Filangieri Museum, Maiuri feared the treasures of Naples might be next.

In late November, Becker received word that an art expert from Berlin had indeed finally arrived at the secret storage facility, a villa near Spoleto, about seventy miles north of Rome, which the division had commandeered as its supply depot. Becker drove for more than ten hours, over roads recurrently subjected to Allied air attacks, to reach the villa. He pulled up to the door, exhausted by the harrowing journey and fearful of what he would find inside. His suspense was short-lived. The original crates from Naples had been stacked in the center of the reception area. Many had already been pried open, their seals broken. Packing material littered the floor. The scene looked like an art gallery, with paintings leaning against the wall as if a dealer had just unpacked his latest acquisitions. Becker had walked in on a looting operation initiated by the Hermann Göring Division.

Boiling with anger, Becker blurted out, “There’s some unbelievably shitty business going on here!” That drew the attention of soldiers in the room as well as the art expert. Becker also informed him that members of the newly formed German Kunstschutz in Italy had recently visited the supply depot, inspected the paintings, and departed, satisfied that all the contents were intact. Becker then threatened to report the activities of the art expert to his superiors if any painting or object left the Spoleto depot without authorization from Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring.

Upon returning from Spoleto, Becker found Jacobi and angrily explained what he’d witnessed. Far from being defensive, Jacobi justified the right of the Hermann Göring Division to exact a legitimate reward—a good deeds commission—for transporting and saving art treasures from a war zone on behalf of Italy.

Italian art officials besieged Tieschowitz, the Kunstschutz representative, shortly after his arrival in Italy, desperate to know the status of the collections taken from Monte Cassino. Tieschowitz subsequently questioned both Schlegel and another officer, probably Jacobi. The answers they received summed up the arrogance of the Hermann Göring Division. “We didn’t get [the collection] away from the priests just so we could give it back to the church. This stuff belongs to Germany!” After Tieschowitz informed both officers that his orders provided for the Hermann Göring Division to turn over to the Vatican those treasures formerly stored at the abbey, they exclaimed, “You’re upsetting our whole applecart!”

Tieschowitz then arranged a meeting with Kesselring to seek his help in forcing the Hermann Göring Division to produce the missing artwork, but to little avail. Having dealt previously with the independently minded division, who “had not complied with my issued orders at all,” Kesselring knew that expending valuable political currency doing battle with the Reichsmarschall was futile.

THROUGHOUT THE FALL
of 1943, SS General Karl Wolff managed to delay his report to Hitler regarding seizing control of the Vatican. He used that time to brush up on the medieval power structure within Italy. The independent city-states and kingdoms had only united as the nation of Italy in 1871, just seventy-two years earlier. Most of the country’s political parties were even newer. But the authority of the Catholic Church dated back centuries. From Wolff’s perspective, it made sense to develop good relationships with high-ranking church dignitaries, not incarcerate them, and then use his power as head of the SS to grant favors to church officials and others as their inevitable special requests arose. Wolff later referred to it as his “easy hand policy.”