The Monuments Men (56 page)

Dr. Herbert Seiberl, the Austrian art official who had been an early conspirator with Pöchmüller, lost his job and was banned from working in his field because of his registration in the Nazi Party. He tried working as a Christmas card maker, painter, restorer, and author, but without success. He died in 1952 at the age of forty-eight, leaving behind a widow and four children. His family was saved from destitution by gifts from a Mrs. Bondi and a Mr. Oppenheimer, both of whom had artwork rescued from Altaussee.
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Karl Sieber, the restorer, remained at the mine and became a valuable source of information for the Americans. Although he never spoke publicly of his role, his descriptions of the preparations at the mine were related by George Stout’s assistant, Monuments officer Thomas Carr Howe Jr., in his book
Salt Mines and Castles
. The book became the source of later theories ascribing the rescue to the quiet restorer. The Americans helped him return home to Germany, and later got him released from house arrest, but Sieber never worked as a restorer again. He died in 1953.
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The worst fate, unfortunately, was meted out to the unknown hero of Altaussee, mine director Dr. Emmerich Pöchmüller. He was arrested there on June 17, 1945, and charged with trying to blow up the treasures at Altaussee. During his interrogation, he was beaten so mercilessly by an American officer that he lost six teeth and was unable to stand for a day. In November 1945, his sister obtained an audience with the Austrian Ministry of Education. She showed them her brother’s diary, which detailed his actions at the mine. The answer from the court counselor was that “what your brother writes is all correct. We have checked it. But we cannot influence his discharge.”
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Pöchmüller was finally released from detention in July 1947, and immediately began the fight to rehabilitate his reputation. In the fall of 1947, he confronted Dr. Michel about his false claims, which had been in the press for two years. On December 15, 1947, Michel wrote to the Austrian ministry, detailing Pöchmüller’s true role at Altaussee. (Michel later recanted this statement, the only true one he ever made about Altaussee.)
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Mayerhoffer, the engineer with whom he’d planned the palsy, confirmed Pöchmüller was a patriot and hero. A police investigation at the mine found no abuse of power or Nazi activity by its director. The archbishop of Vienna appealed for clemency on his behalf, and his official file in the Austrian government acknowledged that he had “taken an invaluable part in saving the art treasures.”
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Nonetheless, Pöchmüller’s petition for an Act of Mercy (dismissal of charges for illegal Nazi activity) was turned down in 1949. It had been supported all the way to the office of the president, where it was summarily dismissed. Those who had benefited from the false stories of Altaussee had been working behind the scenes to defeat the petition.

Without the Act of Mercy, Pöchmüller was unable to work. He had joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and in 1934 was named an honorary member of the National Socialist Motor Corps, a division of mostly apolitical industrialists and businessmen. Because of this membership, he was barred from employment in Austria and Germany. In 1950, the German courts ruled that those bearing this honorary position were to be taken off the rolls of ex-Nazis, freeing Pöchmüller to seek employment. The stigma remained, however, and he was unable to find steady work. Unemployed, vilified, and impoverished, his health deteriorated.

Finally, a small publisher agreed to publish his book,
World Art Treasures in Danger
, which he had unsuccessfully self-published in 1948. Karl Sieber supported him, writing that “all facts described in this report are, as far as I have been present, true. Because the events which I have not been present at, but which correspond with the reports of different people I am aware of, I come to the conclusion that Engineer Dr. E. Pöchmüller has tried his utmost to write an absolutely objective, truthful report.”
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Nobody cared. Hardly any copies of the book were printed, and today it is very difficult to find (but not impossible, as we eventually discovered).

Devastated and bitter, Pöchmüller filed a lawsuit under an Austrian law that anyone who had saved artwork for a third party could claim 10 percent of its value as a reward. Although he publicly stated he did not want the money, only an Act of Mercy and public recognition of his role in rescuing the art treasures, he was castigated by the press and other interested parties—like Dr. Michel—as greedy and selfish.

Throughout the 1950s, he continued to lodge lawsuits in an attempt to clear his name, with limited success. In 1954, he was categorized as “less guilty,” making him eligible for employment in his former profession. He finally found a job in 1955, but in Germany, not his beloved Austria. He made a last attempt to clear his name in 1959, writing to the Austrian government that “I would like my efforts for rescuing the art treasures to be officially recognized so that my wish (for family reasons) of being able to work in an appropriate position in Austria again is met. For this I am prepared to waive everything else.” He never heard back.

Dr. Emmerich Pöchmüller died of a heart attack in 1963, having never received recognition of his accomplishments or freedom from suspicion and censor. His long fight for justice had broken him, body and soul.

Dr. Hermann Michel, meanwhile, did not escape unscathed. Although he was restored to his old job as director of the Natural History Museum Vienna, he was always viewed with suspicion. In 1945, he had convinced the Ministry of Education that he had joined the Nazi Party “to be able to easily carry out his work for the resistance movement at the museum.”
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The Ministry of the Interior was not convinced, and placed him on the ex-Nazi list in 1947.

In 1948, after the accounts by Pöchmüller surfaced, Michel was ordered to explain in writing his actions at Altaussee. Michel delayed writing the account until 1950, and then only turned in a partial draft. When asked why, he claimed that Pöchmüller, who he said greedily wanted the reward money from the rescue for himself, was threatening him.

The report was never filed with the government, but the effort to maintain his vast complex of lies finally wore Michel down. He began to lash out at his acquaintances, and even sued a fellow curator claiming he had stolen from the museum. The judge, in finding the man not guilty, said that “regarding the witness, Court Counselor Dr. Michel, one thing has to be clearly stated. This witness has evidentially made false statements. He also tried to influence another witness and is therefore guilty of incitement to perjury.”

Michel was placed on administrative leave in December 1951 while the accusations were investigated. In May 1952, he was forced into early retirement. He died in October 1965. Although he had left in disgrace, the Natural History Museum—trying desperately to clear the shame of its racist Nazi past—claimed in 1987 that “Dr. Michel together with the freedom fighters prevented the destruction of the art treasures [at Altaussee].”
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Meanwhile, in France, Jacques Jaujard was hailed as a national hero for his role in protecting the state collections from the Nazis. He was named a Commander of the Legion of Honor, received the Medal of Resistance and was promoted to the secretary-general of cultural affairs in the post-occupation French government of André Malraux. When he retired to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1955, his predecessor praised him as a defender of the arts, saying, “He faces the future with the marvelous trail of all the masterpieces he has preserved.”
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In contrast to many other prominent museum figures in France, Jaujard never wrote about his service as director of the French National Museums during World War II, or of his role in saving the French patrimony. He was firm in his discretion and his belief that those who remained silent probably did more than those who spoke publicly of their actions. His only known written account of the war was a seven-page description of the service performed by Rose Valland during the German occupation of Paris. Whether it was written at her request or to counter questions about her heroism or actions is unclear. But clearly, he remained her advocate.

Jacques Jaujard died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1967. He was seventy-two years old. Friend and famed historian André Chamson said in his memorium, “[His] transcendental moment took place during the years of occupation, [an] interminable moment of truth, when everything depended, in a heads or tails fashion, on courage and lucidity…. [He] fought like a soldier, with a clear mind, with a skillful persuasion, a servant of the duties he had added to the responsibilities of his position, already responsible in front of the liberated fatherland of the Republic that would be reborn.”
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In 1974, a book of Jaujard’s philosophies was published in a limited printing. One was, “It matters little that you are afraid if you manage to hide it. You are then at the edge of courage.” Another: “There are fights that you may lose without losing your honor; what makes you lose your honor is not to fight them.”
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His friend Albert Henraux, the French Resistance leader, cited Jaujard’s elegantly self-effacing motto for all Louvre employees: “
Maintenir.
” To Preserve.
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Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, the German Kunstschutz official who aided Jaujard in thwarting the Nazis, was also hailed as a hero by the French. After the war, he helped the Western Allies restitute German art. He then worked in the Foreign Office of West Germany tracking looted works. In 1952, Metternich became director of the esteemed Hertziana Library in Rome, a German library once confiscated by Hitler. He died in 1978.

Rose Valland, Jaujard’s collaborator, continued her forceful advocacy on behalf of the French cultural patrimony long after James Rorimer’s departure from Paris. On May 4, 1945, nearly a month after Rorimer’s assignment to U.S. Seventh Army, Valland received a commission in the French First Army. “Along the [German] roads,” she wrote, “I witnessed the heart-wrenching processions of refugees passing by like five year old ghosts from the [evacuation of Paris in 1940]…. It was the same kind of misery…. Seeing them, I lost the very clear notion of the enemy that had sustained me until then. I learned that we are only truly able to savor victory after having left the horrors of war.”
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She arrived at Neuschwanstein sometime between May 14 and 16, 1945, only a week and a half after Rorimer. Here, seemingly, was the endpoint of her journey, a place that had seemed so inaccessible as to be almost mythical during her years at the Jeu de Paume, but for which she had risked her life countless times. She got as far as the gate, where the American sentry, having no idea who she was, denied her admission. Rorimer had declared no one was to enter; no exceptions. Since the energetic Monuments Man was away on other business, there was no way to argue. Rose Valland was turned away from her own greatest achievement.

But only on this day. She remained in Germany for several years as a fine arts officer attached to French First Army. She loved the company of men, and there are numerous pictures of her at the MFAA collecting points in her captain’s uniform blending in with the male officers. She usually had a smile on her face and cigarette in hand.

Far from being the “shy, timid curator” depicted by history, Rose Valland was a tireless and vocal advocate for the restitution of artwork. She was able to blend into the background when necessary, but as when she challenged Bruno Lohse after he told her “you could be shot for any indiscretion,”
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she was not afraid to question the methods and actions of anyone at any time. Upon returning home from Germany in 1951, Valland continued searching for looted French-owned works of art. Her success in this and other endeavors proved she was not a wilting flower, but a bold, strong-minded, courageous, and intelligent woman fired by a passion to fulfill the destiny fate and Jaujard had provided her in 1940.

For her efforts, Rose Valland received the French Legion of Honor and the Medal of Resistance. She was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, making her one of the most decorated women in France. She also received a Medal of Freedom from the United States in 1948, and an Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1953, after twenty years of service to the French cultural establishment, she was finally awarded the position of “curator.” Her 1961 book
Le Front de L’Art
(The Battle for Art) was made into a 1965 movie entitled
The Train
, starring Burt Lancaster. The movie was a fictionalized account of the rescue of the art train; the Jeu de Paume and a character named “Mlle. Villard,” who was meant to portray Rose Valland, were only briefly mentioned.

Despite her decorations and medals, Rose Valland’s accomplishments were never widely known or admired in France. Partly this can be attributed to her background: She was a woman of little means from a small country town working in a field dominated by aristocratic men. The fact that, in Jaujard’s words, “Miss Valland took the calculated risk, in order to save from the war and then to recuperate tens of thousands of works of art, to give this information directly to an American,”
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was for some French citizens a severe breach of protocol bordering on unpatriotic. Finally, many of her contemporaries came to resent her relentless pursuit of information about the Nazis and restitutions of stolen art. There was a period when many wanted to forget the horrible events of the war; Valland would never forget and never let it rest. Perhaps, despite Jaujard’s support, she was always doomed to be an outsider.