The Monuments Men (57 page)

Rose Valland spent the last two decades of her life in relative quiet and died on September 18, 1980. After a viewing at Les Invalides in Paris, she was buried in a simple grave in her home village of Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs. Her fellow Louvre curator Magdeleine Hours would later comment:
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She received little understanding from her colleagues; she unleashed envy and passions, and we were few to show our admiration. On the day of her funeral at Les Invalides, the Director of the Musées de France administration, the Chief Curator of the drawing department and myself, with a few museum attendants, were practically the only ones present to show the respects that were due to her. This woman, who had risked her life so often and with such persistence, who had brought honor to the corps of curators and saved the property of so many collectors, was treated by many with indifference, if not hostility.

On April 27, 2005, fifty years after the end of the war, a plaque was finally placed on the south wall of the Jeu de Paume to commemorate Rose Valland’s extraordinary service and her commitment “to save a little bit of the beauty of the world.”
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But if history and the people of France never truly understood and acknowledged her heroism, her fellow Monuments Men did. In the years to come, they would repeatedly describe Rose Valland as a great hero of the war and one of the few indispensable persons in the monuments preservation effort. Without her, they believed, the MFAA effort to locate not only the thousands of stolen works of art from France, but also the critically important ERR records, might never have succeeded.

Like Valland, the other Monuments Men continued to work for the preservation of art after the end of active hostilities, but their tours of duty were for the most part short-lived.

On August 21, 1945, the Ghent Altarpiece left the Munich Collecting Point for Belgium. It was the most important piece of artwork stolen by the Germans, and therefore the first returned. A special airplane was chartered, and the twelve panels of the altarpiece strapped down in the passenger compartment. There was only room for one other passenger: Monuments Man Robert Posey.

At 2:00 a.m. on August 22, the plane arrived at a British airfield in Belgium. It was supposed to land hours earlier at the Brussels airport, but a violent storm caused a change of plans. Instead of the grand reception the Belgian government had planned, the airfield was deserted. Posey telephoned an American officer, who shanghaied about twenty soldiers out of Belgian bars. The panels were unloaded in the driving rain and arrived at the Royal Palace in Brussels at 3:30 a.m. Posey left a few hours later, with a receipt for delivery. When he arrived back at U.S. Third Army headquarters after a brief stay in Paris, the commanding officer gave him his reward: the Order of Leopold, one of Belgium’s highest honors. The Belgian government had intended to give it to him at the arrival ceremony, but never got the chance. He was later awarded the French Legion of Honor.

That was Posey’s final lasting military achievement, however, for he found the post-combat work tedious and clashed with the newly arriving Monuments Men. In early May, before the end of fighting, he had scoffed at those back of the combat zone as “too low to even be thought of. If they are as far back as England they are simply civilians in a sort of uniform.” Now that Germany had become a “civilian” world, he felt lost. He agreed with the rigid discipline of his boss, General Patton, who insisted that breakfast for all the men of Third Army, including the Monuments Men, occur early in the morning during a narrow period of time, just as it had during combat. The newly arriving Monuments Men wanted to sleep late. Even worse, they hired a busty German secretary, when it was forbidden to hire German nationals (even buxom blondes); Posey fired her.

Posey left Europe in September 1945, a month after the return of the Ghent Altarpiece and three months before his mentor and idol General George S. Patton Jr. died of injuries suffered in a jeep accident near Mannheim, Germany, in December. By 1946, Posey had resumed his work as an architect, and began his career at the prominent firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. As a senior associate, he worked on such notable projects as the Union Carbide Building and Lever House in New York, and the Sears Tower in Chicago. He retired in 1974 and died in 1977.

His partner, Lincoln Kirstein, who had despaired of leaving “before my retirement pay starts,”
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returned to America in September 1945 on a hardship waiver after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. In 1946, he and his business partner, the choreographer George Balanchine, established a new dance troupe, the Ballet Society (renamed the New York City Ballet in 1948), one of the most influential dance companies of the twentieth century. Kirstein served as its general director until 1989. The poems he composed while in the army were published in 1964 as
Rhymes of a PFC
. Otherwise, he rarely spoke of his tour of duty in Europe, although he corresponded with Posey for several years and even entertained writing a book with him. He even encouraged George Stout to coauthor a book about the Monuments Men, stating, “It’s not a picture book, but a story.”
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Far from viewing his role as glamorous, though, Kirstein often felt guilty that he had not faced more danger. He was the kind of man who struggled to find contentment in his many considerable achievements.

By the end of his life, Lincoln Kirstein was widely considered one of the major cultural figures of his generation, and perhaps its greatest patron of the arts. “He was one of those rare talents who touch the entire artistic life of their time,” wrote critic Clement Crisp. “Ballet, film, literature, theatre, painting, sculpture, photography all occupied his attention.”
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In 1984, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. He also received the National Medal of Arts (1985), and, with Balanchine, the National Gold Medal of Merit Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters. Lincoln Kirstein died in 1996 at the age of eighty-eight.

Walker Hancock left Europe in late 1945, after establishing the Marburg Collecting Point. He returned home and built the house that he had spent so many months dreaming of while at war, and he and his new wife Saima lived and worked in Gloucester, Massachusetts, for the rest of their lives. He resumed teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, remaining there until 1967. He also continued to be a sought-after sculptor, and his works include such monumental pieces as the famous carving of Confederate generals on the side of Stone Mountain outside Atlanta, Georgia. His most enduring work may be the Pennsylvania War Memorial, located in the 30th Street train station in Philadelphia. Completed in 1952, the piece is a tribute to the thirteen hundred railroad employees who died in World War II, and depicts a soldier lifted up by Michael, the archangel of resurrection. One of his last pieces was the official bust of President George H. W. Bush.

Hancock received the National Medal of Arts (bestowed by the first President Bush) in 1989, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1990. His precious Saima died in 1984; Walker Hancock outlived her by fourteen years, dying in 1998 at the age of ninety-seven, beloved to his last day by all who knew him. He maintained his positive attitude until the end, writing in 1997 at the age of ninety-six, “Although I have lived an exceptionally happy life, continually accompanied by good fortune, I possess, of course, my share of painful memories—some of these tragic ones, indeed. However I have clung to the prerogative—perhaps, in old age, the necessity—of dwelling as little as possible on such subjects.”
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James Rorimer stayed in Europe until early 1946 as the chief of U.S. Seventh Army/Western Military District MFAA. He then returned to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, becoming director of the Cloisters, home of the Met’s medieval art collection which as a young curator he had helped establish and build, in 1949. His letters home during the war indicated he was interested in writing a book; after many false starts,
Survival
, a memoir of his MFAA experiences, was published in 1950. By then the country had been flooded with war memoirs, and the book did not prove popular with the public. It was one of the few disappointments in a life of almost constant achievement. In 1955, James Rorimer, tenacious and hardworking as ever, succeeded Roberts Commission member Francis Henry Taylor to one of the highest positions in the American museum world: director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In many ways James Rorimer was the right man at the right time—although this was hardly an accident, as men with the energy, ambition, and intelligence of James Rorimer usually find their place in the world. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States was transformed from a cultural backwater to the center stage of world culture and the arts. World War II had exposed millions of young American men and women to the art and architecture of Europe and Asia and almost overnight created an interest in and appreciation for the arts that would normally require generations to nurture. The “new” nation of America for the first time—and suddenly—had a broad audience that wanted to learn, to be exposed and thrilled, and to simply enjoy painting, music, and sculpture. The Monuments Men, themselves enlightened by their experiences overseas, were at the forefront of providing their fellow citizens that opportunity. Using the same farsighted vision and diplomatic skills he had showcased during the war, James Rorimer harnessed the nation’s enthusiasm to build on the Met’s world-class reputation, developing its Watson Library into one of the largest art libraries in the country and acquiring some of the most famous pieces in the museum’s collection, such as
Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer
by Rembrandt and the
Annunciation
(also known as the Mérode Altarpiece) by the early Netherlandish master Robert Campin. During his tenure, the Met saw an extraordinary surge in attendance from two million to six million annual visitors.

Extremely proud of his service in the MFAA, Rorimer wore his army combat boots almost every day, even to work, and even with tuxedos and suits. It was a terrible loss both to the memory of the Monuments Men and to the art world when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his sleep in 1966. He was only sixty years old.

Appropriately, his memorial service was held at his beloved Cloisters, the first such service ever held there. It was attended by more than a thousand of his many friends and admirers, for James Rorimer was renowned around the world. “Steeped in history,” eulogized his friend and fellow Monuments Man Sherman Lee, “he cultivated the virtues of patience and direction. Possessed by the grasp of quality and connoisseurship, he knew and measured the worth of man’s visible heritage and determined, in the midst of constant change, to preserve and enhance that heritage so that it might be visible to anyone with eyes to see.”
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Rorimer’s own words, however, may summarize his life best. When asked his formula for success, he replied, “A good start, a willingness—even eagerness—to work beyond the call of duty, a sense of fair play, and a recognition of opportunities before and when they arrive. In other words, it is important to find a course and steer it.”
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He might as well have been describing the MFAA and his role within it.

By the summer of 1946, only two of the original group of Monuments Men remained on the continent: the two who had died there.

Walter “Hutch” Huchthausen, killed in western Germany, was buried in the U.S. military cemetery at Margraten, Holland. In October of 1945, his alma mater of Harvard received a letter from Frieda van Schaïk, who had befriended Hutch while he was stationed with U.S. Ninth Army in Maastricht and was tending to his grave. “After we first met him, several times he visited our home and so he became a very good friend of ours… we have been deeply saddened by the message of his sudden death…. I’d be very pleased if I could come in touch with his family. He is buried at the large U.S. military cemetery at Margraten, Holland (a place 6 miles from where I live) and I have been taking care for his grave…. If you know the address of Walter Huchthausen’s mother, I’ll be much obliged to you if you’d let me know.”
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One of his bosses at SHAEF wrote his mother saying, “He was so happy in his work when I visited him at Maastricht last February and so proud of what he was able to do. You—as well as the rest of us—can be proud of him. He is a great loss.”
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Walker Hancock’s observation that “the few people who saw him at his job—friend and enemy—must think more of the human race because of him” had proved true.
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Ronald Balfour was buried in the British cemetery outside Cleves, Germany. In 1954, his photograph was placed in the city’s restored archives building beside a plaque reading, “Major Ronald E. Balfour, Lector in King’s College of the University of Cambridge, died in action March 1945 near Kloster Spyck. This gentleman saved as British Monument Officer precious medieval archives and items of lower Rhine towns. Honor to his memory.”
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When Balfour’s mother visited Cleves a year later on the tenth anniversary of his death, the town leaders assured her they kept “the memory of such a man in high esteem”
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and promised to “do our utmost to take permanent special care of his grave.”
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It was, no doubt, small comfort for the loss of her son.

The last of the original Monuments Men on active duty in a combat theater was, of course, George Stout. He left Europe for the United States in late July 1945, but only for a two-month leave. He had requested and received a transfer to the Pacific theater. He arrived in Japan in October 1945, where he served as chief of the Arts and Monuments Division at Headquarters of the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers, Tokyo. He left Japan in mid-1946. For his years of service, Stout received the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal.