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The Monuments Men: Rescuing Art Plundered by the Nazis
By Ronald H. Bailey |
World War II | With a young friend at the wheel of their jeep, Ettlinger headed for Baden-Baden. They found the warehouse and, inside, the Oppenheimer collection, remarkably intact in wooden boxes. They celebrated over drinks at dinner, and drove the jeep into a ditch, rupturing the brake line. Waiting for a ride back to Heilbronn, the men spent the next three nights in the best suite in the city’s finest hotel — the suite where the kaiser had slept during imperial days. At last they returned to base, and although Ettlinger clearly had been absent without leave, his superiors let him off the hook and had the Oppenheimer collection brought to Heilbronn. It was repacked with care by the miners, and shipped to the United States. Six decades later, a number of prints from the Oppenheimer collection adorn the walls of the New Jersey condominium where Harry Ettlinger, now a retired aerospace engineer, makes his home. Hanging among them is a reproduction of an etching based on Rembrandt’s self-portrait, the precious original of which this old Monuments Man once incredulously lifted from its storage crate deep in a German salt mine. This article was written by Ronald H. Bailey and originally published in the May 2007 issue of World War II Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to World War II magazine today! Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6            Tags: 20th - 21st Century, People, World War II
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2 Comments to “The Monuments Men: Rescuing Art Plundered by the Nazis”
The Monuments Men handled materials looted by the German
Army from individuals and museums for personal gain, but not
the materials stolen by the German Army and used for military
purposes.
The German Military Geology Units (Wehrgeologenstelle)
confiscated maps and geological reports from other countries as
they invaded their neighbors, using their own maps against
them. These, too, were hidden in a salt mine shaft in Heringen,
Germany, where they were discovered by Patton’s troops in
March 1945. Most of these 23,000 items were considered
weapons of war and were not returned, but still reside in the US.
I wrote an article about this issue of stolen maps in the November
2008 issue of “Earth Sciences History”, volume 27, no. 2, pages
242-265, “The Heringen Collection of the US Geological Survey
Library, Reston, VA”
By R. Lee Hadden on Nov 12, 2008 at 2:43 pm