Theft at Dillingen an der Donau

by Marc Masurovsky

Map of Dillingen an der Donau

The final Allied military push against Nazi Germany unfolded in March 1945 when American troops crossed the Rhine river, which acts as a natural border with France and Belgium, pushing towards Berlin in a mad race to reach the German capital. Likewise, the British forces broke through further up north and the Soviets entered Germany from the East. The race was on to reach Berlin at all cost.

On Sunday 22 April 1945, an American Sanitary Unit reached Dillingen an der Donau and set up its quarters at the Lamm Brewery, owned by Mr. Probst. The brewery’s cellar contained 14 crates from the Historic Museum of Dillingen which had been left there for safekeeping against aerial bombings. The crates stored objects that had been extracted from an ancient Alemanic cemetery nearby. 

Seal of the Lamm Brewery in Dillingen

After the Americans left, Mr. Probst, the brewery’s owner, resumed control of his business and, upon inspection of the cellars, noticed that 6-8 crates from the Historic Museum had been broken into and their contents scattered about the cellar floor. He repacked the crates not knowing if anything had gone missing from them.

On 20 May 1946, Robert Roeren, a Bavarian official responsible for the protection of cultural monuments, went to Dillingen to survey the former cemetery of Schreitsheim [Schretzheim]. He observed the absence of numerous items and concluded that these items had been stolen. Furthermore, the looting of the Museum in Dillingen had threatened the integrity of archaeological digs which involved 640 graves at Schreitsheim [Schretzheim] and some 400 “Alemanic” burial sites uncovered near Dillingen an der Donau. Among the stolen objects were bronze pieces from the Roman era and precious incised silver objects. These losses included “valuable gold and silver objects” which had been extracted from 11 graves explored during archaeological expeditions in and around Dillingen for the benefit of the Historic Museum of Dillingen.

In June 1946, Mr. Probst recounted the incident in the cellar to a local high school headmaster named Menz. The headmaster recruited some of his students to inspect the crates, draw up an inventory and return them to the Historic Museum. Later in the summer, Mr. Roeren conducted his own audit of the losses to assess the damage inflicted to the cultural heritage of the area.

The only hope for recovering these items rested with the US army. But because of the massive departure of American military personnel returning to the United States who had participated in the March 1945 campaign against Germany, it was unlikely that any investigation into looting by American soldiers and officers would produce any tangible results.

 

Inventory of missing items

Sources:

Memo from OMGB Capt. Edwin Rae, Chief of MFA&A Section, Restitution Branch, 30 July 1946, RG 260 M1921 Roll 14, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Major L. B. LaFarge, chief of MFA&A Section, OMGUS, to MFA&A Division of OMG Bavaria, 22 July 1946. RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Reports submitted by Captain Edwin C. Rae, chief, MFA&A Section of OMGB, regarding looting at Wittislingen, 30 July 1946 and 5 September 1946, RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Report by Dr. Friedrich Wagner, Munich, 3 août 1946, ‘Disappearance of items discovered during excavations of Alemanic graves in Schreitseim [Schretzheim], Dillingen district, owner: Historischer Verein Dillingen, RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

RG 260 M1921 Roll 14, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Photo of Lamm Brewery seal courtesy of https://www.ebay.com/itm/205638892105

Map courtesy of Google Maps.

Rose Valland mania

by Marc Masurovsky

Many books have been published about Rose Valland, the unsung French heroine of WWII in her quest to recover and protect France’s cultural heritage. One might ask if her idea of cultural heritage also included works produced on French territory by Jewish artists who elected to live and work in France before ending up in the crematoria and gas chambers of the Final Solution. The answer to that question lies in the copious notes she left behind.

Regardless of how she felt (the subject of another text), it might be instructive to give you a quick overview of the many volumes and visual productions that have created a "persona" for Rose Valland as a creature of the French museum world who rose above the fray to do the unimaginable in times of war—put her life on the line to document the plunder of art collections during the Nazi occupation of France (1940-1944). She was passionately devoted to a certain idea of the cultural heritage of her nation, ready to defend it at any cost, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. Truly admirable.

Here is a brief recap of monographs published in French and English since 1961 when the “Front de l’Art (Art Front)”, Rose Valland’s account of her wartime defense of French cultural heritage appeared in its original French edition at Editions Plon. There followed two updated French editions of the “Art Front” in 1997 and 2014. The first English-language edition of the “Art Front” came out in 2024.

Books

1961 

Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, Plon, 262 pages

1997 

 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN 262 pages

2008 

 Rose Valland : Résistante pour l’art, Frédéric Destremeau

2009 

Rose Valland, Capitaine Beaux Arts, Tome 1 Claire Bouilhac, Catel, Emmaneul Polack

2014 

 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN (update of the 1997 edition), 403 pages

2016 

Rose Valland, une résistante sauve des œuvres d’art, Mano Gentil

2019 

Rose Valland, une vie à l’œuvre, Ophélie Jouan

Les Carnets de Rose Valland: le pillage des collections privées d’œuvres d’art en France durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Collectif

2023 

Le livre de Rose, Emmanuelle Favier (Editions les Pérégrines)

2024 

 L’espionne à l’œuvre, Jennifer Lesieur

2024 

The Art Front : The Defense of French Collections, 1939-1945, Rose Valland

Rose Valland’s notebooks are translated and annotated in an English-language version, courtesy of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation. 

2025 

Michelle Young, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland,  

Erin McGuire, The Spy in the Museum: How Rose Valland saved art from the Nazis

Films featuring Rose Valland

1964 

The Train, John Frankenheimer

2014

 “The Monuments Men” starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett (in the role of Rose Valland).

2015 

Rose Valland, l’espionne aux tableaux (the Art Spy) by Brigitte Chevet. Aired on May 4, 2015, as an episode of La case de l’oncle Doc

Rose Valland mania spread to the French educational sector.

Schools and institutes named after Rose Valland

Collège Rose Valland, Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs

Ecole élémentaire publique Rose Valland, Le Mans

Ecole Rose Valland

Institutes

Even a research institute bears her name in Berlin, Germany.

Rose Valland Institut, Berlin

Parting thoughts

We cannot cry over spilled milk. Strong-willed women (Evelyn Tucker, cultural advisor to the US zone of occupation in Austria, and Ardelia Hall, cultural officer in the US Department of State (1944-1961), Rose Valland, cultural officer in charge of recoveries of French cultural treasures) fought an uphill battle to implement Allied restitution policies so as to provide some measure of justice to the victims of National Socialism. 

Life is what it is. Words are one thing. Deeds are quite another.  Something that these three outstanding women found out and fought through in order to assert a policy that was quickly reneged by the very people who shaped them. Alea jacta est.

We haven't forgotten them and we honor them. Role models. We need them now more than ever.

Sources

Photo courtesy of "The Collector."

https://www.thecollector.com/rose-valland-art-historian-spy-nazi/

Opinion: Arranged marriage between SNCF and AAMD against art restitution claims

by Marc Masurovsky

In a news item published by“Tablet” on 21 October 2025, the American museum association (AAMD) gained an unusual ally in its fight against renewal of the HEAR Act—the French parastatal company, SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer). It gained notoriety a decade ago for its role during WWII in assisting in the deportation of Jews from German-occupied France to death camps in Eastern Europe. The crime was worsened by evidence that the company had been paid for each Jewish man, woman, and child that its cattle cars contained on their journey to death. The end result was a "global settlement" that the SNCF signed in 2014 to satisfy claims for reparations filed by Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

Why on earth would SNCF support the AAMD in its fight against renewal of the HEAR Act which is exclusively about art restitution claims filed against American museums? The HEAR Act has nothing to do with the deportation of human beings. Hence, the two should not mix and even be in the same room. Odd to say the least. 

Nicole Wizman, author of the Tablet article, suggests that SNCF fears that if the HEAR Act is renewed, its emphasis on the elimination of legal technical defenses (laches, statutes of limitations, etc.) might make it more vulnerable to lawsuits from the heirs of Holocaust victims that its trains had ferried to their death for the German genocidal machine. It argues that the settlement it signed in 2014 would be breached by the renewal of the HEAR Act and expose it to more lawsuits in US courts. The argument is somewhat lame.

Let’s venture a thought or two here. The SNCF ferried not just Nazi victims to their deaths but also commodities requisitioned by the Germans or, worse, that they stole en masse from Jewish households. Trains conveyed these stolen goods for Vichy and the Nazis on a routine basis from fall of 1940 to summer of 1944. What if, what if those lobbying for the renewal of the HEAR Act are contemplating another round of class action suits aimed at France for all the wrongs that the Vichy government aided and abetted during its four years of collaboration with the Nazis? SNCF and other entities are perfect targets, much like the German Railroads and German companies for their complicity in the genocide machine. Joel Greenberg, founder of the Art Ashes foundation who is spearheading the lobbying campaign to renew the HEAR Act, warned that: “Institutions must stand clearly on the side of memory and restitution, not on the side of obstruction or indifference. France needs to face its treatment of the Jewish people honestly—not turn away from it.”

Jewish groups have largely spared France in their decades-long campaign for reparations stemming from the genocide of the Jews of Europe to which France’s Vichy regime participated with glee. Is France’s time up? And is Joel Greenberg the one holding the spear that will skewer its institutions for their past malevolence? As they say, be careful for what you wish for because it might all backfire. Meanwhile, the AAMD should not order champagne crates just yet. The battle over the HEAR Act has just begun. There's still one more year before a vote up or down will be held in an extremely polarized Congress.

French masterpieces for sale in postwar Germany

by Marc Masurovsky

From a business standpoint, art dealers do not run charities. They buy, sell, trade works and objects of art to make money, and, hopefully, lots of it. The dealer’s instinct is—you guessed it—to look for opportunities, expand networks of informants and clients, make deals, and jump on them before the competition does. As a result, the oftentimes legendary rivalries that arise between art dealers shape and transform the art world as well as the business of art. Every now and then, their acquisitions and sales influence the taste of current and future generations. A thrilling wave to ride but one that comes with a heavy price.

For those dealers who are willing to go all the way, they may assign ethics and History to a backseat in order to unleash their thirst for acquiring unique, expensive and (maybe) transformative objects wherever they can be found hopefully at a low enough price. During the Nazi era (1933-1945), dealers made a pact with the Devil by ignoring the heinous nature of hate-based political systems rising across the European continent and elsewhere. They saw how the discriminatory policies unfurled by the New Nazi/Fascist Order could generate immense opportunities for them as a result of the involuntary disgorgement of valuable works of art on the art market by the victims of Nazi/Fascist violence and persecution.

The dealers, collectors, agents, cultural officials and brokers who invested themselves in acquiring and selling Nazi victims’ cultural property did so willingly, eyes open and focused on the prize. And it so happens that even dealers who fell victim to the rapacity of Nazis’ covetous seizure of their inventories between 1933 and 1945 also saw opportunities for themselves and their colleagues as the genocidal dust of the Nazi-driven Holocaust was barely settling across war-torn Europe. Even if their desire to acquire such works might have been guided by the best of intentions…as art dealers.

To wit, Paul Rosenberg, an iconic figure of the international art world in Europe and the United States, had a keen visionary eye for high-quality art. He exercised his skills with brilliance on both sides of the Atlantic. On December 12, 1946, Rosenberg penned a two-page proposal to the Foreign Division of the US Treasury Department in Washington, DC, regarding the disposition of works of art located in the US zone of occupation of Germany (viz., Bavaria) which belonged to impoverished collectors. Here are the relevant portions:

“There are, in Germany, many great art collections…which include internationally famous French paintings…there might be a possibility that the owners of these paintings, due to lack of funds, might be interested in selling their collections. [Some] are celebrated masterpieces…We, as art dealers, are interested in these pictures…If this is possible, many of these great masterpieces would be acquired..by American collectors and…be donated to American museums or artistic institutions, thereby adding to their greatness.”

The “we” refers to a group of art dealers and their galleries based in New York who shared Rosenberg’s feelings and agreed to contact the US government and encourage the US military occupation authorities in Germany to enact policies that would loosen up export restrictions from the former war zone and allow art dealers and collectors to resume business as usual. The desire to “liberate” heaps of cultural objects from the shackles of Allied military policy and (re)fuel the engine of the international art market appears to be the main motivator behind this proposal. It is unclear whether this proposal was accepted, but it would not have sat well with American cultural officials who were working around the clock in Washington and in liberated Europe to ensure that art collections and individual objects located in liberated areas would be prioritized for restitution and not be offered for sale.

 In June 1946, the celebrated Roberts Commission committed harakiri and put itself out of business, confident that, to a large extent (although the proof for this has always been elusive) its leaders opined that very little looted art had entered the United States.  Before doing so, almost to legitimize its own demise, the Roberts Commission had successfully revoked Treasury Directive TD 51072, a key instrument in the fight against illegal imports of looted property into the United States. The directive was issued on June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day, under sections 3(a) and 5(b) of the Trade with the Enemy Act. Its aim was to restrict the importation into the US of any art object with a value exceeding 5000 dollars or is of artistic, historic and scholarly interest irrespective of monetary value.” The method of restriction was sequestration of objects falling under the aegis of the Directive. The Roberts Commission's job was to review the documentation accompanying these sequestered objects and either approve or refuse their release under a license issued by Treasury.

It should come as no surprise that Paul Rosenberg's proposal came at a time when some parts of the US government were no longer focused on restituting victims' property but on returning to business as usual as quickly as possible even if it meant releasing art objects from Europe into the United States with no filters and no way of vetting imports for evidence of loot.

Source:

Paul Rosenberg to Foreign Department, US Treasury Department, Washington, DC, 12 December 1946, 2 pages, Enclosure III, Box 28, Lot 62D4 (Ardelia Hall files), RG59, NACP, College Park, MD.