by Noah Charney
Article 247 dictated the reparations for the destruction at Louvain and the fate of The Ghent Altarpiece.
Germany undertakes to furnish to the University of Louvain, within three months after a request is made to it and transmitted through the intervention of the Reparation Commission, manuscripts, incunabula, printed books, maps, and objects of collection corresponding in number and value to those destroyed by Germany in the burning of the Library of Louvain. All details regarding such replacement will be determined by the Reparation Commission.
Germany undertakes to deliver to Belgium, through the Reparation Commission, within six months of the coming into force of the present Treaty, in order to enable Belgium to reconstitute two great artistic works:
(1) The leaves of the triptych of the Mystic Lamb painted by the Van Eyck brothers, formerly in the Church of Saint Bavo at Ghent, now in the Berlin Museum;
(2) The leaves of the triptych of the Last Supper, painted by Dirk Bouts, formerly in the Church of Saint Peter at Louvain, two of which are now in the Berlin Museum and two in the Old Pinakothek at Munich.
The reparations would reunite the dismembered limbs of The Ghent Altarpiece.
One other treaty was pertinent to the fate of art in the wake of the First World War. The Treaty of Saint Germain, signed 2 September 1919, dealt with the dissection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the fate of its possessions, distinct from the war. Article 196 dealt with the dreaded reparations in the currency of artworks, beyond what was destroyed or looted. How much of Germany’s punishment would come in the form of cultural bloodletting?
The treaty essentially deferred to further negotiations with individual countries the exact nature and constitution of distributed Austrian possessions, with the provision that objects may only be distributed that “form a part of the intellectual patrimony of the ceded districts,” and that the distribution would be in “terms of reciprocity.” There was no fire sale included in the Treaty of Saint Germain, a point that must have disappointed some French and Italian scholars. The phrasing of the treaty seemed lenient to Austria. Its enactment was less so.
The treaty’s requirements were not enforced until 1921, when a conference was held in Rome among the succession states of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire. The location of this meeting, in the former Austrian embassy in Rome, was designed to highlight all that Austria had lost. The Austrians present at the conference reported that Austria was told its fate without room for discussion. The country and citizens of Austria would be punished for the actions of the warlords.
The Austrian report from the meetings sheds light on the psychology of the reparation demands: “It may be asked how Austria ever got into the position of having such extensive claims made on her cultural possessions. It was due in the first place to the attitude of the conqueror to the conquered and the wish to take from Austria what she valued most in what was left her, her cultural heritage.” The seizure of art was designed to humiliate the defeated. But there was another element noted by the Austrian delegation: one of national enrichment, normally the goal of the invader. In this case, when the defender proved victorious, he would exact the same penalties: “To this must be added the definite aim of the Succession States to outdo dethroned Vienna by enriching their own institutions, archives, and museum, and to exalt their own institutions, archives, and museums, and to exalt their own national status by recovering whatever could be described as belonging to their own past.”
The Austrian report goes on to say that “these destructive aims were energetically opposed by the great Western Powers.” As they saw it, the “Succession States” were seizing a once-in-history opportunity to rob their old overlords and fatten their comparatively diminutive holdings.
At first, Italy tried to overstep legitimate demands and requested major reparations, but backed off completely at the first sign of argument. Poland was singled out for praise for not taking advantage of the situation. Czechoslovakia made “exorbitant demands for the reparation of injustices suffered from the Habsburgs,” seeking recompense without regard to the provision in the treaty that only goods of “intellectual patrimony” could be sought. Their demands were rejected completely by the commission. Hungary sought the most and gained the most. But the complications of the Hungarian negotiation required a separate agreement reached only in September 1927 and signed in November 1932. In the end, Austria yielded to Hungary 180 works, of which 18 were deemed “of outstanding importance.”
Belgium tried and failed to convince the committee to force Austria to return two of its artistic treasures that had been legally purchased for Austrian collections: the gold jewelry that comprised the treasure of the Burgundian military Order of the Golden Fleece, the chivalric order founded in 1430 by van Eyck’s patron, Duke Philip the Good, and the Ildefonso Altarpiece by Rubens.
In the end, the Treaty of Versailles was more lenient with respect to the return of works of art than historical precedent, particularly as set by Napoleon. It sought to usher in a new era, one that would exclude artworks and cultural heritage from war reparations. This enlightened policy was in harmony with the scholarly discourse at the beginning of the First World War, on the privileged position of art. With the prominent exception of The Ghent Altarpiece wings, which had been purchased, it was claimed, in good faith on their way to the Berlin Museum, and the Dirk Bouts Last Supper taken from Louvain, the only artistic compensations in the Treaty of Versailles were for works that had been destroyed.
The Treaty of Saint Germain was phrased in similarly reasonable terms. Nevertheless, a few of the Succession States had sought to exploit the situation. But a firm committee, while leaning in the moral direction of the Succession States, all the same prevented legalized pillaging and made reasoned decisions. The major Western powers (the United States, England, and France) were intent on preserving the nucleus of Austrian culture, which had long been the historical and cultural capital of central Europe. A few outspoken French aside, France was one of the strongest proponents of saving postwar Vienna as a cultural center, once the hot wartime tempers had died down.
Of all of the 440 articles in the Treaty of Versailles, none rubbed the Germans raw as much as the forced return of the six wing panels of The Ghent Altarpiece. The panels had not been stolen—at least not by the Germans. They had been stolen by Vicar-General Le Surre from his own cathedral and sold first to Brussels dealer L. J. Nieuwenhuys, and then to their subsequent owner, the English collector Edward Solly. The fame of the panels made them impossible not to recognize. But by the time Solly’s entire collection was purchased by Prussia, enough time had elapsed since the original theft of the panels that the Prussians could claim that they were innocent of any complicity in the crime. So when the panels were donated to the Berlin Museum, any wrongdoing was a distant memory. The hands of the inheriting Kaiser Friedrich Museum, with reference to the Ghent panels at least, were cleaner than those of many of the world’s top museums today, with their numerous acquisitions of questionable origin.
After the treaty, when the Kaiser Friedrich Museum had finally returned the six wing panels, along with the Dirk Bouts triptych taken from Louvain, the museum staff found a way to express their resentment. Where the panels had once been displayed, a placard was placed in the gallery that read: “Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.”
Years later, in the wake of the post-World War II reparations, discussion of Article 247 continued. Charles de Visscher, a distinguished Belgian lawyer and member of the International Court of Justice, wrote an article called “International Protection of Works of Art and Historic Monuments,” published by the U.S. State Department in 1949. In it, he explores the reparation of the Ghent panels in the Treaty of Versailles.
The restitution required of Germany did not mean the recovery of works of art taken away by force, or appropriated by treaty. The Belgian government refrained from contesting the regularity of these transactions. When the works were returned to Belgium, the Minister o
f Science and Fine Arts, in an address delivered on the occasion of a Van Eyck/Bouts exhibition in Brussels acknowledged that the paintings had been acquired [by Berlin] in the proper manner. Their cession to Belgium, therefore, in no way represented restitution or recovery, properly speaking. In principle, it was justified by Belgium’s right to compensation for the works of art destroyed by the German armies during the war. As for the choice of the works claimed, it carried out the thought, as expressly stated in the text, of restoring the integrity of two great artistic works. Since the return of the works of art specified in Article 247 was required of Germany as reparation, it was of course to be without recompense. However, Germany later put forward a claim to have placed on her credit a total amount of their value, which is set at 11,500,000 gold marks, and which [Germany] proposed to charge against the annual payment obligated as [monetary] reparation. This claim was unanimously rejected by the Reparation Commission.
The return of the six wing panels from Berlin was triumphant, the panels borne like a wounded war hero. A special railcar decked with Belgian flags was fitted to transport the panels safely. The train stopped at each Belgian town along the trail from Berlin to Brussels, where crowds gathered to welcome the return of the kidnapped wings of their national treasure, singing the Belgian national anthem and waving flags.
The entire altarpiece would be reunited for the first time in over a century. After two weeks of display alongside the Dirk Bouts Last Supper at the Royal Museum in Brussels, the entire Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was returned by rail to Ghent. Receptions were held. Officials gave speeches to crowds of thousands. Every church bell in the city’s skyline tolled in unison, ringing the reunion of Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, a painting that symbolized, to the Belgian people, the survival of their nation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thieves in the Cathedral
Plump and disheveled Beadle van Volsem made his final rounds of the day at Saint Bavo Cathedral, ushering the last of the parishioners and sightseers out the door. He checked the clock. He was due for dinner at the bishop’s residence.
The sun dipped behind the chimneys and gabled roofs on the horizon, as the beadle stepped out into the mild April air. He fiddled with his cumbersome set of keys until he found the right one, which he fit into the lock on the cathedral door. The cathedral was closed for the evening.
The staff swept, emptied the coin box offerings beneath the bank of votive candles, dusted the niches behind stone sculptures. The last of the maintenance crew exited out a side door, which they locked behind them.
Darkness fell. Inside the sleeping cathedral, a figure climbed down from the shadows of the rood loft.
At five the next morning, 11 April 1934, Beadle van Volsem made his first rounds. He went about his morning routine, unlocking doors, straightening draperies, checking the maintenance staff’s handiwork. He noticed that a side door to the church had been left open. Curious, he thought, but it had been accidentally left open on a number of occasions in the past.
It was not until 7:30 AM that he saw the broken padlock on the door to the Joos Vijd Chapel.
No, he thought, his heart rate rising. Not that door.
The door swung open with a squeal on aged hinges. There was The Ghent Altarpiece on display inside the chapel, its wings closed. And yet the beadle could see the panel depicting the Lamb of God—which could only be seen when the altar wings were open.
One of the panels was missing.
The beadle ran to the office of Canon van den Gheyn, the man who had so valiantly defended the altarpiece during the First World War. It was 8:35. They summoned the police, but not before word got out. A crowd gathered inside the cathedral to see the scene of the disappearance, erasing any clues that might have been present. The police arrived in the wake of the crowds.
Pushing through the throng of people that had gathered to gawk at the gaping hole in the bottom left-hand corner of The Ghent Altarpiece, police investigator Patijn saw a note pinned to the frame. It read, in French, “Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.”
Had this been a retributive crime, revenge for The Lamb’s wings having been forcibly repatriated from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin? The stolen panel was too famous to be shopped to buyers and sold. Or was it? Nieuwenhuys had found a buyer for six stolen panels just a generation before. Might a collector want only one panel of the twelve-panel masterpiece?
The missing oak panel was from one of the wings of the altarpiece. It was one of the panels that had been split vertically for display in Berlin. It contained a painted front and back, recto and verso, both of which had been taken. When the altarpiece was closed, on weekdays, the recto of the panel displayed the painted sculpture of Saint John the Baptist, in grisaille. When the altarpiece was opened, on weekends and holidays, the verso of the panel showed the so-called Righteous Judges on horseback, traveling to see the sacrificial Lamb at the center of the painting. It was said that several portraits were hidden among the painted judges, including that of Duke Philip, Hubert van Eyck, and a self-portrait of Jan.
Antique iron hinges that had held the panel in place had been removed, and then the panel had been pried from its frame, possibly with a large screwdriver. The removal of the hinges required some carpentry skill. The frame around the now-empty space was splintered, but there was no damage to the other panels. There were no fingerprints, footprints, or other telltale clues. Had there been any, the curious crowd ruined them.
Why this panel in particular? Both sides of the panel had a special resonance with the city of Ghent, more so than any of the other panels of the altarpiece. As the patron saint of Ghent, John the Baptist adorned the city seal, and, until 1540, the cathedral of Saint Bavo had been called the Church of Saint John. The Righteous Judges panel may have been a choice barbed with irony, the judgment of the Reparations Commission of the Treaty of Versailles having forced Germany to return that very panel. There were other potential reasons why the thief chose the Righteous Judges. In 1826, an engraving of that panel alone by British artist John Linnell began to circulate, increasing the fame of the Judges in particular. And if in fact the Judges panel contains portraits of not only Jan, but Hubert and Philip the Good, then that particular panel was of further historical and regional resonance.
From the outset, the theft was investigated in a strange and surprisingly unprofessional manner, one that led conspiracy theorists to assume that there was a cover-up involved.
First, Chief of Police Patijn arrived late to the crime scene. He had been investigating, of all things, a report on the theft of cheeses from a Ghent cheese monger, and was delayed because of it. After having arrived at the cathedral, he neglected to evacuate and seal the premises, and the mass of people milling about erased any clues that might have been left. He ordered no investigation of the surrounding area, took no fingerprints nor any photographs. He did not call the federal police, and yet they came anyway. Inspector Antoon Luysterborgh arrived at the scene soon after Patijn himself. Most bizarre and ridiculous of all, after a cursory look around the crime scene, Patijn excused himself to resume the investigation of the stolen cheese.
Luysterborgh was left to investigate, but he was no more thorough. The official police report only mentioned the theft of one panel, neglecting to include the information that the panel had been split vertically and, therefore, there were effectively two panels that had gone missing, the recto and the verso.
Van Eyck’s altarpiece had been back in its home, whole, and intact, only since 1921, barely more than a decade. In July 1930, for the centenary celebration of Belgian independence, The Lamb had been triumphantly displayed out-of-doors, symbolizing a united and independent Belgium. And now this.
The theft of the Righteous Judges occurred during a difficult period for the newly formed country of Belgium. In the wake of a national recession, triggered by the Depression in the United States, unemployment was rampant. As the recession grew progressively worse, religious fervor rose. Betwee
n 1932 and 1933 multiple visions of the Virgin Mary were reported in the area of Beauraing. The site suddenly became a pilgrimage point.
The first three months of 1934 were plagued by national crises. On 18 February 1934 the Belgian populace was horrified to learn of the strange death of their monarch, King Albert I. The king had been hiking in a desolate location called Marche-les-Dames when he slipped and fell to his death. Many suspected that this was no accident. Then on 28 March, the Socialist Bank of Labor declared bankruptcy. Thousands of small investors lost all their savings. Only weeks later Belgium’s largest bank, the General Bank Union, announced losses of millions, nearly going bankrupt itself. After the theft of the Righteous Judges was discovered on 11 April, national and local newspapers picked up the story, expressing outrage at the lack of security in the cathedral and the chapel itself. No guard had been posted, nor was there any barrier between visitors and The Lamb. Visitors could easily touch the painting, if they didn’t know better than to do so. Belgian columnists wondered in print: Is this how we protect our national treasure?
This was the most prominent theft since Leonardo’s Mona Lisa had been stolen from the Louvre in 1911, and international newspapers printed their share of recrimination. After the tribulations of The Lamb, how could the Belgians let it slip away?
Though the thief’s calling card suggested a nationalistic motivation in its reference to the Treaty of Versailles, it was unimaginable that the German government should sponsor such a crude, aggressive act as this. Perhaps the Righteous Judges panel had been stolen by an angry vigilante who planned to take it as a trophy back to Germany?
