Stealing the Mystic Lamb

by Noah Charney

  There, unwrapped on four empty cardboard boxes one foot off the mine’s clay floor lay eight panels of Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Someone, just before the mine’s entrance was sealed, had looked lovingly and admiringly on this greatest treasure. How close it had come to being forever buried alive. How close to complete destruction.

  There was evidence of fond and mournful farewells. Also in the chapel, on an old brown-and-white-striped mattress, they found the Madonna and Child marble sculpture by Michelangelo that had been looted from the church of Notre Dame in Bruges, Jan van Eyck’s hometown. It had remained in Bruges throughout the war until 8 September 1944, when the Germans removed it, claiming that they wanted to protect it from falling into the hands of the barbarous Americans. It had been smuggled out of Bruges in a confiscated Red Cross truck only eight days before British soldiers had recaptured the city. And now here it was, lying on a mattress on the floor of a subterranean chapel. Had Michel taken one last look at beloved works before fleeing?

  The fifty-three finest objects in the mine, those that would be the trophy pieces of any museum in the world, bore the label “A. H. Linz”—artworks reserved for Adolf Hitler’s supermuseum.

  The soldiers and miners, led by Posey and Kirstein, spent four days cataloguing the stolen hoard. In all, the Alt Aussee treasure consisted of the following objects:• 6,577 oil paintings

  • 2,030 works on paper (watercolors and drawings)

  • 954 prints (etchings and engravings)

  • 137 statues

  • 128 pieces of arms and armor

  • 79 containers full of decorative arts

  • 78 pieces of furniture

  • 122 tapestries

  • 1,500 cases of rare books

  These objects included works by most of the greatest artists in history: van Eyck, Michelangelo, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Reynolds, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, Brueghel, and on. There were hundreds of nineteenth-century German paintings of the sort Hitler prized, as well as Egyptian tomb statuary, Greek and Roman busts and marble sculptures, bronzes, porcelain, inlaid wood furniture, ornate tapestries—the finest content of the looted museums, galleries, and private collections of Nazi-occupied Europe.

  There is a lingering debate among historians as to whether or not Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, perhaps the only painting more famous than The Ghent Altarpiece (although nowhere near as influential), was successfully stolen by the Nazis and stored at Alt Aussee. Mona Lisa is not mentioned as having ever been in the mine in any extant wartime document, Nazi or Allied. Whether it might have been at Alt Aussee was a question only raised when scholars examined the postwar SOE report on the activities of Albrecht Gaiswinkler. This report states that Gaiswinkler and his team “saved such priceless objects as the Louvre’s Mona Lisa.” A second document, from an Austrian museum near Alt Aussee, dated 12 December 1945, states that “the Mona Lisa from Paris” was among “80 wagons of art and cultural objects from across Europe” that had been taken into the mine.

  For its part, the Louvre museum has remained surprisingly silent regarding the whereabouts of its treasures during the war. After years of refusing to respond to inquiring scholars, the Louvre finally admitted that the Mona Lisa had indeed been in the Alt Aussee mine. But why, then, was there no record of it, either at the Munich Collection Point or in any extant document from either the Allies or the Axis, for that matter?

  The Louvre now states that a sixteenth-century copy of the Mona Lisa had been found at Alt Aussee and was on a list of several thousand works assembled at the Musées Nationaux de la Recuperation—works whose owner could not be traced. This Mona Lisa copy was marked MNR 265 on the list. After five years had passed, with no proven owner coming to light, the copy was presented to the Louvre for indefinite safekeeping. From 1950 to the present, it has been hanging outside the office of the museum’s director.

  An intriguing story of what might have happened to the Mona Lisa during the Second World War emerges if one pieces together the known facts. The Mona Lisa would certainly have been an important target for the ERR, Göring, and Hitler. Nazis would have sought the Mona Lisa without rest, demanding that it be handed to them upon their entry into Paris and hunting it down if it were not. A nearly identical contemporary copy of the painting had been placed in the specially marked wooden crate labeled “Mona Lisa” and shipped for storage with the rest of the national museum collections, while the original was craftily hidden away. The ERR then chased what they believed to be the original Mona Lisa and, upon capturing it, sent it to Alt Aussee for storage. All the while, the original lay in hiding, officially resurfacing only on 16 June 1945—the very day that the first of the Alt Aussee treasures were carried up out of the mine. This explains how the Mona Lisa did return from Alt Aussee: restitution number MNR 265, which now hangs in the Louvre’s administrative offices. It also explains why the Mona Lisa was not noted in any of the records related to Alt Aussee—some officers recognized that the Alt Aussee painting was a copy, while others, and evidently the ERR, thought it was the original.

  Posey and Kirstein learned the story of The Ghent Altarpiece from Karl Sieber, the German art conservator who had been in charge of caring for the Alt Aussee hoard. After Buchner had driven The Lamb from Pau to Paris, it had been taken to Neuschwanstein, the fairy-tale palace in Bavaria that served as the model for the Disneyland castle. Neuschwanstein was originally meant to be the main storage depot for all of the Nazi stolen art. The first trainload of art arrived there in April 1941. An alternative had only been sought and found in Alt Aussee when Neuschwanstein, a monastery, and five other castles all became overfilled with loot. Alt Aussee, having already been converted into a covert art depot, began to fill from February 1944 on, as Allied air attacks threatened the existing castle storage centers.

  At Neuschwanstein, a restorer from Munich had treated The Lamb for blisters it had developed during its years of exile and transport, adding facing to the areas where the paint had peeled away from the panel as a result of changes in humidity. When The Lamb was found in the mine, it still had wax paper bandages on certain sections. The Saint John the Baptist panel that had been stolen from the Cathedral of Saint Bavo and recovered in 1934 was still in Sieber’s workshop for treatment.

  It was then that Posey and Kirstein received unfortunate news. The man who had helped them to save all this, Hermann Bunjes, had shot his family before taking his own life. His guilt, hopelessness about his future, and fear of reprisals from his countrymen took a heavy toll on him—a weight too strong for him to bear. The only consolation to that tragic coda is that history can remember with thanks the part he played in saving these treasures—although such recognition must be cut with contrition, for he also had played a role in stealing them.

  Captain Posey and Pfc. Kirstein were relieved by the Monuments Men of the Twelfth Army, George Stout and Lieutenant Thomas Carr Howe Jr. Posey and Kirstein continued north with the Third Army, while their replacements prepared the Alt Aussee treasure for transport and brought it to a collection point in liberated Munich.

  The Munich Central Collection Point was established in July 1945 in Hitler’s former headquarters and was to be the primary destination for all objects of cultural heritage that had been displaced by the ERR. There a team of scholars, led by the brilliant American art historian Craig Hugh-Smyth, would be charged with sorting out what belonged to whom and arranging for the return of each piece of stolen art to its rightful country. In turn, each country would take charge of returning art taken from its private citizens.

  In order to remove the treasures from the mine, Stout and Howe had the mine shaft equipped with rails. Specially designed five-foot-long flat-cars were fitted with narrow running boards and pulled by small gasoline engines. The Michelangelo Madonna and Child was the first object to leave the mine, wrapped in padding, on 16 June. Howe describes it in his memoir as looking like “a trussed-up ham.” The next masterpiece to be liberated was The Ghent Altarpiece. A low-rid
ing flatcar had to be designed especially for this purpose, so that the height of the enormous painting would not brush against the jagged rock outcroppings of the mine shaft ceiling.

  Even out of the mine, the road from Alt Aussee to Munich was far from safe. A line of trucks was defended by a heavily armed escort. Howe wrote, “Between Alt Aussee and Salzburg the road led through isolated country. Conditions were as yet far from settled. Small bands of troops lurked in the mountains.” Under Howe and Stout’s supervision, the entire contents of the mine made the trip safely to the Munich collection point.

  While most of the objects at the collection point were to be retrieved by representatives from each victimized country, the most important artworks would be taken back to their homelands directly. General Eisenhower personally requested the immediate restitution of these selected masterpieces, at U.S. expense, as evidence of American policy. Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was very first of these most important artworks to be returned. A chartered plane was to fly the altarpiece from Munich to Brussels. The panels were tied to specially fitted metal supports in the plane’s hull. It would have only one passenger to ensure its safe arrival—Captain Robert K. Posey.

  A parade and grand welcome waited at Brussels airport. After five hundred years of kidnapping, smuggling, dismemberment, looting, successful and attempted vandalism, ransom, near destruction, and a dizzying array of thefts, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb could finally rest, safely on its way home.

  Or could it? One more twist would occur on its odyssey homeward.

  Where to pin the badge of heroism? With a number of mutually contradictory accounts, from Gaiswinkler, Grafl, Michel, Pöchmüller, and others, one must sift out the ulterior motives to seek the truth from among the various versions proffered. That Gaiswinkler’s adventures are incredible is certainly no reason to discount them. It is a cinematic tale—one that inspired the 1968 film Where Eagles Dare, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. True history is full of stories that seem impossible outside the realm of fiction, never more so than during the Second World War, when the unlikeliest of peons became heroes. Is the story of Gaiswinkler any less plausible than the thirteen crimes surrounding The Ghent Altarpiece, than the serial thievery of Napoleon’s Citizen Wicar, than Canon van den Gheyn’s heroic hiding of The Mystic Lamb, than the bizarre and conspiratorial theft and ransom of the Righteous Judges?

  Numerous primary source documents attest to the truth of the Gaiswinkler story, but they are, in the main, German and Austrian sources. These sources have incentive to frame an Austrian double agent as the savior of the Alt Aussee treasures. That it is in their interest does not discount the potential truth of the matter. There are, however, conflicting testimonies by other primary sources, such as Pöchmüller, which discount Gaiswinkler’s role in the salvation of the mine and shift the heroism to anonymous miners, to Pöchmüller himself, to the leader of another Austrian Resistance group named Sepp Plieseis, to Josef Grafl, or to Alois Raudaschl, the head of the Alt Aussee miners in the Resistance. By the war’s end there were really only five insiders during the last days of the Alt Aussee mine left who could tell the story, each one providing their own version of the truth: Hermann Michel, Emmerich Pöchmüller, Sepp Plieseis, Josef Grafl, and Albrecht Gaiswinkler. Each had reasons to declare himself the hero of the day. Other sources lean more heavily on the Allied Monuments Men—it was they who saved the treasures with the help of the miners and the Resistance, not some Austrian. But those sources are, of course, British and American, and therefore their agenda is to support the efforts of the Allies. We may never know the precise truth, which most likely encompasses elements of all of the surviving versions of the story.

  Those who downplay Gaiswinkler’s role note that, while he was briefly used by the Allies as the district governor of Aussee and then launched a successful political career after the war as a member of the Austria National Assembly (based largely on the perception of his heroism at Alt Aussee), he was later voted out of the Assembly in 1950. While in office, he ran a successful campaign for the region of Ausseerland (in which Alt Aussee is located) to be included in the province of Styria. His eventual ejection from office could have been because his stories had become discredited, as his detractors say, but it could also have been for other, more subtle political reasons.

  The primary documents that relate Gaiswinkler’s story in full are his own 1947 memoir, Leap into Freedom (Sprung in die Freiheit), and the oddly named Red-White-Red Book (the title refers to the Austrian flag), which bears the unusual subtitle Justice for Austria! This latter book was published by the Austrian state in 1947, its authors remaining anonymous. It was also translated into English, with the possible motive of improving the negative opinion of Austrians among English speakers immediately after the war. There is no doubt that it was a piece of propaganda, as was Gaiswinkler’s own memoir, in which he added to his list of heroic deeds the plan to assassinate Josef Goebbels. But this propagandistic bent does not mean that the stories contained in the works were untrue.

  In the end, there proved no need to assassinate Goebbels—he did the job himself soon after Gaiswinkler parachuted into Austria. The Nazi minister of propaganda remained in Berlin through the end of April 1945, as his world disintegrated around him. On 23 April Goebbels gave a speech in the Reich’s capital, which included the following passage:I call on you to fight for your city. Fight with everything you have got, for the sake of your wives and your children, your mothers and your parents. Your arms are defending everything we have ever held dear, and all the generations that will come after us. Be proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning! Your Gauleiter [Hitler] is amongst you. He and his colleagues will remain in your midst. His wife and children are here as well. He, who once captured the city with 200 men, will now use every means to galvanize the defense of the capital. The battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle.

  But the battle for Berlin went nowhere. On 30 April, with Soviet troops less than a mile away from the Berlin bunker in which Hitler was entrenched, Goebbels was one of only four eyewitnesses to the dictation of the führer’s last will and testament. Hours later, Hitler shot himself.

  On 1 May, a day that might have been the target for the assassination attempt, Goebbels was determined to follow the führer’s example. One of the last men to speak with Goebbels, Vice Admiral Hans-Erich Voss, recalled him saying, “It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example.” Goebbels and his wife arranged for the sedation and cyanide poisoning of their six children; then they took their own lives.

  The Goebbels assassination plot is the least plausible aspect of Gaiswinkler’s story, but it is seconded by his fellow double agent, Josef Grafl. The only part of the story that seems to have been physically impossible is Gaiswinkler’s claim that he and his team oversaw the setting and explosion of the palsy charges that sealed the mine in one night—this procedure, involving six tons of explosives, 502 timing switches, and 386 detonators in 137 tunnels was complex, to say the least, and would have taken far longer than one night to accomplish. It is possible that Gaiswinkler was referring only to the six charges that sealed the entrance to the main mineshaft, although he did not specify this. The other remarkable stories—of seizing the radio transmitter to broadcast false messages about the impending arrival of the Yugoslav army, of Eigruber’s order for an SS detachment to personally destroy the treasures in the mine—are all plausible.

  Fellow British-trained double agent Josef Grafl’s own testimony diverges in a number of ways from that of Gaiswinkler. Grafl underscores the fact that the primary mission for the parachutists was the assassination of Josef Goebbels and that this mission was only abandoned when it was learned that Goebbels never made it to the area. Gaiswinkler claims that the Goebbels assassination had to be abandone
d when the radio was damaged beyond repair during the initial parachute jump onto the mountainside, while Grafl stated that the radio was in fact not damaged, but it was determined that the parachutists could not navigate the deep snow of the mountainside if they were to carry the radio, so it was abandoned in the snow. Many years after the war, Grafl raised allegations that Gaiswinkler had been relatively inactive and played only a minor role in the salvation of the mine treasures. At the same time, Grafl scrambled to increase his share of glory, claiming that it was he who led the Allied soldiers, when they did arrive on the scene, to help capture Kaltenbrunner. Grafl’s allegations have caused some to dismiss Gaiswinkler’s story. Others view the two SOE agents as disagreeing out of a mutual animosity, each trying to make himself look like the hero while undermining the word of the other. The truth is unknown.

  The other primary-source account of the Austrian resistance at Alt Aussee comes from another Resistance leader. Sepp Plieseis was a mountaineer and hunter born in 1913 in the alpine town of Bad Ischl. A Communist, he fought first with the International Brigades in Spain. He then joined the French but was captured by the Gestapo and sent first to Dachau and then to a labor camp at Hallein, where, incredibly, he escaped in August 1943 in a mass prison break with 1,500 men. He dedicated himself to fighting the Nazis and, having made his way back to Austria, led a local Resistance group under the nickname he’d given himself, “Willy.” The ragged band of refugees, deserters, and others who had been persecuted by the Nazis began with as few as thirty people. This Resistance group contacted the team of eighty miners who worked Alt Aussee and who would form their own subgroup of resisters, led by Mark Danner Pressl and the miner called Alois Raudaschl, who, through a mutual friend, had access to Ernst Kaltenbrunner at his nearby alpine retreat. From May 1945 on, once the Allies had seized the area around Bad Ischl and Alt Aussee, Plieseis was made the local security consultant to the Allies. After the war Plieseis became an official in the town of Bad Ischl and worked as a functionary for the local branch of the Communist Party. In 1946 he published a memoir with an appropriately Communist title: From the Ebro to Dachstein: The Life Struggle of an Austrian Worker.