Experiences of a Monuments Officer in Germany

Hancock, W. K.

doi:10.2307/773217

Cited by 3 publications

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“…But these caches also held the contents of the German museums and treasury, as well as other historic objects, including the remains of Friedrich Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great, the Hindenburgs (found in a salt mine at Bernterode), and Charlemagne (discovered in a copper mine at Siegen). 15 The ancient salt mine at Alt Aussee posed an acute, but representative, challenge. It contained many thousands of art objects, much of which had been destined for Hitler's dream museum in Linz.…”

Section: History and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Saving Civilization: The "Monuments Men" in History and Memory

Freeman¹

2021

Journal of Women's History

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This article examines the recent rebranding of the World War II Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program (MFA&A) into the "Monuments Men." It contends that the Monuments Men project, and its consequent masculinization of male and female officers who served in the MFA&A, is not neutral but rather gendered and imperial: gendered because it asserts that the act of protecting objects of beauty and desire, especially those coveted by the enemy, epitomizes masculine heroism; imperial because with the defeat and occupation of Germany and the nascent Cold War, the United States took up the mantle of protector and champion of Western Civilization by asserting custodianship of its greatest treasures. The experiences of five women in the monuments program-Edith Standen, Ardelia Hall, Mary Regan, Evelyn Tucker, and Rose Valland-throw into troubling relief the impact of such heroic discourses.A t the end of the Second World War, the task of salvaging war-ravaged monuments and restituting displaced artwork fell to a military unit that was new in the history of the Allied armies: the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives division, or the MFA&A. This program has attracted broad interest since the 1990s, when World War II art looting and restitution gained international attention. 1 The end of the Cold War saw the reunification of Germany and revelations about "trophy art" in Russia. The World Jewish Congress renewed its advocacy for the return of stolen art to Holocaust victims and their heirs. The many fiftieth anniversaries associated with the end of the Second World War fed debates about wartime guilt and responsibility in various national contexts, including the United States. Archives and attics opened worldwide. At the same time, a cultural turn in the academy brought art to the center of scholarly concerns. These developments fueled public interest: historian Lynn Nicholas's landmark The Rape of Europa (1994), journalists Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov's Beautiful Loot (1995), and journalist Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum (1997) captured people's attention and spurred governments to action, as did a major symposium on WWII art restitution held in New York in 1995. 2 Consequently, the late 1990s saw a series of government commissions, which led to massive provenance research campaigns and an onslaught of related publications, both popular and scholarly.

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Section: History and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%