Towns and cities in the Western German regions were at the mercy of the Allies after war's end,
and they were not spared plunder, rape and cultural destruction. The Allied detachments in World
War Two which occupied the pile of stinking rubble which was once Charlemagne's Aachen, for
example, reported constant looting by their troops. Each new unit passing through stole radios, food,
bicycles, crucifixes, cooking utensils and all else they could. Ironically, the American "Monuments,
Fine Arts, and Archives Branch of First Army " (MFA&A) was on the tragic scene almost instantly,
not to prevent the plunder or destruction of German treasures, but to look for Nazi looted treasure.
At Rimburg Castle, the furniture and art work was scattered, vandalized and thrown into the moat,
and the locked rooms broken into and rifled. When MFA&A advisers later toured, they concluded
the destruction was a combined effort among the British, Canadian and American troops. There
were slashed pictures and cases of books from the Aachen library broken open with their contents
strewn about by souvenir hunters. MFA&A officials were concerned that the German collections
being desecrated might contain looted Nazi art which the Allies had pledged in advance to restore to
the "rightful owners" and it was these pieces they worried might be threatened!
There were thousands of Russian DPs in Aachen living in a huge barracks, and even though the
camp was in a state of chaos, violence and filth, Allied troops issued passes every afternoon for a
group of these DPs to visit the town. These visits were looting expeditions. According to Allied
military records, the DPs would leave the camp with empty baskets and briefcases and return at
nightfall "loaded down like camels" with all manner of goods, leaving murders, rapes, and robberies
in their wake. With a few honorable exceptions, nobody cared.
Most important was of course the ancient cathedral which housed Charlemagne's coronation chair.
The archives, library and treasures which could be moved had fortunately been taken out earlier in
the war for safe keeping by German officials, and the heavy coronation chair was intact, protected
from English bombs inside a masonry shield, the floor beneath it reinforced by temporary brick
arches and shoring. Not so lucky were the events at an old castle of the Teutonic Knights at nearby
Siersdorf where an American division had set up its command post and moved valuable medieval
carved panelling from the Aachen Rathaus (city hall) out into the weather, ruining it.
In old Aachen, a city blessed with rich architectural treasures in the heart of Germany, only four out
of hundreds of the city's rarities were even somewhat spared Allied destruction: the cathedral, the
14th century city gate, the Frankenberg Castle and the Haus Heusch. The remains of Charlemagne
were hidden in the woods beforehand by Germans hoping to protect them. The occupying Americans
later ordered a G.I. to go and bring his remains back, and the soldier supposedly asked upon his
return with the sack of bones, "So, where do I dump this?”
The Fine Art of Organized Thievery
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Capt. Walter Farmer was the Wiesbaden collecting point's first director. The first shipment of
artworks which arrived there included cases of antiquities, Egyptian art, Islamic artifacts, and
paintings from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. On November 6, 1945, Farmer was ordered by the
U.S.Military to select at least 200 German museum-owned artworks and ship them to the USA for
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to hold on to in exchange for "wartime reparations"
and as an "entitlement of the American people to view the masterpieces". Outraged, Farmer called
this "blatant looting" and "systematic looting" of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and the Berlin
Nationalgalerie by the U.S. Army, and on November 7, 1945 wrote the "Wiesbaden Manifesto"
which urged the MFA&A not to take part in the plan because it violated international law and
"establishes a precedent which is neither morally tenable nor trustworthy"; Risking court-martial,
twenty-four MFA&A officers signed the document. But the plan went through anyway.
In November of 1945, under the code name "Westward Ho", 202 paintings by Cranach, Raphael,
Rembrandt and other great masters left Germany for New York City, and from 1946 to 1948 the art
circulated throughout various American museums. After negative publicity, the U.S. Army returned
the paintings to Germany in 1949.
In order to accommodate the thousands of pieces of "Nazi plundered artworks", U.S. occupation
forces in 1945 established "collecting points" in German warehouses and office buildings, among
them Marburg, Munich, Offenbach, and Wiesbaden. The Wiesbaden Collecting Point held artworks
from German museums, artworks confiscated from German nationals, and other artworks subject to
restitution to store and identify. Objects, German and otherwise, were retrieved and taken to one of
the collecting points. The 'Property Division of the Office of Military Government for Germany,
U.S. Zone Headquarters', administered the recovery and restitution efforts. Additionally, a
'Monuments, Fine Arts, & Archives' (MFA&A) branch, with help from Allied military staff, began
restitution of some objects to its country of origin or, at times, to the rightful owner..or at least who
they guessed or were told was a "rightful owner".