The Berlin Masterpieces in America: Paintings, politics, and the Monuments Men

Abstract

Triggered by Lynn H. Nicholas’s book The Rape of Europa: The fate of Europe’s treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (1994), the ‘rediscovery’ of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (mfaa) Programme, established by the American government in 1943 to administer cultural property in war-torn Europe, was a phenomenon. The several hundred ‘Monuments Men’ (the ‘Monuments Women’ fell foul of patriarchy, or perhaps alliteration) became the focus of several books, documentaries, a foundation and the 2014 film The Monuments Men. This was about something more than seeing wrongs righted. It was about ‘saving’ artefacts stolen by the Nazi regime that were now in the hands of British and American forces (who might destroy them through indifference) and those of the Soviets (who might put them on display in Russian museums, a fate considered equally undesirable). Then there is the Great Escape quality: the sense of a motley crew of underdogs pulling together in a common cause. As characters in a moral fable, therefore, the Monuments Men tap into powerful ideas of justice as common decency and the enduring value of art when human life itself is instrumentalized by conflict and genocide.