A photo from the National Archives and Records Administration Web site—www.nara.gov—shows an American soldier inspecting German loot stored in a church at Elligen, Germany, April 24, 1945.

Parkhurst Honored for Role in Reclaiming Art from Nazi Looters

By Chip Cassano

Long before Charles Parkhurst gained notoriety as director of the Baltimore Museum of Art and assistant director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., he served the art world in a much different capacity.

After serving as a U.S. Naval Reserve combat officer during the Second World War—"I was at sea at the time and God knows where I went," Parkhurst said. "Let's say I was in the South Seas somewhere, sitting around a campfire with some beautiful maidens under the palm trees . . . but I wasn't, unfortunately"—he returned to Germany as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Specialist Officer, charged with recovering and returning art stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War.

"There were only about 35 of us in the [Wiesbaden, Germany] outfit," Parkhurst said. "I worked mostly in the field, trying to find hidden art that had been sequestered for safety. We had to find the art, make sure it was safe and secure, lock it up and post a letter from General [Dwight] Eisenhower over the doorway so that nobody else claimed the place for a bivouac or something." Eventually the art would be brought to the collecting points, where it would be cataloged and routed back to its rightful owners.

It was a daunting task. At the height of operations, the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point alone, where Parkhurst was stationed, contained about 700,000 objects, and the Munich Central Collecting Point had in excess of 1 million. Similar operations were in place across Europe.

Sadly, the job could be challenging for other reasons, as well. When a retired Army colonel and Navy commander showed up with orders from Washington to bring back about 200 valuable paintings for "safe keeping," the group in Wiesbaden staged a quiet rebellion.

"Some museums in the U.S., I'm ashamed to say, coveted war loot from those German museums, and we were sworn enemies of war loot," Parkhurst said. "We were identifying stuff and giving it back to its rightful owners, and that included the Germans. Anyway, it smelled to high heaven. Here we were trying to mend the fences that had let [those thefts] happen in Germany in the first place, and we were being suborned."

The group sat down and drafted what has since become known as the Wiesbaden Manifesto. It read, in part:

We are unanimously agreed that the transportation of those works of art [to Washington, D.C.], undertaken by the United States Army, upon direction from the highest national authority, establishes a precedent which is neither morally tenable nor trustworthy. . . . No historical grievance will rankle so long, or be the cause of so much justified bitterness, as the removal, for any reason, of a part of the heritage of any nation, even if that heritage be interpreted as a prize of war. . . . There are yet further obligations to common justice, decency and the establishment of the power of right, not might, among civilized nations.

At first the group was threatened with court martial, but their statement was leaked to the press by a correspondent for the New Yorker, and eventually the government backed down. "The Monument and Fine Arts Men" went back to work.

Over time, their efforts were recognized. A 1965 movie, The Train, starring Burt Lancaster and directed by John Frankenheimer, dramatized the struggle to prevent the Germans from transporting looted art from across Europe, and several books—including one by Parkhurst's boss, James Rorimer, entitled Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War (New York: Abelard Press, 1950)—told the story of their accomplishments.

For his part, Charles Parkhurst was decorated Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur de la République Française for his efforts to return art to its rightful French owners after the war.

"Our conviction was that art is a patrimony," Parkhurst said. "It's like your baby slippers that your mother kept from when you were a child; it's part of your family, and it belongs where it originated."

For more on the efforts to track and reclaim stolen art and other assets during and after World War II, visit the Web site of the National Archives and Records Administration at www.nara.gov/publications/assets.