Defiant in the Defense of Art
Three "Monuments Women" Push for Postwar Reforms
Summer 2015, Vol. 47, No. 2
By Bryce McWhinnie
Capt. Edith Standen (left) with Rose Valland at Wiesbaden. Standen was named officer-in-charge in March 1946. Valland had spied on Nazi transport of French artworks through the Jeu de Paume, and her secret notes on the destinations of train shipments helped with later restitution work. (26-WAE-35)
After the last shells exploded and the dust had settled on World War II, work entered a new stage for the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives (MFA&A) Section of the U.S. Army’s Civil Affairs Division—now popularly known as the “Monuments Men.”
The MFA&A units were select groups of art historians, architects, archivists, artists, and curators who were handpicked from America’s cultural institutions to actively lend their knowledge in order to preserve and protect Europe’s monuments and works of art.
Most enlisted voluntarily, several braving the front lines without machine guns or adequate supplies, overcoming the odds stacked against them to pro-tect defenseless works of art from devastation and preserve Europe’s cultural patrimony during the war.
After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the MFA&A’s attention focused on the restitution of everything that had been displaced by the Nazis’ obsession with art. Repositories were found in castles and salt mines, many overflowing with looted art. Under direction from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters, the MFA&A established collecting points within the U.S. zone of occupation to safeguard millions of objects while they were investigated and prepared for eventual repatriation to their home countries.
By the end of 1946, only three of the main central collecting points remained: Munich, Offenbach, and Wiesbaden. Through these collecting points passed Europe’s greatest cultural treasures. Entire art reference libraries and photography studios were assembled on site to aid in the analysis of incoming inventory. Conservation laboratories cared for works at greatest risk. Every possible resource was exhausted in order to return items home in the swiftest and most favorable condition.
Rose Valland’s Detailed Records Key to Finding Looted Artwork
The MFA&A was established in 1943 by the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, known as the Roberts Commission for its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts.
While the vast majority of MFA&A officers were male, a few “Monuments Men” were female. Many of these young American women entered the war through the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) before applying for coveted posts in the MFA&A at the war’s end.
Yet, American women have been largely absent from recent World War II–era cultural heritage scholarship. The most prominent woman afforded consistent mention has been Rose Valland, the French heroine at the Jeu de Paume museum. As the artistic patrimony of France passed through the doors of the Jeu de Paume, she eavesdropped on German conversations and secretly kept meticulous notes on the destinations of train shipments.
She witnessed the frequent shopping trips of Hermann Göring in his selection of looted art for both Adolf Hitler’s planned museum at Linz and his own vast personal collection. Her records produced a paper trail that led to not only the enormous cache of looted art at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, but also the discovery of further repositories and the eventual return of France’s greatest treasures. Valland was in constant danger of being discovered by Nazi officials, who wouldhave surely killed her had they known the depth of her espionage.
However, there were three unsung female American MFA&A officers, who, like Valland, put their personal interests in jeopardy in order to protect priceless art. Capt. Edith A. Standen, Evelyn Tucker, and Capt. Mary J. Regan all entered service under the age of 40, and each of these women left her own mark on postwar cultural heritage restitution policy.
Each held a firm belief in justice for art in occupied territories, and they all possessed the courage to act in defiance of a practice they found morally intolerable. Standen, Tucker, and Regan each recognized an opportunity to reform post–World War II restitution policy and defied their superiors for the common good of cultural heritage protection.
These are their stories.
Capt. Edith A. Standen: A Woman on the Way Up
Capt. Edith A. Standen was the only woman to sign the Wiesbaden Manifesto on November 7, 1945. Called “the only act of protest by officers against their orders in the Second World War,” it denounced the U.S. Government’s decision to transfer 202 paintings from the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in Germany to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for safekeeping.
During her work with the MFA&A, Standen rose through the ranks from second lieutenant in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to officer-in-charge at Wiesbaden—all within three years. She worked closely with Valland (by then an art representative with the French First Army) at Wiesbaden, and the two developed a real camaraderie while Standen was director.
Standen’s academic experience directly pre-pared her for a prolific career in the MFA&A. An Oxford graduate, she worked for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities before studying at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University under Paul Sachs, future prominent member of the Roberts Commission. Just one year after becoming an American citizen, in early 1943, she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
After being referred to MFA&A officer and Harvard professor Mason Hammond, she was selected as a fine arts specialist officer in June 1945. One of her first assignments was to inspect the art objects being held at the Reichsbank in Frankfurt—the same objects
that would later be transferred to the Wiesbaden Collecting Point when it opened. By September 1945, she was transferred again to the G-5 Division of the European Theater of Operations. After her promotion to captain, she was named temporary officer-in-charge of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point upon the redeployment of its former director, Capt. Walter I. Farmer, in March 1946.
Standen described setting up a collecting point as “an almost superhuman task.” Established in 1945 by Farmer to be the cen-tral collecting point for all German-owned works of art, Wiesbaden held works from the vast collections of 16 Berlin state museums along with 17 other prominent German collections.
Perfectly Working Unit Receives a Major Jolt
An interior view of the Wiesbaden Center. It held works from the vast collections of 16 Berlin state museums along with 17 other prominent German collections. (260-WAE-129)
Farmer recruited an American architect, a photographic team, conservators, and administrators to document and care for the artworks. The Wiesbaden Collecting Point was a well-oiled machine that stood as a symbol of success for the MFA&A. Standen later remarked that, when she later took over for Farmer, she inherited “an organization in perfect working order.”
Farmer established extensive security measures at the collecting point, and the staff was dedicated to the safety and integrity of the objects under their care. It therefore came as a serious blow when Farmer was hand-delivered a telegram received from Seventh U.S. Army headquarters on November 6, 1945.
The telegram ordered “immediate preparations be made for prompt shipment to the U.S. of a selection of at least two zero zero (200) German works of art of greatest importance.” The order was the product of a secret plan in the works for months, personally approved by President Harry S. Truman as early as July.
Because “neither expert personnel nor satisfactory facilities are available in the U.S. zone to properly safeguard and handle these priceless works of art,” argued Gen. Lucius Clay, the deputy military governor of Germany, they must be sent to the United States, where better resources and personnel were available.
Clay divided Germany’s works of art into three classes and supplied his recommendations for their respective fates: Class A (art seized by Germany from countries or private owners without compensation), Class B (art taken from private collectors with some level of compensation), and Class C (art placed within the U.S. zone by Germany for safekeeping).
While Classes A and B should be returned to their original owners, Class C was considered German public property. Therefore, these works of art fell under U.S. control and should “be returned to the US to be inventoried, identified, and cared for by our leading museums” and “be placed on exhibit in the US.” Chillingly, Clay added that these works of art would be “held in trusteeship for return to the German nation when it has re-earned its right to be considered as a nation.”
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, was inevitably chosen as the safe haven for these objects: the gallery housed the headquarters of the Roberts Commission, while its board of trustees included the chief justice of the United States, the secretary of state, and the secretary of the treasury.
Eisenhower’s Advisers Were Never Consulted
The MFA&A, along with the Roberts Commission back in Washington, was not initially consulted about the plan to move German art to the United States. When word finally did reach the MFA&A at its Frankfurt headquarters on July 29, 1945, Lt. Col. Mason Hammond immediately protested to headquarters. In addi-tion, he defied the order of secrecy regarding the plan and relayed a copy of Clay’s memorandum to the director of political affairs.
Also never consulted on the plan was John Nicholas Brown, Eisenhower’s adviser on cultural matters, who sent multiple let-ters pleading for the plan to be abandoned. His August 9 letter to Clay is a line-by-line deconstruction of the original memorandum, in which he references Clay as being “under a grave misapprehension” for doubt-ing the MFA&A’s quality, while calling the plan “manifestly impossible” and “not only immoral but hypocritical.” (Brown’s son, J. Carter Brown, was the National Gallery’s director from 1969 to 1992.)
Such protestations were ignored, and the National Gallery sent its representative, Col. Henry McBride, to Wiesbaden to supervise the shipment. Standen was ordered to submit information on the masterpieces at the Marburg and Wiesbaden collecting points.
Wholeheartedly objecting to the plan, Standen put minimal effort into her response. She listed “only things I saw with my own eyes, gave them fifteen paintings . . . all belonging to museums outside our zone. I rather hated doing it.” Yet, in a quiet victory for the MFA&A, one of their own officers (and former National Gallery staff member), Lt. Lamont Moore, was chosen to accompany the shipment. It is clear from their correspondences that Moore was a dear friend of Standen’s, and the two valued and trusted each other’s opinion throughout their respective careers with the MFA&A. It would have come as a comfort to her and her colleagues that Moore accompanied the works of art to the United States.
Colonel McBride, along with Moore and Maj. L. Bancel LaFarge (chief of the MFA&A section of the Seventh Army under General Clay), arrived at Wiesbaden on November 7, 1945. The official order called for “at least 200” works of art to be packed and ready for shipment by November 20. The numerous MFA&A officers were powerless to stop the shipment, and their mood was palpable. Standen mentioned "the state of utter misery we are all in now” and even that “Col. McBride has threatened us all (in a nice way) with court martials.”
Though the National Gallery’s original wish list included items from multiple collecting points, the many complications of such an involved shipment forced McBride to limit his selection to Wiesbaden. The final list of 202 paintings reveals the staggering importance of this collection to not only the German public but to Europe as a whole. The shipment included works by Caravaggio (1), Manet (1), Fra Angelico (1), Hals (6), Giotto (1), Tintoretto (2), Tiepolo (3), Titian (5), Rembrandt (14), Bronzino (3), Giorgione (1), Botticelli (6), Raphael (3), Watteau (3), Van der Weyden (5), Dürer (5), Bruegel (2), Van Eyck (5), Lorenzetti (2), Holbein (3), Rubens (6), Masaccio (3), Lippi (2), Verocchio (2), Poussin (2), Velasquez (2), and Vermeer (2). For the MFA&A, the dangerous shipment of such an incredible collection overseas for no legitimate reason was inconceivable.
Most MFA&A Officers Sign Wiesbaden Manifesto
Farmer invited the 35 MFA&A members available in Europe to assemble in his office on November 7. There, Capt. Everett Lesley penned the five paragraphs that became known as the Wiesbaden Manifesto. Though not all made it to Wiesbaden on such short notice, 32 officers ultimately gave their names in support of the protest. Of these, 24 signed with their official signatures, three gave their names as an expression of agreement but did not “feel at liberty to sign,” five officers were listed as having sent private letters to LaFarge, and the remaining three could not be contacted in time.
This internal revolution was “the only act of protest by officers against their orders in the Second World War,” Farmer later wrote. The document was sent to LaFarge at MFA&A headquarters. In the interest of protecting his friends and colleagues, he hid it in his desk and never sent it on. Nevertheless, after returning to his teaching post at Harvard, Lt. Charles Kuhn published the Wiesbaden Manifesto in the January 1946 issue of College Art Journal.
Kuhn’s article, combined with multiple reports on the transfer in the American press, sparked a heated ethical debate that did not fade until the 202 paintings were eventually returned to Wiesbaden after a blockbuster exhibition in Washington and a national tour to 13 American cities.
The third paragraph of the document speaks of the declared Western Allied responsibility to “protect and preserve from deterioration . . . all monuments, documents or other objects of historic, artistic, cultural or archaeological value.” Later, in her own words, Standen remarked that: “The greatest priority to us was the well-being of art of all kinds and of any ownership.”
In addition to their concerns for the safety of art, Standen and the other supporters of the Wiesbaden Manifesto believed that a large-scale removal of German art to the United States would forever damage the integrity of the Allied mission to protect cultural heritage. In Septem-ber 1945, Hammond had warned on behalf of the entire MFA&A that the shipment would align the United States with the Nazis, “who equally used the pretexts of protection and of the unsuitability of other nations to own art objects to justify their looting of art objects.”
National Gallery Plan Seen As Bad for U.S. Relations
Artworks are returned to Wiesbaden in 1949 after being exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and in 13 other American cities. (260-WAE-439)
After the shipment left Wiesbaden, American MFA&A officers found it hard to face the workers at the collecting points. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to justify in the eyes of other people something that you think horrible,” Farmer remarked.
In their protest, the supporters of the Wiesbaden Manifesto referenced the prosecutions of individuals for art crimes during the war—namely those who seized German-owned art under pretext of “protective custody.”
They powerfully pointed out that much of the indictment of these criminals rested on the Allied belief that “even though these individuals were acting under military orders, the dicates of a higher ethical law made it incumbent upon them to refuse to take part in, or countenance, the fulfillment of these orders.” Painfully aware of the hypocrisy of the situation, they called themselves “no less culpable than those whose prosecution we effect to sanction.”
Standen’s signature is the seventh on the Wiesbaden Manifesto. She continued to distribute copies to various offices with a personally signed cover letter nearly a month after the paintings had left Wiesbaden. As temporary officer-in-charge of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point, she oversaw the restitution of thousands of art objects.
Standen is the only female member of the Roberts Commission to have earned the Bronze Star for her service, as did 10 fellow signees of the Wiesbaden Manifesto. In 1997, just a year before her death, she referred to her role in the MFA&A as “a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants.”
In her character, devotion to her task, and her belief in justice, Edith A. Standen was anything but dwarflike. Certainly, she was one of the giants.
Evelyn Tucker: A Woman Committed to Action
The most outspoken female voice in post–World War II cultural heritage restitution was Evelyn Tucker. She harbored an opinion on everything, and she voiced each convic-tion without apology or frills.
After joining the WAC, she was a secretary/stenographer at Hermann Göring’s war crimes trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. She was then the administrative assistant at the Reparation, Deliveries, and Res-titution Branch in Salzburg, Austria, upon its activation in February 1946. Tucker was later a Fine Arts representative with the RD&R, keeping inventory records of the branch’s art objects and personally investigating countless restitution claims within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forces, Austria (USFA).
Her many field reports reveal a woman who never stopped moving. One detailed weekly report mentions the shipment of scientific skeletons stolen from the University of Strasbourg, a search for a person of interest across six neighboring villages, and a trip to the art depot to examine a set of paintings—all before taking the Friday afternoon train to Linz under a “pea-soup fog.”
While she worked with the MFA&A, Tucker recognized many shortcomings in its policy and organization and committed herself to their reform. She blatantly reported the missteps and mismanagement of her superiors and actively investigated the hushed subject of looting by American officers. She criticized what she saw as a disorganized and confusing plan for restitution, setting many of her colleagues against her and eventually costing her the position.
Her piéce de résistance is her Final Status Report filed February 16, 1949, after her position was terminated. In the report, Tucker levies many complaints against the Army, which in her opinion blocked her every path and never afforded her the support she required to finish her job. From her words, it is clear that she was long past mere frustration and had crossed into the realm of disgust.
On the first page alone, she sarcastically refers to the Army’s treatment of her as “a matter of regret” and sees her dismissal as an omen of their “deplorable” approach to the work only she was qualified for.
She makes a final plea for improvement in the Army’s treatment of the Austrian monuments agencies with whom she had painstakingly built a strong working relationship. She dramatically warns that, if relations are not improved, “you will discover that a nation is extremely jealous of its cultural heritage and these offices will work against you instead of with you.” While one could read this 31-page report with raised eyebrows and see naught but a woman past her breaking point, it is not the measure of the woman.
Rather, Tucker’s entire career with the MFA&A was laced with defiance.
Tucker Seeks to Bring Reform in Austria
As a representative of the MFA&A within the USFA, Tucker traveled widely across the U.S. zone of occupation. She collaborated with various foreign agencies and witnessed firsthand the delicate balances of power involved in sending art objects home. Yet she quickly became frustrated with what she saw as an inefficient and confusing method for restitution—intensified by an endless web of protocols and jurisdictional disputes.
In her field reports, she highlights these deficiencies and confidently gives her opinions for reform. Of particular frustration was her weeklong visit to the Munich Cen-tral Collecting Point in early February 1948. She discovered that looted paintings were not filed under a specific artist’s name but were categorized by the claimants, and one needed that name in order to find a specific work.
Tucker mentions that a search as specific as “Dutch Government, claim no. 10” was not sufficient. Trying to find items on her list of Austrian claims, she sifted through lists and records to create an inventory of how many still remained in Munich. Tucker tiredly remarks that she “can only make a wild guess as to what we still have there . . . certainly in the thousands, with values running into the millions.” She later returned to Munich on August 9, and established the procedure for Austrian items to be segregated into five categories to make their return easier.
Also at Munich, Tucker experienced firsthand the emotional roadblocks to Austrian art restitution, which Herbert Stewart Leonard, director of the center, called “political dynamite.” The 160 German workers at the center had recently handed Leonard a 45-page protest of the center’s restitution policy by way of a chief staff officer, who then resigned.
The German workers vehemently believed that Austria had no right to restitution unless it could prove the objects had been confiscated or taken under duress. Tucker angrily wrote that such prejudicial sentiments were “developing from an attitude into policy.” Furthermore, Germany had no “moral right (not to mention orders from Washington)” and that the whole situation was “unanswerable.”
Tucker’s Field Reports Reveal Sharp Differences with Superiors
To reform these prejudices and ease the restitution effort, Tucker sent notes to Leonard, reminding him of the USFA position on fine arts matters. As the chief of the MFA&A section for Bavaria, Leonard held the precarious role of representing both the commanding general of the USFA and the commanding general of the Office of Military Government for Bavaria (OMGB). As director of the collecting point in Munich, he was regularly caught in the middle of intense jurisdictional disputes.
Despite Leonard’s superior rank, Tucker made it her business to stand up for the best interests of Austrian cultural heritage. In her notes, she references his power to sign USFA receipts out of Munich as “a dual capacity” and reminds him of the directive from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This mandate established the policy that any fine arts removed from Austria between March 13, 1938, and May 15, 1945, were to be returned without question and regardless of the nature of their sale.
Tucker’s field reports detail her tumultuous working relationship with Leonard, which finally reached its peak with his dramatically phoning in his resignation to headquarters during one of their arguments. She states that they had become “two operators working largely from the same pot, under different directives.”
In her work to reform postwar restitution policy, Tucker was not afraid to report the missteps of her superiors and fellow MFA&A officers. She mentions her frustration at her superiors’ unauthorized restitutions out of the Salzburg warehouse as well as their many inconsistencies in protocol. Many times, she would clear an art object for restitution but later discover that it remained in the vault rooms.
At Schloss Fischhorn she tried to untangle “the errors caused by MFA officers” such as why two paintings remained at the castle despite having been listed on a transport receipt to the Polish government. At the Alt-Aussee salt mine, over a dozen works inspected were listed on conflicting inventories as having already left the mine.
When a junior officer was falsely accused of having stolen a number of paintings from the collection of Frederic Wels, it was a highly publicized embarrassment for the USFA. Tucker helped investigate the situation and cleared his name. However, she made sure that all blame for the situation was placed on the lieutenant, who “moved things around, mixed them up and apparently kept little records.” In her eight-page report on the matter, she declared that “he has only himself to thank for the suspicion which has been thrown on him.”
Looting by U.S. Troops Draws Tucker’s Ire
Workers at Wiesbaden open crates and inspect artworks. Edith Standen and Rose Valland observe in the back. (260-WAE-84)
Tucker was especially vocal in regard to the hushed problem of looting by American military personnel. There remained an attitude among some American soldiers that they were entitled to such souvenirs as payback for their wartime hardships.
In addition, the U.S. Military Detachment took a large chest of 2,500 gold coins belonging to the Salzburg Museum from the Hallein salt mine. Many high-ranking officers removed items from repositories and property warehouses to furnish their personal offices and apartments. In Tucker’s eyes, this was wholly contradictory to the mission of the MFA&A and tarnished the international public image of the U.S. Army.
To further investigate the involvement of American troops, she made lists of art objects kept in officers’ clubs and the personal offices of generals. Much of her final report is devoted to listing these items in detail and pressing one last time for their return. She reported that Lt. Colonel Smith removed seven rugs from Schloss Mitterstill for use in his Salzburg apartment, and four Louis XV chairs were located in Villa Warsburg, the villa of the commanding general in Salzburg.
Through her own investigations, Tucker became incensed that many of the paintings used as décor by American personnel had already been released for restitution to their home countries. She lists eight paintings released to the Austrian government on December 19, 1947, and 14 released to Hungarian agencies on January 5, 1949, all of which still remained in use by the USFA as of her final report in February 1949.
In another section labeled “Special Problems,” she exposes the shipment of five truckloads full of “large paintings, large furniture, and objects of art, and huge baroque mirrors” removed from Stift St. Florian between 1945 and 1946 for use in American billets.
In these efforts, she was repeatedly obstructed. Many Army personnel had misconceived notions of the role of restitution officers and treated them with suspicion and criticism.
One colonel cautioned her that his fellow officers “were rather sensitive about their villas and didn’t like RD&R people coming around and looking for things or removing them.” The villas, resorts, and clubs of high-ranking officers seemed curiously off limits. She had been informed of the locations of many priceless items, such as a Millet painting at Villa Trainblick and a Van Dyck at the general’s villa in Linz, but no investigations had been made at these places to determine the provenance of these objects.
She was the first restitution officer admitted into the Nazi guest house turned Allied officers’ club, Cavalierhaus, only after securing written permission from the chief of staff in Salzburg. Tucker again saw no logic in this. She called the inaccessibility of these collections to fine arts officers “reprehensible.” Her job was to locate and identify looted objects in the U.S. zone of Austria, but she was, in her own words, “forbidden to check the one best source.”
Tucker’s Job Encounters Many Roadblocks, Much Resistance
Tucker remained remarkably persistent despite every roadblock set in her path. She often felt overwhelmed, but still she fought for her voice to be heard.
At every turn, she needed clearance from a superior or someone else’s signature in order to act on time-sensitive matters. Tucker writes of having to convince one major to give her a set of unclassified papers after he asked: “What do you want this information for?” Another officer expressed reluctance to sign her paper because he wanted to think it over and write to the general. True to form, she records her response: “I said I did not see why Generals had to become involved.”
In the field, Tucker obsessively tracked down leads. She pushed and shoved past a stubborn housekeeper to gain entrance to Schloss Fischhorn and rooted through the shed in back of Castle Leopoldskron to see her investigations through to the end.
Her outspoken nature caused many to decide she was difficult to work with, and her relentless meddling set the U.S. Army against her. Yet, for Tucker, these were worthy sacrifices for a cause that needed a champion. In persistence and passion, she was an unmatched force that could not be silenced.
Mary J. Regan’s Research Aids Officers in the Field
Mary J. Regan served as an MFA&A art intelligence research officer, providing information for active monuments officers to protect cultural property. (Photo courtesy of Monuments Men Foundation)
Similar frustrations and roadblocks were also encountered by Mary J. Regan, a Harvard graduate and captain in the Women’s Army Corps. After working as a high school art teacher, she enlisted in July 1942 and devoted herself to tireless action in the WAC.
At the war’s end, she quickly volunteered for service with the MFA&A and was assigned the post of fine arts specialist officer at the Repatriation, Deliveries and Restitution Division in Berlin. There, she worked alongside Standen, who had arrived a mere three months earlier. By the end of 1946, Regan was assigned the duties of art intelligence research officer in the MFA&A Art Intelligence Sub-Section.
As art intelligence research officer, she provided the information necessary for active MFA&A officers to effectively protect cultural property and monuments. Her official field reports reveal her correspondence with foreign offices, management of intelligence documents, and updates on the proceedings of high-profile looting cases. They even include the whereabouts of suspicious art dealers in the American zone of occupation.
Regan made sure the monuments officers in the field were up to date on the current customs regulations for art objects. When three paintings were stolen from a storeroom of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, it was Regan who was informed of their suspected location. She then interviewed the middleman, Wolf von Appen, and confiscated the paintings from the art dealer, Herbert Klewer, who had purchased them illegally.
Such a role as the eyes and ears of the MFA&A established Regan as a trusted source of information and put her in the position to make informed suggestions for improvement.
In mid-January 1947, her MFA&A section chief, Richard F. Howard, requested a detailed report of her activities during roughly the previous year. In addition to 15 required inclusions, she was to provide “a brief analysis of your position as you see it, with your analysis of the possibilities of exploiting it, the gaps in information, and the probable source for filling such gaps.”
Regan Takes Aim at Disorder, Confusion in Her Sub-Section
As soon as she became a monuments officer, Regan had recognized the same disorganization and inadequacy in the MFA&A that had so frustrated Tucker. In Regan’s eyes, this report was her opportunity to effectively advocate for reform.
While a superior officer requested her suggestions, her report is nevertheless a work of defiance. She went above and beyond what was asked of her in outlining a job in which she felt underappreciated, unaided, and misunderstood. Her sub-section was disorganized to the point of confusion, and she was repeatedly denied the help of just one clerk to assist her in a sea of claims.
In her special report filed January 28, 1947, Regan outlined her frustrations but managed to withhold the outright disdain expressed in Tucker’s final report. However, she made no attempt to hide her frustrations over the lack of attention afforded her cases and the deaf ears on which her recommendations inevitably fell.
In the first paragraph, she called for a clarification of the Art Intelligence Sub-Section itself, stating that without “a clear definition of the nature of intelligence work within MFA&A, cases of all kinds have been gathered together,” thus creating confusion.
The central files, she said, were stacks of papers strewn about with missing pages to be found throughout other folders. She reasoned that these jumbled documents should be sent to the Berlin Documents Center, which had recently become the Central Documents Center for the American zone. If all intelligence files were housed in a centralized location, they would be better organized, more accessible, and thus a better aid in not only restitution cases but also in the prosecution of art looters at trials in Berlin.
In wading through the disorder of her subsection, Regan was on her own. Lack of assistance was admittedly a fact of life for every monuments officer since the inception of the Roberts Commission. Supplies, transportation, and extra hands were understood as luxuries to be improvised.
Yet, Regan was alone to the point of being overworked. She firmly stated to her superiors that “the number of cases on hand and likely to arise are too numerous for one intelligence officer to investigate or solve. . . . Either this fact must be recognized and accepted, or a policy should be made which would reduce the number of cases.”
Regan’s Recommendations Ignored or Never Put into Effect
She recommended a card index system to catalog the numerous civil censorship intercepts that, while useful for future reference, did not warrant immediate individual attention and were essentially crowding the system. She reiterates that she had already submitted a request for the help of a clerk to complete the 1,200 cards necessary almost a full year prior—which was ignored.
Regan also insisted that officials pay more attention to the Intelligence Sub-Section. It was one matter to be working amid understaffed disorganization; however, if her cases never saw any action, the work of her sub-section would never progress. The whole business of postwar restitution was delicate; mishandled or delayed restitutions could lead to a host of diplomatic tensions.
True to her organized nature, she kept detailed notes of her cases. While summarizing her activities for the past year, Regan stated that 200 of her cases had seen some sort of action, but around 150 remained pending. In addition, of the 509 civil censorship submissions she reported, only 251 cases had been assessed by the Claims Sub-Section.
At the end of her report, Regan included a 10-page list of the 154 art intelligence cases currently under her investigation. Of these, 80 were awaiting answers from various people or government officials, and 71 were labeled as “investigation proceeding.” Such numbers made for a disappointingly low amount of activity seen on her cases.
In general, Regan’s recommendations for improvement within the Art Intelligence Sub-Section were either ignored or never carried out. Her report is peppered with phrases like: “It is believed this was never completed” and “Instances of failure to do what is recommended above, are very numerous.” The simplest change she advocated for was a rewriting of the intelligence paragraph in Title 18 of Law 59, which set forth the policies of the MFA&A regarding cultural objects in the U.S. Zone of Occupation of Germany.
Regan asked that the updated policy mention the MFA&A’s responsibility for “searching and finding art objects looted, stolen, hidden, or claimed by Germans or other nationals, or for prosecuting Nazi art personalities and looters.” In Regan’s estimation, it was an inadequate description of her intelligence work and presented an outdated and confusing definition of the present MFA&A effort.
This simple suggestion was symptomatic of her advocacy for increased clarity regarding intelligence work and her own frustrations with its disorganization. Yet, in the next revised draft of Title 18 on February 12, 1947, no discernable revision can be found for the intelligence section aside from putting one word in quotation marks.
Like Standen and Tucker, Regan dealt with the problem of looting by American personnel firsthand. Yet, Regan was the sole woman who investigated it in an official capacity as part of her job description.
In her report to Howard, she mentioned she had been sent multiple cases of looting by American soldiers, namely from Wuerttemberg-Baden, Schloss Bentinck, and Schloss Neuenstein. Though she does not mention the sender’s identity, references to American looting at these same locations can be directly matched to field reports filed by Standen.
As with her contemporaries, she believed that looting by American personnel was an embarrassment that the U.S. Army failed to effectively prevent or control. She poured this frustration into her work and kept meticulous records on the topic. In her report, she includes the document entitled “Art Looting by American Personnel (ALBAP),” a list of the 24 sets of documents in the intelligence files directly related to American looting.
Capt. Mary J. Regan’s contribution to the reform of postwar restitution policy cannot pale in comparison to that of Capt. Edith Standen and Evelyn Tucker simply for lack of drama. She was never involved in a mass protest of military orders and never inspired any of her superiors to phone in their resignation. Still, she recognized a serious deficiency in her subsection and consistently advocated for reform. Her suggestions were repeatedly ignored; nevertheless, she continued to maintain highly detailed notes to support her claims.
At the same time, she held a negative view of the Wiesbaden Manifesto on the grounds that it violated the military oath she and her fellow monuments officers had sworn to obey. However, the concluding sentence of her special report reveals a similar core sentiment:
It is recommended that international discussions be initiated to solve the intelligence problem presented by the removals, generally accepted as illegal, of German art treasures by governments and individuals of occupying powers, whether the objects removed are considered as “War Trophies”, or “Reparations.”
Epilogue
At the core of each of these acts of defiance stood a firm belief in justice for art in occupied territories. Capt. Edith A. Standen (1905–1998), Evelyn Tucker (1906–1996), and Capt. Mary J. Regan (1915–2010) each possessed a sacrificial commitment to cultural heritage protection that directly influenced their actions.
With no thought for the loss of their positions or professional reputations, each acted in defiance of decisions or policies they found to be incorrect. Each recognized an opportunity for reform in post–World War II restitution policy and possessed the courage to speak up to her superiors in defense of what was right.
In their calls for reform, they were relentlessly persistent. Despite many bureaucratic roadblocks, they felt an obligation to see their tasks through to the end. They remained devoted despite the patterns of disorganization and inefficiency that often left them disheartened.
Each living into her nineties, these brave women remained committed to preserving art and cultural heritage. Standen worked studying textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for over 20 years until her retirement in 1970. Regan (later Mary Regan Quessenberry after her 1965 marriage) taught humanities at the University of Florida and St. Petersburg Junior College in Florida. Tucker opened an art gallery in Miami Beach before returning to action working on a Navajo reservation with the New Mexico Office of Health and Social Services.
What must surely be the legacy of these women is their outstanding examples of tireless action in pursuit of the common good for displaced works of art.
Bryce McWhinnie’s research specializes in the protection of art and cultural heritage during armed conflict. After studying art crimes and cultural heritage protection with the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) in Italy. Currently, she is a research intern with the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art in Dallas, Texas. This is her first article for Prologue.
Note on Sources
Further information regarding the postwar efforts of the MFA&A can be found in Record Group 239 (Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas) and Record Group 260 (Records of the U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II) at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
Integral to postwar cultural heritage research is the Ardelia Hall Collection, named in honor of the devoted woman who compiled them while working as arts and monuments adviser for the U.S. State Department. As a former MFA&A officer and chief of the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs, Ardelia Ripley Hall kept detailed records of the reports of her fellow MFA&A officers, their restitution efforts, intelligence reports, and inventories of the collecting points. She was also a great source of support for Evelyn Tucker, and the two exchanged many correspondences during their efforts.
The compiled documents related to the Wiesbaden Manifesto, including the once-classified correspondence regarding the shipment of 202 paintings to the National Gallery and Lt. Lamont Moore’s final report, can be located in the file Shipment of Works of Art to the United States (“202”), July 1945–October 1946, Records Concerning the Central Collecting Points (“Ardelia Hall Collection”): Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point, 1945–1952 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1947, roll 70).
The many field reports of Evelyn Tucker have their own file, MFA Field Reports (Miss Tucker), Records of the Reparations and Restitutions Branch of the U.S. Allied Commission for Austria (USACA) Section, 1945–1950 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1926, roll 151). Her Final Status Report can be found in the file Final Status Reports on Art Restitutions, roll 148 of the same microfilm publication.
Mary J. Regan’s special report, including the intelligence files composing Art Looting by American Personnel (ALBAP), can be found in Records Concerning the Central Collecting Points (“Ardelia Hall Collection”): OMGUS Headquarters Records, 1938–1951 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1941, roll 16).