At the end of August 1944, the thousand-year-old château of La Roche-Guyon, in what is now the Val-d'Oise, was visited by an officer of the French Army. Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section Unit (MFAA), a programme created in 1943 by the Allies to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis. At the age of 38, Lieutenant James J. Rorimer was, in civilian life, curator in the Medieval Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
A Harvard-educated art historian, he joined the unit better known today as the Monuments Men. A nickname that gives its title to an exhibition in the same château at La Roche-Guyon, on show until 24 November. Since it opened on 18 May, it has attracted more than 50,000 visitors.
"Like the other Monuments Men, Rorimer was a rather middle-aged man," explains exhibition curator Mattéo Grouard. "They were between 35 and 60, compared with an average age of 26 in the US Army. Often married with families, they were mature enough to come to terms with the fact that some of them would never come back. And some sacrificed their lives to preserve a little of the world's beauty.
THEY OFTEN REPAIRED THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY THEIR OWN ARMIES
Two Monuments Men were killed in the conflict. James Rorimer survived to become the director of the prestigious Met in New York from 1955 to 1966. When he inspected La Roche-Guyon in 1944, it was because the château had just been bombed by the Allies on 25 August. "Monuments Men have often had to repair damage caused by their own armies," notes Mattéo Grouard.
In fact, from February to early August 1944, the Château de La Roche-Guyon housed the staff of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, "the Desert Fox", and then his successor. "During Rommel's stay, there was no looting or damage," notes Mattéo Grouard. "In fact, he mentioned the works of art in the château in letters to his wife.
The 24-year-old commissioner is organising his 8th exhibition. "Since the age of 10, I've been fascinated by the history of the Monuments Men," he says. "So I've built up a personal collection on the subject, and I've made contact with the families of members of the MFAA. Including that of Lieutenant Commander George L. Stout, who inspired the character played by George Clooney in the hit film "The Monuments Men" (2014).
Actor Matt Damon plays the role inspired by James Rorimer. In reality, it was Rorimer who worked with Rose Valland, the most emblematic French figure in the Monuments Men epic. A curatorial attaché at the Jeu de Paume, Miss Valland scrupulously kept an inventory of the works of art looted by the Nazis, who used the Paris museum as a "marshalling yard".
23 FRENCHMEN AMONG THE "MONUMENT MEN
Adolf Hitler wanted to bring together the finest European works of art in a museum dedicated to his glory, the Fürhermuseum, near Linz (Austria), thanks in particular to theEinsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR, in French Équipe d'intervention du gouverneur du Reich Rosenberg). "He wanted his museum to be bigger than the Louvre," explains Mattéo Grouard. In the end, it was never built, but tens of thousands of works stolen from public institutions and private (mainly Jewish) collectors were taken to Germany and Austria.
From 1944 onwards, it was thanks to information gathered by Rose Valland in the autumn of 1940 that the Monuments Men were able to find these works hidden in mines or tunnels. Until 1954, the French curator was involved in the repatriation of some 60,000 items of cultural property looted in France, including flags and cannons from the Musée de l'Armée, which she unearthed in the Soviet zone.
Captain Rose Valland recounted her actions in "Le Front de l'art: défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945", published in 1961 and republished several times since. Although she died in 1980, she remains one of the most decorated women in French history.
Visit its extensive websiteThe Texas-based Monuments Men and Women Foundation officially lists 348 MFAA members of 14 nationalities, each of whom has inspected an average of 1,000 sites, according to Mattéo Grouard. Among them, 23 are French.
Several played a major role, such as Jacques Jaujard, Director of the National Museums during the war, a member of the Resistance and the initiator and supporter of Rose Valland's action. Others were instrumental in the recovery of the works, including Major Pierre-Louis Duchartre, Captain Marcelle Minet, Major Bernard Druène, Colonel Michel François, Captain Hubert de Brye and the septuagenarian art historian Carle Dreyfus.
A LITTLE-KNOWN ASPECT: THE PLUNDERING OF SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE
Some, such as Lieutenant-Colonel Cheguillaume, Captain Jean Rouvier, Margaret Callon and "Madame Wolff", have little or no documentation. Lieutenant-colonel Raymond Hocart, on the other hand, brings to light a little-known aspect of this famous epic: the looting not of artistic, but of scientific heritage.
A professor of mineralogy at the University of Strasbourg before the war, Hocart was posted to the MFAA in September 1945 as a restitution officer with the task of locating, identifying and returning to France the scientific materials, archives and research documents stolen by the Nazis from the same university.
By the time Alsace was liberated by French troops in November 1944, it was estimated that only 600 of the tens of thousands of books belonging to the University of Strasbourg remained. Colonel Hocart found boxes of books and archives in a Bavarian castle, in Nazi officers' messes and in mines. In October 1945, while inspecting a factory near Stuttgart, he recovered 100 boxes of scientific instruments and materials, as well as five cupboards, three tables and even a stove belonging to his university's laboratory.
Like most of the Monuments Men, Raymond Hocart continued his brilliant scientific career after the war, ending it as holder of the chair of mineralogy at the Sorbonne.
