Defending National Treasures: French Art and Heritage Under Vichy 9780804777827

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Defending National Treasures

Defending National Treasures French Art and Heritage under Vichy

Elizabeth Campbell Karlsgodt

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of the division of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Denver. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Karlsgodt, Elizabeth Campbell. Defending national treasures : French art and heritage under Vichy / Elizabeth Campbell Karlsgodt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-7018-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Art treasures in war—France—History—20th century. 2. Art museums— France—History—20th century. 3. Art and state—France—History—20th century. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Destruction and pillage—France. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Confiscations and contributions—France. 6. Cultural property—Protection—France—History—20th century. 7. France—History— German occupation, 1940–1945. I. Title. n9165.f8k37 2011 363.6'9094409044—dc22 2010039800 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond

To Ryan and Grant

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

xiv 1

Part I  Visions of National Renewal 1 Cultural Affairs under Vichy

17

2 Defending French Style and Beauty

52

Part II  Asserting French Sovereignty 3 Exodus

67

4 Museums Fit for France

87

5 Saving Historic Sites

102

6 Archeology and the National Revolution

119

Part III  Accommodation, Opportunity, and Compromise 7 Recycling French Heroes: The Destruction of Bronze Statues

145

viii  Contents

8 Endangered Local Patrimony: Bronze Statues in Paris, Chambéry, and Nantes

165

9 Jewish Art Collections

191

10 Art as a Negotiating Tool

235

Part IV  Le patrimoine and Postwar France 11 The Vichy Legacy

263

Conclusion

295

Appendix A Primary National Museum Storage Depots, 1939–1940

305

Appendix B Provincial Museums in 1939 Protection Plan

306

Appendix C Evacuation of Provincial Collections, 1941–1944

308

Appendix D Composition of the National Museum Advisory Councils

310

Notes

311

Bibliography

355

Index

369

Illustrations

Figures The fine arts administration under Vichy

30

Vichy officials in 1942

34

Abel Bonnard and Louis Hautecoeur with General Medicus

36

Jacques Jaujard

38

Transferring the Venus de Milo

72

Evacuating Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa

73

Empty frames at the Louvre

74

Protecting the Arc de Triomphe

106

Destroyed historic buildings in Rouen, June 1944

116

Removed statues by subject

162

Removed commemorative statues by profession

163

Monument to General De Boigne

174

La Savoyarde (“La Sasson”), Chambéry

175

Fountain on the place Royale, Nantes

184

Note by Rose Valland

206

The “Room of Martyrs,” Jeu de Paume Museum

207

Mystic Lamb altarpiece

238

Mystic Lamb, detail of central panel

239

Presentation in the Temple

247

Saint Mary Magdalene

248

Antependium of Basel

249

x  Illustrations

Map The Partition of France, 1940–1944

19

Plates  following page 238 Mystic Lamb altarpiece Mystic Lamb, detail of central panel Presentation in the Temple Antependium of Basel

Table Removed bronze monuments and works of art

170

Acknowledgments

This book came to fruition thanks to the generous support of many people and institutions. I am indebted to the Direction des archives in the French Ministry of Culture, which granted me permission to study archives that were closed when I began my research. I owe thanks to thendirector Philippe Belaval for these crucial permissions. Archives housed by the Musées de France have been pivotal to this project, and I thank the former head of archives, Isabelle le Masne de Chermont, and her staff for their efforts to inventory and make available to researchers these important documents. I am grateful to the former head of the Musées nationaux archive center, Gilles Poizat, for his kind assistance as I was carrying out my research. Special thanks as well to M. Poizat’s successor, Alain Prévet, for creating a welcoming environment and facilitating research with remarkable courtesy and efficiency. Numerous archivists and librarians graciously guided me through my research at the National Archive centers in Paris and Fontainebleau, the library of the Institut de France, the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, and the departmental archive centers in Nantes and Chambéry. Jean Astruc provided valuable assistance at the library of the Institut d’histoire du temps présent in Cachan, as did Marie-Thérèse Berger at the Ministry of Culture’s office of archeological affairs. Critical financial support came from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and ­Science and the Société des professeurs français et francophones d’Amérique. At the University of Denver, I received generous backing from the Office of Internationalization, Faculty Research Fund, Rosenberry Fund, and the division of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Over the past ten years, I have benefited enormously from the expertise of remarkable French scholars. I owe special thanks to Pascal Ory at xi

xii  Acknowledgments

Paris I–Sorbonne for helping me develop this project from the beginning and continuing to deepen my understanding of French cultural history. I belong to an entire generation of historians shaped by his influential work on the history of French cultural policy. Philippe Poirrier, Loïc ­Vadelorge, and other members of the French Ministry of Culture’s ­Comité d’histoire enthusiastically shared their expertise in the history of patrimonial policy. Marc Olivier Baruch, Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, Eric Fassin, ­Krzysztof Pomian, Christophe Prochasson, and Jacques Revel offered key insights into French history and culture as I was first exploring the topic. ­Marie-Claude Genet-Delacroix provided crucial information on the fine arts budget under Vichy, and Christian Sorrel helped me understand the history of ­Chambéry. Laurent Olivier had a profound impact on my perspective of French cultural policy and archeological excavation during the Occupation. Closer to home, mentors, friends, and colleagues have provided essential support and guidance over the years. I extend special thanks to ­Edward Berenson, Michèle Cone, Gabriel Finkelstein, Kirrily Freeman, the late Tony Judt, Yanni Kotsonis, Jennifer Kremer, Pamela Laird, Marjorie Levine-Clark, Mary Lewis, Stephen Mihm, Molly Nolan, Matilde Pineda, Myra Rich, Jerrold Seigel, Kenneth Silver, Kelley Franco Throop, and James ­Whiteside. In France, Catherine Tamburini and Fabrice Faure-Dauphin, Stéphanie and Erwan Papin, and Peggy Robinson and Daniel Berrous have been welcoming hosts, on numerous occasions. Most of all, I am indebted to Herrick Chapman, who has offered a perfect balance of encouragement and constructive criticism. I cannot imagine a better mentor, and I strive to follow his fine example with my own students. At the University of Denver, I have benefited from the wisdom of exceptionally talented colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Elizabeth Escobedo, Caleb McDaniel, Jennifer Pap, and David Shneer for reading my work and offering astute advice. Carol Helstosky was especially generous in carefully reading and rereading several sections of the book, always responding with valuable suggestions. Bonnie Walker proofread the text and contributed to my analysis of dismantled bronze statues. Phoebe Busch helped me improve the text considerably by sharing her expertise in German history and language studies. Special thanks as well to Norris Pope, Sarah Crane Newman, Carolyn Brown, and their colleagues at Stanford University Press who turned the manuscript into a book, patiently guiding me through every step of the process. I am grateful to Cynthia Lindlof for her careful editing of the manuscript.

Acknowledgments  xiii

I also extend deep and heartfelt thanks to family members who have provided essential personal encouragement, notably my brother T. J. Campbell, and my uncle James Marsh—a model of engaged, critical, and hopeful intellectual activism. My husband, Paul, helped me in many ways, not the least of which was reading every page that follows, at least once. I am beholden to him for his sharp analytical mind, steadfast support, and goodnatured willingness to plan “Daddy days” for our children when I needed to focus on the manuscript. I thank my parents, Robert and Mary Ann Campbell, who taught me early on to read widely, think critically, and take a keen interest in world affairs. In many ways, I strive to emulate their parenting with my sons, Ryan and Grant, to whom I dedicate this book. May we someday explore the world’s wonders together.

Abbreviations

CGQ J Commissariat général aux questions juives (Commissariat for Jewish Affairs) CNRS Centre national de recherche scientifique (National Center of Scientific Research) CRA

Commission de récupération artistique (Art Recovery Commission)

DAI

Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (German institute founded in 1829, specialized in classical archeology)

DIME Direction des industries mécaniques et eléctriques (division within the Ministry of Industrial Production for mechanical and electrical industries) ERR

Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (key Nazi looting agency in France)

GIRM Groupement d’importation et de répartition des métaux (association created in 1939 to ensure distribution of metal) MBF

Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (German military headquarters in France)

MNR

Musées nationaux recupération (unclaimed objects recovered from Germany and overseen by the postwar French museum office)

OBIP

Office des biens et intérêts privés (division in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs created to manage the restitution of looted assets)

SAN

Société des antiquaires de Normandie (Normandy Society of Antiquaries)

xiv

Abbreviations  xv

SCAP

Service de contrôle des administrateurs provisoires (French Aryanization agency)

SPdF

Société préhistorique de France (Prehistorical Society of France)

SPF

Société préhistorique française (French Prehistorical Society)

SS

Schutzstaffel (“protective echelon,” elite Nazi security forces)

STO

Service du travail obligatoire (French labor draft to Germany)

Defending National Treasures

Introduction

On 2 May 1944 , René Huyghe, director of paintings at the Louvre, wrote a friendly note to Jean-François Lefranc, a French art dealer who facilitated sales for Nazi collectors. Huyghe was a highly esteemed curator, art historian, and Resistance member who after the war would be elected to the Académie française and awarded the Legion of Honor. Lefranc was later sentenced to five years in prison for his wartime deals with works looted from Jewish collections. What could these two men possibly have in common? A passion for world-class art. Writing from the chateau of Montal in southwestern France, where Huyghe monitored evacuated works of art from the Louvre and other museums, the curator regretted that he was not able to see Lefranc during a recent trip to Paris: “I would have liked to shake your hand and tell you how much I appreciate all of your dedication in promoting the Louvre’s interests in the Schloss affair.” Huyghe was referring to the temporary appropriation of forty-nine paintings from a looted Jewish art collection, which contained highly coveted paintings by Dutch and Flemish old masters. Although the forty-nine pieces eventually were returned to the Schloss family after the war, Huyghe had spent several months pursuing what he believed would be a permanent acquisition, raving to Lefranc that the masterpieces from the looted collection “greatly enhance the value of our Dutch gallery.”1 Adolphe Schloss, a Jewish financier, had amassed the prestigious collection in the late nineteenth century. Born in Austria in 1842, he immigrated to France where he became a naturalized citizen in 1871. He built a sizable fortune as a commodities broker, and as his wealth grew, so did his art collection. Schloss became an autodidact in Dutch and Flemish art history and carefully selected paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van der Neer, and Frans Hals, and an array of less famous artists, displaying the treasured 1

2  Introduction

pieces in his elegant Paris townhouse on the avenue Henri-­Martin. He died in 1911, and after the death of his widow in 1938, the collection passed to five adult heirs, three sons and two daughters. By the eve of the Second World War, art experts around the world were familiar with the Schloss paintings, considered the finest collection of Dutch and Flemish masters in France. As tensions mounted between France and Nazi Germany in 1939, the eldest Schloss heir, Lucien, realized that a military invasion might put the collection in danger. He transferred the collection from the French capital to the remote chateau of Chambon, owned by a trusted friend near the city of Tulle, in the Limousin region of central France. During the Occupation, French and German art dealers, including Lefranc, were determined to find the hidden collection. In the summer of 1943, French agents working for the Germans located the collection in the Limousin region, largely thanks to Lefranc’s detective work. The Vichy government negotiated with German authorities to transfer the collection back to Paris, in French moving trucks and under German supervision. There, in the Aryanized Dreyfus Bank, French and German curators and art experts divided up the collection: Huyghe and his colleagues secured the 49 paintings for the Louvre, German curators working for Hitler took 262 works, and Lefranc earned 22 pieces for facilitating the liquidation. French officials later argued that they had defended the French patrimony by saving forty-nine precious paintings from the Nazis and preventing damage or destruction in Germany. Implicit in this claim is the notion that the officials planned all along to return the paintings to the Schloss family, an idea that lives on even in recently published histories.2 Yet wartime correspondence among French officials leaves no doubt that Huyghe and his colleagues believed they were acquiring the paintings for the Louvre—permanently. Huyghe’s superior during the war was Jacques Jaujard, director of French national museums. A dynamic civil servant who oversaw a massive evacuation of French art museums in 1939 and tirelessly worked to protect the collections from damage and theft, he remains a symbol of resistance in the arts administration. After the war, Jaujard was awarded a Resistance Medal and the Legion of Honor, and in 1955 was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts. Today the entrance to the Ecole du Louvre bears his name, paying homage to his role as a protector of French national treasures during the Occupation.

Introduction  3

However, in securing paintings for the Louvre from the Schloss collection, Jaujard also facilitated negotiations between Huyghe and Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, commissioner of Jewish affairs from April 1942 to February 1944.3 Historian Henry Rousso has described Darquier as “the very embodiment of the most violent, irrational, and sinister aspects of Vichy’s anti-Jewish policy,” including state management of seized Jewish assets. Darquier later fled to Spain, received a death sentence in absentia from the postwar French government, and proclaimed in a 1978 interview with L’Express that only lice were killed at Auschwitz.4 Despite their drastically different legacies, in the summer of 1943 these four men—future Resistance figures Huyghe and Jaujard, and future condemned collaborators Lefranc and Darquier—had a common interest in liquidating the Schloss art collection. To be clear, that all four were involved in dividing up the paintings, with forty-nine of the finest works designated for the Louvre, does not invalidate the resistance activities of Huyghe and Jaujard. Huyghe served the Resistance from the art repository at Montal, where eleven of his guards were men from Alsace-Lorraine whom the Nazis had condemned to death in absentia. Jaujard similarly sought to protect Jews and communists in the arts administration and employed young men as guards who otherwise would have been forced to work in Germany. He also gave Resistance members access to his apartment at the Louvre and repeatedly opposed demands from the Nazis and Vichy officials that might threaten the French cultural patrimony. However, both men also sought to acquire paintings for the Louvre that had been seized from the Schloss heirs and several other Jewish families. French handling of the Schloss art collection during the Occupation thus raises some important questions: How did Jaujard, Huyghe, and their colleagues develop plans to integrate pieces from a looted Jewish collection into the Louvre? Why is this complicated affair still absent from the dominant narrative of French resistance to Nazi looting? How does evidence of opportunism aimed to enrich museums, particularly at the expense of Jews, disrupt established notions of collaboration and resistance? Put simply, how should we evaluate the actions of resisters who collaborate with collaborators? Without denying the courageous acts that earned Jaujard and Huyghe their prestigious honors, I aim to provide a more complete picture of museum officials’ actions during the Occupation, addressing acquisition issues that do not appear in memoirs and histories written by the actors themselves or their present-day successors in the cultural administration.

4  Introduction

Although the Schloss pieces eventually were returned to the family, the affair illustrates the arbitrariness of cultural property rights during the war for those affected by Vichy’s exclusionary laws. It also helps us understand policy in the early postwar years, when the museum administration, run by many of the same men, established a guardianship over unclaimed objects from looted Jewish collections. This policy reflected norms or standards of conduct at the time but became controversial by the late 1990s when journalists stridently proclaimed, albeit simplistically, that French museums were holding looted art.5 The Schloss affair, the French government’s effort to acquire art from sequestered Jewish art collections, and the postwar guardianship are examples of patrimania, defined here as a condition in which cultural and political figures succumb to opportunism in their pursuit of cultural acquisitions—not for personal gain but for the institutions they serve. By opportunism, I mean that individuals took advantage of circumstances to pursue acquisitions that potentially could harm the interests of previous owners. Of course, whether one considers certain practices opportunistic depends on one’s own perspective of cultural property norms, past and present. The actions of the museum administration may have respected norms of the time, particularly in light of Vichy anti-Semitic laws that stripped Jews of property ownership rights. Yet in seeking a deeper understanding of this history, we should assess those norms with a critical eye. Defending National Treasures is, in part, a story about what French leaders did when they had an unforeseen opportunity to control and possibly house highly coveted and valuable works of art. It also examines the development of important and enduring cultural preservation policy ­under Vichy. Thousands of historic monuments, chateaux, cathedrals, and art collections were continually threatened during the war and Occupation. Air raids and other combat operations created constant and widespread danger, even after the Franco-German armistice of June 1940, coupled with Nazi campaigns to “repatriate” Germanic works of art that were held in public and private art collections throughout France. As a result, the fine arts administration of the Vichy regime implemented numerous measures to protect French national treasures from the ravages of modern warfare and Nazi looting. Some laws were more effective than others in preserving art and historic sites, but all contributed to the development of national policy that postwar leaders would later validate and expand.

Introduction  5

For some officials in the Vichy regime, these preservation laws served a broader political goal. High-ranking civil servants argued that French preeminence in the arts was the nation’s last remaining comparative advantage. The nation had been defeated militarily and greatly weakened economically, but it could still lead the world in cultural and intellectual affairs. These officials optimistically envisioned an artistic mission that would celebrate French painting, sculpture, and architecture. They also believed that the government could not wait until the end of the war to implement cultural reforms that were necessary to maintain French prestige in the arts; they needed to act immediately, despite the pressing security and economic concerns brought on by the war. In the minds of these officials, protecting le patrimoine national (French national treasures) would serve the country on multiple levels. Domestically, it would signal the resurgence of France in the aftermath of a devastating military defeat; internationally, it would maintain French stature in the arts and cultural affairs. In economic terms, the vast wealth of French museums and historic sites would bolster the tourism industry, enabling France to pull itself out of the wartime crisis and reclaim lost grandeur. Most of the preservation reforms carried out by the Vichy regime had been proposed and debated in parliament during the Third Republic, some for more than twenty years. Yet they were implemented during the Occupation with a new ideological justification. Under the Vichy regime’s head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, preservation complemented the traditionalist domestic program dubbed the National Revolution. Viewed in this light, conservatives believed that the preservation of national treasures, symbols of “true France,” would also serve as an antidote to a wide range of destructive social trends—socialism, laziness, excessive materialism, and individualism.6 A study of le patrimoine in the 1940s may initially seem anachronistic, as the term’s cultural meaning is often held to have become widely used only in the 1970s and 1980s.7 Yet members of the cultural and political elite had been using it at least since the early 1940s, and it appears frequently in articles, reports, and letters during the Occupation. This repeated usage of the term justifies an analysis of what people meant by it. When officials invoked le patrimoine national in the early 1940s, in most cases they were referring to a relatively limited area of cultural heritage by today’s standards. They had in mind the fine arts, akin to the realm of le patrimoine ­artistique—works of art, historic landmarks, and antiquities, usually predating 1900. Today

6  Introduction

scholars, journalists, experts, curators, and political leaders continually redefine notions of le patrimoine, incorporating a wide range of objects, sites, and structures: le patrimoine ethnologique (folklore relics recalling France’s peasant economy), le patrimoine naturel (landscapes), le patrimoine industriel (defunct factories), and les écomusées (mines-turned-“ecomuseums”).8 I  have chosen to focus on the more limited realm of artistic patrimony, focusing on museums and art collections, antiquities and archeological excavation, historic sites and commemorative monuments. Studying policy related to a nation’s cultural heritage tells us a great deal about the priorities and preoccupations of modern society, particularly in a country like France, where historically the state has largely assumed the responsibility of cultural preservation. Policy choices reflect the nation’s desire to preserve vestiges of the past, as indicators of civilization and a superior culture. At the same time, assertions of grandeur rooted in a glorious heritage from the past can betray anxieties about a nation’s military, diplomatic, and economic strength in the present. ­Focusing on a particular country—France—at a particular time of profound national crisis—the German occupation—this book examines French interests in a policy nexus where political, military, diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural history intersect. Drawing on various published and unpublished sources, including recently declassified archives, it deepens our understanding of French history in multiple areas, showing the roots of contemporary cultural policy in the Vichy years. The notion of cultural patrimony proves a malleable and powerful concept, not only in postwar republican history, marked by policy initiatives implemented under André Malraux, Charles de Gaulle’s minister of culture from 1959 to 1969, but also during the exclusionary Vichy dictatorship. This study builds on nearly forty years of important scholarly research on the Vichy regime. With the Liberation of Paris, Charles De Gaulle established a powerful and reassuring resistance myth, analyzed most notably by Henry Rousso in The Vichy Syndrome (original French edition, 1987), in which all French people, except a small number of traitorous collaborators, had opposed Nazi domination. For nearly twenty years after­ward, most French writers, journalists, and historians further viewed the Vichy regime as a mere interruption in French history, a period disconnected from the years that preceded and followed it. Early postwar histories such as Histoire de Vichy by Robert Aron (1954) argued that ultracollaborators such as ­Laval were marginal in French society and that both Gaullists and ­Pétainists defended French interests. This perspective began to change with

Introduction  7

groundbreaking studies by Stanley Hoffmann in the early 1960s, followed by Robert Paxton’s Vichy France, first published in 1972. Hoffmann and Paxton both challenged the notion of the Vichy “interruption” in French history, underscoring the continuities in social and economic policy from the 1930s through the postwar period.9 Paxton also disrupted notions of a collaborationist cabal at Vichy, carried out by only a small number of traitors, by using German archives to prove incontrovertibly that Vichy leaders actively pursued collaboration and enacted measures such as the Jewish Statute without German pressure. Into the 1980s, historians such as Pascal Ory and Bertram Gordon focused attention on collaboration in various realms—­political, economic, artistic, and intellectual.10 By the end of the decade, the myth of widespread French resistance had been so thoroughly discredited that historian John Sweets argued that an equally distorted countermyth had developed, depicting France as a “nation of collaborators.”11 Numerous scholars over the past twenty years have sought to understand the gray area between the extremes of active resistance and ardent collaboration. Studies of French society during the Occupation shifted attention beyond the realm of politics, such as Pierre Laborie’s work on French public opinion and, more recently, in studies of everyday life by Robert Gildea, Richard Vinen, and Shannon Fogg.12 In his highly influential study France under the Germans, Philippe Burrin offered an alternative analytical framework to the Manichean categories of resistance and collaboration through the notion of “accommodation.” Lynne Taylor used a case study of northern France to examine various forms of popular protest beyond the realm of armed resistance. More recently, Jonathan Judaken has proposed an intriguing “C-curve,” in which one may evaluate an individual’s actions within twelve categories, ranging from active resistance to collaborationism, that is, “commitment to fascist or Nazi ideology.”13 This redefinition of collaboration and resistance has yielded more nuanced studies that greatly enriched our understanding of French behavior—official and societal—under the Occupation. Yet in evaluating Vichy leadership, notions of accommodation and choices on the C-curve still leave an analytical gap, as they focus on the interaction between French and German authorities and the extent to which the French were willing to satisfy German demands. Much of Vichy policy that merits critical analysis, however, dealt with internal policies carried out independently of the Germans, as illustrated in studies by Annette Wieviorka, Susan ­Zuccotti, and Laurent Joly on the Vichy regime’s anti-Semitic administration and

8  Introduction

policies, and French responsibility in the Final Solution.14 The spoliation of real estate, bank accounts, gold, cash, and cultural objects was carried out not to satisfy German demands but to fill the state’s coffers and pay for welfare programs such as National Aid. In evaluating French leadership, it is important to consider both French concessions to the Germans and the extent to which the agencies of individual administrators profited at the expense of the regime’s victims. The subfield of Vichy cultural history has been particularly rich in the past twenty years. When I first became interested in the Vichy cultural policy, I was greatly influenced by Christian Faure’s study of folklore, JeanPierre Bertin-Maghit’s work on French cinema, and studies of the visual arts by Laurence Bertrand Dorléac and Michèle Cone. The edited collection by Jean-Pierre Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, provided an effective overview of Vichy cultural history and policy, expanded more recently by Stéphanie Corcy in La vie culturelle sous l’Occupation.15 While Vichy cultural history is now a thoroughly researched area, historical surveys of French patrimoine tend to skip or merely gloss over the Vichy years, and the present study is the first to focus on heritage policy. Outside the Occupation period, however, a rich body of scholarship has developed on French cultural patrimony. As public awareness and appreciation of le patrimoine grew to a truly mass scale in the 1980s, scholarly texts on the topic quickly proliferated, a trend that both fed and stemmed from the broader field of memory studies. French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945) had provided an early intellectual framework in On Collective Memory (first French edition, 1941) by examining the social construction of memory in modern society. Four decades later, Eric Hobsbawm and  Terence Ranger examined the relationship between collective identity and constructed celebrations in their edited volume, The Invention of Tradition. David Lowenthal further analyzed the roots of the twentieth-century preservation movement, seeking to understand its “near universality.”16 Pierre Nora’s multivolume project from the 1990s, Les lieux de mémoire, with contributions from dozens of scholars, represented an intensifying French obsession with “realms of memory,” the meaning of an array of events, objects, and historical figures—the tricolor flag, Bastille Day, the Gauls, Joan of Arc. Rousso’s The Vichy Syndrome, again, was a groundbreaking study of French national memory of the German occupation.17 My own understanding of memory has been informed by scholars who question the notion of “collective memory,” in which certain interpretations of past events dominate a national public consciousness. When

Introduction  9

attention is shifted from the national to the local level, fascinating contested realms of memory become apparent. I address local memories in case studies of dismantled bronze statues under the Vichy regime (Chapter 8) and found useful Daniel Sherman’s definition of “dominant memory.” Whereas Rousso sees dominant memory as “a collective interpretation of the past that may even come to have official status,”18 Sherman sees it as “a set of narrative explanations emanating from dominant groups,” which may operate locally.19 Offering a more nuanced view of power and politics, this view of local memory takes into account the importance of local elites who actually controlled the business of commemoration, or “decommemoration” in the case of the Vichy regime. In the history of French patrimonial policy, French scholars such as Dominique Poulot, Jean-Pierre Babelon, and André Chastel have examined the shift in heritage management from royal and aristocratic control to domination by a political and social elite in the nineteenth century, and, in the last few decades of the twentieth century, the advent of a national appreciation of patrimony on a mass scale. Former United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) consultant and curator of patrimony, Jean-Michel Leniaud, provided a frank assessment of the challenges in managing such expansive policy in L’utopie française: ­Essai sur le patrimoine (1992). From a historian’s perspective, Philippe Poirrier has contributed a great deal to our understanding of patrimonial policy at national, regional, and local levels. Shifting from the national to local scale also helps avoid erroneous assumptions of a national, collective memory, as evidenced in the work of Loïc Vadelorge and Stéphane Gerson.20 In the final years of the last century, some observers cautioned that the obsession with heritage could have damaging consequences. In The Heritage Crusade (1998), Lowenthal emphasized both the benefits of heritage—“it links us with ancestors and offspring, bonds neighbors and patriots, certifies identity, roots us in time-honored ways”—as well as the threats, arguing that it can be “oppressive, defeatist, decadent. Miring us in the obsolete, the cult of heritage allegedly immures life within museums and monuments. Breeding xenophobic hate, it becomes a byword for bellicose discord.”21 While Lowenthal pushes the argument to an extreme, his critique constructively draws attention to the dangers inherent in overzealous devotion to heritage. In Who Owns Antiquity? (2008), James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, argues that the governments of Italy, Greece, and Turkey, among others, have pushed nationalistic restitution

10  Introduction

claims too far: “Antiquities are the cultural property of all humankind—of people, not peoples—evidence of the world’s ancient past and not that of a particular nation. They comprise antiquity and antiquity knows no borders.”22 Other museum directors echo this sentiment in Whose Culture? (2009), edited by Cuno. The contributors, which include then-director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Philippe de Montebello and British Museum director Neil MacGregor, emphasize the right of museums to maintain the art and antiquities in their collections, in part due to the unsurpassed ability of well-established museums with significant resources to conserve and display treasured objects. Among recent studies, the history of Nazi looting in France has garnered significant attention since the late 1990s, yet it is a field that has attracted few professional historians working in academe or research centers.23 Some of the most influential histories of looting and restitution in France have been written by journalists (Lynn Nicholas, Hector Feliciano), retired teachers (Michel Rayssac), or amateur historians (Robert Edsel). And often with impressive results. Nicholas’s The Rape of Europa and Rayssac’s L’exode des musées derived from years of rigorous archival research.24 Yet these authors have not addressed critically the issue of Jewish collections sequestered by the French museum administration. Recent histories published by the Musées de France or written by its administrators also omit in-depth analysis of policy toward sequestered art, most alarmingly in a contribution to the Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, the so-called Mattéoli Commission report published in 2000.25 Though the extensive, multivolume report aimed to promote transparency on the history of spoliation under Vichy, its conclusion that art looting in France was “a German affair” is strikingly oversimplified.26 The Schloss case and others discussed in Chapter 9 show that certain French dealers, police agents, and members of the Vichy government took advantage of circumstances to appropriate and profit from stolen art, whether for personal or institutional benefit. All of these trends in the history of the Vichy regime, cultural and patrimonial policy, and memory studies shaped this book, which underscores the malleability of notions of heritage, perceived variously as an effective political tool for democrats and dictators, a source of national unity and sectarianism. My analysis is grounded in archival research carried out at the French National Archives, the archive centers of the Musées natio­ naux, the French Institute, the Médiathèque du patrimoine, and the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC), all in Paris. I also

Introduction  11

use departmental archives for case studies on the recycling of bronze commemorative statues in the cities of Nantes and Chambéry. I incorporate German sources, including both published collections and unpublished documents seized by Resistance members during the liberation of France and conserved at the French National Archives and the CDJC.27 Memoirs by Gerhard Heller, Arno Breker, and Albert Speer provide insight from the occupier’s perspective, albeit with the self-interested spin of all memoirs. I also include German publications from the Occupation period, as well as secondary sources by German scholars.28 The book’s first two chapters provide an overview of the arts administration under the Occupation and the ways in which these cultural leaders and experts reconceived their troubled nation through its national treasures. At first glance, the war years appear to be an inauspicious moment for the development of patrimonial policy. The armistice of June 1940 partitioned the national territory into German-occupied and unoccupied zones, and the French bureaucracy was bifurcated between the cities of Paris and Vichy. French leaders operated in a perpetual economic crisis, and the wartime government increasingly became a puppet regime to the Third Reich. Yet these unusual circumstances actually created a reform paradox, facilitating the implementation of significant cultural legislation. The absence of parliament greatly hastened the legislative process, as new laws could be drafted by civil servants and approved by Pétain with relative efficiency. These new preservation policies, moreover, suited the conservative agenda of Pétain and his traditionalist appointees—namely, Jérôme Carcopino, education minister from February 1941 to April 1942, and Louis Hautecoeur, secretary general of fine arts for all but the last few months of the Occupation. Carcopino and Hautecoeur were particularly activist administrators who took advantage of parliament’s absence and sought to strengthen control of the fine arts administration. Building on this overview, Chapters 3 to 6 explore the implementation of several significant preservation policies during the war and occupation. Chapter 3 examines the massive evacuation of public art collections to makeshift storage depots in chateaux throughout France, involving several hundred thousand objects from more than two hundred museums. Chapters 4 to 6 explore the administrative reorganization of French public museums, preservation measures that increased protection of historic and natural sites, and the creation of centralized archeological regulations. All of these key reforms outlasted the Vichy regime. Following the Liberation

12  Introduction

in 1944, Charles de Gaulle proclaimed the end of the Vichy regime and, in theory, the nullification of all its laws. In reality, the provisional French government of 1944 to 1946 validated many wartime laws, including key preservation reforms. The air raids of the war’s final battles, in which entire neighborhoods and villages were destroyed, made the postwar argument for centralized patrimonial policy all the more compelling. If the French enjoyed relative latitude in the implementation of preservation policies while under the Nazi jackboot, the limits to their sovereignty became painfully clear when the Germans demanded victor’s spoils. The book’s second half focuses on key areas of Franco-German conflict and negotiation. Chapters 7 and 8 address German requisitions of nonferrous metal, a scarce resource in central Europe needed for bullets and other armaments in Hitler’s war machine. While the Germans seized church bells in other occupied territories, melting them down and recycling them into weapons, the French preferred to offer up bronze commemorative statues that inhabited public parks and town squares across the country. The Vichy regime determined which monuments would be sacrificed to the Germans, dismantling hundreds of bronze statues and leaving behind as many empty pedestals. Chapter 9 examines Jewish-owned art collections as Nazi war booty. Works of art belonging to collectors and gallery owners who had fled France were particularly vulnerable, as Vichy anti-Semitic laws had stripped emigrant Jews of citizenship and property ownership rights. The Nazis looted prestigious collections throughout the Occupation, despite continual and vehement protests from numerous French agencies. However, French officials were asserting their own right to control the collections, in defense of the French patrimoine—not in defense of the Jewish collectors. I explore what happened when the French were able to sequester several prestigious Jewish art collections that had eluded the Nazis, including part of the vast Rothschild holdings. Considering the works “ownerless,” Jaujard and Huyghe developed plans to incorporate masterpieces into the Louvre and other museums—not as a temporary safeguard, as they and their colleagues later claimed, but permanently. As in the case of the Schloss affair, correspondence between Jaujard, Huyghe, and others in the arts administration reveals that these men saw the sequestration as an unforeseen opportunity to expand public museum collections during the wartime crisis. Chapter 10 also considers the fate of French museum collections, from the perspective of Franco-German negotiations. Reichsmarschall Hermann

Introduction  13

Göring demanded spoils for his personal collection, targeting key pieces from the Louvre. After a series of contentious meetings, ­Jaujard and curators in the national museum administration agreed to an exchange involving from the French side two highly valuable objects: a sixteenth-century statue by Gregor Erhart, Saint Mary Magdalene, and a Renaissance altarpiece panel entitled Presentation in the Temple. Göring proudly displayed the objects at Carinhall, his hunting lodge and personal art gallery, but never offered equivalent pieces in exchange. Although the pieces were recovered after the war and returned to the Louvre, the fact remains that Jaujard and his colleagues accommodated a significant Nazi demand that was unlikely to result in a reasonable exchange. The final chapter on the legacy of Vichy policy explains the ways in which wartime preservation measures were adopted and implemented more fully in the postwar period. Along with the continuity of these reforms, the notion that the state ought to protect national treasures for the good of the collective—even at the expense of private interests—also endured. In perhaps its most injurious form, this guiding principle helped prolong the exploitation of the Vichy regime’s Jewish victims. This guardianship over unclaimed art that had been looted or sold from Jewish collections turned into a long-term appropriation of objects, including highly valuable paintings by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Monet. Following restitution norms of the time, relying on claimants to provide proof of ownership, museum officials held these pieces in public museums and storage depots without searching for the rightful owners—despite the administration’s access to extensive documentation on the looted collections. These documents, in part, had been gathered by the Germans as they carried out looting operations. The Musées de France initiated research using these archives only in the late 1990s, as a result of growing media scrutiny and public pressure. This delay raises some uncomfortable questions: To what extent did anti-Semitism play a role in the long-term guardianship? Would it have gone unchallenged for so long had the art previously belonged to Gentiles rather than Jews? Acceptance of the status quo by postwar curators and cultural administrators may be related to a broader lack of attention paid to the Holocaust, Vichy anti-Semitism, and the spoliation of Jewish assets, at least until the 1970s. But questions related to latent postwar antiSemitism certainly are worth asking. .  .  .

14  Introduction

Beyond the history of Vichy, this study addresses the nature of the French state. By “the state” I mean not only l’Etat français, the title adopted by the Vichy regime, but the centuries-old administrative system that has evolved in France under various forms of government—monarchical, dictatorial, and republican. The Vichy regime controlled the government for four years, but the administrative machinery that constitutes the French state has been developing since the medieval Capetian kings. This study thus focuses on “the Vichy moment” in the history of the French state and cultural policy, taking into consideration continuities in the periods that preceded and followed it, as well as the changes brought about by the unique context of the Occupation. A key goal here is to challenge a compelling notion that stems from the French Revolution—that the state necessarily acts for the benefit of the collective, “one and indivisible,” by transcending partisan interests. French culture and cultural administrations in particular appear to rise above factionalism, as the term le patrimoine national implies. Few French people would deny the inherent value of the Louvre’s collections, Notre Dame cathedral, and the well-preserved villages of Provence, the heritage that in many ways defines France today. Yet under Vichy, visions of national renewal through French heritage also yielded the pursuit of institutional gain at the expense of the regime’s victims. Finally, Defending National Treasures raises important questions that are relevant beyond France, the Second World War, and the discipline of history: How does art shape national identity? What is the relationship between art’s material and aesthetic value? Do museums have an ethical obligation, if not a legal one, to grant restitution in response to legitimate claims? As the age of formal colonialism recedes into an ever-distant past, who ought to control artifacts still held in museums of former imperial powers? What lessons should we have learned from the German occupation of France that could have prevented the looting of the Iraqi National Museum following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion? What is the U.S. responsibility in helping Iraqis recover stolen items? Although I do not tackle all of these questions directly, the example of France during the Second World War sheds light on current cultural property disputes and the complicated relationship between governments, museums, and individuals—all coveting art.29

1 Cultural Affairs under Vichy

As in each painful chapter in their history, the French people must rediscover their identity, in the aftermath of defeat, within defeat itself. . . . We must end the delusion that our neighbors will bring happiness, counting on others to escape a difficult situation. . . . We must rebuild for ourselves this France, which will become for us as it was for our ancestors, “Land of France, my sweet country.” —Fernand Lemoine, La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1 July 1941 The soldier should take upon himself a personal duty, despite the harshness of war and contrary to all the powers of destruction, to preserve the meaningful, the beautiful, and the exemplary created by history as “the Great One”—Goethe—had in mind when he crafted just the right words for this situation: Whoever protects and preserves The many splendors of the world, Dissolved war and conflict. Secured the most noble destiny. Protect and preserve—that is the German task. —Franz Albrecht Medicus, Schlösser in Frankreich, guidebook on French chateaux for German soldiers published in Paris, 1944

During the six-week campaign against France , from the launching of Hitler’s invasion on 10 May 1940, to the signing of the armistice on 22 June, an estimated 6 million panicked civilians fled northern France, desperate to reach safer ground. They loaded up cars, carts, and bicycles with their most cherished possessions or set out on foot with all they could carry. They became refugees in their own country, uncertain 17

18  Visions of National Renewal

how long they would be away from home. With healthy men of fighting age at the front, mothers bravely gathered their children and packed food for the next meal or two. The refugees jammed the roads outside Paris, competing for space with French military vehicles that were pushing against the human tide, toward the front. They were beset by fear, uncertainty, and periodic strafing from the Luftwaffe, whose brutality already had been immortalized in Picasso’s Guernica. Some of the refugees planned to join friends and relatives in designated locations; others had no specific destination—just somewhere farther south. On 10 June, with German forces encroaching on Paris, the French government joined the civilian exodus. Cabinet members regrouped on 14 June in the city of Bordeaux on the southern Atlantic coast. In accordance with the Third Republic’s 1875 constitution, on 16 June Premier Paul Reynaud nominated eighty-four-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain to form a new government that would negotiate peace terms. President Albert Le­ brun accepted the nomination, and the following day, Pétain informed the French people by radio that their government had surrendered. The devastation of military defeat, within a matter of weeks, was compounded by humiliating peace terms. Hitler delighted in the symbolism of signing the armistice in the exact location as the 1918 armistice, in the Rethondes clearing outside Compiègne. The earlier armistice had been signed inside the private railway car of Marshal Foch, the French general who had led Allied forces against Germany and its allies in the Central Powers. A symbol of French victory, Foch’s railway car had become a tourist attraction between the world wars, a sign that France had avenged the Prussian defeat of 1870. Hitler, a master of symbols himself, reversed the referents of victor and vanquished, transforming Foch’s railway car into a sign of German resurgence.1 The 1940 armistice agreement divided France into several administrative zones. The Third Reich annexed two French departments, Alsace and La Moselle, incorporating them into its own administration. The German military command in Brussels absorbed the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, and northeastern France was divided into two regions: the “forbidden” zone, extending north of the Somme and Aisne rivers, and the “reserved” zone, covering eight French administrative departments northeast of the Meuse, Aisne, and Saône rivers. These two special zones portended further possible annexations of what the Reich considered “Germanic” departments. The main German-occupied zone extended from the

ENG

LISH

C

N HAN

BELGIUM

EL

GERMANY

LUX.

Paris Sourches Chambord Nantes SWITZ. Vichy ATLANTIC OCEAN

Lyon Chambéry

Tulle

ITALY

Montal

Bordeaux

Loc-Dieu Montauban Pau

SPAIN

Corsica

MEDITERRANEAN SEA Principal art storage sites in this study Demarcation line German-occupied zone Zone attached to German military administration in Brussels Annexed zone Unoccupied zone (until November 1942) Areas occupied by Italy, June 1940 Italian-occupied zone, after November 1942 [includes Corsica] Forbidden zone Reserved zone

The Partition of France, 1940–1944

20  Visions of National Renewal

English Channel to the Loire River and jutted southwest to the Spanish border, thus incorporating the country’s entire Atlantic seaboard. The unoccupied or so-called free zone made up two-fifths of the national territory, in the resource-deprived central and southeastern regions. With the city of Bordeaux now in the occupied zone, French officials sought out another temporary headquarters. They settled in the spa town of Vichy in central France, forever linking that city to the wartime regime and the darkest period in modern French history. A popular vacation spot for those seeking the therapeutic benefits of natural hot springs, the town of Vichy offered, above all, an array of hotels that functionaries quickly converted into offices. Over the next four years, the city’s population grew from 30,000 to 130,000 because of the influx of government officials, who adapted to the inconvenience of cramped quarters and restricted telephone service. As the fighting ceased in northern France and civilian refugees worked their way back home, Pétain and his government continued to operate in a state of dislocation. Article three of the armistice agreement provided for the government’s return to Paris, and Pétain hoped to establish his headquarters at the nearby Versailles palace. It was a rather appropriate idea, as one of his aides would later quip that the Marshal ended up consolidating more power than Louis XIV.2 Yet Versailles also had some drawbacks. An adviser pointed out that the palace was too isolated and evoked negative images of the Old Regime and Adolphe Thiers’s headquarters in the early Third Republic following the Prussian victory. This aide had another palace in mind for Pétain—the Louvre. In a note to Pétain, the adviser explained that the Marshal’s battle against enemies—both foreign and domestic—would require the use of les armes morales (moral weapons); the Louvre was just “this kind of weapon.” The palace was the “political heart of Paris,” near the city’s “spiritual heart beating on the Ile de la Cité,” a reference to Notre Dame cathedral. The Louvre was familiar to all Parisians, “the perfect museum, the only one that French people know” and “the most majestic urban palace in the world.” If Pétain were living at the Louvre, Parisians would feel that he was “close to them, in their home.”3 Pétain’s presence at the Louvre would show a certain amount of noble self-sacrifice. The French people would recognize the “discomfort” and “spiritual value” of living in the museum, as opposed to the heady opulence of Versailles. They would know that “something new really was happening,” that France would be “remade at the Louvre as it was by

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  21

the Capetians and Richelieu,” referring to the consolidation of the French monarchy in medieval and early modern times, before the construction of Versailles. On a more practical level, Pétain’s presence in the Louvre would also help “protect the treasures of our patrimoine national against certain appetites,” an allusion to the Nazi art looting that was already under way. As the Louvre’s newest resident, the Marshal would thus serve as the ultimate protector of the French people and their artistic treasures.4 In the end, Hitler did not allow the government to return to Paris, and Pétain maintained his headquarters in Vichy. But the proposal illustrates one of many possible interpretations of the palace’s symbolic power beyond its functional use as a public museum. It is a vision of the Louvre as an embodiment of the nation, an instrument for unifying the French people through their cultural heritage. Over the next four years, Pétain would sign into law several key measures to protect French national treasures, thus also protecting a certain traditional idea of France. The government that later would be known as “the Vichy regime” thus formed in the midst of crisis, dislocation, and humiliating defeat to France’s modern archenemy. The transfer of power to Pétain was entirely legal within the Third Republic’s constitutional framework. When Pétain became président du conseil (premier) on 16 June, the Republic’s two-person executive endured, with Lebrun continuing to serve as president. However, Pétain wished to dispel fears of a military coup and acknowledged his need for assistance managing the government. Veteran politician Pierre Laval thus earned the position of vice-président du conseil (deputy premier) on 27 June. Laval felt quite at home in Vichy, as he was born in the nearby village of Châteldon and still held property there. The son of an innkeeperbutcher, he had followed the path of other ambitious young men from the provinces and pursued a legal career in Paris. After establishing a law practice in the capital, he was elected to parliament as a socialist in 1914. Over the next twenty years, the practice prospered, his wealth grew, and his political views shifted from left to right. He held a variety of political positions in the 1930s—as parliament member, mayor of Aubervilliers, foreign minister, and premier. Following the 1940 defeat, at the age of fifty-six, he was eager to draw on his extensive political experience and serve in Pétain’s government. Although Hitler had forced the French to accept defeat and occupation, he did not coerce them into creating a new regime; the French

22  Visions of National Renewal

parliament approved this change on its own. On 9 July, parliament members, having joined the cabinet in Vichy, voted 624 to 4 to scrap the 1875 constitution. The next day, parliament pushed the transfer of power a key step further, granting Pétain full emergency powers to formulate a new law of the land, by a vote of 569 to 80. This was no cabal; it was a transfer of power overwhelmingly approved by the current leadership. And it was less temporary than some deputies had hoped. As it turned out, parliament had voted itself out of existence for the war’s duration, and in the several months following those key votes of 9–10 July, Pétain consolidated executive, legislative, and judicial authority, laying the foundation for wartime authoritarianism.5 Yet Pétain never held executive power alone. Laval maintained his position as deputy premier until December 1940, when Pétain’s closest advisers convinced him to remove Laval from office. While Pétain sought to stabilize and renovate France, focusing on domestic reform, Laval ardently believed that Franco-German collaboration would establish the best position for France in a Nazi-dominated Europe. Men who were more sympathetic to Pétain’s vision for France succeeded Laval: Pierre-Etienne Flandin, from December 1940 to February 1941, followed by Admiral François Darlan until April 1942. By that time, the Germans were increasingly determined to extract additional resources from France—labor, raw materials, foodstuffs, and Jews. Dissatisfied by the level of cooperation they received from Darlan, the Germans forced Pétain to reinstall Laval in April 1942, revealing Pétain’s ultimate powerlessness.6 French authorities enjoyed relative latitude in cultural affairs during the Occupation only because the Germans very deliberately gave it to them. Hitler believed that cultural activities would offer the French people a useful distraction from the difficulties of everyday life and help placate urban populations. Similarly, Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels believed it was in the German interest for the arts and cultural life to flourish, particularly in the French capital. The division responsible for censorship in Paris, the Propaganda-Abteilung, exempted the French from strict artistic censorship, allowing a wider range of expression than was permitted in the Reich. As a result, German officers enjoyed gallery exhibitions of “degenerate” art in Paris that would have been banned in Berlin. This wartime approach to French cultural life reflected the Führer’s plans for the country within a New Europe dominated by the Thousand

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  23

Year Reich. Hitler considered France a Rückendeckung, or “rear shield,” that would neutralize Germany’s western flank while he pursued his chief expansionist goal: Lebensraum (living space) for the German people in eastern Europe and Russia.7 Like other satellite countries, France would first and foremost support the German economy. It also would be a top vacation spot where troops and workers would rest their weary Aryan bones. With its exceptional artistic and cultural resources, France would provide tourist attractions, fashion, entertainment, and gastronomic delights.8 Soon after the armistice, on 23 June 1940, Hitler made his first and only trip to Paris. The German embassy, led by thirty-seven-year-old Otto Abetz, an ambitious young diplomat who lacked the official title of “ambassador” because of the military occupation, planned the itinerary. Abetz wanted to showcase for Hitler the splendors of Paris—its theaters, museums, historic buildings, and monuments. The Führer, who as an aspiring artist had twice failed to gain entrance to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, fancied himself an art connoisseur and was grateful for the opportunity to visit the traditional artistic capital of Europe. His tour guides included architect Albert Speer, who offered commentary on French urbanism, and Arno Breker, the Reich’s official sculptor and a former denizen of the Montparnasse art district. Hitler marveled at the ornate Garnier opera house, startling his tour guides with detailed knowledge of the palace structure. Standing before the grandiose central staircase, he proclaimed that the Garnier opera house was “the most beautiful theater in the world!”9 Hitler also admired the Louvre’s classicist facade overlooking the Seine, designed by architect Claude Perrault under Louis  XIV: “I  won’t hesitate to call this grandiose construction one of the most brilliant ideas in architecture.”10 The entourage paused at the Trocadéro palace, taking in the view of the Eiffel Tower, and visited  the Hôtel des Invalides. Overlooking Napoleon’s tomb, Hitler removed his hat and bowed slightly in a moment of silence. According to Breker, Hitler at that moment decided to transfer from Vienna the remains of Napoleon’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt.11 The transfer occurred in December 1940, though the conciliatory gesture soon was overshadowed by Nazi exactions. While Hitler enthusiastically admired several Paris landmarks, he was disappointed by the historic Panthéon and Sacré Coeur basilica and felt overall that Paris lacked a certain dramatic grandeur found in Rome and Vienna. He remained convinced that his renovated Berlin would outshine every other European city.12

24  Visions of National Renewal

In the summer of 1940, the new French government faced numerous logistical difficulties. Though Pétain spent most of his time in Vichy, other senior officials shuttled frequently between Vichy and Paris, their trips delayed by German restrictions on travel across the demarcation line. Interruptions in mail delivery, electricity, and telephone use further hampered government operations, along with a persistent lack of skilled personnel who normally would support the civil service. As the Occupation wore on, Laval’s willingness to send French workers to German factories further aggravated a widespread labor shortage. In September 1942 he negotiated a worker exchange program known as the relève, in which one French prisoner of war (POW) would be repatriated for every three skilled French workers sent to Germany. As Hitler became more desperate for laborers, Laval agreed to a labor draft of young men in February 1943, a program known as the Service du travail obligatoire (STO). This concession to the Germans, more than any other Vichy policy, drove young French men into the Resistance. Determined to evade the labor draft, many fled to the countryside and joined the maquis (guerrilla units), which sought refuge in mountainous regions of southern France and other rural areas. With more than 2 million young Frenchmen in captivity as POWs or working in German factories, and thousands increasingly joining the Resistance after early 1943, the labor shortage remained acute throughout the Occupation.13 Despite the difficulties of operating in divided territory, Vichy leaders pursued ambitious domestic reforms under the illusion that the government had maintained full sovereignty. A traditionalist reform program, dubbed the National Revolution, was designed to renovate the French nation in the wake of defeat, under the strong leadership of an authoritarian regime. In the end, the combined impact of German restrictions, logistical difficulties, and a lack of time and resources hindered the implementation of some reform measures. Other Vichy policies, however, had a profound, lasting, and at times devastating impact.

A National Revolution? Pétain represented not just a change in government, an event that occurred on average every several months during the Third Republic, but a change in regime. The men controlling the government intended to restructure the political system, recast French society, and reorganize the

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  25

economy. No other country occupied by the Germans pursued such an ambitious domestic agenda. Many of the men who served the regime were united in a deeply ingrained obsession with maintaining public order and, in particular, quashing communism. As Philippe Burrin puts it, anticommunism was “the most powerful motivating force upon which the whole history of Vichy rests.”14 Despite this common goal, the men of Vichy did not belong to a single, fascistic political party with an official ideology— perhaps to Pétain’s chagrin. Rather, Vichy officials held competing visions for France, with different social and economic priorities. Pétain rallied one group of men around traditionalism, the ideological foundation for the National Revolution. Drawing on the xenophobic conservatism of nationalist writer Charles Maurras, Vichy traditionalists believed that modernity was slowly destroying Western civilization by encouraging excessive materialism, individualism, and secularism, all of which contributed to a general moral decay. Traditionalists called for a return to premodern communities—the family, trade corporations, and Old Regime administrative regions. Pétain sought to restore Catholic values, end republican secularism, and reintroduce religious education in public schools. Vichy propaganda romanticized rural life and the soil, encouraging the French people to rediscover their national roots in the countryside.15 The motto of the National Revolution summed up the traditionalist vision, replacing the republican credo “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” with “Work, Family, Fatherland” (Travail, Famille, Patrie). The Maurrassian vision behind the National Revolution encouraged not only romantic nostalgia for an idealized past but also militant xenophobia that was most evident in the regime’s anti-Semitic legislation. The economic crisis of the early 1930s had heightened antiforeign sentiment as unemployment rose, and many French people viewed immigrants as competition for increasingly scarce jobs. In 1933, twenty-one thousand Jewish refugees entered France from Germany, exacerbating the crisis-driven xeno­phobia.16 By the end of the decade, anti-immigrant sentiment deepened further with the influx of political refugees from Italy and Spain. But Jews, in particular, remained a target of nationalist writers and antiforeign political activists. Anti-Semitic publications such as Je Suis Partout flourished, and high-profile right-wing writers such as Robert Brasillach, Drieu la Rochelle, and Céline fuelled anti-Semitic sentiment.17 Following the defeat, Jews—along with communists and Freemasons—were easy scapegoats for French people who already were inclined

26  Visions of National Renewal

to blame Jews for society’s ills. The Nazis did not need to impose antiSemitic measures in France; the Vichy leadership diminished the public activity of Jews within its own program of national renewal. The Jewish Statute of 3 October 1940, for example, barred Jews from positions of public influence—in the military officer corps, radio, film, press, teaching, art dealing—and Jewish artists, along with alleged communists and Free­masons, could not exhibit their work. These exclusionary laws had a significant impact on cultural affairs, as we will see, thanks to the willing and even enthusiastic cooperation of some French fine arts administrators. On a broader level, these laws singled out, isolated, and impoverished Jews, making them vulnerable to deportation beginning in 1942, under Laval’s restored government. In the end, the Vichy regime deported to Nazi death camps some seventy-six thousand Jews, including eleven thousand children. Only 3 percent of those deported survived.18 Though traditionalists at Vichy may have wanted the National Revolution to dominate social and economic policy, regionalism fundamentally contradicted the centralizing impulses of reformers who sought to modernize France. Technocrats in the new regime dismissed the National Revolution and promoted a more forward-looking vision of French society, openly admiring the industrial efficiency of fascist regimes. This group included engineers Jean Bichelonne and Jean Berthelot, who served as ministers of industrial production and communication, respectively, and former business executive Pierre Pucheu, who headed the Ministries of Industrial Production (February 1941–July 1941) and the Interior (July 1941–April 1942). These experts sought to centralize economic affairs through state planning of commerce and industrial production. The regime assigned Comités d’organisation (COs; organization committees) to each industrial sector, which created lasting cooperation between government and business leaders. While Pétain and fellow traditionalists viewed trade corporations as a way for each sector to defend its own interests, modeled loosely on the premodern guild system, under Vichy the COs reinforced control over the economy by elites and large-scale industrial and manufacturing interests. The committees, for example, overpowered the Artisans’ Bureau, established in November 1940 to protect small producers. Artisans resented hearing and reading National Revolution rhetoric from traditionalists, celebrating the need to preserve artisanal production while at the same time facing the reality of elite domination in each industrial sector’s CO. Yet the partnership between business and political

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  27

interests under Vichy served both sides so effectively that it has endured ever since, far outlasting the regime’s traditionalist initiatives.19 Traditionalists and technocrats alike benefited from the absence of parliament under Vichy, which greatly increased the regime’s efficiency in creating new legislation. Leaders ruled mostly by executive decree, consulting with members of a Conseil d’état (State Council) only when deliberating matters of significant national interest.20 Pétain had the authority to enact legislation by his signature alone, a power extended to Laval in April 1942. Cultural reforms in two areas, public art museums and archeological excavation, illustrate the government’s new efficiency. During the Third Republic, French parliament had debated museum reform throughout the 1930s, and archeological proposals had periodically appeared since 1910. Vichy leaders borrowed ideas from those earlier proposals and took advantage of the lack of parliamentary debate by enacting the reforms swiftly—in a matter of roughly four months for museum reorganization and five months for archeological policy. As Pétain and his cohorts called for national renewal in the wake of defeat, numerous cultural officials and journalists emphasized the need for increased protection of French cultural heritage. Letters, reports, and articles repeatedly refer to the notion that the military defeat did not destroy French culture—the country’s only remaining comparative advantage. French authorities believed they needed to take immediate measures to ensure that Paris would be the world’s cultural capital after the war. It was a vision stemming from the fear that New York already held this position, as art collectors and patrons had helped establish world-renowned private museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Founded in 1929, MoMA had moved to its current location in 1939 and promised to house the world’s finest collection of modern art.21 In response to the rise of New York and Berlin, a number of French wartime proposals reflect a strong desire to reaffirm the status of Paris as the world’s artistic capital. On 1 December 1940, the ministers of national education, finance, and justice (Georges Ripert, Yves Bouthillier, and Raphaël Alibert, respectively) sent Pétain a proposal to reorganize the fine arts administration. These changes were necessary, according to the authors, because “a large part of the rayonnement [influence] and the inalienable glory” of France is “founded on our rich artistic past and on the high quality of our artists and artisans.” With increased funding and more centralized organization, the authors continued, the fine arts department could help to “defend

28  Visions of National Renewal

our traditions, to protect all of our elites and to encourage the ­blossoming of new talent.” French works of art had always enjoyed worldwide prestige because they reflected “intelligence and taste.” The new regime, they reasoned, could not afford to neglect the nation’s artistic heritage.22 Another proposal from the fine arts department suggested that France was the global leader in only one sector—cultural affairs. It was therefore in the nation’s interest to plan for the postwar period by encouraging art production, protecting historic monuments, and promoting tourism as a significant source of economic growth.23 Journalists echoed these ideas in cultural and literary publications, often from a centrist to right-wing political perspective. In La Nouvelle Revue Française,24 Fernand Lemoine exalted French cultural rayonnement and the worldwide “unanimous admiration” of French art and literature.25 Similarly, painter Jean Bazaine argued that the military defeat need not necessarily derail the French civilizing mission. During the past thirty years, he pointed out, French paintings by artists such as Matisse, Bonnard, Braque, Dufy, and Picasso (apparently an adopted Frenchman) were “our only bold act in the world” and a rare source of artistic innovation and excitement (l’un des rares ferments vivants de notre époque).26 Bazaine believed that such fruitful production could and should continue, even in difficult circumstances.27 Writing in the cultural weekly Comoedia, art critic Pierre du Colombier argued that privately owned artistic treasures did not merely belong to their owners. Rather, the entire public, in his view, had “moral rights” to the preservation of historic buildings. According to Colombier, the state should subsidize restoration projects of privately owned property to mitigate the financial hardships experienced by owners during the war. He further argued that the state should buy historic chateaux and other artistic treasures that could soon be lost, either because of decay or foreign buyers. He reminded readers that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had garnered sections of five French churches to form the Cloisters museum in northern Manhattan, an appropriation of heritage made possible by laxity in French legislation.28 Men in the fine arts administration also shared this vision of national renewal through French heritage. They varied by age, training, work experience, and political affiliation, but, with the exception of ­Laval’s education minister Abel Bonnard, they agreed on one crucial point: the urgent need to protect French national treasures.

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  29

French Cultural Services Pétain himself conveyed the idea that national renewal lay, at least in part, in the ability of the French people to draw strength from their rich intellectual and cultural heritage. He assured his compatriots that despite the military defeat, “France will remain . . . the fatherland of the arts, of high culture, and of objective research.” The new regime, he declared, “will maintain its Greek and Latin heritage” and its cultural “rayonnement throughout the world.”29 In a regime without parliament, cabinet ministers were able to play a key role in producing new legislation. Within the French bureaucracy, the head of fine arts reported to the education minister, who set an important tone for cultural affairs. Jérôme Carcopino, a classical historian and archeologist, served as minister from February 1941 to April 1942. A conservative traditionalist, Carcopino shared Pétain’s belief that the strength of the French nation and its promise for renewal lay in its Greco-Roman heritage. In an interview with the newspaper Tunis-Soir, Carcopino argued that the French people were the inheritors of classical civilization, and as such they would be among the top nations in a rejuvenated New Europe. Promoting a sort of classicist civilizing mission, Carcopino claimed the French were “obligated to ensure the diffusion of European humanism throughout the world.”30 Carcopino’s views were informed by a lifetime of classical training and research. He was born in 1881 in Verneuil-sur-Avre, a small town in Normandy; his mother died while he was an infant, and he was raised by his father, a physician in the republican army. The young Carcopino began a brilliant academic career at the finest schools in Paris, including the Henri IV lycée and the Ecole normale supérieure. In 1904, he earned first place in the history and geography agrégation, a rigorous examination administered to aspiring French teachers. This top honor gave him a threeyear research assignment at the Ecole française in Rome. He spent the next several years working on his doctoral thesis, interrupted temporarily by the First World War. He volunteered, served as captain, and earned the Legion of Honor. In 1920, he was named chair of Roman history at the Sorbonne and served as director of the Ecole française in Rome from 1922 to 1923 and 1937 to 1940. At the beginning of the Occupation, he was named director of the Ecole normale supérieure and provisional rector of the University of Paris system. When Pétain was searching for a new education minister in February 1941, he selected Carcopino over the right-

Head of State

Departmental commissions for bronze statue selection René Huyghe

Director of Paintings, Louvre Museum

Jacques Jaujard

Director of National Museums

National Museum curators committee

René Perchet

Director of Architectural Services

Louis Hautecoeur

Secretary General of Fine Arts

Minister of Industrial Production

High Council for bronze recuperation program (statues)

GIRM: Group for the Importation and Distribution of Metals (dismantled statues)

M. Regnier

Commissioner for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals

François Lehideux (July 1941–April 1942) Jean Bichelonne (April 1942–August 1944)

The fine arts administration under Vichy (key figures in this study)

Rose Valland

Attachée, Jeu de Paume Museum

Jean-François Lefranc

Provisional administrator for Schloss art collection

Xavier Vallat (March 1941–May 1942) Louis Darquier de Pellepoix (May 1942–February 1944)

General Commissioner for Jewish Affairs

Minister of Education Jérôme Carcopino (February 1941–April 1942) Abel Bonnard (April 1942–August 1944)

Minister of the Interior

Pierre Pucheu (July 1941–April 1942) Pierre Laval (April 1942–August 1944)

Pierre Laval (June–December 1940, April 1942–August 1944), Admiral François Darlan (February 1941–April 1942)

Head of Government

Marshal Philippe Pétain

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  31

wing writer Abel Bonnard, who would eventually succeed Carcopino in April 1942.31 During his tenure as education minister, Carcopino gave at least tacit approval of patrimonial reforms proposed by the fine arts office and even initiated important legislation. A 1941 law commonly known as the Carcopino Law created the policy framework for all archeological excavation on French soil and remains the basis of current policy. Carcopino believed the law was necessary to regulate and professionalize excavations and to prevent the exportation and illegal sale of precious antiquities. In a similar vein, as we will see in Chapter 9, he initiated another law the same year that restricted art exports. Moving down the administrative hierarchy, Louis Hautecoeur, another classicist and traditionalist, headed the fine arts office for all but the last few months of the Occupation. A prominent historian of French architecture, he implemented artistic policy and oversaw historic sites and monuments, archeological excavation, and public art museums, including the Louvre. Hautecoeur was born in Paris in 1884 and attended the Ecole normale supérieure. In 1908, like Carcopino a few years before, he earned first place in the history and geography agrégation. He served briefly in the First World War as a lieutenant but suffered an injury and was removed from combat. Beginning in 1923, Hautecoeur taught the history of architecture at the Ecole du Louvre and the Ecole nationale des beaux-arts. During the 1930s he also pursued a career managing contemporary art collections, despite his fundamental aesthetic disdain for modernism. This career move may have been guided by pure ambition, but he also may have believed that he could help shape the modern aesthetic in France, promoting the moderation and rationality found in neoclassicism over abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism. Moving from one position to another, he served as curator of contemporary art at the Musée du Luxembourg, director of art projects for the 1937 Universal Exposition, and founding director of the National Museum of Modern Art from 1937 to 1940. Hautecoeur became director of fine arts after his predecessor, Georges Huisman, boarded the ship Massilia on 21 June 1940, sailing from Bordeaux to Morocco along with two dozen parliament members who had opposed signing an armistice with Germany.32 A political traditionalist, Hautecoeur embraced the classicist aesthetic as the French national style. He believed that a return to classical principles in artistic and architectural policy, beyond mere aesthetic value, could help reshape the French spirit and promote renewal within

32  Visions of National Renewal

the broader framework of the National Revolution.33 While curator at the Musée du Luxembourg, he published Considérations sur l’art aujourd’hui (Reflections on Art Today, 1929), an artistic manifesto in which he lamented the lack of a single stylistic school in French architecture, painting, and sculpture. In his view, a renewed “French School” should follow the basic tenets of seventeenth-century French classicism: harmony, taste, balance and reason, and a stylistic unity among the various branches of the visual arts. Describing the classical ideal of absolute beauty, he argued that “perfection is a divine attribute.” Since “the divine is one and universal . . . there is only one beauty, eternal and everywhere the same.”34 In painting, Hautecoeur argued for the primacy of drawing over color “because drawing is geometry, and thus reason, and color is subjected to endless individual variations.”35 He admired, among modern painters, Ingres’s odalisque, which showed rigorous attention to line and harmonious balance. In contrast, Manet’s Olympia, in his view, focused too much on the subject’s character (that of a lower-class prostitute), thus departing from the classical ideal of beauty.36 Beyond aesthetics, Hautecoeur believed that an artistic policy grounded in classicism could help renovate the French spirit and yield important social benefits. In a request for arts funding, Hautecoeur described various ills that had weakened French society leading up to the defeat, and he proposed cultural remedies. The root cause of the defeat, as Pétain had pointed out, was “the profound moral decline of the French people.” In Hautecoeur’s view, materialism and easy living had weakened French society. A decline in religious values, combined with a rise in alcohol abuse, excessive individualism, and a constant pursuit of leisure, made the French “more average, that is to say, more mediocre” each day, devoid of “moral conscience and national organization.”37 In the wake of defeat, therefore, “the task of the government is above all a spiritual task; we must rebuild the French soul.” The fine arts, he argued, “can strongly assist in this task” by renovating and exalting the French spirit in music, art exhibitions, and conferences. Artistic programs can help instill “a spirituality that will help [the French people] understand and carry out their responsibilities” as citizens.38 Hautecoeur was an activist civil servant and played an important role in supporting, if not spearheading, key cultural reforms under Vichy. Hautecoeur’s proposals fall into four main areas: administrative reorganization, regulation of professional groups, diffusion of “edifying” art to the

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  33

provinces, and protection of French heritage. In reorganizing the fine arts administration, Hautecoeur created two main divisions, both of which addressed patrimonial affairs: Architectural Services; and Teaching, Art Projects, and Performing Arts. By creating the first division, Hautecoeur increased the status of architectural policy, which extended to the management of historic sites and monuments; the second oversaw art commissions and the public museum administration.39 He also initiated regulation of certain artistic professions, a key trend in Vichy cultural policy. The fine arts office created, for example, a corporation of architects in December 1940, instituting architectural licenses for the first time and establishing standards for professional conduct. The fine arts office also professionalized archeological excavation with the 1941 Carcopino Law, which banned amateur excavation.40 In an effort to increase access to the country’s prestigious art collections, Hautecoeur proposed traveling exhibitions of French masters and artisanal work that would herald “French genius” throughout the provinces. He proposed cultural centers for larger cities, seeking to expand a Popular Front initiative that had created thirty-four such centers in metropolitan France and two in North Africa.41 Appropriating the leftist project for a new traditionalist regime, Hautecoeur proposed additional centers in the provinces and in foreign capitals. The proposals were not funded during the Occupation, but some eventually came to fruition within postwar cultural democratization programs.42 The period of Carcopino’s ministry, from February 1941 to April 1942, was the most productive in terms of new preservation policy. The traditionalist Carcopino-Hautecoeur team was able to realize several key reforms, examined in subsequent chapters, before German demands for French resources dominated the attention of fine arts officials. When Laval returned to power in April 1942, he accumulated powers as head of internal affairs, foreign affairs, and public information and replaced several ministers believed to oppose collaboration, including Carcopino. Over fierce but ultimately fruitless objections by Pétain, Laval replaced Carcopino with fascist writer Abel Bonnard, an enthusiastic advocate of Franco-German collaboration. Described by Céline as “an academician of shock tactics,”43 Bonnard was Laval’s ideal candidate for the education ministry. He was born in 1883 in Poitiers, where his father had served as director of prisons for the Vienne department. He received his education at top Parisian schools, including

34  Visions of National Renewal

Vichy officials in 1942 (from left to right): Minister of Justice Joseph Bartélemy; Pierre Laval; Marshal Pétain; Abel Bonnard behind Pétain, to the right. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

Louis-le-Grand, Henri IV, and the Ecole du Louvre, and developed a taste for writing early in life. At the age of twenty-two, he won the education ministry’s national poetry prize for a collection of poems, Les familiers. His subsequent poetic works, however, garnered less acclaim, and he turned his attention to prose and journalism.44 Following an eight-month sojourn in Asia, Bonnard wrote one of his best-known works, In China, which earned him the literary Grand Prize from the Académie française in 1925. ­Maurrassian nationalism runs throughout the book along with an assertion of Caucasian racial superiority (“races should know each other but not intermix”45) and virulent anticommunism. As Bonnard continued to publish in the 1920s and 1930s, his views gradually shifted from conservative, Maurrassian nationalism to the more militant right wing, showing a marked admiration for Nazi Germany. He praised the largest interwar fascist party in France, Jacques Doriot’s Parti populaire français (PPF; French Popular Party), though he never became a registered member. At the height of his writing career, Bonnard entered the Académie française in May 1932 and delighted in the social perks of the intellectual elite. Flitting from one Parisian gathering to the next,

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  35

he earned a reputation as “the most sparkling salon conversationalist of the interwar period.”46 Bonnard published extensively during the early months of the Occupation and spoke regularly at public events. He became increasingly critical of Vichy conservatives who, in his opinion, were slowing down social reforms and Franco-German collaboration. The leitmotifs in these wartime writings are action, energy, elitism, and racial purity. On the political front, Bonnard believed that domestic and foreign policy were inherently interconnected; he called on the French people to rebuild their own country and join in the construction of a New Europe. In December 1941, while chairing a conference on the role of France in Europe sponsored by the PPF, Bonnard argued that the reconstruction of Europe must occur through a Franco-German partnership, which until the war “had been prevented by the Jews.” He believed that France should assist the Nazi fight against Bolshevism—militarily. At that very moment, several hundred Frenchmen belonging to the Anti-Bolshevik Legion were fighting on the Eastern Front in German uniform. Several right-wing and fascist sympathizers had brought the Legion together, including Marcel Déat and Eugène Deloncle, but Doriot emerged as its main leader by autumn 1941. The Legion, absorbed into the Wehrmacht as the 638th Infantry Regiment, suffered heavy casualties on the Russian front in early December 1941. Nonetheless, Bonnard praised the French volunteers “who fight alongside Germany for a common cause. We must be present everywhere; we must collaborate.”47 In the German-sponsored newspaper Aujourd’ hui, Bonnard praised German achievements in Eastern Europe and further promoted FrancoGerman cooperation: The prodigious battle that rages in the East, from the deserts to the mountains, is the firewall in an enormous work site; the only vivacious order that the world knows today is in Europe: Germany is working with all of its growing strength; it is up to us to work with all of our renewed strength. . . . The Frenchman and the German need only to know each other to see that they understand and complete each other, and from their powerful union a new history is bound to emerge.48

In a speech honoring Arno Breker, Bonnard called for moral rejuvenation through a mystique de l’action (action mystique), in which a new affinity for work and physical effort would take hold in all French people. He also believed that artistic beauty, once the sole province of the materialistic

36  Visions of National Renewal

bourgeoisie, should be accessible to all in the New Europe.49 Yet behind this apparently populist rhetoric, his worldview was profoundly elitist. Speaking on social elites in 1943, he argued that modern society required leadership made up of “chosen men,” based on their character, moral fortitude, and the quality of their work.50 Bonnard’s ministry marked a shift in tone for the fine arts. He focused on youth affairs to a greater extent than did his predecessor and was less concerned with conservation than using works of art to his and Laval’s political advantage. Laval was willing to use French artistic masterpieces as tools for diplomatic negotiations with the Germans, who continually proposed exchanges of works of art from public collections. René Huyghe, curator and director of paintings at the Louvre, claimed that Bonnard was even more destructive than Laval in this area. Whereas Laval at least sought to gain some advantage for France, Bonnard “adhered to German decisions without hesitation.”51 Bonnard used his position to pursue closer collaboration with Germany and zealously implemented exclusionary legislation. As the Allies approached Paris, he fled to Germany along with other top Vichy officials. He finally settled in Franco’s Spain, where he died in 1968, having earned a death sentence in absentia from a French court in 1945.52 Toward the end of the Occupation, in March 1944, Bonnard replaced Hautecoeur as fine arts director with Georges Hilaire, an adminis-

Three central figures (from left to right): Abel Bonnard, Louis Hautecoeur, and General Franz Albrecht Medicus of the MBF. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  37

trator who had held a few positions in the Vichy administration thanks to connections to Laval.53 Hilaire had served as Laval’s deputy chief of staff in 1931 and 1932 when Laval simultaneously held the positions of président du conseil, foreign minister, and interior minister. After the defeat, Hilaire was named prefect of the Aube department in September 1940, and with the return of Laval as head of government in April 1942 became secretary general of administration in the interior ministry. He held this position until he replaced Hautecoeur as the head of fine arts. The fact that Bonnard forced Hautecoeur’s resignation is more significant than Hilaire’s accomplishments in the fine arts office. Hautecoeur later viewed his removal from office as evidence of his own “resistance” to German demands and the collaborationist caprices of Bonnard and Laval.54 It is far more likely, however, that the ultra-collaborationists grew frustrated with Hautecoeur’s cautious pragmatism, which made him avoid any visible collaboration or resistance. Laval may have believed that ­Hilaire would prove more amenable than Hautecoeur to using French art as a diplomatic tool. In the end, Hilaire’s stint as head of fine arts was too short to be of much practical use to Laval. After the Liberation, Hilaire fled to Switzerland, and in 1947 a French High Court condemned him in absentia to five years in prison for collaborationist activity in the interior ministry—not as fine arts director. He benefited from a general trend toward amnesty in the 1950s, and the French government dropped charges against him in 1958.55 Reporting to the head of fine arts, Jacques Jaujard shaped patrimonial policy as director of national museums from 1939 to 1944. Unlike Haute­ coeur, Jaujard had an administrative rather than an artistic background. Born in 1895 in Asnières, near the city of Nanterre, Jaujard attended the Condorcet High School in Paris. He entered the world of politics as the assistant to Paul Painlevé, an influential socialist politician, from 1922 to 1924. He worked as Painlevé’s chief of staff from 1924 to 1930, when the socialist leader headed a leftist coalition, the Cartel des gauches, and Painlevé briefly served as head of government (1925). In the 1930s, he served in the office of national museums, as assistant director in 1933 and director in December 1939, during the massive evacuation of the Louvre and other public arts museums. Although France was not engaged in active combat during the first several months of Jaujard’s tenure as director, his department had been evacuating the most important masterpieces from French museums since August 1939. Jaujard had prior experience in this sort of undertaking, ­having

38  Visions of National Renewal

facilitated the evacuation of the Prado museum during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The evacuation in France was a highly organized and successful operation; no other country in Europe protected its museum collections so effectively. By the end of the Occupation, administrators could legitimately boast that the public museum collections, overall, were well protected from air raids and Nazi looting alike. Jaujard earned a Medal of Resistance for his efforts, going on to serve as director of arts and letters in the Fourth Republic, and secretary general in the Ministry of Culture from 1959 to 1967. In a sad end to an illustrious career, he only learned that his position had ended by reading about his own “retirement” in a newspaper article; he died a month later.56 One of Jaujard’s key associates in the museum office was René Huyghe. Born in Arras in 1906, he attended prestigious schools in Paris, including the Montaigne and Michelet lycées, and prepared for advanced studies at Louis-le-Grand. He first studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, then art and art history at the Ecole du Louvre. In 1930 he became assistant curator of paintings at the Louvre and was promoted to head curator in 1937. Soon afterward, he played an essential role in the evacuation effort, which included some four thousand works from the Louvre. During

Jacques Jaujard at his desk. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  39

the Occupation, he also oversaw evacuated pieces housed in the chateau of Montal in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southwestern France. He also joined an armed resistance division of the Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI; French Forces of the Interior) led by Colonel Jean Vincent, known by his underground pseudonym, General Vény. Huyghe’s Resistance activity eventually created tension with Jaujard, who feared that direct involvement of museum staff in Resistance units could jeopardize the security of French national treasures. Ironically, it was Jaujard and not Huyghe who earned a Resistance Medal after the war. Yet Huyghe was awarded some of the nation’s other top honors, including the Legion of Honor (rank of Grand Officier) and the Ordre national du Mérite (Grand Croix), as well as election to the Académie française in 1960. He died in 1997.57 The roster of important figures in cultural affairs would be incomplete without the Germans who also served in this area. As in other branches of the Nazi bureaucracy, Hitler encouraged rivalries among a few cultural services in order to foster competition, productivity, and loyalty. These rivalries also ensured that no one person would gain enough influence to challenge Hitler’s ultimate control over artistic treasures in the occupied territories.

German Cultural Services German cultural services in France reflected the Third Reich’s complex administration, in which Hitler’s deliberate overlapping of services was meant to encourage industriousness and a sort of administrative Darwinism. Three German services oversaw cultural affairs in France, and their contentious relationship is perhaps best illustrated through conflicts over art looting. One was the Kunstschutz, an art protection division within the Wehrmacht. In theory, the division’s mere existence reflected ­Germany’s adherence to the 1907 Hague Convention, which required occupying countries to protect art and heritage in occupied areas. In reality, the Nazis working outside the Kunstschutz quite freely violated the Hague Convention to pillage art, furniture, libraries, and musical instruments from the homes of state enemies. The men who led the Kunstschutz, however, genuinely believed in their mission to help protect French heritage. Count Franz Wolff Metternich, an eminent art historian and former curator of artistic patrimony in Rhineland-Westphalia, headed the commission from 1940 to 1942. A descendant of the Austrian Metternich who led the restructuring of

40  Visions of National Renewal

­ urope after the fall of Napoleon, Wolff Metternich, by all French accounts, E led the division with dignity.58 He was among the traditional German elite who disdained Nazi extremism and sought to conduct affairs honorably in the occupied territories. Louvre curator Germain Bazin described him as “truly European” and “later wondered how someone who was so clearly anti-Nazi would be chosen to fulfill such an important role.”59 The Kunstschutz, for example, heightened German soldiers’ awareness of French monuments and art storage depots by placing posters near key locations. One such poster warned, “Vorsicht beim Heizen! Du ­zerstörst sonst historische Werte!” (Caution with heating! It may destroy historic works!) Another line added, “Zeigt Euch als Deutsche und beweist den Franzosen, dass wir als Träger einer eigenen hohen Kultur auch Achtung vor den Gütern fremder Kulturen besitzen!” (Show yourselves as Germans and prove to the French that we, as carriers of our own high culture, also respect the assets of other cultures!)60 The Kunstschutz helped French officials reorganize evacuated works of art and obtain gasoline for truck convoys, and Wolff Metternich secured the release of Georges Salles, a curator of Asian art at the Louvre, from the Mailly prison camp. Once the Nazi art looting was under way, the commission went so far as to warn French authorities of upcoming raids.61 Göring removed Wolff Metternich from the Kunstschutz in June 1942, claiming as a pretext that his expertise was needed in the Rhineland. It was widely believed, however, that Wolff Metternich’s opposition to Nazi looting had irritated the Reichsmarschall. Wolff Metternich’s assistant, Bernhard von Tieschowitz, replaced him and continued his general approach—a genuine aim to protect French heritage paired with limited opposition to the looting carried out by other German agencies. The men in the Kunstschutz faced competition from German administrative rivals, including the embassy in Paris. Otto Abetz extended his influence well beyond international politics and into cultural affairs. He founded the German Institute in Paris as a place where the French elite could rub shoulders with the German literati and enjoy concerts, plays, and lectures on various aspects of German culture. While a minority of Germanophile French intellectuals gravitated toward the institute, most resented the obvious demotion of French culture to that of the occupier.62 The German embassy also played an important role in the initial phase of Nazi art looting that began in June 1940, immediately after the armistice. Hitler instructed the embassy to secure works of art from

Cultural Affairs under Vichy  41

high-profile Jewish collectors and art dealers, including the Rothschild family, Maurice Dreyfus, Raymond Lazard, and Paul Rosenberg. In the early weeks of the Occupation, the embassy, assisted by Geheime Feldpolizei (a military division of the German secret police), confiscated at least 450 ­cases of art by October 1940, storing them in embassy depots.63 The embassy soon lost control of the operation to another German division, the Ein­satzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), led by Nazi ideologue and party leader Alfred Rosenberg. A few months after instructing Abetz to launch the embassy’s looting operation, Hitler ordered Rosenberg to confiscate works of art, archives, and library collections. Though the initial directive came from Hitler, Göring actually oversaw Rosenberg’s group, using his position of influence to expand his own art collection with the wartime spoils.64 Unfortunately for the French, the Kunstschutz was powerless against Nazi agencies backed by the most powerful men in the Third Reich. While the commission did help French authorities evacuate works from public museums and protect them throughout the Occupation, it could not stop the ERR’s looting of private Jewish collections. Nonetheless, after the war the French government recognized Wolff Metternich’s and ­Tieschowitz’s preservation efforts by awarding them both the Legion of Honor.65

A Cultural Policy? Given the various restrictions on French officials—Nazi surveillance, budget constraints, and personnel shortages—and competing visions for cultural initiatives among the French themselves, the Vichy regime did not produce a coherent cultural policy. Yet cultural life remained quite active during the Occupation as the Vichy regime drew upon many initiatives from the interwar period, particularly those of the leftist Popular Front government from 1936 to 1938. As Pascal Ory illustrated in his groundbreaking study of cultural policy, La belle illusion, the Popular Front broke with the Third Republic’s previous approach to the fine arts, in which the Academy of Fine Arts and advisory councils such as the Conseil supérieur des beaux-arts (CSBA; High Council of Fine Arts) dominated cultural affairs. Inspired in part by communist programs, the Popular Front ­promoted cultural initiatives as a way to instill a sense of national heritage among the French people and, at the same time, combat fascist propaganda that threatened to undermine the French republican tradition.66

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Ory underscores three areas of continuity in Popular Front cultural policy that remained priorities of the Vichy regime: popularization, professionalization, and an emphasis on youth affairs. Popularization efforts increased public access not only to the fine arts but also to “lowbrow” culture through regionalist and folklore programs. As Shanny Peer explains, in the first half of the twentieth century, regionalism and folklore were not the sole preserve of either the political Right or Left. Conservatives embraced Maurrassian regionalism as a way of returning to a “true France” located in the preindustrial past. Leftist writers, social theorists, and political leaders also claimed that France could reconcile modernity and tradition through a kind of “modern regionalism.”67 Recasting conservative approaches to regional identity, proponents of modern regionalism aimed to demonstrate that folklore and provincial cultures could adapt to the inevitable changes of a dynamic industrial society. The 1937 Universal Exposition offers an example of this attempted reconciliation of tradition and modernity. As a member of the Poitou organizing committee explained, “The 1937 Exposition is not intended as an immense museum, filled with dead things, but should instead provide a point of departure toward new kinds of action, toward progress. . . . Of course, we love the past. . . . But the past is not everything. Man should not live in the past, but should have his eyes turned toward the future.”68 Meanwhile, the conservative variant of regionalism endured and became an important component of the Vichy regime’s program for national renewal. As Christian Faure has argued, folklore and regional projects were a conscious critique of modern French society and were designed not just to study vestiges of the past but to revive a traditional social order. The Musée des arts et traditions populaires, led by former Popular Front official Georges Henri-Rivière, spearheaded extensive ethnographic surveys of regional customs and architecture as part of the regime’s “return-to-the-soil” campaign. Studies of regional architecture, for example, would enable the state to reconstruct towns after the war according to each area’s unique style. At the same time, these reconstruction projects would promote an idealized vision of premodern French society, grounded in an agrarian economy and a hierarchical social structure. As Faure puts it, the regionalist project under Vichy “did not limit itself to studying tradition . . . but became in itself a factor or a vehicle in perpetuating it, even restoring it.”69 The regulation of cultural professions was a second area of continuity in cultural policy from the Popular Front. This regulation was part of

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the broader corporatist reorganization of the French economy but drew on earlier efforts to manage cultural affairs. Comités d’organisation were created for the film industry, theater, fashion design, and architecture.70 The regime also extended Popular Front youth programs, prioritizing sports education under the energetic leadership of Jean Borotra, from July 1940 to April 1942. Within the education ministry, the Commissariat for General Education and Sport launched a new program for physical education, requiring nine weekly hours for primary and secondary students and three afternoons each week for university students. It also created new training centers for physical education teachers and regulated sports associations. In the vision of Vichy traditionalists, including education minister Carcopino, this emphasis on sports education would help create physically strong youth and ensure a sound future for France.71 If the Vichy regime continued the interventionist spirit of the Popular Front in these areas of cultural policy, there were important differences in emphasis. The Vichy regime focused on cultural preservation to a much greater extent than did the Popular Front, whose main focus was popularization. The Popular Front had encouraged the cooperation of around one hundred cultural associations, such as the antifascist Comité de vigilance des intellectuels anti-fascistes (CVIA), and other specialized associations that promoted reading, aviation, theater, and radio programs.72 At least in patrimonial affairs, initiatives of the Vichy regime such as museum and archeological reform focused more on centralization and professionalization. More significantly, Vichy measures were carried out within the regime’s exclusionary framework, with a devastating impact, in particular, on Jews who worked in cultural and intellectual fields.

Anti-Semitism and Exclusion in the Arts Until the summer of 1940, the cultural professions employed a disproportionate number of Jews and communists. Several fine arts administrators were dismissed, including fine arts director Georges Huisman, who had two strikes against him: he had joined parliament leaders aboard the Massilia in June 1940, and he was an alleged communist. The new government also removed Jean Cassou, assistant curator of the soon-to-open National Museum of Modern Art, for communist activity. Vichy exclusionary legislation tapped into anti-immigrant sentiment that had been growing in the visual arts since the 1930s, a reaction to

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the prominence of foreign Jewish artists such as Chaim Soutine, Michel Kikoïne, and Moïse Kisling. As a result, certain art critics such as Camille Mauclair claimed that foreign artists were contaminating the French artistic tradition. Terminology had developed in the early 1920s as observers sought to distinguish “true” French painters from foreign artists living in Paris. The term Ecole de France (French School) was applied to art by native French painters such as André Derain, Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Maurice Vlaminck. In contrast, the term Ecole de Paris (Paris School) increasingly denoted Jewish artists living and working in the Montparnasse district.73 Art critic Waldemar George, a French-born Jew and admirer of Italian fascism, wrote in 1934 that the term “Paris School” was in fact a “premeditated conspiracy against the notion of a French School.” “It refers to French tradition,” he continues, “but in fact it annihilates it.” George suggests that France should “repudiate the works that weaken her genius,” such as those produced by the Ecole de Paris. “The moment has come,” he concludes, “for France . . . to find on her own soil the seeds for her salvation.”74 The regime displayed official anti-Semitism in a vast exhibition at the Palais Berlitz called “The Jew and France,” organized by the French Institute of Jewish Affairs with German financial support. The pedagogical aim of the exhibit was to teach French people why Jews, as a supranational group, could never truly be French nationals. Relying on long-held physical stereotypes, displays contrasted “Aryan” facial features—purportedly found in French peasants, whom the Nazis considered non-Aryan—with exaggerated Jewish noses.75 The Vichy regime’s exclusionary laws hurt Jewish artists, who were no longer able to exhibit in France or sell their work to the public. NonJewish leftists also feared persecution, having witnessed the dismissal of Cassou and Huisman. The excluded had two options: self-imposed isolation in France or exile. A legendary group of surrealist artists fled to New York, including André Masson, Salvador Dali, and Yves Tanguy. Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti chose exile in Switzerland, while Matisse and others worked quietly in southern France. The most unfortunate faced imprisonment and perished in German or French camps, as did Max Jacob at Drancy in March 1944.76 Anti-Semitic policy also targeted Jewish art dealers and collectors, as the Nazis scrambled to seize highly valuable collections. Foreign-born Jews and those who had lost citizenship rights under Vichy held the most vulnerable assets. The regime reviewed naturalization cases since 1927, when reforms had allowed an increase in

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naturalized citizens, and revoked the citizenship of some six thousand Jews.77 Collectors and dealers who fled France at the beginning of the war, including several members of the Rothschild family, also lost their nationality. To the Nazis, art in the empty homes and galleries of noncitizens legally was “ownerless” and could be pillaged most easily. Louis Hautecoeur and Jérôme Carcopino were responsible for implementing exclusionary laws in cultural affairs. Although Hautecoeur may have shed a few tears when dismissing Cassou,78 he intervened for only a handful of people with whom he had close personal ties, such as his Jewish secretary.79 Anti-Semitism in Hautecoeur’s writings helps explain why he did not oppose Vichy exclusionary laws more forcefully. In Considérations sur l’art aujourd’ hui, Hautecoeur obliquely disparaged Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had become a part of the French artistic community. He feared that French artists, commonly referred to as the French School, would be corrupted by foreign, and implicitly Jewish, influence. He even criticized the use of immigrant, and again implicitly Jewish, models from Eastern Europe, as their bodies were “emaciated by hunger” with an “angular thinness” as opposed to the charmes rebondis (plump charms) of proper models. Expressionist artists further exacerbated the problem, in his view, by emphasizing the immigrant models’ bones and scandalizing the viewer with unnecessary pictorial details.80 During the Occupation, Hautecoeur more explicitly lamented the influence of Jewish artists in French artistic life: For the past twenty years, the Parisian salons and magazines might have given the wrong impression because the French were mingled with many foreigners, often Jews from Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Balkans who, eager to be noticed or subject to ancestral forces, practiced an art very different from our own.81

This notion of “otherness” was not merely a benign intellectual exercise; it helped justify the implementation of the Jewish Statute in artistic affairs. While his writings do not reflect the radical anti-Semitism of French fascist intellectuals, he denounced Jewish influence in French culture and came to the defense of Jews only with whom he had personal ties. As ­Michèle Cone points out, Hautecoeur could have used his position to help Jewish refugee artists, but he chose to offer assistance only to struggling French artists.82 Guided by innate elitism, opportunism, and ­Maurrassian antiSemitism, Hautecoeur faithfully served the Vichy regime and enforced its exclusionary laws.

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Carcopino similarly accepted and even initiated anti-Semitic policy. He came to the defense of exceptional scholars such as the renowned historian Marc Bloch, for whom he helped secure a university position in Montpellier. Yet Carcopino used his influence so sparingly that, in the words of Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, “the result was faithful service to the regime and its laws.”83 Moreover, he implemented a quota of Jewish students in higher education, otherwise known as the numerus clausus. Carcopino used the exclusionary laws to reaffirm his own authority and granted exemptions from the laws only to protect members of the social elite who, in his opinion, were essential to French national renewal.84 In contrast to the victims of Vichy policy, a number of French artists unaffected by exclusionary laws chose to live and work in Paris throughout the Occupation. Some French School artists not only tolerated the Nazi presence in Paris but actively promoted Franco-German collaboration in the arts.

Cultural Collaboration A minority of artists enthusiastically sought to increase cultural ties between France and Nazi Germany. In the summer of 1942, the Germans arranged several trips to the Reich for French writers, musicians, actors, and artists who had proven “hospitable” to the occupier. Painters and sculptors who made the infamous trip were for the most part associated with the French School: André Derain, Charles Despiau, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Bouchard, Aristide Maillol, and André Dunoyer de Segonzac. Upon their return to France, Segonzac and Despiau openly praised Hitler’s patronage of the arts. Sculptor Henri Bouchard wistfully observed that in Nazi Germany, artists were “the cherished children of the nation.”85 In May 1942, the Vichy regime organized a very public display of cultural collaboration, exhibiting Arno Breker’s monumental sculptures at the Orangerie museum in Paris. The official sculptor of the Third Reich, Breker created sinewy athletes and warriors that reflected the Nazi ideal of the Aryan man, leaving little doubt as to why Hitler so passionately admired his work. A week after the exhibition opened, Jean Cocteau, ­Breker’s friend from his Montparnasse days, lauded the German sculptor in an homage published on the front page of Comoedia: Hail, Breker. I salute you from the high fatherland of poets, where fatherlands do not exist, except in the sense that each person brings a wealth of national heritage.

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I salute you because you rehabilitate the thousand contours creating a tree’s grandeur. Because you consider your models trees and, far from sacrificing to volume, you endow your bronzes and plasters with a delicate sap that racks the Achilles shield of their knees, that makes the rivers of their veins beat, that curls the honeysuckle in their hair. . . . I salute you. . . . Because in the high fatherland where we are patriots, you speak to me of France.86

After the Liberation, Cocteau was forced to appear before the visual arts purge committee, largely as a result of his homage to Breker. Yet as Cocteau’s statement suggests, the sculptor’s striking aesthetic appealed to a wide range of French observers who favored the neoclassical statuary also created by French artists such as Maillol and Despiau. The octogenarian Maillol was known for his curvaceous female nudes, and as Bertrand Dorléac points out, the artists’ sculptures seemed to symbolize a gendered relationship between Germany and France—the stronger, more aggressive occupier and the softer, more docile occupied. Breker and Maillol were more than artistic kindred spirits. Maillol’s model, Dina Vierny, was a Russianborn Jew, and after her arrest by the Gestapo, Breker secured her release.87 Pursuing cultural collaboration, education minister Abel Bonnard developed projects for educational exchanges in order to “enable French culture to profit from the zone of influence of German culture, and vice versa.”88 However, most German officials, with the possible exception of Otto Abetz, found little to gain in the prospect of cultural collaboration, which suggested a level of parity between the two nations. Rather, a superior German Kultur would help to cultivate the French people; the benefit was not reciprocal. Even on the French side, collaborationist projects received less support from traditionalist officials such as Carcopino and Hautecoeur, who preferred to focus on domestic needs. The fine arts budget reflects their priorities.

The Fine Arts Budget On 5 April 1940, one month prior to the German invasion, the finance minister declared that all expenditures for the next year’s budget must be “directly or indirectly” linked to national defense. “Like individuals,” the minister argued, “civil services must lower their standard of living.” 89 A few months later, budgetary concerns were compounded by

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the harsh terms of the armistice agreements. The French government was forced to pay 400 million francs daily in occupation costs under a skewed exchange rate that favored the Germans.90 In response to economic pressures, Vichy’s finance minister, Yves Bouthillier, at least in theory sought to balance the budget, rationalize public finances, and fund only essential services. In practice, Bouthillier’s ministry approved significant budget increases for programs that suited the priorities of Vichy leaders, such as youth affairs and sports education.91 The overall fine arts budget increased in nominal value during the Occupation,92 climbing from 271 million francs in 1939 to 424 million in 1944. However, given the two-thirds devaluation of the franc during this period, state funding in real terms actually declined. Readjusting these figures based on the 1938 franc, the fine arts budget fell from 252 million in 1939 to 157 million in 194493 —a drop of 38 percent. This decrease in spending continued a trend of budget cuts from the late Third Republic. Funding for the division responsible for art preservation, acquisitions, exhibitions, and provisions of subsidies to artists had been reduced by 3 million francs in the budgets for both 1938 and 1939.94 The 1939 budget of nearly 273 million francs shrank to just over 219 million in 1940, a loss of more than 53 million, or 28 percent. During the same period, the credit for maintaining state-owned monuments fell from 18 to 12 million, and subsidies to private owners of historic buildings fell from 19 to 15 million.95 In January 1940 Beaux-Arts magazine reported the budget cuts, lamenting in particular the lack of preservation funds for historic landmarks. According to Senator Manuel Fourcade, the fine arts budget reflected a perennial “insufficiency . . . for the protection of French artistic patrimony.” The magazine’s editors were “stunned” that the preservation of historical sites, “this part of our artistic patrimony that sustains one of our most brilliant claims to glory,” perhaps “the best example of French genius” as well as an indisputable source of income, is not given “closer consideration.”96 Despite the overall decrease in funding for the fine arts, there were a few areas of significant budget increases related to the protection of cultural patrimony. In both 1941 and 1942, funding for national museum acquisitions jumped dramatically, mainly because the museum office was asserting control over pieces from confiscated Jewish art collections. This area of Vichy policy is examined extensively in Chapter 9, but the budgetary impact is worth noting here. In 1941, Jaujard requested a special credit

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of 25 million francs in order to exercise a droit de préemption, or “right of first refusal,” for works confiscated from Jewish collectors and dealers who had lost their French citizenship. According to legislation created by the Vichy regime in July 1940, seized assets were to be sold at public auction to benefit a charitable fund called the Secours national (National Aid). As a result of this legislation, the museum administration could not merely obtain the works of art; it had to pay for them through another government office—the state property administration (Direction générale des domaines et du timbre). An initial request of 5 million francs appears in the budget for 1941. Under chapter fifty-nine for departmental and municipal museum acquisitions and restorations was added a chapter fifty-nine bis, or “addendum”: “Subsidy to the National Museums budget for the acquisition of sequestered assets.” The Ministry of Finance approved the credit of 5 million francs, established by law on 28 June 1941 and deposited to the national museums account on 25 July 1941.97 The Vichy regime’s budgetary committee approved an additional 20 million franc credit in September 1941: The Committee, Considering that this proposal aims to acquire works that are highly desirable for inclusion in the national patrimony, Agrees to allow the requested credit.98

In contrast, the fine arts administration a year earlier initially had requested only 7 million francs for all acquisitions and commissions in the 1941 budget. In January 1942, the finance ministry approved another credit of 35 million to secure sequestered art from Jewish collections, plus an additional 6 million to purchase other nonsequestered works at auction.99 The Paris art market had been infused by works looted from Jewish collections or sold under duress, lending new urgency to auction purchases. Thus, the total of these credits for art acquisitions in 1941 and 1942 was 66 million, compared to the amount of 7 million initially budgeted for 1941. Even taking into consideration the devaluation of the franc, this stunning increase in funding shows a determination among French officials to secure valuable works of art from sequestered Jewish collections as well as pieces up for auction. After the war, museum personnel described this special acquisition fund as “fictional,” created merely so that the administration could protect works of art from the Germans with the full intention of returning

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them to Jewish owners after the war.100 However, wartime correspondence between Jaujard and Huyghe leaves no doubt that in 1941 French officials intended to acquire the most valuable pieces of the collections permanently. In a letter to Jaujard, Huyghe specified which paintings would best “fill gaps” in the collections at the Louvre, such as two examples of Rembrandt’s early work found in the Robert de Rothschild collection. By expanding the Louvre collections with this acquisition, Huyghe believed the administration would show that France had not relinquished its spirit following the defeat and that France was “faithful to its civilizing mission.”101 The increase in acquisition funding reveals a consensus among fine arts and finance officials that the state should acquire the seized works of art for French museums, keeping them on French soil. Seized objects were to be incorporated into the national collections, lest the booming art market continue to drain the nation’s artistic heritage and siphon precious works of art to foreign collections. A key idea here is that the works’ value lay not only in their artistic quality but also in their being held on French soil; artistic rayonnement had to radiate from French museums. The displacement of art to collections abroad, rather than exporting French genius, would simply impoverish the French cultural patrimony. The protection of French artistic patrimony was also funded through special credits totaling 305 million francs in 1941 and 141 million in 1942. In 1942, for example, a sum of 30 million francs was allotted for the protection and restoration of state-owned buildings and palaces, another 55 million to preserve historic monuments, plus 50 million labeled simply as “protection,” and 4 million for the continuation of major public works projects that had been authorized in 1938.102 As historian Marie-Claude Genet-Delacroix points out, the Vichy regime’s decision to pursue these public works projects reflects continuity with similar programs from the late Third Republic to spur economic development and reduce unemployment. Construction and preservation credits also may reflect the priorities of Hautecoeur, a specialist in the history of architecture.103 Overall, the real value of funding for the fine arts dipped during the final two years of the Occupation, falling to 171 million in 1943 and 157  million in 1944 (in 1938 francs). As these figures indicate, the fine arts were a relatively low priority for the Vichy regime, constituting only .25 percent of the national budget.104 Even within the education ministry, funding for the arts paled in comparison to that of other programs. In 1943 the division of youth affairs alone received 788 million francs, more

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than double the total fine arts budget of 305 million. Funding for sports programs in 1943 also exceeded that of the fine arts, totaling 365 million.105 Yet the percentage increase in funding of key areas at critical moments, such as acquisitions in 1941 and 1942, underscores arts officials’ priorities. .  .  . The French regime born of defeat in 1940 began as an emergency solution to a political crisis, and today one is struck by the leaders’ quixotic ambitions. Under the illusion that they had maintained national sovereignty, the French pursued extensive domestic reforms to rebuild the nation. In reality, they faced constant penury and deprivation, and after April 1942, Laval’s government increasingly became a puppet regime. The fanciful ambition of Vichy leaders extended to patrimonial reforms, which were to help restore national identity and a sense of grandeur while re­asserting the position of Paris as the world’s artistic capital. Louis Hautecoeur, in particular, saw himself as the defender of French style and beauty, threatened by war, occupation, and modernity itself.

2 Defending French Style and Beauty

Behind the dry and irritating facade of this legislation, the beauty of France will be protected. . . . What would France be without its cathedrals, historic buildings, statues, and paintings? . . . French beauty is today one of our supreme assets. The Marshal’s government is determined to save it. —Louis Hautecoeur, “Défense de la beauté française,” 1943

promoted social and religious values from an idealized past, a number of artists, critics, and administrators called for a “return to French tradition” in the visual arts. As Kenneth Silver and Romy Golan have argued, this retour à l’ordre had characterized much of artistic production since the First World War.1 Under Vichy, however, the trend took on new meaning, complementing the propaganda of an authoritarian, exclusionary regime. Some writers and experts sought to define a kind of artistic genealogy in French heritage, emphasizing Latin influence in French classicism, exemplified by the paintings of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), with an emphasis on balance, harmony, symmetry, and rational control of emotion. For others, the nation’s Celtic heritage best represented French tradition, dating from the time of anonymous artisans who created the nation’s famed Gothic cathedrals. Each cultural lineage struck nationalistic chords for some but remained politically problematic for others. As such, there was no general consensus in the art world as to which lineage best represented French heritage, or whether a particular style could be widely accepted as the French national style. While the debate over French cultural origins continued, there was widespread agreement among art experts on the need for state intervention to “defend French beauty” and protect the nation’s artistic and As the Vichy regime

52

Defending French Style and Beauty  53

natural patrimony. A group of outspoken writers, artists, and administrators hoped that government programs would prevent new construction from marring views of historic sites, monuments, and landscapes. The long-term benefit of protective policy was twofold: it would encourage economic growth by boosting the tourism industry and foster a sense of collective heritage among the French people.

A National Style? Latin versus Celtic Heritage The question of the French nation’s ethnic origins had fueled debates since at least the mid-eighteenth century, precisely because of the population’s heterogeneity. Whereas German nationhood was and continues to be defined by the material criterion of bloodline, French nationality was considered universal, allowing la mission civilisatrice (the civilizing mission) to incorporate foreign-born individuals who had been shaped by French institutions such as schools and the military. Despite a general consensus on the universalism of French civilization, questions over the nation’s ethnic and racial origins remained, focusing on three main ancestral groups: the Gauls, Romans, and Franks—none of which in itself was racially pure or indigenous to the territory of modern France. Some nineteenth-century historians had argued that the Roman conquest of Gaul marked the beginning of French civilization as Roman language, religion, and law infused Gallic culture. At the same time, proponents of a Celtic movement forcefully countered that the Roman conquest had, in fact, destroyed an advanced, indigenous Celtic culture. Supporters of this theory highlighted the valiant, if unsuccessful, resistance of Gallic tribes led by Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar in 52 b.c.e. In contrast to both the Latinist and Celtic perspectives, the French aristocracy traditionally traced its ancestry to the Germanic Franks who had conquered and, in its view, civilized the Gallo-Romans in the first century a.d.2 In the early twentieth century, political debates about French ethnic origins extended into artistic affairs. Writers, critics, and artists created ­artistic lineages to locate the essence of French style in classical antiquity or the Middle Ages, depending on whether they emphasized Latin or Celtic heritage. They invented stylistic continuity to demonstrate the universality and superiority of French civilization, particularly in relation to the more restrictive notion of German Kultur.

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Classicism as an artistic style appealed to a wide range of observers precisely because it eluded narrow definition. According to Ken Silver, art experts used it to describe a wide range of works from antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or those of modern artists who were considered the inheritors of classical culture, such as sculptors Charles Despiau and Aristide Maillol.3 Despite the term’s elasticity, Vichy officials Jérôme Carcopino and Louis Hautecoeur had quite specific ideas about what characterized French classicism: moderation, balance, symmetry, rational control of emotion, the primacy of the human form, and stylistic unity in the various branches of the visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts). French classicism also connoted certain values in cultural affairs, such as respect for artistic masters, belief in the value of apprenticeships, and adherence to stylistic rules. Those who believed classicism was indeed the national style created an artistic genealogy, tracing the influence of Poussin into modern times through the works of JacquesLouis David, Jean Ingres, and Paul Cézanne, all of whom painted with attention to structure, line, and composition.4 The classicist grande tradition was distinct from “academicism,” which during the Occupation was largely a misnomer for nineteenthcentury genre painting and sculpture. Some prominent classicists such as Carcopino were members of the Academy of Fine Arts (Hautecoeur also would be named in 1952) and criticized both avant-garde works and academicism, a style exemplified by nineteenth-century bronze statuary that decorated public squares throughout France. In his memoirs, Hautecoeur argued that commemorative statues often were blemishes on the French landscape and even brought dishonor to cities.5 When the Germans pressured the Vichy regime to provide bronze shipments in 1941, as we will see, Hautecoeur and Carcopino quite willingly offered more than a thousand statues, most of which were dismantled, melted down, and recycled into German armaments. The classicist or Latinist perspective had dominated artistic production, criticism, and the art market in France through the First World War. Silver analyzes a “return to order” during the Great War, in which the avant-garde temporarily abandoned abstractionism, while critics and collectors rejected cubism and expressionism as “barbaric” imports of German style. Italy’s decision to join the Allied powers in April 1915 further bolstered the appeal of Latin classicism in France, creating a kind of artistic union sacrée even after the conflict had ended and into the early 1920s.6

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Cultural rhetoric shifted during the interwar years, as some critics and artists associated Latinism with authoritarian and hierarchical institutions, such as the Catholic Church and Mussolini’s fascist regime. A rival Celtic genealogy developed through the writings of two basic subgroups: neomedievalists and organicists. According to Romy Golan, neomedievalism gained popularity after the First World War as the French witnessed extensive damage to Gothic national treasures, including the Reims cathedral. Neomedievalists located the origins of French style in Gothic architecture—the only artistic style, they argued, that truly originated in France. While this group focused on French heritage in architecture and sculpture, it found common ground with organicists, who celebrated the nation’s Celtic heritage as expressed in landscape painting. In contrast to the classicists’ emphasis on rationality, the Celtic camp prized a Bergsonian élan vital, the emotional driving force behind cultural expression. They traced French heritage from the impressionists and the Barbizon painters to the anonymous artisans of the Gothic cathedrals. Organicists viewed French landscapists as successors to artists of the seventeenth-century Dutch republic, providing a leftist political lineage that challenged the apparently authoritarian Latin model.7 The debates on French stylistic heritage surfaced during the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, which put France and the French “on display” for the rest of the world, in Shanny Peer’s terms.8 Among the fair’s many exhibits was a retrospective of some thirteen hundred French works of art, assembled to demonstrate the nation’s unrivaled superiority in the fine arts. In describing the retrospective, French critics tended to gloss over differences between the Latin and Celtic visions of French cultural heritage. Instead, they emphasized the consistency and unity in French art, creating a sense of permanence over the previous three centuries. Critics highlighted the strength and vitality of French universalism, which enabled artists to incorporate foreign influences without losing their sense of national style. As James Herbert observes, “Frenchness in art could claim to embody all values and all virtues, each contributing its own bit to an all-encompassing national tradition.”9 This strident display of national confidence, however, suggested an underlying fear that Germany might eclipse France in artistic affairs. The retrospective showed, Herbert argues, “the paradoxical coupling of a Gallic cockiness about the absolute legitimacy of French cultural enterprise, together with a deep underlying anxiety that the Germans, not the French, might somehow have gotten it all, horribly, right.”10

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By the defeat of 1940, the primacy of classicism as an artistic style was contested on several fronts. As Laurence Bertrand Dorléac explains, there was no clear link between specific political and aesthetic preferences. Some political traditionalists such as Carcopino and Hautecoeur promoted French classicism and the Latin influence in French art. However, other reactionary traditionalists considered themselves neomedievalists, emphasizing the Celtic influence in French culture. Furthermore, a number of right-wing and leftist observers found common aesthetic ground in promoting organicism, also linked to the nation’s Celtic heritage.11 Defenders of the Latinist perspective included writer and critic Raymond Lécuyer. In 1941 he wrote for a monthly publication, European France, which accompanied a vast exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. The exhibition featured a variety of displays illustrating the important role that France would play in the New Europe, show­casing the country’s agricultural production, luxury goods, and classical artistic heritage. Commenting on artistic displays, Lécuyer exalted the classicist grande tradition, denouncing the anarchy in French art that, in his opinion, had reigned since the mid-nineteenth century. For Lécuyer, disorganized Salon exhibits had characterized this cultural chaos, the intermixing of styles, artistic schools, genres, and techniques. In contrast, French classicism displayed an admirable “control of sentiment by reason.” Linking the arts to the French philosophical tradition, he described this rationality as the “distinctive trait of classical art in France, the fatherland of Descartes.”12 Another writer, Roger Peyrefitte, found classical roots in both French and German heritage. Comparing classicist and Celtic traditions, he argued, “There can be no doubt that the German ideal is closer to the ancient ideal—and hence to ours—than to that of the civilization of Notre Dame and sentimental girls.”13 According to Bertrand Dorléac, public taste in general favored classicism, as evidenced by widespread admiration for the graceful feminine form in Aristide Maillol’s sculpture.14 For other French observers, however, it was precisely this international appeal of classicism that prevented it from being a truly French style. And the regime’s “return-to-the-soil” propaganda, with simple ­Epinal-style images of the French countryside, appealed to those who preferred organicism to classicism. As Michèle Cone points out, landscape painting enjoyed great popularity during the Occupation, as “middle-of-

Defending French Style and Beauty  57

the-road” art that was neither avant-garde nor academic, and thus held widespread appeal. For some critics, landscape painting also was an intrinsically French artistic style. Lucien Rebatet, a right-wing art critic and vocal anti-Semite who reviewed shows for Je Suis Partout, praised the followers of Corot and the Barbizon school for encouraging a love of the French soil and depicting the positive relationship between humans and nature. In a review of the exhibition “Landscape from Corot to the Present” held at the Galerie Charpentier in 1942, Rebatet observed, “Corot takes us from the historicist landscape of Lorrain and Poussin all the way to Impressionism.” Another show at the gallery entitled “Flowers and Fruit since Romanticism” prompted his confident assertion that “the continuity of French painting remains assured.”15 He considered landscape painting a pure French style, immune to the contaminating influence of Jewish artists. According to Cone, Rebatet believed that landscape painting by definition excluded Jews, who in his stereotype “are nomads and city dwellers par excellence, who need the hubbub of the city, either for capitalist pursuits or as a place to work” and thus “cannot partake of this harmony between man and nature.”16 Pushing a nature metaphor rather clumsily, Rebatet described art as a tree, and Jewish influence a contaminating weed. Given the strength of French landscape painting, he proclaimed, “No one can say that our pictorial sap has run dry.”17 Others in the art world rejected the classicist model as too hierarchical, rigid, and conformist. Painter and theorist Jean Bazaine, for example, denounced the repeated call for “returns” to French classicism. He opposed the notion that French artists should abandon abstractionism and expressionism and embrace the classicist emphasis on line, composition, rationality, and the grand sujet—usually historical or mythological subjects. This return to tradition, in his view, would create an art d’ évasion, a visual conformism devoid of critical edge. Bazaine considered this move toward classicist uniformity “the most brutal assault endured yet by contemporary painting.”18 In the end, the nature of “true” French tradition and style remained ambiguous during the Occupation. Although some Vichy arts officials promoted French classicism as the national style, others in the art world contested the primacy of classicism, pointing to French superiority in neomedievalism and landscape painting. Some artists like Bazaine rejected homogeneity in any form, whether in the classicist grande tradition or middle-of-the-road painting. While the definition of French style

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r­ emained unclear, there was a striking consensus among artists, critics, and administrators that immediate state intervention was needed to preserve environmental beauty in France.

The Defense of French Beauty According to Louis Hautecoeur, patrimonial reforms under Vichy were meant to combat ugliness throughout France, in cities and rural areas alike. Campaigns to protect la beauté française, like most wartime preoccupations, had already surfaced during the interwar period. In the late 1930s, Jean Giraudoux, playwright and future information minister under Vichy, had lamented the increasing ugliness of Paris and its surrounding suburbs. He described myriad problems afflicting the French capital in Pleins pouvoirs (1939), a book described by Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton as “a kind of summation of republican anti-Semitism on the eve of Vichy.”19 In Giraudoux’s opinion, Paris was a lovely city surrounded by hideous towns that merely served as the capital’s trash bins. While new construction greedily gobbled up parks and green spaces, the Seine rapidly was becoming an enormous sewer. Highlighting the danger to historic buildings in Paris, Giraudoux claimed that the municipal government was equal only to the 1871 Commune in its willingness to “destroy the most sacred examples of Parisian spirit and civilization.”20 In fact, the deterioration of the urban environment, in his view, prevented French people from living with dignity and threatened the nation’s vitality more seriously than “any international peril.”21 During the Occupation, Louis Hautecoeur wrote and spoke about what he called a growing problem of enlaidissement, or “encroaching ugliness.” In 1943, he wrote a report entitled “The Defense of French Beauty” and later included a version in his postwar memoirs—without the glowing references to Pétain’s regime. Hautecoeur described various sources of ugliness that were tainting French rural and urban settings and proposed cultural remedies. All of the major patrimonial reforms instituted since 1940, he claimed, were part of his effort to defend French beauty. Yet the measures were not initially part of a coherent and planned reform program. Only after the laws had been instituted could Hautecoeur describe them together in terms of an overall campaign to combat enlaidissement. According to Hautecoeur, ugliness was an unfortunate consequence of industrialization and urbanization. Electrical wires, factories, unsightly

Defending French Style and Beauty  59

water towers, and smokestacks all tainted the French landscape. Mass-­ produced objects such as World War I memorials and roofs created a sterile aesthetic uniformity. Brightly colored posters and advertisements defaced historic monuments and landmarks. In Hautecoeur’s opinion, the state had a responsibility to reverse the negative effects of modernity and preserve French cultural heritage—“the richest artistic patrimony in the world.”22 Hautecoeur proposed an increase in cooperation between the state and private associations, such as tourism clubs. According to his plan, the tourism clubs would issue reports to the fine arts office and note areas where the nation’s natural or artistic patrimony was in danger. Hautecoeur further proposed that construction codes regulate the height of buildings in older neighborhoods and ensure that new roofs would complement each region’s traditional style. He concluded by arguing that the French territory is “a patrimony in which we see ourselves: our soul is shaped by the landscapes of our France.” During this period of crisis, artistic masterpieces were “a testament to our glories, an instrument of our prestige, a guarantee for our future. The beauty of France,” he concluded, “is today one of our supreme possessions. The Marshal’s government has resolved to save it.”23 On 18 December 1943, the newspaper Nouveaux Temps applauded Hautecoeur’s efforts to preserve French beauty. Reporting on a speech by Hautecoeur in Vichy, an editorial praised the fine arts director’s emphasis on the importance of architectural regulations that will “prevent people without culture or competence from compromising the aesthetics of our countryside and our cities.” In his speech, Hautecoeur had stressed the “eminent role that art plays in our country” and its value in “the project of national renovation yet to be accomplished.”24 Like Hautecoeur, Abel Bonnard also wrote about the urgent need to defend French beauty against ugliness. Embracing a more radical stance than Hautecoeur, Bonnard sought to defend not only the splendor of landscapes and historic buildings but also the beauty and racial purity of the French people. In October 1941, the newspaper Aujourd’ hui, a Germansupported publication, ran an article by the future education minister entitled “The Reign of Ugliness.” Bonnard blamed the Republic for the encroachment of enlaidissement, which in his opinion was the result of bourgeois laziness. Prior to the French Revolution, he argued, all buildings constructed by the state, from palaces to army barracks, were “nobly and grandly maintained.” In contrast, the esprit bourgeois ushered in a period of relâchement général, “letting go,” in which all social life was surrounded

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by ugliness—in schools, factories, offices, and army barracks. Institutions that required serious work or reflection were designed in a sterile, morose style. An “empire of ugliness” was, in his view, “too readily accepted.” According to Bonnard, a fundamental principle of the New Society was that “beauty must triumphantly return to the lives of all French people.” Although he offered few practical ideas about how this goal would be achieved, he claimed that “the money necessary for this change must be found.” He suggested beginning with minor measures that were not expensive, such as changing the color of walls in public buildings and maintaining cleanliness: “everything must first be clean to be pretty.” He abhorred a lack of cleanliness not only in French buildings and landscapes but also among the French people. He linked personal hygiene to physical beauty, intelligence, and moral fortitude. “Cleanliness of the soul,” Bonnard claimed, “begins with cleanliness of the body.” By improving the cleanliness of living spaces, such as army barracks, he argued, the state would encourage a moral rejuvenation of the French people.25 Bonnard also linked cleanliness to racial purity. In a disturbing portent of imminent deportations to death camps that would begin a few months later, Bonnard argued in February 1942 that Jews must be expelled to purify French society. Interviewed by Le Cri du Peuple, a radical anti-Semitic daily founded by Doriot, Bonnard declared that “the expulsion of Jews is the condition of our Renaissance.” Jews, in his view, had “attacked and nearly destroyed all the values upon which the French soul has lived and survived. They must leave for us to be ourselves.” The notion of race, he continued, is a “question of honor and cleanliness.” Thus, the primary French task, in his view, was the restoration of physical health, which in turn would encourage moral fortitude. The French people would be refashioned into strong, healthy, beautiful individuals. A united community, he argued, “begins with physical order,” shaped along racial lines.26 Along with these writings by Hautecoeur and Bonnard, various wartime proposals indicate a more widespread goal among concerned individuals and members of private associations to protect French beauty. Proponents of one proposal sent to Pétain, for example, sought to create a Division of National Aesthetics within the education ministry.27 The agency would ensure “the conservation of all the elements that contribute to . . . aesthetic value in France and its different regions,” regulating new construction to maintain architectural traditions. The proposed law provided for a twenty-member Conseil supérieur de l’esthétique générale

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(High Council of Aesthetics), of which three members would belong to the Academy of Fine Arts, and three others would belong to various branches of the French Institute. Membership also would include representatives from several private associations, such as the Society for the Defense of French Beauty and Aesthetics, the Society for the Protection of Landscapes, the Geography Society, and the French Society of Archeology. While there is no indication that this proposal moved beyond a very rough draft, it shows how certain French people were imagining state regulation of a “national aesthetic” along conservative lines. Similarly, a group of artists proposed the “Project for the Preservation of Natural Beauties and Artistic Patrimony in France.” Artists Pierre Chevrillon and Dunoyer de Segonzac submitted the project in the spring of 1941. (Segonzac was one of several French artists who traveled to Berlin later that year as cultural ambassadors, prompting charges of collaboration with the enemy.)28 In a cover letter explaining their preservation project to a Pétain adviser, the artists wrote, “We are certain that you will think, as we do, that the beauty of our country and its artistic heritage are . . . all that, for the moment, we have left.” The group of artists involved in this project joined forces to “defend our country against the ugliness that threatens our admirable landscapes of the countryside and in French cities.” The group intended to target unsightly advertising such as the posters that surrounded Mont Saint-Michel, and “monstrous” architecture that diminished the regional character of the provinces.29 The artists sought to create an organization called Group for the Preservation of French Artistic Patrimony. The group would be led by a French School artist called a curator general, who would report to the education minister. The French territory would be divided into provinces, each with a curator responsible for maintaining the region’s aesthetic character. The regional curators would not necessarily be associated with the French School, but they would have goût avéré (good taste). The curators would inventory sites in three categories of artistic and historic importance: zones in which no new construction would be undertaken without prior authorization, those with less historic interest but that would be monitored to prevent any constructions that might “diminish beauty,” and those areas with no particular historic interest in which greater latitude would be allowed for new construction. The artists envisioned both inducements and punishments to protect the patrimony. The state would officially commend aesthetically pleasing

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new construction that served to “embellish the patrimony of France.” However, “hideous and dishonorable” construction would be “publicly stigmatized,” though they do not specify a particular tactic. The artists mentioned the example of the Samaritaine Building on the right bank of the Seine, which originally was painted in a “shocking” blue and yellow. In response to public pressure, the decor was later modified to complement the surrounding buildings. The group intended to use similar measures in encouraging changes to unsightly buildings and decor. In their conclusion, the artists explained that they did not intend to prevent the construction of roads and factories that were necessary for modern living. “We only wish,” they claimed, “to preserve one of the principal French assets: its beautiful patrimony . . . and to encourage a new rise in French art.” The artists added that these ideas were “already favorably welcomed by the Marshal,”30 though the extent of his support is unclear. As with the previous proposal, there is no indication that this project developed beyond these initial ideas. However, it reflects a belief among some artists that state regulation was needed to protect French beauty, under the leadership of a French School artist who would maintain a traditional aesthetic. In both proposals, the fine arts bureaucracy was the solution to the problem of ever-increasing environmental ugliness, a perceived threat to French heritage and, ultimately, grandeur. .  .  . The wartime preoccupation with French beauty and artistic style indicates the extent to which artists, critics, and administrators sought government intervention to preserve the nation’s artistic heritage. For some, cultural patrimony was the nation’s single most important asset in the midst of French military, political, and economic decline. Yet these writings also reflect an underlying fear: that this heritage was somehow being diminished or tainted, and that France would lose—or worse yet, may have already lost—its preeminent position in the art world. In art criticism as in art history, cultural genealogies seemed to guarantee continued French superiority in the arts. Competing visions of what exactly defined “French tradition” prevented any kind of stylistic consensus from emerging among art experts. The classicist consensus of the First World War had depended on a clear national enemy on both political and artistic fronts—Germany and expressionism. During the Occupation, French notions of “the enemy” became more equivocal, potentially including Germans, Italians, Vichy, communists, Jews, or Resistance fighters. Similarly, traditional notions of French

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artistic heritage carried mixed political messages. Classicism, for some, was linked to Italian fascism and official Nazi art such as Breker’s colossal statues. The Vichy regime, moreover, appropriated organicist discourse through its “return-to-the-soil” campaign, and critics such as ­Rebatet located the essence of French style in landscape painting. Thus, the elastic political resonance of both Latin and Celtic heritage became even more ambiguous during the Occupation. French leaders, furthermore, were unwilling to impose an official, national aesthetic. In contrast to Hitler, Pétain did not consider himself an aesthete and eschewed hard-line artistic policy. As the head of fine arts, Hautecoeur followed Pétain’s lead in avoiding radical measures to promote any sort of official national style. Although competing notions of French style endured, a clearer consensus emerged among writers and artists that the French were facing an urgent need to combat ugliness in their cities and the countryside. On the eve of the Second World War, prior to these lofty wartime speeches and proposals, Jaujard, Huyghe, and their colleagues in the museum administration were engrossed in far more concrete matters. Hitler had annexed Austria in March 1938 and, after the Munich accords several months later, absorbed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Even as politicians and the press throughout Europe lauded appeasement politics, which in the words of Neville Chamberlain had secured “peace in our time,” officials in the French museum office remained skeptical. Hitler’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 prompted French and British declarations of war two days later. And in the entire French government, including the defense ministry, museum personnel may have been those most prepared to face the enemy.

3 Exodus

The French artistic patrimony is intact. . . . Despite German pressure, despite the bombings, the staff of our public galleries saved the treasures entrusted to their care. When peace returns, a rejuvenated, revamped, and reformed Louvre will become once again . . . an art sanctuary. —Waldemar George, “Un homme a sauvé les trésors de nos musées,” Résistance, September 1944 To lead is to foresee. —Jacques Jaujard, cited by George in “Un homme a sauvé les trésors”

On 23 August 1939,

Hitler and Stalin concluded a nonaggression pact that shocked the world. Despite apparently antithetical core ideologies, the communist and National Socialist powers were now allies, and Hitler had neutralized Germany’s eastern flank. Astute observers realized that the Führer was strategizing his next conquest, and arts officials did not wait for declarations of war to implement their museum evacuation plans. Just a few days after the announcement of the Nazi-Soviet pact, they began transferring thousands of pieces to rural chateaux that would serve as storage depots for the war’s duration—the most extensive operation ever conducted to protect the French cultural patrimony. Unable to foresee several months of “phony war,” officials expected immediate air raids that would threaten priceless works of art in city centers and near strategic targets. The devastation of World War I—human and material—was fresh in many French minds, and members of the cultural services were determined to protect the nation’s artistic treasures from the ravages of modern warfare. In the most thorough and effective evacuation 67

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program carried out in Europe, French authorities evacuated several hundred thousand objects from national museums, such as the Louvre and the Versailles palace, and from more than two hundred smaller art museums throughout France.1 This highly organized artistic exodus illustrates the central government’s control over the preservation of French national treasures, initiated during the final months of the Third Republic and reinforced under the Vichy regime. Arts officials also considered privately owned objects part of the national patrimony and evacuated several collections from private homes and galleries. The most prestigious private collections were owned by Jews who had voluntarily entrusted their assets to the public museum administration, an act of faith that led to continual conflicts between French and German officials. Yet the museum collections remained safe from damage and plunder, with the exception of only a few objects, because of the vigilance of French personnel and, perhaps more significantly, a decision by the Nazis to limit looting to private collections.

Prewar Preparations The destruction of heritage during the First World War, perhaps best illustrated by damage to the Reims cathedral, had heightened public awareness of cultural patrimony and deepened a sense of responsibility among public officials to protect it. As tensions mounted between France and the Third Reich in the late 1930s, arts officials developed extensive plans to protect historic sites and museum collections in the event of another war. Beginning in 1936, the defense, interior, and education ministries coordinated preparation for “passive” or civil defense—nonmilitary measures that would protect French heritage from aerial attacks. In January 1936, the Direction des musées, the museum administration, instructed curators of public art museums throughout France to create lists of objects that would require evacuation, with separate lists for sculpture, paintings, archeological artifacts, and decorative objects. Under the leadership of Henri Verne, whom Jaujard would succeed as director of national museums in 1939, the administration developed a system of labeling the relative importance of pieces with colored stickers: red for top-priority works, blue for second-tier objects, and yellow and black for works that could be protected on-site. In August 1937, education minister Jean Zay underscored the importance of these measures: “Given our uncertainty about the nature of an armed

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conflict, it is better to push forward the study of measures that may in the end be unnecessary than to allow ourselves to be caught by surprise.”2 As the civil-defense strategy developed, the fine arts administration was forced to decide whether it would also evacuate privately owned collections. In January 1937, fine arts director Georges Huisman, after consulting with the defense and interior ministries, informed the museum office that “all works of art worthy of state protection will be evacuated by, and at the expense of, the fine arts administration.” Collections in twenty-three musées nationaux (state-owned national museums), including the Louvre, would be given top priority in the evacuation, followed by departmental and municipal collections—referred to as musées de province (provincial museums)—and finally those owned by private entities and individuals. The administration instructed curators to contact private collectors in their vicinity who might wish to include their works of art in the evacuation.3 A law of 11 July 1938 established the legal framework for the passivedefense program, providing “national organization for war” and mobilizing “all of the country’s resources” in preparation for both active (military) and passive (civil) defense. The law further proclaimed that “the organization of passive defense against the danger of aerial attacks is obligatory on all of the national territory.” As a result, the state had the authority to requisition privately owned buildings for art storage. Personnel for the passive-defense operations included civil volunteers, reserve soldiers, and men who had finished their military service within the past two years but could still be called up for nonmilitary duties.4 As the defense ministry ultimately controlled the operation, military leaders, not fine arts officials, initially selected regions where the storage depots would be established. Anticipating an invasion from the east, the French High Command instructed the fine arts administration to secure storage depots in western and central regions—Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, and the Loire Valley. Fine arts officials then faced the daunting task of finding suitable locales that met a long list of criteria. These depots were not modern warehouses but existing historic chateaux, sometimes hundreds of years old. Authorities looked for chateaux away from urban centers and strategic targets, such as industrial or munitions plants, but that were easily accessible by rail or roads. The buildings needed to be sturdy and large enough to withstand the impact of nearby bomb explosions, close to a water source for extinguishing fires, yet not too cold or humid for delicate

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paintings. Once officials located the potential sites, the state offered indemnity payments to the property owners, who were required to allow curators, guards, and their families to live on-site indefinitely.5 As these civil-defense plans were being made, in 1939 the Direction des musées joined an international project to protect art collections in Spain, where a bloody civil war had been raging for three years. The Spanish program reflected a spirit of international cooperation in the arts that had developed in the early 1930s, largely due to initiatives of the International Museum Office, a Paris-based cultural division of the League of ­Nations. In October 1932, the League of Nations General Assembly approved a resolution declaring that the conservation of monuments and art is of interest to “the community of states that protect civilization.” Member states were to collaborate in preserving each country’s cultural heritage and preventing illegal exports of art and artifacts.6 An international body of art experts applied these principles in wartorn Spain. David David-Weill, then president of the French Council of National Museums, organized an international committee through private contacts in Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. The committee proposed the evacuation of works from northern Spain and Catalonia across the French border and into the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. All affected parties approved the proposal—the Spanish Republic, secretary general of the League of Nations, and French Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs. Jacques Jaujard, then assistant director of national museums, served as the French negotiator and signed the evacuation agreement with Spanish foreign minister Alvarez del Vayo. The agreement allowed the League of Nations secretary general to receive the collections but specified that after the war, the collections would be returned “only to the Spanish government, in order to remain the common asset of the Spanish nation.”7 Using private funds, the committee packed the works into 1,845 cases and shipped them to the League of Nations headquarters. The Spanish collections reached Geneva on 17 February 1939, where they were inspected and inventoried by British, Swiss, and French museum officials. Meanwhile in Spain, Francisco Franco defeated the republican forces on 1 April with significant assistance from Germany and Italy and demanded the immediate return of the art collections. The intact collections reached Spain later that month, under the authority of a new military dictatorship.8 Drawing on the League of Nations resolutions from the early 1930s, the Spanish evacuation program legitimized the protection of cultural

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heritage by international public authorities, led first and foremost by French representatives.9 David-Weill, Jaujard, and other members of the international committee appear to have acted with the belief that they held a moral obligation to protect the works of art not only for Spaniards but for the good of all humanity. Jaujard and his colleagues followed similar principles on a national scale as they prepared for the evacuation of French public museums. These officials held that the French state was the ultimate guardian of the nation’s cultural heritage and had a responsibility to protect objects for all people who appreciated art. As Louis Hautecoeur explained in a radio address in May 1940, the evacuated works represented “an important part of our intellectual, moral, and religious civilization, this patrimony of humanity.”10

The Initial Evacuation, August 1939 After three years of careful planning, the Direction des musées launched the evacuation operations in late August 1939. Participating museums fall into two main categories: the state-owned national museums and provincial museums owned by cities and departments. Initially the state did not have legal authority over the second group of public museums, which would come with the museum reform law of August 1941. But there was no time to waste; officials in Paris believed it was their duty to protect provincial museum collections as well, and the state assistance was almost always welcome outside the capital.

National Museums There were twenty-three national museums, most located in Paris or the surrounding suburbs, including the Louvre, Jeu de Paume, Orangerie, and Versailles palace. The museums closed to the public on the evening of Friday, 25 August, so personnel could dismantle, wrap, and pack the works into wooden cases. The first convoys began Sunday, 27 August, and over the next four months, thirty-seven convoys with several trucks each shuttled the works to the Loire Valley. The Chambord palace, a state-owned elaborate Renaissance chateau and peacetime tourist destination, served as a triage center where staff under the leadership of Pierre Schommer divided up works and rerouted them to other storage depots. For most of the Occupation, the national collections were divided among nine primary sites and various smaller depots.11 (See Appendix A.)

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The operation’s ultimate success depended on the ability of the museum administration to secure vehicles and personnel. It had negotiated contracts with transportation companies to reserve thirty trucks for the evacuation, later adding twenty vehicles, which would be exempt from army requisitions. The administration further negotiated with labor officials, military leaders, and regional prefects the ability to recruit civilian men to assist museum personnel.12 The process of packing and protecting the works of art was an extensive operation in itself. The Direction des musées hired professional packers from Parisian firms to wrap up fragile paintings and sculpture. Several specialists supervised the dismantling of large sculptures in the Louvre such as Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo. Once the pieces were carefully removed from their pedestals and wrapped in packing materials, trained personnel loaded them onto low-riding trucks that carried them

Workers transferring the Venus de Milo. Photo: Ministère de la culture / Médiathèque du patrimoine, Dist. RMN / Art Resource, NY.

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Evacuating Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Photo: L’Illustration.

off to the storage depots. Large paintings from the Louvre posed a particular challenge. Some were removed from their frames and rolled up, such as Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, David’s Consecration of the ­Emperor Napoleon, and Delacroix’s Ceiling for the Apollo Gallery. Other large paintings such as Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa were too fragile to be rolled and were transported on a large trailer that normally held stage decorations borrowed from the Comédie-Française.13

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Lucie Mazauric recalls in her memoirs that a moment of panic during the evacuation of the Medusa seemed to mirror the painting’s dramatic shipwreck scene. While en route to the Loire Valley one evening, the truck carrying the Medusa struck a power line, “plunging Versailles into a darkness filled with sparks.” “We were very afraid,” she recalled, “that we would end up with a sizable fire and a small riot.” Electrical workers soon repaired the fallen wires, and the Medusa was stored temporarily at the Orangerie of the Versailles palace. It was later transferred to the Louvigny chateau along with other large paintings from the Louvre.14 The operation required meticulous planning, from the transfer stage through maintenance in the storage depots. During the evacuation, the fine arts administration remained in close contact with the defense ministry to avoid a disruption in military operations. At least one staff member and one or two guards rode on every trip, and museum personnel inventoried the items with the departure and arrival of each convoy. Between 27 August and 23 October, the trucks made 238 trips from national museums in Paris, Versailles, Saint Germain, Malmaison, and Blérancourt. The Louvre alone evacuated more than 1,000 cases of Greek, Roman, Asian, and Egyptian

Empty frames at the Louvre. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

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artifacts and antiquities; 268 cases of paintings; plus a few hundred drawings, engravings, sculptures, and miscellaneous art objects. In all, museum personnel evacuated from the national collections more than 2,000 cases, plus 1,500 additional objects. Once the pieces reached their destination, museum staff turned their attention to on-site preservation. They supplied chateaux with fire extinguishers and motorized pumps and informed local fire departments of each depot’s location. Attempting to mitigate damage from humidity, they periodically inspected and aerated the works of art.15 These initial storage sites also housed works from outside the national museum collections that museum personnel considered part of the French patrimony. Works from museums owned by the city of Paris, a category distinct from national and provincial museums, were sent to two chateaux in the Sarthe—Poncé and La Gidonnière.16 Museum personnel also evacuated and monitored 530 cases of art from private collections, which carried the names of the most prominent Jewish collectors in France: Rothschild, Wildenstein, David-Weill, Kann, and Seligmann. As we will see, Jewish-owned objects were vulnerable to Nazi looting from the storage depots, despite the best efforts of Jaujard and his colleagues. Rose Valland, a French official who oversaw the Jeu de Paume museum during the war, later observed that the administration’s protection of private Jewish collections was a noble gesture but one that created “innumerable difficulties.”17

Provincial Museums While objects in the so-called provincial museums may not have held the value or fame of the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo, the evacuations outside Paris constituted a massive, nationwide operation, involving several hundred thousand works from more than two hundred museums. As with the national collections, museum staff began to develop plans for the evacuation of provincial museums in 1936. Joseph Billiet, an assistant director of national museums, oversaw management of these collections throughout the Occupation. Prior to the war, the state held no formal administrative authority over the provincial museums owned by cities and departments. In seeking additional funds from the finance ministry to subsidize the evacuation of provincial museums, the fine arts office argued that to deny such assistance would “irremediably compromise” the protection of important works of art. The national interest of such an operation was “evident to all those who seek to keep the French artistic patrimony intact.”18

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In January 1936, Billiet began collecting information from 140 museums in twenty-six departments in northern and eastern France, trying to assess the number of works that would be evacuated and ranking their relative importance. The survey was extended to the southeastern and Mediterranean regions in September 1936, covering sixteen departments and sixty additional museums. In the following months, Billiet’s staff supplied local authorities with packing crates and wrapping materials. They distributed sandbags, which would be placed around large sculptures and other objects that would remain on-site. In addition, the museum administration facilitated agreements between local museum officials, prefects, military representatives, and labor authorities to confirm that nonmobilized individuals would be available to evacuate and transfer the works and that a certain number of vehicles would be exempt from military requisitions. Billiet also developed an inventory system for curators using a series of special codes.19 These preparations intensified in September 1938 as Hitler laid claim to the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia and war appeared imminent. On 9 September 1938, Billiet instructed personnel in the provinces to prepare their collections for evacuation. Several cities in western France and along the Atlantic coast were added to the plan: Rouen, Le Havre, Caen, Brest, Rennes, Nantes, La Rochelle, and Poitiers. After European leaders, including French premier Edouard Daladier, brokered a temporary peace in Munich, the fine arts office reviewed the problems it had encountered in this initial effort. Despite the bold proclamation of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain that the leaders had achieved “peace in our time,” Jaujard, Billiet, and their colleagues considered the mobilization a practice drill and continued to prepare for a likely full-scale evacuation.20 Taking into consideration the regions that were most threatened by military operations, the museum office divided the country’s ninety-plus departments into three categories. Works housed in the most threatened areas, in the first category, were under mandatory evacuation and would be shipped to departments in the second category, called départements de correspondence (transfer departments). Curators of museums in the third category, the least threatened areas, were allowed to carry out voluntary evacuations to sites within the same department.21 The storage sites for provincial collections were chosen by the summer of 1939. Most were rural chateaux, along with a handful of abbeys and churches that met the same criteria established for national collec-

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tions. Some owners voluntarily offered their property while prefects requisitioned other locations. In all, more than one hundred sites were used in forty-five departments. (See Appendix B.) The fine arts administration offered an indemnity payment to private owners, but was slow in paying them; as of May 1941, no indemnity payments had been made.22 By October 1939, the museum office had successfully evacuated priority works from the most threatened areas. Although nearly all local authorities willingly followed the administration’s instructions, a handful did not. Some mayors silently disregarded the state’s recommendations while others openly protested its intervention in local affairs. Billiet reported that prefects in the Aube, Jura, Nord, and Var departments proved uncooperative, displaying “an apathy that delayed the implementation of protective measures” and threatened to “compromise” the operation. He regretted the difficulties encountered in those departments, but he was pleased to report that most individuals involved in the evacuation had demonstrated “the maximum of devotion.”23 Despite the best efforts of cultural personnel, a total of forty-nine museums were destroyed or damaged in the battles of May and June 1940. Not all were art museums, but twenty-two institutions, including one devoted to Joan of Arc in Orléans, were destroyed, while twenty-seven were partially damaged in battle or by occupying troops.24 Despite the loss of buildings and objects, overall the massive art evacuation program was a success both for the national and provincial museum collections. Reflecting on the effective defense of art museum collections, Louvre curator Germain Bazin wondered, “If the army had prepared equally well, would it have won?”25 Despite these early successes, Bazin and other officials faced continual challenges in maintaining the far-flung storage depots over the next five years.

Art Storage during the Occupation The Direction des musées under Vichy benefited from continuity in high-ranking personnel from the Third Republic. Jaujard and Billiet were the primary administrators responsible for the national and provincial collections, respectively, and most museum curators who were not affected by the regime’s exclusionary laws maintained their positions. This corps of seasoned civil servants immediately faced German challenges to their authority. On 30 June 1940, Hitler proclaimed that all art objects would be placed

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under German surveillance as a guarantee for peace negotiations. He further demanded the return of the evacuated art collections to their original locations. Jaujard, now director of national museums, immediately issued a protest to Count Franz Wolff Metternich, director of the Kunstschutz.26 By all accounts of French personnel at the time, Metternich conducted the commission with an aristocratic dignity and a sincere aim to protect works of art. Viewing him as an ally, Jaujard’s office readily provided Metternich with detailed maps of the art storage locations, which they hoped would prevent German forces from damaging the sites. The main concern of French officials at the time was preventing damage from Germany’s continuing battle against Britain—not hiding works from Nazi looters. As fine arts officials struggled to maintain the storage depots throughout the Occupation, Metternich assisted them in several important ways. For example, he guaranteed the Direction des musées that chateaux housing the art collections would not be requisitioned by German troops. Moreover, he provided gas coupons that enabled French authorities to acquire fuel for the trucks used in transferring works of art. When French officials discovered that vaults in the Banque de France were too humid for delicate pastels being stored there, Metternich facilitated a transfer of the works to another depot. Countering orders from other German officials, he also enabled French guards at the depots to bear arms and intervened when German authorities tried to inspect the art depots, purportedly to search the cases for weapons and target possible resisters. The commission struck an agreement with the Direction des musées, according to which the cases would be opened only by French museum personnel in the presence of the depot director and a representative of the Kunstschutz. Under Metternich’s successor, Bernhard von Tieschowitz, the commission also later exempted depot guards and other museum personnel from the German labor draft until their replacements had been hired.27 Most important, Metternich helped stymie Nazi plans to plunder art from French museums during the early months of the Occupation. Although the German embassy claimed to have a direct order from Hitler to “repatriate” Germanic works from French museums, Metternich refused to cooperate without an explicit written order. As the order never materialized, General von Brauchitsch, the Wehrmacht chief of staff in Berlin, supported Metternich’s opposition to the embassy’s plan. In another example of Hitler’s deliberately contradictory directives, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also claimed to have orders to seize museum pieces

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and commissioned a secret report that detailed the planned requisitions. Two lists created in September 1940 and January 1941 were known as the Kümmel reports, named after Otto Kümmel, the director of Berlin State Museums who became special commissar for securing foreign museums in 1940. These lists reveal a detailed Nazi plan to seize foreign museum pieces to enrich the German patrimony.28 Yet Hitler never issued a direct order to any of his henchmen to seize art from French national museums. According to Albert Speer, the Führer commented more than once that the French eventually would be forced to relinquish paintings from the Louvre as war reparations in the final peace treaty.29 Some smaller municipal museums, however, did not benefit from such a reprieve. Occupation troops looted museums in Argentan, ­Aubusson, Auneuil, Castelnaudary, Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, Larchant, and the Musée de la monnaie in Vic-sur-Seille. A museum in the southeastern town of Castellane, nestled in préalpes mountains, had the dubious honor of being looted by German and Italian troops.30 As we will see in Chapters 9 and 10, there are also important exceptions to the general security of evacuated objects, and these cases are worth mentioning here to underscore the reality of German power. By merely threatening force, German agents seized from the storage depots fourteen Jewish collections and the Bayeux tapestry, which had been housed at the Sourches chateau. They also removed from a museum in Pau the fifteenth-century Adoration of the Mystic Lamb panel of the Ghent altarpiece, entrusted to the French museum administration by the Belgian government. Seeing an opportunity to pursue deeper collaboration with the Nazis, Pierre Laval had allowed the Germans to seize the panel, despite precautions taken by Jaujard and Metternich to ban its removal. Given the inability of French personnel to prevent the seizure of art from storage depots in these cases, the key factor in the security of evacuated objects, in the end, was not the competence of French personnel—which is indisputable—but objectives of the Germans and their willingness to use force in achieving them. Meanwhile, the Direction des musées took advantage of the emptied exhibition halls and carried out some overdue renovations. They hired unemployed artists to clean and refurbish exhibition rooms while art experts inspected, restored, and reframed paintings at some of the evacuation sites.31 Yet the administration was plagued by a persistent lack of funding. As the Occupation dragged on, many city governments were unable

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to generate funds necessary to pay for the evacuations. Jaujard repeatedly requested additional funds from the finance ministry to cover the costs of maintaining the storage depots. Local authorities, he argued, had a right, “morally and legally,” to “count on the state to subsidize the costs of war.” Any delay in providing the necessary funds, Jaujard continued, “would very soon lead to a halt in operations of these depots, that is to say, to the abandonment of these treasures for which the French state has assumed responsibility.”32 Jaujard and other French officials believed that centralized funding was the most effective way to protect municipal collections, rather than distributing subsidies to local institutions directly. By 1943, the museum administration also became concerned about its financial responsibility toward the private owners of evacuated art collections and storage sites in the event of property damage during inspections, art transfers, or military attacks. The administration consulted a fine arts committee of legal advisers, which determined that the state could be held partly liable, along with the owners, for damages to the chateaux, and fully responsible for damage done to municipal or private collections under its surveillance. As a result, Jaujard’s office advised prefects, mayors, and private owners to verify that the collections were adequately insured against such damages. It encouraged prefects in particular to raise the issue with mayors, as the prefects’ recommendations would be “the equivalent of imperative demands that could result, if there are numerous protests, in a legislative text. While this text would encourage cities to insure themselves, it would also remove the state from all responsibility for the security measures it has undertaken.”33 The Direction des musées claimed that the state had taken action to protect the provincial collections, “an eminent part of our national patrimony,” because of the state’s “natural role as protector” of a common artistic heritage. In doing so, however, the state wished neither to diminish the rights of the owners nor accrue the responsibilities implied by current legislation. Thus, the administration advised collection owners to disclose their insurance coverage to the Direction des musées and add a codicil to their policy that would insure any subsequent transfers conducted by the state.34 Beyond financial issues, a persistent dearth in skilled personnel also plagued the museum administration. The national museums particularly lacked depot directors, assistant directors, and guards who would agree to live in the rural chateaux. Curators of the national museums were obvious candidates, but most were unwilling or unable to live in the depots. Three

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were prisoners of war, three had taken up residence outside the country, and ten were professors at the Ecole du Louvre who chose to remain in Paris. Four other curators had been fired or forced into retirement, and one was too ill to serve as a depot director. Thus, the Direction des musées resorted to hiring individuals outside the museum system, soliciting the help of job-seeking intellectuals through the Vichy regime’s unemployment commission.35 As the battle zones shifted throughout the war and authorities foresaw military operations in western and southern areas, the museum administration continually transferred collections and consolidated storage sites. (See Appendix C.) A German ordinance of 15 July 1940 required prior approval by the Kunstschutz of all transfers of museum collections. According to Rose Valland, the German commission approved the transfers “with the sincere desire to ensure the protection of our works of art.”36 During the phony war from September 1939 to May 1940, the museum collections had remained at their original evacuation sites as officials waited along with the rest of the country, wondering whether Hitler would attack. Though the Allies had been anticipating the invasion, the German forces moved farther northwest than expected, through the dense Ardennes forest and around the Maginot Line defensive fortifications. As a result, several evacuation sites in northern France sat squarely in the main combat zone. As German troops advanced, the Direction des musées swiftly transferred these works to more secure locations farther south. The transfer took place amid the larger exodus of northerners who flooded country roads, loaded down with their possessions in search of safer ground. Accompanying the transfer of paintings from Chambord to other depots, Lucie Mazauric watched in dismay as panicked refugees pursued the same route as the museum convoy. She recalled that German planes roared overhead: “If [the Germans] had wanted it, one must admit, this exodus would have turned into carnage.”37 Following the initial transfers of May and June 1940, museum personnel divided paintings from the Louvre into two parts. They stored the most precious masterpieces in the central Midi region and dispersed the rest, about seven hundred, in the Sarthe department, with the largest paintings housed at the Sourches chateau.38 Among those in central France, a number of important works, including the Mona Lisa, had been transferred to the Loc-Dieu chateau in the Aveyron. By the fall of 1940, however, museum officials found the building too humid for fragile paint-

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ings. They transferred the works once again, this time to the Musée Ingres in Montauban, about thirty miles north of Toulouse. Museum staff painstakingly created inventories after each transfer to ensure the collections were still intact.39 As the war continued into 1941, unexpectedly for those who had anticipated Germany’s quick victory over Britain, French authorities increasingly anticipated landings from the Atlantic. The Direction des musées decided to evacuate forty-one museums and thirteen depots located along the western coast from the Nord department to the Basses-­Pyrénées. In the fall of 1941, the Kunstschutz encouraged Billiet to investigate which museums would require evacuation and which works could be protected on-site.40 Thus, German soldiers and French cultural officials prepared for the invasion simultaneously: the former built up military defenses along the coast while the latter searched for new storage sites. The Direction des musées had gained greater control over provincial collections with the museum reform law of 10 August 1941 and had the legal authority to transfer the works of art as needed. The evacuation that followed a few months later included not only museum collections but also archives, library collections, and stained-glass windows from churches and cathedrals. In order to centralize the transfers, the education ministry appointed a delegate in each department who served as a liaison between the Direction des musées and local archivists and curators.41 The transfers also included works from collections that had not been evacuated in 1939. From May to December 1942, museum personnel evacuated works from several museums in northern France, Normandy, and Brittany to depots in the Sarthe, Orne, and Loir-et-Cher departments. The principal museum collections affected were in Amiens, Caen, Le Havre, Lille, Rennes, and Valenciennes. Authorities also evacuated archives from Boulogne, Caen, Coutances, Le Havre, Saint Omer, and the Nord department; books from the Avranches city library; and church windows from Coutances, Dol-de-Bretagne, and Quimper. In financing these extra shipments, the Direction des musées continued to use funds allotted for protection of the national collections, unsure whether it would obtain additional credits to maintain the depots for the war’s duration.42 Following the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, the Germans occupied the entire French territory, and southern regions were no longer safe from military operations. In early 1943 French administrators discussed plans to transfer works from southern depots and evacuate

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museums in the region. On the German side, Tieschowitz inspected museums throughout southern France and consulted with Wehrmacht officers about anticipated military operations. During a meeting with Billiet in February 1943, Tieschowitz recommended that the Direction des musées extend the evacuation from Toulouse, across the Mediterranean coast, and north along the Rhône Valley to Lyon. He also advised French authorities to transfer additional works from museums that had already been evacuated in Nîmes and Marseille. Lucie Mazauric recounts that she and other French personnel, including Jaujard and René Huyghe, were particularly concerned about the paintings stored at the Musée Ingres of Montauban. The museum sat near a bridge over the Tarn River, a potential military target. Jaujard spearheaded a search for other suitable chateaux in southern and central France and secured sites in Vayrac, Loubejac, and Betaille. La Treyne chateau welcomed Mazauric and her husband, writer André Chamson, along with Egyptian artifacts from the Louvre, and the Mona Lisa was among the precious cargo moved from Montauban to the Montal chateau.43 A broader evacuation of the southern region began in March 1943, incorporating museum collections from Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, and Toulouse.44 As during the initial evacuation in 1939, the Direction des musées faced some opposition from municipal and departmental authorities who resisted central control over these transfers. According to Germain Bazin, director of the depot at Sourches, Jaujard worked to convince “reticent municipalities” that the transfers were the best way to protect the art collections. In rare cases, authorities disregarded warnings from the Direction des musées and, as a result, lost important works of art. Municipal authorities in Quimper, for example, refused to evacuate pieces from a Breton furniture museum. The museum and its contents were destroyed in a fire following an air raid.45 As a general rule, however, most communities welcomed state assistance in the transfers. The Germans, of course, did not encourage the additional evacuations merely out of a disinterested concern for the French cultural treasures. Nazi leaders outside the army, mainly working for Göring or Abetz, intended to “secure” French collections so that Reich officials could later choose pieces for German museums or for their own personal collections. In early 1944, the Germans developed plans for another major evacuation, this time to transfer the national collections from the depots back to Paris. As mentioned previously, Metternich had stymied a similar ­demand in

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July 1940. The order resurfaced, however, in early 1944 and now had the support of education minister Abel Bonnard. On 5 January 1944, Jaujard and Billiet met with a Dr. Kuetgens of the Kunstschutz,46 who suggested that Paris, not rural chateaux, was the safest place for French masterpieces. Alarmed by this remark, Jaujard explained that transferring the collections back to Paris would put them in extreme danger of air raids and would diminish his ability to monitor them. Kuetgens’s suggestion, Jaujard added, contradicted the agreement reached between the German commission and French authorities, in which the Direction des musées would maintain control over the collections and transfer them as necessary to depots throughout France.47 Given that French officials consistently emphasized the important role of the Kunstschutz as an ally of the Direction des musées, Kuetgens’s proposal seems incongruent with the commission’s general approach up to that time. Whatever Kuetgens’s reasoning, the suggestion justifiably alarmed Jaujard and Billiet. Meanwhile, Bonnard informed Louis Haute­ coeur that he supported the German proposal to return the masterpieces to Paris, contrary to Jaujard and Billiet’s recommendations. On 12 January 1944, Jaujard noted a conversation with Hautecoeur, in which the secretary general told Jaujard that Bonnard would soon send him a directive, ordering the transfer of some masterpieces back to Paris. The next day, Hautecoeur informed Jaujard that the Militärbefehlshaber, General Heinrich von Stülpnagel, who had succeeded his cousin Otto as military governor in 1942, “would provide all the authorizations and means of transport necessary” to transfer “masterpieces of universal value” back to Paris. Jaujard was not swayed by Stülpgnagel’s generous offer to “protect” the Louvre’s most precious works of art. He again relayed to Hautecoeur his staunch opposition to the German plan. Hautecoeur, in turn, explained Jaujard’s position to Bonnard, admitting his own “perplexity.” “Security is greater in Paris than in the provinces,” Hautecoeur observed, “but in the current circumstances, technical conservation would be less easily ensured.” In the end, Hautecoeur vowed to follow the minister’s orders and take “all necessary measures to best execute them.”48 As Hautecoeur was not willing to oppose Bonnard, Jaujard was the last line of defense in keeping the French collections safe in the depots. By early February 1944, he convinced Kuetgens that the transfer of collections to Paris was not worth the risk of damage from aerial attacks. However, Jaujard accepted another proposal by Kuetgens to consolidate

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the evacuated collections into fewer depots. As a result, the Direction des musées developed a plan in which the total number of depots would be reduced from fifty-eight to around forty, depending on the availability of new storage sites, shifting works stored in eastern and southern France toward depots in more central locations and, it was hoped, farther away from likely battle zones.49 Following the Allied landings at Normandy on 6 June 1944, the battles of liberation again heightened the risk of damage to the French patrimony. The danger was acute and spread to much of the nation’s territory before France was entirely liberated. René Huyghe relayed a dramatic account of his experiences at the chateau of Montal, where he was both depot director and captain in the FFI. In response to the Allied landings, the Waffen-SS tank division Das Reich had been ordered to move north from Montauban, where the troops had been stationed. The SS soldiers passed by the chateau of Montal on 9 June 1944, the day before the Der Führer regiment carried out the horrific massacre of 642 villagers at ­Oradour-sur-Glane. Huyghe was forced to stand guard against not only the Germans but also maquis (guerrilla fighters) who wanted to fire on the enemy from the chateau. After Huyghe threatened the fighters with severe punishment if they failed to leave the chateau, the maquis relented, without harm done to the art sheltered inside. Huyghe later surmised that had he not cleared the maquis from the chateau, the SS soldiers might have unleashed their fury on Montal, not Oradour.50 While Huyghe may have exaggerated the German threat to national treasures in this incident, it is a striking reminder that art was often better protected than people. .  .  . Throughout the French territory, as a result of careful selection of sites and effective storage methods, along with a good deal of luck, there was no significant loss in the depots during these final battles. By the end of the war, the thousands of evacuated pieces remained intact and undamaged in French historic chateaux, with only a few exceptions. Like the refugees from northern France who returned to their homes in the summer of 1940, the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, the Medusa, and many less famous but equally treasured pieces gradually regained the sanctuary of museums once the war was over.51 The evacuation and return of all these pieces of French patrimony reflect a widely accepted notion at the time that the state bore the ultimate

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responsibility in protecting the nation’s artistic treasures, whether owned by the national government, departmental or local authorities, or private individuals. National and provincial authorities, with few exceptions, accepted the state’s expanded control over public art collections. On the national level, fine arts administrators correctly believed that the state could best coordinate the massive evacuation of provincial collections. Moreover, some fine arts officials such as Hautecoeur displayed a fundamental distrust of local authorities and doubted their ability to carry out such an important procedure without becoming mired in local politics. Most municipal and departmental authorities welcomed the state assistance, realizing that the fine arts administration was able to coordinate the transfers with greater efficiency. Many cities did not have the financial resources to evacuate the collections on their own, or the necessary contacts with chateau owners. Jaujard and Billiet had been developing these ties since 1936 and were able to use their network of supporters in finding additional storage sites. Yet the reasoning behind the increase in state control over provincial art collections went beyond mere logistics. Even though the works of art were the owners’ property, they were considered a crucial collective asset, one that helped define France as a cultural haven. As the war placed art collections directly in harm’s way, centralized patrimonial policy gained new urgency. In the end, the evacuation of art collections reflected and reinforced French awareness of the nation’s cultural patrimony. According to Germain Bazin, the wartime evacuation of public collections “provoked a consciousness of patrimonial wealth that had not before been fully appreciated.”52 As hundreds of people became involved in the evacuation effort, from museums in numerous cities to the depots in isolated rural areas, the evacuation effort reinforced national consciousness of a collective patrimony worthy of state protection. The ability of the state to fulfill its role as the wartime guardian of national treasures was greatly enhanced with the museum reform law of August 1941—measures largely proposed and debated under the Republic that came to fruition through the Vichy regime’s legislative efficiency.

4 Museums Fit for France

If I may make an observation, not as merely a personal opinion but a fact known around the world by those aware of artistic affairs, that France, given the treasures in its public collections and the role of its artists in the history of civilization, should have the most important and best-organized museums in the world. —Jacques Jaujard, report to Georges Hilaire, 25 May 1944

While thousands of works from public art museums sat in chateaux throughout the French countryside, the museum administration busily prepared for an anticipated return to normalcy. According to Louis Hautecoeur, the war “did not prevent administrative reorganization, an evaluation of collections, building renovations,” or “the promulgation of legislative measures.”1 The most important new legislation affecting public museums was the law of 10 August 1941, which reorganized all fine arts museums in France—the national museums owned by the state plus nearly seven hundred municipal and departmental museums. The museum reform law was a key element in the expansion of state control over artistic patrimony during the Occupation and was directly linked to the evacuation process. Civil servants had proposed many of the law’s measures during the 1930s, but the precarious legal status of evacuated objects made the reform urgently necessary. And the legislation endured after Vichy; the postwar provisional government validated the law on 13 July 1945 with only minor modifications.2 It remained the founding legislation of museum policy for nearly forty years until decentralization initiatives under François Mitterrand’s socialist government in the early 1980s. There was wide support for the centralization of museum policy, and the project attracted the attention of top Vichy leaders, including Admiral Darlan and Pétain himself. 87

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Origins of the 1941 Museum Reform Law Louis Hautecoeur gives the impression in his memoirs that he singlehandedly crafted the museum reform law in the summer of 1941. According to Hautecoeur, Jérôme Carcopino asked him to create a proposal that would reorganize the entire public museum administration. “I drafted my proposal,” Hautecoeur explains, “and once it was ready, I summoned the director of national museums and a few curators, who readily accepted it.”3 In fact, the national museum office had proposed many ideas in the 1941 law in the 1930s. The continuity in reform ideas from the late Third Republic to the Vichy regime is partly explained by continuity in top museum personnel. Louis Hautecoeur had held several positions in the ­museum administration during the 1930s, including those of assistant curator at the Louvre from 1919 to 1927, curator of the Luxembourg museum beginning in 1927, and founding director of the National Museum of Modern Art from 1937 to 1940. Jacques Jaujard had served as assistant director since 1933, while Joseph Billiet, assistant director of national museums and director of provincial museums during the Occupation, had served as assistant curator of national museums prior to the war.4 As during the art evacuations, the museum reform law maintained a distinction between national and provincial museums. (Museums owned by the city of Paris remained a distinct category and were excluded from the reform law.) Through the 1930s, administrative problems had plagued both the national and provincial museums. Within the national museum system, the services under the Direction des musées had become redundant and inefficient. Hautecoeur’s predecessor as the head of fine arts, Georges Huisman, had encouraged the education ministry in 1939 to pursue “a complete reorganization of the entire administrative operation of the national museums.”5 One area of particular concern was the role of the National Museum Council, a consultative body that had served the fine arts administration since the 1890s. The council consisted of the head of fine arts and the director of national museums, along with two members of the French Institute, two senators, two deputies, representatives of the finance ministry, and several collectors and artists. The council originally was created to manage and disburse funds for public museums. Over time, however, it began reviewing and authorizing donations, which did not require the disbursement of funds. As a result, by the 1930s curators were forced to accept donations based on the decisions of the council members, most of

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whom were not trained art experts. According to Hautecoeur, “the council members followed the advice of collectors who acted as if they were expanding their own private collections.” Moreover, the council handled such a variety of administrative matters that it had little time to consider proposed acquisitions. While reading documents about national museum acquisitions, Hautecoeur had also discovered that some members were corrupt: “many of the council’s operations, which involved some eminent attorneys, were stained with illegality.”6 Regarding the provincial museums, administrative problems abounded. Prior to the war, there was no formal organization linking the museums to the central fine arts administration. The state served as an adviser to municipal and departmental authorities but held no legal authority over them. As Daniel Sherman has argued, the quality of fine arts museums varied widely from one city to another. Several larger cities such as Lyon, Montpellier, and Avignon boasted well-managed fine arts museums with reputable collections. Since the mid-nineteenth century, these cities had expanded their holdings, renovated their exhibition halls, and facilitated public access.7 However, the vast majority of provincial museums remained dilapidated and disorganized, with only sporadic visiting hours. There was a growing sense among art experts and administrators in Paris that provincial museum collections were part of the national patrimony; their problems, therefore, were too important to be left to local control. The French state was the appropriate guardian of the collections, in their view, and the fine arts administration bore the ultimate responsibility of ensuring high-quality institutions that, in Sherman’s words, would be “worthy monuments” to French culture and civilization. Arts officials hoped that this museum reform would help position France as the global leader in the arts, highlighting a source of enduring strength following the debacle of defeat. The provincial museums had vocal critics during the Occupation. In October 1941 Pierre Darras, honorary director of fine arts for the city of Paris, published an article in Beaux-Arts magazine about the sorry state of  the museums. Although there were some excellent museums outside Paris, he wrote, “We could, alas! count them on our fingers.” Showing a biting contempt for local artists, Darras observed that museums in small towns often contained paintings by artists who so acutely lacked talent that one could not “regret enough that they did not choose an activity from which artistic ambition had been rigorously banned.” Furthermore,

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he noted, people rarely visited these museums, and those who did were subjected to the scornful eye of the security guard, who watched them “with distrust.”8 A year later Sorbonne professor Louis Réau, also writing in BeauxArts, described his experience in provincial museums: [They] seem numb in a slumber that singularly resembles death: dusty warehouses filled with junk where paintings with outdated and sometimes laughable attributions are stacked up in five or six rows to the ceiling, where copies are mixed in with originals, where masterpieces—if there are any—are suffocated underneath an avalanche of navets [literally “turnips,” meaning worthless paintings]. Is this really a twentiethcentury museum? It appears to be a hundred years back in time.

Réau argued that the time had come for state intervention: When “a city demonstrates that it is incapable of managing its artistic patrimony, which also belongs to the entire nation, the state has a duty to intervene.”9 Hautecoeur had experienced firsthand the lack of competent management in provincial museums. He claimed that the concierge at a small museum once told him, “Come back tomorrow; I am doing laundry today.” Elsewhere a curator said jokingly, “My predecessor died too soon. He did not have time to repaint all of the works. Please excuse those that are a bit old.” On a more serious note, Hautecoeur found that salaries were often insufficient for curators, some of whom were merely volunteers. Furthermore, many curators considered themselves representatives of the municipality and thus felt obligated to exhibit paintings by local artists— regardless of the works’ quality.10 Like Réau, Hautecoeur and other fine arts officials in the Vichy regime believed the appropriate solution was to increase state control over all public art museums. The fine arts administration sought to place competent technical experts in provincial museums, provide subsidies to local and departmental authorities to pay these experts, and perhaps most important, foster art appreciation, encouraging the French people to discover forgotten masterpieces in towns all across the country.11 The need for central museum policy also became more urgent during the war, as the Direction des musées was managing the evacuation and maintenance of collections in storage sites. Numerous cities depended on state assistance, but the Direction des musées lacked the legal authority to transfer provincial collections.12 Addressing these wide-ranging concerns, the main goals of the 1941 law were to increase the efficiency of the Direction des musées and the

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integrity of its advisory council, create new standards for the recruitment and remuneration of curators, and centralize the administration of provincial museums.13 For the first time, the museum administration would oversee both national and provincial museums, which together would constitute the Musées de France.

From Proposal to Promulgation The unusual development of the museum reform law reflects the ad hoc nature of lawmaking under Vichy. In the absence of parliamentary debate and a working constitution, many laws were promulgated by executive decree. Measures that were considered urgent were approved by Pétain and promptly enacted without significant debate by any type of legislative or advisory body. Yet certain proposals required deliberation by the Council of State—those that appeared to lack urgency but also could modify juridical principles in a significant way.14 The issue of urgency would plague museum personnel as they sought increased funding to manage the nation’s art museums. According to Jaujard and Billiet, the reform was indeed urgent, as the museum office was assuming responsibility for evacuated provincial collections. Yet Pétain and finance minister Yves Bouthillier, as we will see, both perceived a lack of urgency, given the government’s other concerns, which delayed funding for the law’s provisions. By April 1941, the fine arts department had prepared a draft law and administrative decree describing the technical aspects of the law’s implementation. After the education ministry approved the proposals, they were distributed to Bouthillier and Admiral Darlan, who at the time served as minister of the interior as well as head of government. Bouthillier’s initial response was an early signal to the museum office that the reform, though of significant national interest, was not urgent enough to require immediate funding. The finance minister recommended that funding begin a year later, on 1 July 1942.15 Meanwhile, Darlan believed that the initial draft gave the interior ministry too little influence in museum affairs, considering that provincial museums made up most of the affected institutions. He made several recommendations that were incorporated into the final law. For example, Darlan wanted the ministry to be consulted on all matters involving departmental and municipal museums, which in his view fell under the authority of the interior ministry’s office of departmental and local affairs.

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Darlan opposed in particular a provision by which “the management of all questions concerning provincial museums will be carried out by the Direction des musées nationaux.” He argued that the law should specify only certain areas that the Direction des musées would fully control, such as the recruitment of curators and museum inspections. Darlan ensured, moreover, that the interior ministry, along with the education and finance ministries, would create a commission to determine qualified candidates for curator and assistant curator positions (article fourteen). As the curators would have the status of fonctionnaires (civil servants), Darlan also recommended changes that would bring the museum law in line with other regulations, such as requiring retirement at age fifty-five (article twentysix). The original proposal also had included a provision that would have allowed the state to remove from museums any works that, according to national officials, lacked “artistic, historic, or archeological interest.” Preferring a less invasive measure, Darlan suggested that the National Museum Council and the education ministry focus on approving new acquisitions rather than removing works from museums (article seventeen). Darlan signed the amended proposals with the understanding that all of his suggestions would be incorporated in the final text.16 In the meantime, Carcopino’s office also forwarded the draft proposals to Pétain in early June 1941. The head of state curtly admonished Carcopino for not providing him with a preliminary study of the proposed reforms. On two occasions, 10 August 1940 and 29 April 1941, Pétain had instructed his ministers to provide such preliminary studies before sending him the projets de loi (drafts). Pétain also reminded Carcopino that according to the law of 18 December 1940, the Council of State was to review all laws and decrees whose implementation was not urgent but that would entail significant legislative and juridical reform. According to Pétain, the new museum law fit this description. “The reform of fine arts museums,” the Marshal explained, “is incontestably one of the questions that the Conseil d’état must address.” Pétain wanted to ensure in particular that provisions regarding museum personnel did not contradict broader reforms of the civil service that were already under way.17 The Council of State dates from 1799 and is the highest administrative court in France. Its importance in the legislative process had declined since Napoleonic times, prompting some Third Republic council members to bemoan their lack of influence. After the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, the Vichy regime transferred the council from its usual headquar-

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ters at the Palais-Royal in Paris to Royat, a small town in central France near Clermont-Ferrand. Despite the council’s relative isolation from both Paris and Vichy, the regime strengthened the assembly’s legislative role in the law of 18 December 1940. The council had the authority to initiate legislation, and, in theory, the assembly would examine all new legislation, though such extensive review proved impractical. There were forty councilors of state en service extraordinaire (in special service), including secretaries general in state ministries (and thus Hautecoeur) and individuals selected for various areas of expertise. In addition, thirty-six council members were appointed for service ordinaire (routine service).18 The council discussed the proposed law, with Darlan’s modifications, on 13 August 1941 and rewrote the text with significant changes. Haute­ coeur and Jaujard each reacted quite differently to the new text. According to Hautecoeur, the changes were “above all editing modifications.”19 Jaujard, however, found that the council had substantially altered the proposal. The key issue for Jaujard was how much independent authority the Direction des musées would have within the fine arts administration. For example, the draft reviewed by the council had placed the Direction des musées under the direct authority of the secretary general, the administrative hierarchy preferred by Jaujard. The council’s version, in contrast, would have placed the museum office under the authority of the Office of Works of Art, another division within the Secretariat General of Fine Arts that handled art commissions. The council further sought to reduce the authority of the Direction des musées by making the director responsible to an additional civil servant who would oversee inspections of all national and classified museums. Another significant departure in the new text would have placed museums owned by the city of Paris under central state control, a measure that would have required the unlikely approval by the prefect of the Seine department.20 In response to the recommendations of the Council of State, the Direction des musées modified seven articles in its original text and sent a compromise version to Carcopino on 13 September 1941.21 However, neither draft—from the Council of State or the revised version from the Direction des musées—appears in the final legislation. The Journal Officiel of 29 November 1941 indicates that the state promulgated the law on 10 August 1941, three days before the council even deliberated the proposals, with the approval of Pétain, Carcopino, Bouthillier, and Pierre Pucheu.22 (Pucheu had taken over the interior ministry from Darlan in

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July 1941.) According to Hautecoeur, Carcopino had “removed the law from the council and published it without taking into account the council’s observations,” a move that “provoked some agitation.”23 Nonetheless, both the law and decree of 10 August 1941 remained in effect. Thus, they included Darlan’s revisions but not those of the Council of State. Regarding the law’s specific provisions, the opening paragraph defined a museum as “any public and permanent collection of works with an artistic, historic, or archeological interest.”24 The text was then broken down into two sections, the first focusing on national museums, the second on provincial museums.

National Museums The law defined “national museums” as those owned by the state, placing the Direction des musées under the authority of the education ministry and managed by a director and an assistant director. The Paris region boasted several national museums: the Louvre, Orangerie, Museum of Modern Art, Jeu de Paume, Cluny, the Guimet museum of Asian art, the Museum of French Monuments, and Popular Arts and Traditions. Stateowned museums in Versailles included the palace itself, the Jeu de Paume, and the Grand and Petit Trianon museums. Other national museums in the Ile-de-France were the ceramic museum in Sèvres, Museum of National Antiquities in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the museum of seventeenthand eighteenth-century art and technology in Maisons-Laffitte, plus the chateaux of Malmaison, Bois-Préau (annex to Malmaison), and Fontainebleau. A few national museums were in the provinces: the Bonaparte home in Ajaccio, the Blérancourt museum of Franco-American cooperation, as well as chateaux in Compiègne and Pau. Collectively, the museums made up the Réunion des musées nationaux, a designation originally created in 1895 to centralize financing for state-owned museums.25 Article three specified that the director of national museums “is independent from the services of the fine arts department” and reports “directly to the secretary general of fine arts,” as Jaujard had hoped. Articles five through eight revamped the museum administration’s advisory body by dividing it into two councils, one of which, the Conseil administratif, focused on budgetary and personnel matters; and the other, the Conseil technique, approved acquisitions for the national museums. Curators of the national museums were to present potential acquisitions to the latter, which included art experts with proven competence—professors from

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the Collège de France and the Sorbonne, collectors, artists, and honorary curators. (See Appendix D.) The use of two separate councils was meant to improve efficiency in managing administrative details and to allow for careful consideration of acquisitions by competent art experts.26 The 1941 law, as mentioned earlier, also created new standards for hiring and promoting national museum curators and assistant curators. When a curator position became available, potential candidates were placed on a candidate list created by the curators of the other national museums. The director of national museums nominated a candidate from the list and sought approval first from the head of fine arts and the minister of education. Article eleven of the administrative decree specified that the curators would be chosen from “administrators, experts, archeologists, and historians with a high diploma from the Ecole du Louvre,” or “eminent personalities,” for whom the hiring commission chose to waive the diploma requirement. An earlier law promulgated on 1 June 1941 had reformed the Ecole du Louvre curriculum in order to distinguish between élèves libres (auditors) and students who sought more rigorous training for curator positions, earning a diplôme supérieur (high diploma).27 Candidates for curator positions who had received their training prior to the creation of the diplôme supérieur could be included on the candidate list, as long as they had been trained in a reputable program at one of a dozen other schools, such as the Ecole normale supérieure, or French art schools in Rome and Athens.28 These specified credentials show that professionalization of the curator corps entailed elite training, in top educational institutions. In addition, article ten created a committee made up of the national museum curators. The committee was to advise the councils on acquisition proposals, ensuring that trained experts would have a voice in the decision-making process.29 As we will see in Chapter 10, the newly formed committee played a key political role in 1942 and 1943 by protesting German art seizures and discussing German proposals to exchange works of art from French national collections.

Provincial Museums Perhaps the most important provisions in the 1941 law were those related to the provincial museums, creating a new relationship between these institutions and the central state. Municipal and departmental authorities retained ownership of their museums while the central administration increased its role in acquisitions, the recruitment and remuneration

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of curators, and art preservation. Within the Direction des musées natio­ naux, a Direction des musées de province would oversee two categories of museums: classé (classified) and contrôlé (controlled). Classified museums generally were larger and held more prestigious collections than controlled museums and received a higher level of state funding. Billiet had proposed the idea of creating different tiers of state intervention in 1936, dividing up seventy provincial museums into three categories. He maintained this organization in early drafts of the 1941 proposal and later regrouped them into two categories.30 Article fifteen of the reform law specified that there would be “no more than twenty” classified museums. An executive decree classified nineteen museums: those in Amiens, Angers, Avignon, Besançon, Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes, ­Orléans, Reims, Rennes, Rouen, Toulouse, and Tours. According to Haute­coeur, the language of article fifteen was deliberately vague, allowing the state to plan for a twentieth classified museum in Strasbourg, which at the time was part of the eastern territory annexed by the Reich.31 Nonclassified art museums owned by cities and departments—a total of nearly seven hundred—became controlled museums. Cultural districts were established around each classified museum, whose curator oversaw the controlled museums located within the district.32 The 1941 reform law centralized the administration of provincial museums in five important areas. First, while cities and departments remained primarily responsible for funding the museums, the law provided for an increase in state subsidies for curators’ salaries, restoration work, and exhibitions. The state-regulated entry fees and all proposals to create new public museums required approval by the fine arts administration.33 Second, the new law changed the hiring procedures for curators. Previously, mayors or prefects had appointed curators, a decision that required state approval if the museum held more than ten works of art donated by the national government. According to Hautecoeur, however, cities and departments had found ways of employing individuals whom the state had not approved. The officials created a sort of substitute curator position, in which the rejected candidate actually ended up serving as curator. In Hautecoeur’s view, the old system allowed local politics to dominate the hiring process and perpetuated incompetent leadership.34 The 1941 law addressed these irregularities by using hiring procedures similar to those for curators of national museums. After the reform, curators for

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all provincial museums, as well as the assistant curator of the fine arts museum in Lyon, would be selected from a candidate list created by a special commission. Required credentials included prior experience as an assistant curator or a high diploma from the Ecole du Louvre. The mayor or prefect—depending on whether the museum was owned by a municipality or department—then selected three preferred candidates from the list. The education minister made the final decision based on the mayor or prefect’s preferences.35 The third area of reform focused on the status of classified museum curators within the civil service and the regulation of their salaries. With the 1941 reform law, these administrators became civil servants whose salaries were determined by the fine arts administration and were partially state funded. Departments paid 60 percent of curator salaries, and the state paid the other 40 percent. The state’s contribution to municipal salaries was based on population size. Cities with less than forty thousand inhabitants contributed 40 percent, leaving 60 percent for state funding. Cities with between forty thousand and one hundred thousand people contributed 50 percent, and those above one hundred thousand inhabi­ tants paid 60 percent of the curator’s salary. In contrast, curators for controlled museums were not civil servants, and the cities or departments that owned the museums determined and funded their salaries.36 A fourth important provision was the creation of a new state-funded inspection program for all provincial museums. A similar measure had been created in 1928 but was never fully implemented. According to the 1941 law, inspectors were to examine the exhibition, maintenance, documentation, and storage of works, as well as the general upkeep of the museums. Classified museums were to be inspected by national museum curators who were competent in the relevant domain or by other art experts in the national administration. For example, Egyptologists from the Louvre would inspect provincial collections of Egyptian artifacts, while an inspector of historic sites (also competent in evaluating art objects and antiquities) would examine decorative art collections. Curators of classified museums, in turn, would inspect controlled museums located within their districts.37 Finally, the new law modified the acquisition process for provincial museums. All acquisitions, whether purchased by public authorities or donated to the museums, would now require approval by the technical council of the national museums and the education minister. According

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to Hautecoeur, this measure was meant to remove the curator from the decision-making process, thus reducing the influence of local politics.38 Although these important reforms had a lasting impact on the public museum administration, the Direction des musées faced several challenges in implementing the law during the Occupation.

Obstacles to Implementation The 1941 law had one immediate positive effect: the state now held legal jurisdiction over hundreds of public art collections that had been evacuated. Prior to the 1941 law, the central administration had served merely as an adviser to municipal and departmental authorities, providing limited subsidies for the evacuations. With the new legislation, the fine arts administration was able to transfer municipal and departmental collections as the battlefronts shifted or as the storage depots in use were found to be unsuitable for housing precious works of art. One might expect departmental and municipal authorities to reject an increase in central state control over provincial museums, but there is little evidence that provincial authorities protested the law. In fact, according to Hautecoeur, they generally welcomed the reform. Hautecoeur had a vested interest in downplaying hostility to the law in his memoirs, but the fine arts archives show no evidence of significant opposition. It is possible that further research in local archives might reveal some resistance to the reform, but Hautecoeur had consulted with mayors from major cities as the law was developed and explained its most important provisions. The only city officials who criticized the law, according to his account, were those who were disappointed that their museums were not classified.39 The reform elicited early praise. In Marseille, for example, the local press applauded the classification of the city’s fine arts museum, which at the time was considered one of the weakest collections in a major French city. An editorial in Le Petit Marseillais proclaimed that the city would finally have a museum worthy of Marseille. The author looked forward to the day when the museum would reopen, “perhaps transformed,” with a new roof and a “purified” collection.40 Pierre du Colombier, a prominent art critic, lauded the administration for intervening in crucial areas that previously had been dominated by local politics, such as acquisitions and curator nominations. He also praised the Direction des musées for ensuring a higher level of competence among curators in provincial museums.

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However, Colombier would have liked the reform to create a corps of regional superintendents under the authority of regional prefects, similar to a system used in Italy. Each superintendent would be responsible for not only museums but also historic monuments and protected natural sites within the given district. Such a corps, in his view, would be “perfectly in accordance with the general spirit of new French laws that promote regionalism.” Colombier also wondered whether increased state control might make provincial cities “less and less interested in a museum that so marginally belongs to them.”41 Such fears of excessive state control proved unfounded, at least during the Occupation, as several persistent obstacles stymied full implementation of the law. Perhaps most important, a lack of adequate funding consistently plagued the fine arts administration, and the law was not fully funded until 1943. This lack of funding, in turn, led to a lack in skilled personnel needed to help carry out the law’s new provisions. In preparing the 1943 budget, the Direction des musées implored Pétain to ensure full funding of its new mission, which was a key element in the “revaluation of the country’s spiritual wealth.” Pétain responded favorably, as he was “personally interested in the matter.” His office prepared a letter to the finance minister, asking that he set aside as much funding as possible to allow the museum administration to fully implement the new reform measures.”42 In May 1944, Jaujard prepared a fifty-page report for Georges Hilaire, Hautecoeur’s successor as director of fine arts, detailing myriad ways in which the system could be further improved. The department’s responsibilities had grown significantly, Jaujard explained, as it now oversaw more than seven hundred museums without a corresponding increase in funding and personnel. In particular, Jaujard underscored the inadequacy of security guards and an urgent need for two new administrators to manage the Direction des musées de province. He believed these measures were necessary not only to improve French museums but to make them the world’s finest: “Given the treasures in its public collections, and the role of its artists in the history of civilization,” he argued, France “should have the most important and best-organized museums in the world.” At a time when the state sought to reawaken the “great national values in the French spirit,” museums could provide valuable lessons through their artistic masterpieces. However, the Direction des musées needed additional means to fulfill this important mission and prevent museums from becoming mere “cemeteries for art.” Jaujard urged Hilaire to pursue these

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additional measures immediately, rather than wait until the end of the conflict. Any delay would surely incite criticism after the war, when the state would again promote the education of France and the nation’s cultural rayonnement throughout the world.43 .  .  . Jaujard’s observations in May 1944 succinctly summarize the broader goals behind the 1941 museum reform law. It was designed to improve museums and make collections more accessible to the French people, but it was also a way to strengthen the position of France as the world’s preeminent cultural power. In reality, New York already was eclipsing Paris as the capital of the art world, yet top Vichy officials, including Hautecoeur, Carcopino, Darlan, and Pétain, believed that France could maintain its international stature in cultural affairs. Pétain was directly involved in the law’s development, demanding prior approval by the Council of State— even though the education ministry, in the end, disregarded the body’s recommendations. It is also likely that missives from Pétain helped secure funding in the 1943 budget for the museum administration’s new mission. In terms of national cultural policy, the 1941 museum reform law was an important part of the general strengthening of central state control over cultural patrimony during the Occupation. The law reorganized national and provincial museums, created new educational standards for curators, raised the professional status of curators in classified museums by incorporating them into the civil service, and increased the independent control of the Direction des musées within the fine arts administration. Its creators included not only the politically moderate Jaujard and known communist sympathizer Billiet but also vichyste Admiral Darlan, who rewrote numerous provisions that remained in the final text, and ­Pétain himself, who monitored the law’s progress. The 1941 reform law thus reflected common ground among traditionalists, moderates, and leftists who believed the state held a moral obligation to protect the artistic patrimony in French museums for the collective good of the nation. These men with varied political affinities also looked ahead to the postwar period, perhaps with different visions for French society but with a common sense that France would derive global influence from cultural affairs—the civilizing mission redefined through artistic rayonnement. Although the museum reform could not achieve this highly ambitious goal on its own, it created a lasting administrative structure that shaped postwar museum affairs

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until the decentralization initiatives of the 1980s. Arts officials held similar ambitions for the nation’s many grandiose chateaux and cathedrals, along with picturesque villages with centuries-old churches and historic landmarks. Vichy policy centralized state management in this realm of artistic patrimony as well, aiming to preserve French architectural grandeur and encourage the return of tourism in peacetime.

5 Saving Historic Sites

The French state, owner of an architectural heritage that is among the richest in the world, including cathedrals, historic palaces, Versailles, Fontainebleau, the Louvre . . . does not have a true architectural division. . . . Expert commissions have underscored our need for reform and the establishment of a strong organization that will carry out state projects, manage public programs, and preserve the rich national patrimony bequeathed to us by centuries past. —Joint letter from Ministries of Education, Finance, and Justice to Pétain, proposing reorganization of fine arts office, 1 December 1940

On 23 June 1940 , Hitler was a tourist in Paris. Sightseeing with an entourage that included Arno Breker and Albert Speer, he admired the ornate Garnier opera house, marveled at the gold-domed Invalides palace housing Napoleon’s tomb, and, like so many tourists who have visited the City of Light, posed for photographs in front of the Eiffel Tower. Despite Hitler’s appreciation of the city’s cultural landmarks, over the course of the war his strategic objectives remained paramount—whatever the cost to French heritage. Four years later, as Allied forces moved eastward from Normandy and prepared to liberate Paris from the Nazis, Hitler sought to destroy many of the sites he had previously admired. Recognizing the symbolic importance of these structures to French grandeur, he ordered the German chief of forces in Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, to demolish the city as the Wehrmacht retreated. The Germans attached explosives to bridges along the Seine and placed them in Notre Dame, the Luxembourg palace, the Invalides, the Madeleine, and the opera house. In the end, Choltitz recognized the barbarity of Hitler’s orders and left the city’s historic structures intact, foiling Nazi plans for a dramatic and destructive exit from Paris.1 102

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For centuries French historic landmarks—chateaux, churches and cathedrals, medieval fortresses, commemorative arches, and state palaces—have been symbols of national power and grandeur. On the eve of World War II, cultural officials prepared for the harsh reality that some of these treasured sites would be damaged in the imminent conflict. They protected historic buildings as best they could before military operations began and continued to expand state protection of cultural and natural sites during the Occupation. Laying a legislative foundation that postwar administrations would build upon, Vichy officials sought to protect historic structures in the short term, prepare France for long-term economic growth through the tourism industry, and reclaim lost grandeur by preserving French national treasures and promoting public awareness of cultural patrimony.2

Preparation for War, 1937–1939 With the advent of air combat during the First World War, bombs had destroyed hundreds of historic churches and chateaux in northern and eastern regions of France. Air strikes flattened more than one thousand towns and villages and inflicted significant damage on two thousand more. Reconstruction projects during the interwar years included more than 350,000 homes, 1,200 churches, and 1,000 factories. The reigning doctrine at the time was la conservation intégrale, or “total preservation,” meaning that architects restored structures to their original appearance, at times reversing “errors” of previous restorations. During the mid-­ nineteenth century, architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and his followers had pursued stylistic purity, even if such a “restoration” actually expanded a structure or significantly modified the original style. By the 1920s and 1930s, preservation experts widely considered many of the ­nineteenth-century modifications abusive and restored the structures’ original appearance.3 The battered Reims cathedral, perhaps the most poignant reminder of the Great War’s destructiveness, underwent these stylistic shifts through successive repairs. Between the world wars, photographs and postcards of the cathedral’s ruins circulated throughout France, reminding French people of the nation’s suffering and generating a sense of outrage toward German barbarism. The French writer Edmond Rostand advocated leaving the cathedral in ruins, as a symbol of the war that would be “a source of

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shame for them, for us a Parthenon.” In the end, American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller helped finance the restoration, and architects eliminated perceived abuses of nineteenth-century modifications. Overall, however, restoration projects were carried out slowly because of lack of funding and personnel; the Reims cathedral reopened only in 1937—nineteen years after the armistice.4 After Hitler’s rise to power, while French architects were still repairing damage to churches and other cultural landmarks sustained during the previous war, fine arts officials began developing plans to protect sites in the event of another conflict. As technology in air combat had advanced significantly since the last war, above all they prepared to ward off the effects of nearby bomb explosions—fires and reverberations that could destroy weakened buildings and shatter stained-glass windows.5 In August 1937 education minister Jean Zay proposed measures to preserve the nation’s cultural patrimony. The fine arts administration had gained preservation experience during the First World War, when sandbags surrounded the Vendôme Column and the July Column on the place de la Bastille, and the statue of the Republic on place de la Nation became a towering mound of protective materials. Heritage preservation in wartime, like the evacuation of art, was considered part of the nation’s passive or civil defense. Preferring to take extraordinary measures in this domain rather than risk being caught unprepared, Zay emphasized in his report that “no bit of territory may be considered safe from aerial attacks.” He recalled the bombing of La Courneuve in 1918, which had caused significant damage to the nearby cathedral of Saint-Denis, and emphasized the importance of protecting sites located near potential military targets. Zay planned to dismantle stained-glass windows, build protective walls of sandbags around fragile edifices, and use all means necessary to prevent fires.6 He proposed a kind of heritage triage system, in which sites and objects would be divided into four categories. The first would include the most important elements that required preservation, down to those in the fourth category that were impossible to protect or were of “secondary interest.” In each administrative department, preservation specialists would coordinate their efforts with curators to protect art objects housed inside the historic buildings.7 As with the art evacuations, the international crisis over the Sudeten­ land in September 1938 served as a dress rehearsal for the protection of historic sites. On 6 September, with war appearing imminent, the Bâti-

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ments civils (Division of Public Buildings) distributed fire extinguishers and materials for sandbags to cities throughout the country and recruited workers to create protective ramparts. One report indicates that the 1938 operation ended up securing the sand and bags that actually were needed the following year; without that rehearsal, the military would have absorbed them all.8 The real test for French architectural experts came when Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, provoking the French and British declaration of war two days later. The extensive preparation in the previous two years enabled workers to protect historic structures throughout the country with remarkable efficiency. Under the leadership of a Captain Prieur, the Service des monuments historiques (Division of Historic Landmarks) first protected stained-glass windows, which were vulnerable to any explosion within a radius of one hundred meters. Prieur’s division had distributed scaffolding materials with interchangeable parts to cathedrals across the country, allowing workers to reach windows of all heights. Following the 1938 operation, workers had replaced the windows by using a malleable plastic material as caulking rather than cement, making it easier to dismantle them a year later. Securing personnel was a difficult task in itself, as the dismantling of stained glass required skilled workers, many of whom had been drafted for combat. As a result, the division was forced to train nearly a quarter of the workers on-site. Within four days, workers had dismantled the famed Sainte Chapelle stained-glass windows in Paris and those in the cathedrals of Bourges and Amiens. Within another week, they had protected windows at the Chartres and Metz cathedrals, and by the end of two weeks, workers had removed eighteen thousand square meters of stained glass. They replaced much of it with temporary windows, enabling churchgoers to continue worshipping during the conflict.9 Once the stained glass had been placed in safekeeping, architects focused on church buildings and other historic structures. To prevent fires, workers cleared flammable materials from attics and disassembled scaffolding made with wooden planks—the kind of scaffolding that had fueled the Reims cathedral fire in 1914. Metal buffers further protected decorative sculptures at the base of buildings. Preserving objects housed inside the churches, workers stacked sandbags around fragile statues and built protective shells to shield them from falling stones. Whenever possible, fine arts personnel evacuated mobile objects to storage depots along with museum collections. Workers in Paris stacked sandbags around Jean-Baptiste

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Carpeaux’s The Dance at the opera house and the Henri IV and Louis XIII commemorative statues. On the Arc de Triomphe the bas-relief by François Rude, La Marseillaise, was covered with thirty meters of scaffolding, plus forty-four thousand bags filled with twenty cubic meters of sand—a task that alone employed twenty-five workers for nearly two months.10 Despite the extensive precautions taken to minimize damage, fine arts personnel could not entirely prevent damage to historic sites. The 1940 campaign scarred 460 monuments classés (registered landmarks), the primary category of protected sites, along with seventy structures on the inventaire supplémentaire (secondary register). Eighty churches sustained significant damage along with homes in Blois, Orléans, Calais, Rouen, and Valenciennes. Other battered sites included the Evreux cathedral, the stock exchange center in Bordeaux, and the Amboise chateau. In Tours, the school of fine arts and public library were completely destroyed.11 Louis Haute­ coeur reviewed Prieur’s assessment of damages and over the course of the Occupation sponsored several pieces of legislation that expanded state protection of historic and natural sites.

Protecting the Arc de Triomphe. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

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Wartime Protection Reflecting on his tenure as head of fine arts under Vichy, Hautecoeur wrote in his memoirs that his administration had fulfilled a “mission to maintain public buildings and to protect sites of artistic, historic, and archeological interest.”12 The fine arts administration under Hautecoeur implemented measures that fall into three categories: administrative reform, the designation of historic landmarks and protected natural sites, and a series of laws that broadened the state’s preservation authority. Although the bureaucratic restructuring of the fine arts office may seem prosaic, it was central to Hautecoeur’s mission to “defend French beauty.” The administration, he argued, could not effectively protect the French artistic patrimony without proper organization.13 Once in office, Hautecoeur wasted no time developing a new administrative system for French architecture, his primary area of expertise. A law of 1 December 1940 created a division of architectural services directly responsible to him.14 Previously, several divisions in the education ministry alone had handled architectural affairs, and at times architects were forced to coordinate efforts with other ministries. For example, competing agencies managed the Invalides palace. This expansive structure dated to the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715) and housed a military hospital, as well as the tombs of Napoleon and numerous French marshals. The division of public buildings managed one section of the complex, the French military administered another, and the Division of Historic Landmarks oversaw the striking gold-plated dome. Repairs to a broken water pipe running throughout the vast building had required meetings and payment negotiations among representatives from all three offices.15 The creation of a single architecture division prevented this kind of bureaucratic redundancy. Later that month, on 31 December 1940, Hautecoeur created a corporation of architects, similar to existing legal and medical organizations. His project dovetailed with the broader economic goals of the Vichy regime, which sought to establish corporations as the primary institutions of professional life. Economists believed that corporations, also established in fascist Italy, would allow individual industries to regulate themselves and curb class conflict by fostering a sense of common interests among workers and employers.16 Hautecoeur’s goal in creating the corporation of architects was to build an association along the lines of the royal academies. “In four months,” he later boasted, “I was able to complete regulations that had been sought after by architects for more than half a century

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and that consecrated an evolution begun under Louis XIV.”17 The law established licensing regulations and new educational standards, which emphasized practical training over architectural theory. It also limited the profession to French citizens, with the exception of foreign architects protected by reciprocity agreements with their home countries. Hautecoeur hoped, moreover, that the corporation would establish aesthetic standards in the classicist tradition that he preferred.18 The fine arts office also added historic landmarks and natural areas to registers of protected sites, continuing a trend that had accelerated since the mid-nineteenth century. The July Monarchy created the Commission of Historic Monuments in 1837, beginning the process of classification, registering landmarks considered worthy of state protection—with the exception of churches, which fell under control of the Ministère des cultes (religion ministry). In 1887, another law required the central state to carry out maintenance and repair work to publicly owned structures, including those owned by cities and departments. Private owners were allowed to register their own historic properties but were not obligated to do so. Some owners preferred to avoid state interference in their affairs; between 1887 and 1900, some 110 properties were delisted by owners.19 The register of protected sites grew significantly after 1905 with the separation of church and state. While the law freed congregations from state intervention in their internal affairs, the religious structures remained public property, and many churches and cathedrals became designated landmarks managed by the fine arts administration. During the eight years between 1905 and 1913, some 1,862 sites became landmarks—roughly the same number as during the previous sixty-eight years, mainly because of the inclusion of religious structures.20 In 1913, another important patrimonial reform law allowed the state to extend landmark status to private property, with or without the owner’s consent. For private owners, there were benefits and drawbacks to having a property registered. Owners became eligible for subsidies to pay for restoration, but architectural experts in the Division of Historic Landmarks oversaw the projects, limiting owners’ control. The 1913 law also created the inventaire supplémentaire for lower-priority structures that were considered worthy of some state protection. This register allowed the state to prevent demolition of buildings that might be worthy of a listing on the primary register in the future. The fine arts office required private owners of sites on this register to notify the state of planned renovations or modifications,

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enabling the state to consider landmark designation. The system provided fewer restrictions as well as fewer benefits for private owners: restoration work did not require oversight by a state architect, but owners were ineligible for state subsidies. Preservation policy of the Third Republic expanded beyond historic structures and objects in 1930, when the most important parks and natural sites in France were added to both the primary and secondary registers.21 The Vichy regime extended this long-term trend of adding historic structures and scenic rural areas to registers of protected sites. Between July 1940 and March 1945, the French state (Vichy and the provisional government) designated 565 buildings as historic landmarks and placed 914 structures on the secondary register—roughly an annual average of 113 for the primary register, 182 for the secondary. The Vichy regime also listed natural sites between July 1940 and August 1944: 352 rural areas in the first category and 1,833 in the second (annual average over four years of 88 and 458, respectively).22 Georges Hilaire, who succeeded Hautecoeur in March 1944, later claimed that the landmark designations constituted “the most audacious and original work of the fine arts administration in the past one hundred years.”23 If one considers only the number of registrations, Hilaire exaggerates the singularity of the Occupation, as the pace was slower than that of 1905 to 1913, following the separation of church and state, and between 1919 and 1921, when six hundred war-torn sites became designated landmarks to enable state-funded restorations.24 Yet in the combined impact of primary and secondary registration, both for structures and natural sites, the Vichy government at least continued to expand the number of protected places that would be eligible for statefunded preservation in the postwar period. Natural parks and rural areas increasingly became a priority for members of the Division of Historic Landmarks, in part for their value to the tourism industry. In a preparatory report for the 1941 budget, the division observed that it was more important than ever to preserve exceptional landscapes “so that after the war tourism will be reborn and the country’s economic life will resume.”25 With this goal in mind, Hautecoeur sought to create an inventory of all potential tourism sites in France that deserved state protection. He solicited the assistance of private organizations such as the Touring-Club, a national association with chapters throughout France. The club published a periodical about French tourism sites, including scenic rural areas marred by new construction, billboards, ­telephone

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and electrical poles, and military exercises. The fine arts office also worked with the General Commissariat for Tourism within the commerce ministry to study ways in which electrical installations and factories could be built without compromising the surrounding landscapes. Hautecoeur and representatives from the Ministry of Industrial Production traveled to the Alps and the Pyrénées to determine appropriate sites for new factories, electrical plants, and stadiums that would not spoil scenic landscapes.26 Alongside the continued registration of historic buildings and natural sites, the Vichy regime also expanded existing patrimonial policy through new legislation. A key priority for Hautecoeur was securing state funding to restore structures—quickly and effectively—that had been damaged in combat. During the First World War, architects had learned the importance of repairing damage to cultural landmarks as quickly as possible to prevent further degradation and completing routine maintenance despite other pressing needs. Yet even by November 1939, the Division of Public Buildings noted that structures damaged during the Great War were still in “a lamentable state” and repairs would require “many years and heavy expenses,” a situation that could have been prevented simply with “routine maintenance.” “This experience,” the report’s author noted, “must serve as a lesson, and the error of 1914 to 1918 must not be repeated.”27 To some observers, the reconstruction projects would be a sign of the nation’s vitality, providing an important morale boost following the defeat to Germany. Henri Dorgères, rural activist and founder of the Comités de défense paysanne (Peasant Defense Committees) in the 1930s, argued this point. In August 1940, Dorgères wrote in Le Jour that the rapid reconstruction of French villages was no less important than the returnto-the-soil campaign. Although reconstruction would be expensive, he argued, the investment would become “an integral part of the fatherland’s patrimony” and would be “much more productive than the distribution of subsidies and financial assistance.” Dorgères added that peasants in the villages could assist in reconstruction projects “to prevent errors, waste, and unnecessary expenses that could be created by the most well-­meaning civil servants.” This unusual approach, he admitted, differed from old methods, but he believed the National Revolution “should not only supersede legislation; it must also overturn spirits and mores.”28 Hautecoeur also argued for the prompt restoration of historic sites in a report submitted to the Délégation générale à l’équipement national, a division within the finance ministry charged with coordinating urban-

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ization projects. Hautecoeur outlined three ways in which the arts could help rebuild France: by forging a sense of national unity, maintaining French artistic prestige throughout the world, and encouraging economic growth through the tourism industry. Restoration of historic sites would help encourage tourism once the war was over: “monuments, museum objects, or collections attract tourists, and we know the influence they have on a country’s reputation and the hidden imports of foreign currency.” In the construction business, Hautecoeur explained, “the Frenchman builds solidly but maintains poorly.” He added, “Will we imitate the neglectfulness of our ancestors and let a patrimony that attracts tourists disappear?”29 The fine arts administration aimed to put these ideas into practice through a law of 12 July 1941, providing state funding for the restoration of buildings ravaged during the battles of 1940—including those added to the registers after sustaining damage. According to Paul Verdier, a government inspector of historic landmarks, the state sought to “preserve in the cruelly battered regions of France all that reminds us of their historic past and ensures artistic interest in them.” The administration demonstrated its “firm intention to rebuild the monuments of France” and to “reconstruct the traditional physiognomy” of the country “wherever and whenever possible.”30 Private owners of damaged buildings were to submit claims to their prefects, who would then forward the request to the Division of Historic Landmarks for final review. Owners were encouraged to submit photographs showing the building’s condition before and after the damage.31 Restoration would be granted only for destruction caused by acts of war and excluded losses from storms or accidents indirectly related to military operations. The new legislation also allowed the education minister, upon consultation with the Division of Historic Landmarks, to declassify sites that had been damaged beyond repair.32 Such an ambitious measure, however, was unrealistic from the outset given the flow of resources to Germany and the country’s more pressing financial needs during and immediately after the war. In the short term, the state undertook only the most urgent restoration projects, including some that had been under way when the war began and required immediate attention. The cupola at the French Institute, for example, was in disrepair, creating “fears of catastrophe on days of public sessions,” according to a 1939 government report. Unfinished projects launched by the Third Republic also had to be completed, such as additions to the Collège

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de France and the Ecole normale supérieure.33 Most restoration projects, however, were postponed until after the end of hostilities, and even then the lack of funding and skilled personnel continued. A statement by the Division of Historic Landmarks in April 1946 indicated that individuals and municipalities were having trouble obtaining estimates for claims because of a dearth of architects and funding. With their services in high demand, architects often turned down smaller and less profitable jobs.34 In another example of Vichy legislation, a law of 30 August 1941 extended the review period of landmark designation from six to twelve months, giving architects in the fine arts office more time to consider applications and correspond with prefects and property owners.35 More significantly, the Vichy regime also began regulating the construction of commemorative monuments in public spaces. This policy was related to another law of October 1941 that organized the dismantling of bronze statues in parks and public squares across France. As we will see in Chapter 7, the recycling of bronze statues was the Vichy regime’s solution to German demands for shipments of nonferrous metal, needed to manufacture armaments for Hitler’s war machine. The loss of statues commemorating local heroes in towns throughout the country prompted communities to propose replacement statues. The fine arts office, determined to prevent the creation of eyesores in public squares, instituted a law on 13 January 1942 requiring prior state approval for new commemorative or decorative monuments on public land, with the exception of cemeteries. The law required an applicant to submit to the fine arts office a detailed description of the project, three photographs of the model (front, back, and side views) and another photograph of the potential site, a drawing of the project, and proposed inscription. Military monuments required additional approval by the relevant branch of the armed forces (army, navy, or air force) and by the interior ministry. In the event that this procedure was not respected, the prefect would issue an order to dismantle the new monument.36 On 25 February 1943, another law allowed the designation of megaliths as historic landmarks and extended the protection of registered buildings to a five hundred–meter radius around the site. Technological advances in modern construction had allowed the creation of taller and more imposing buildings, tainting views of and from historic sites. The preservation laws of 1913 and 1930 thus proved inadequate, as they did not protect areas adjacent to landmarks. A fine arts report cited the example

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of the Vieux Port in Marseille, which had been “disfigured” by “two massive constructions” along the wharf. In Valence, a seven-story apartment building was under construction that would destroy the city’s most impressive view, and in Amboise, a four-story industrial building was being built five meters from the wall surrounding the historic chateau. Given these “regrettable precedents” carried out by “unscrupulous individuals,” the fine arts office believed it necessary to prevent such construction near historic and natural sites.37 The Division of Architectural Services drafted the initial proposal in the fall of 1941 and coordinated with the delegation for Equipement national within the finance ministry to create the final law.38 Public architects considered the measure necessary to isolate and more effectively display cultural landmarks—a significant idea that introduced a new element in patrimonial policy. From then on, public officials were concerned about not only the protected structures or sites in themselves but also the surrounding areas that affected views of and from them. The law gave the state, departments, and cities the right to expropriate property adjacent to protected structures. All new construction or renovations that could be seen near or from the site required prior approval by the education ministry, upon consultation with the Division of Historic Landmarks.39 Such a measure could have a wide-ranging impact, but the architectural division promised reasonable application of the law, planning to reject building permits only when new construction posed “certain danger” to protected sites. Whenever possible the division would seek “an amiable accord . . . through negotiations with the applicant.” A head architect in each of the French departments could provide a provisional permit, for example, subject to approval of details such as building materials and paint colors.40 In a related measure, the Vichy regime in April 1943 banned the posting of advertisements on and around historic landmarks. Between 1902 and 1938, several laws had been passed to limit advertising around historic sites, but none had effectively curbed the practice. A number of observers had lamented the proliferation of bill posting, including Haute­coeur and writer Jean Giraudoux, who served as propaganda minister under Vichy. In his 1939 publication Pleins pouvoirs, Giraudoux argued that in order to project the image of a top world power, the French government needed to clean up the nation’s cities. Advertising, in his view, diminished the quality of urban life, along with poorly planned roads, unsightly commemorative monuments, and the disappearance of parks.41

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The education ministry under Vichy echoed these ideas in a report to Pétain, in which it argued that bill posting was “the most displeasing, the most tyrannical form of advertising” because it endangered “individual liberty.” While an individual may skip over advertisements in newspapers or turn off a radio, the author argued, the pedestrian could not avoid “immense billboards, most often painted in loud colors” that were “outrageously displayed in places most likely to strike one’s gaze.” Advertisers placed posters in areas that attracted people, such as around historic landmarks, panoramic views, or “landscapes that invite silent admiration and meditation.” The ministry recognized that advertising was inherently part of economic life but called on businesses to “revise their current methods, adapt them to today’s times, discipline themselves, and demonstrate that they can use moderation, discretion, and good taste.”42 Although these ideas reflect the classicist aesthetic preferred by Haute­ coeur and promoted balance, reason, and moderation, they had circulated among lawmakers for at least forty years prior to his administration. Laws promulgated in 1902, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1922, 1923, 1926, 1930, and each year from 1935 to 1938 attest to the persistent effort of parliamentarians to curb advertising and their failure to do so.43 A Senate report from 1910 indicates that posters and billboards were almost always aesthetically displeasing, a phenomenon “deplored by all men of taste.” Other European countries had taken measures to curb bill posting in the early 1900s—Germany in 1902, England in 1907, and Switzerland in 1908. The French parliament followed suit on 22 March 1910, banning publicity on or around designated landmarks.44 Yet the ban proved difficult to enforce because it relied on the intervention of prefects, many of whom disregarded it. The argument that freedom of the press, established in 1881, also guaranteed freedom in advertising had some public support. Some property owners considered the ban a violation of their right to post bills on their own walls. Subsequent laws passed in 1912, 1923, and 1926 increased taxes on bills posted in public spaces but did not succeed in significantly reducing advertisements. By 1935, lawmakers had developed yet another law, arguing that “the protection of monuments and landscapes seeks not only to preserve the true face of France; it is the defense of essentially productive treasures, as they attract and keep tourists on our soil.”45 As did past laws, the 1935 regulation relied on the intervention of prefects and municipal councils and also proved ineffective. Hautecoeur initiated yet another version of the advertising ban under Vichy, drafted by site inspector Verdier. The new text, promulgated

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on 13 April 1943, revised vague language of previous measures. It distinguished permanent advertisements (painted, installed on buildings) from temporary images (posters glued onto walls) and offered different provisions for urban and rural settings. It allowed permanent notices only in urban settings, defined as groups of twenty-five homes or more. In urban areas the law banned advertisements from roofs and windows, including shop windows; outlawed billboards on top of buildings that increased the height of notices; limited the size of ads to sixteen square meters; and prohibited advertisements within one hundred meters of protected sites. Moreover, prefects had the authority to ban or restrict advertising in any other location as deemed necessary and set aside zones d’affichage (special zones for bill posting).46 Outside urban areas the law allowed posters only on building walls, as opposed to freestanding billboards, and established a maximum size of three square meters, with a maximum height of three meters above the ground. Hautecoeur later boasted that because of the law, “One would no longer see immense billboards in the countryside that had tarnished the most beautiful landscapes.”47 The actual impact of the law is unclear, at least in the short term, mainly because it continued to rely on the intervention of prefects. With these agents increasingly preoccupied with more urgent matters in 1943 and 1944, such as food shortages, deportations, the STO, and policing resistance activity, it is unlikely that many paid close attention to the posting of advertisements in their departments. While Vichy patrimonial legislation aimed to prepare France for the resumption of tourism after the war, the battles of 1944 caused significant damage to historic sites, hitting the Atlantic coast and northern France the hardest. Several regions in particular sustained extensive damage, including the Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Normandy, the Loire Valley, the Paris region, and the Midi. The Rouen cathedral suffered extensive damage during air raids in April 1944, and the city’s Palais de Justice was set on fire in August the same year. Seven churches were destroyed in Caen, and the town of Vire lost two important historic landmarks, the Tour de l’Horloge and the Fontaine-Henry chateau. The city of Saint-Lô in Normandy was almost entirely destroyed.48 In the Ile-et-Vilaine department, the walled city of Saint-Malo lost 80 percent of its buildings to bombs or resultant fires. Cathedrals in SaintMalo, Orléans, and Nantes were also damaged, along with famous GalloRoman arenas in Arles. In contrast, historic landmarks in the Paris region

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Destroyed historic buildings in Rouen, June 1944. Photo: Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

were largely spared from the bombing, with the exception of the military academy in Saint-Cyr, a designated historic landmark, where a classroom building was seriously damaged and the chapel was completely destroyed.49 An air raid over Strasbourg on 11 August 1944 dropped five bombs on the Rohan chateau, destroying a terrace, the main vestibule, sections of the roof, and two decorative sculptures. Another bomb struck a wing of the cathedral but left much of it intact. The historical and ­Alsatian museums were both damaged by bombs that fell nearby, breaking windows and damaging floor tiles.50 The Germans also ravaged several important historic landmarks as they retreated eastward in the summer of 1944. In addition to the tragic civilian massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limousin and destruction of the entire village, the Germans destroyed churches in Saint-Dié, ­Perpignan, and Dortan. Outside Paris retreating German forces burned down the “Queen’s pavilion” of the Vincennes chateau, a twelfth-century building that contained a museum of the First World War.51 After the war, the Division of Historic Landmarks estimated the total damage to protected sites at

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10 billion francs—more than twenty-three times the entire fine arts budget of 1944 (424 million francs).52 With a persistent dearth in public funding and skilled labor, reconstruction in many cities was a slow process that continued into the 1960s.53 .  .  . The Vichy regime accelerated a thirty-year trend toward centralized patrimonial policy that protected historic landmarks and natural sites. Conditions were ripe for wartime reforms as a result of a unique convergence of circumstances. The war created a new urgency to protect these important buildings and sites against air raids, and there was a belief among government officials that the state could better orchestrate this protection than municipal or departmental officials working in isolation. Perhaps most important, there also was a widespread consensus that the nation’s historic and natural sites were public assets worthy of centralized protection. As the head of fine arts, Hautecoeur sought to expand the state’s role in managing historic sites within his mission to “defend French beauty.” Yet the potential impact of the policies went beyond mere aesthetics. Hautecoeur and officials in the industrial production and commerce ministries also recognized the important economic value of historic and natural sites for the tourism industry. From an ideological standpoint, the protection of historic monuments complemented the National Revolution’s program for national renewal. Legislation regarding historic monuments and natural sites was part of a broader centralization of patrimonial policy, designed to protect the nation’s cultural heritage and maintain the position of France as the predominant cultural power. As described by Hautecoeur in his report for the Délégation de l’équipement national, increased state support of the arts would help foster a sense of national identity and create a leadership role for France on the international stage. Despite Hautecoeur’s ambitious goal to use fine arts policy to help “rebuild the soul of France,” the actual impact of these laws during the war was negligible. The fine arts office faced numerous obstacles in fully implementing the wartime measures because of a lack of time, funding, and skilled labor. Yet the spirit behind these laws endured after the Liberation, as the postwar governments validated most of them, laying a foundation for more extensive and coordinated patrimonial policies during André Malraux’s cultural ministry in the 1960s.

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In a related area of Vichy preservation policy, the German presence on French soil created new urgency to protect archeological artifacts and regulate excavations. As scientists in the Nazis’ employ excavated in France to demonstrate a prehistoric domination of Germanic peoples on the European continent, education minister Jérôme Carcopino spearheaded lasting archeological legislation that, as initially conceived, bolstered Vichy’s National Revolution.

6 Archeology and the National Revolution

It is worth noting that the projects assigned to the directors of antiquities, or to their representatives, while enriching the historical and artistic national patrimony, will also have a positive effect on the areas where they are carried out and developed. The intellectual elite of our cities—an essential component of regional life—ought to understand better the meaningful origins, history, and culture of the generations who gave character to provincial life; [the elite] will be able to draw upon an increased vitality and new activity. —Circular from Pierre Pucheu and Jérôme Carcopino to regional prefects, 16 April 1942

in public museums, cathedrals, chateaux, and other historic landmarks, artifacts excavated in France were an important component of the cultural patrimony. During the Occupation, the Vichy regime’s regionalist program provided an ideological justification for regulating archeological excavation and research carried out on French soil. Education minister Jérôme Carcopino, a classical historian and amateur archeologist, promoted excavation as a means of establishing a sense of shared history among local and regional communities. Guided by this mission, in September 1941 Carcopino oversaw the implementation of the first national archeological policy created in France, commonly known as the Carcopino Law. Some studies of French archeological policy minimize the wartime context of the Carcopino Law’s promulgation. Catherine Rigambert has analyzed the laws of 1941 and 1942 within a broader continuum from the Restoration to the Fifth Republic, without noting the unique circumstances of the Vichy period.1 A 1993 report by the Direction du patrimoine Along with the art collections

119

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in the French Ministry of Culture states that “the law of 1941 is merely the product of a long battle to protect archeological patrimony,” thus any trace of Vichy ideology is “hardly apparent.”2 In dismissing the relevance of the wartime regime, these observers underestimate the importance of the political and ideological context, in which the “long battle” to codify archeological practices finally became law. A reform measure as significant as the Carcopino Law, which even bears the name of a loyal Pétainist, begs a closer analysis of the regime’s political motivations in creating it. In another example of the Vichy regime’s preservation reform paradox, the Occupation provided a favorable context for the creation of new policies, partly because of the political goals of Vichy traditionalists. Even though the archeological reform laws may have filled a decades-old lacuna in French policy, they were implemented with a new ideological justification that affirmed the traditionalist tenets of the National Revolution.

German Archeologists in France Carcopino’s tenure in the education ministry helps explain the timing of reform on the French side; equally significant, at least, was the presence of German archeologists excavating in several regions of France, under Nazi patronage and often with the assistance of French archeologists. Since the founding of the Third Reich, German archeologists had been exploring the prehistoric influence of Germanic peoples across the European continent. German scientists and amateur archeologists drew inspiration from the early twentieth-century racial theories of linguist Gustav Kossinna, a professor at the University of Berlin who in 1902 headed Germany’s first national archeology program. Kossinna developed an archeological method called Siedlungsarchäologie, based on a vision of European ethnic territories. Kossinna and his followers promoted a Germano­centric interpretation of prehistoric Europe during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, roughly 7000 to 2300 b.c.e., with regional variations in development across the continent. Indo-European peoples, these scholars argued, “Germanized” Neolithic cultures in northern, central, and western Europe through a warrior aristocracy. In the early twentieth century, Kossinna’s theories were highly controversial among scientists in Germany and throughout Europe. Archeologists questioned Kossinna’s expertise, pointing to his training in philology, and were alarmed by his overly nationalistic assertion of Germanic racial superiority. With the

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rise of the Third Reich, however, Kossinna’s ideas shaped Nazi archeological policy and provided an ideological basis for excavation in northern and western Europe.3 As Lars Schreiber Pedersen argues, German archeologists “made a Faustian bargain with the new system and legitimized the expansion plans of the National Socialist leadership” by demonstrating the presence and cultural superiority of prehistoric Germanic peoples across the continent.4 These men aimed to reveal an advanced Germanic culture through prehistoric artifacts, particularly shards of pottery and porcelain with specific decorative markings and runes (characters from Scandinavian alphabets), evidence of an advanced system of writing. European Germani­ zation was held to represent the founding moment of “Germanity” and the transformation of Europe from the Neolithic to the Iron Age around 800 b.c.e.5 The head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Heinrich Himmler, also embraced and radicalized these ideas as scientific affirmation of modern Aryan ethnic superiority. As Jonathan Petropoulos puts it, Himmler’s “highly racialist worldview, his passion for Teutonic myth and imagery, and his idiosyncratic understanding of history all contributed to his bizarre conception of German culture.” His accumulation of power in control of Nazi police forces and the SS, moreover, gave Himmler significant power and influence in the cultural realm and the ability to use scientific and historical research to affirm his Aryan worldview.6 Himmler sought to attract scientists and scholars who would put Kossinna’s ideas into practice and excavate in “Germanic” ethnic territories. On 1 July 1935, he founded the Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte, Deutsches Ahnenerbe (Study Group for Primordial Intellectual History, German Ancestral Heritage), shortened to Ahnenerbe. Himmler served as the association’s curator, and Herman Wirth, founder of the Institute of Intellectual Prehistory, managed affairs as president. The ­Ahnenerbe promoted the notion of a direct succession between modern-day Germans and prehistoric tribes, separated by a mere thirty or forty generations. In this vision, the National Socialist empire was embodied in its people, with a particularly German spirit, soul, and character, the product of well-preserved virility across the generations and robust breeding. The Ahnenerbe gathered a group of eminent German academics who were easily persuaded to support Himmler’s project.7 The Race and Settlement Main Office, which traced the ancestral lineage of SS members and officers to ensure racial purity, announced in September 1935 that within two years all important

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positions in prehistory would be occupied by SS men; experts known to have a neutral or negative view of National Socialism would be replaced.8 Wirth himself, in the end, appeared to lack devotion to the Nazi cause, and in 1937 he was replaced by Walther Wüst, dean of philosophy (Dekan der philosophischen Fakultät) at the University of Munich and a specialist in Indian literature and religion.9 On 9 August 1937, the Ahnenerbe became an official division of the SS, renamed Forschungs und Lehrgemeinschaft das Ahnenerbe (Research and Teaching Community in Ancestral Heritage). Himmler nominally assumed the presidency in January 1939, strengthening the organization with financial contributions from like-minded wealthy associates who built a discretionary fund that grew from RM 600,000 in 1936 to RM 8 million by 1944.10 As the war progressed and Himmler’s responsibilities extended to the Final Solution, the Ahnenerbe also played a role in Nazi death camps. In 1941, Himmler had instructed the organization’s business manager, Wolfram Sievers, to found and direct within the Ahnenerbe an Institut für Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung (Institute for Military Scientific Research), which later oversaw medical experiments carried out on Jews and other victims. The Ahnenerbe thus was connected to some of the Reich’s most heinous crimes against humanity.11 Himmler was not the only Nazi official with a keen interest in archeological affairs. Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, who also oversaw the looting of Jewish cultural assets in western Europe, had been developing his own network of prehistory experts. Because of the political implications of tracing a prehistorical Aryan lineage in Europe, these two men developed a fierce rivalry in archeological affairs, as both sought to control German prehistorical research. In 1934, Rosenberg established a cultural agency within the Nazi Party with six sections: education, art, letters, preand proto-history, archives for church affairs, and sciences. Within the prehistory section, he appointed Hans Reinerth to serve as Reich deputy of German prehistory. Just as Wirth recruited experts to the Ahnenerbe, Reinerth attempted the same for Rosenberg’s service. Reinerth proved a less able administrator, however, and several respected researchers shifted to the Himmler-Wirth camp, which appeared more welcoming to erudition. The Ahnenerbe leadership pursued a rigorous intellectual and research agenda in Germanic prehistory, whereas Rosenberg’s aims were more superficial, immediate, and practical, aiming to bolster Nazi Party propaganda through archeological discovery. The two teams, as a whole,

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managed to dominate German archeology by the late 1930s, winning the loyalty of scientists through a mixture of threats and monetary rewards funded by the Nazi Party.12 Beyond the Himmler-Rosenberg rivalry, a third institution managed to survive under the Third Reich: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI; German Archeological Institute). The DAI was created in 1829 and specialized in the classical period, having dominated early twentiethcentury archeological research in Greece and Italy.13 While Himmler and Rosenberg obsessively sought to reveal Aryan roots in prehistoric Nordic and Germanic sites, Hitler himself preferred the grandeur of the classical Greek and Roman civilizations. According to Albert Speer, Hitler lambasted Rosenberg and Himmler’s obsession with Nordic and early Germanic populations. Hitler once referred to Rosenberg as “a Baltic German who thinks in horribly complicated terms,” his seven hundred–page Myth of the Twentieth Century as “stuff nobody can understand.”14 Himmler’s Germanic mysticism fared no better. The Führer allegedly complained that Himmler’s research only proved the inferiority of German civilization in relation to that of the Romans: Why do we call the whole world’s attention to the fact that we have no past? It isn’t enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds. All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of their culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler makes a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be having a laugh at these revelations.15

Hitler’s vision of human history, as related by Speer, confuses the Ahnenerbe’s work on prehistory and technological advances in antiquity. Yet the Führer knew enough about classical history to support research on ancient Greece and Rome. The DAI, with an emphasis on classical research, survived largely because of Hitler’s support and its members included influential Nazis, such as Hans-Joachim Apffelstaedt and Heinz Haake.16 A few prominent French archeologists proved willing to cooperate with the Reich’s agents. During the 1930s, archeological research in France had lagged behind the better-funded and better-organized German program, and French scholars welcomed intellectual exchanges with their German counterparts. Beginning in 1933, Wirth exchanged letters

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with the curator of the French Museum of National Antiquities, Raymond Lantier. Wirth and Reinerth both were interested in searching for evidence of Germanic engravings on megaliths in the Breton region. Contacts between German researchers and Lantier intensified from 1937 to 1939, when the Museum of National Antiquities hosted Reinerth and a team of several German archeologists who studied the museum’s collections.17 As a counterpoint to these projects in the 1930s, at least one German scientist proposed a collaborative Franco-German project to challenge Nazi theories of Aryan prehistorical dominance. In July 1937 Franz Weidenreich, director of the Institute of Physical Anthropology at the University of Frankfurt, contacted Lantier about the possibility of studying the presence of Jews in North Africa. A Jew himself, Weidenreich suggested this research could help counter “the ideas circulating in Germany and certain Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian milieus about the cultural and intellectual supremacy of the Teutonic race.”18 These ties among French and German archeologists developed at a time when the prospect of war between the two countries increased as well, creating a tension between the spirit of intellectual cooperation and the practical difficulties posed by the threat of renewed conflict. As tensions mounted in September 1938, for example, Lantier was forced to prepare for a partial evacuation of his museum’s collections. After the declarations of war a year later, the artifacts joined paintings and other objects from the national fine arts museums in the Chambord and Cheverny chateaux.19 The 1940 defeat of France created new research opportunities for German archeologists. During the first two years of the Occupation, scientists in the Nazis’ employ carried out excavations in several regions of France, drawing on the contacts they had established with French archeologists in the 1930s. In June 1940, Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Office, advocated sending Ahnenerbe missions to France. German research peaked just prior to the occupation of the entire French territory in November 1942, when workers were increasingly needed to support military operations. The extent of German interest in various regions of France correlated with a perceived level of “Germanity,” with particular emphasis on two special projects headed by prehistorian Herbert Jankuhn. In the region of Alsace and Moselle, Jankuhn’s team sought to demonstrate an ancestral linkage to Germanic culture, showing that Alsatians were direct descendants of Germanic populations, thus justifying the region’s annexation to the Reich.20

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Elsewhere in France, Jankuhn was particularly keen to study megaliths in Brittany to demonstrate the role of northern, Germanic people in their construction. Yet Rosenberg’s team of experts shared Jankuhn’s ambitions, and the Nazi missions in Brittany exemplify the HimmlerRosenberg rivalry. Himmler arranged for Jankuhn to lead a detachment to Brittany in October 1940. Once there, Jankuhn was dismayed to encounter prehistorians from Rosenberg’s services, under the direction of Werner Hülle and Walter Modrijan. With Rosenberg’s support, Hülle and Modrijan had already begun measuring and studying the megaliths in the Menec and Kermario installations. Jankuhn was incensed to find German rivals in Brittany but did not confront them immediately. He waited five weeks before finally meeting with Hülle in Carnac, an encounter that merely resulted in an “exchange of words.” Rosenberg protested in vain to Himmler that his own prehistorians should carry out the study.21 Researchers from both Nazi teams developed plans to conduct aerial studies of the megaliths. Rosenberg’s network launched these studies first, beginning with a topographical study of the Carnac region from September to December 1940, overseen by Hülle. Detailed aerial photographs were taken of the megaliths and surrounding areas, and Rosenberg’s team carried out an extensive inventory of prehistoric objects in the Vannes and Carnac museums. Aerial photographs taken by the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe also supplemented the research of Amt Rosenberg.22 These preliminary studies by Rosenberg’s services helped German researchers launch excavations in areas surrounding the megaliths in 1941 and 1942. Friedrich Walburg, a German teacher from Bremen, directed the excavations with the assistance of the French curator of the Carnac museum, Maurice Jacq. Although Jacq was able to obtain several ceramic pieces for the Carnac museum, most of the objects were sent to Berlin and were not recovered. German scientists conducted other excavations in Pasde-Calais, again with the goal of demonstrating the presence of Germanic populations in this area during the early Iron Age.23 Within the northern occupied zone, the German Military Command in France (MBF) coordinated archeological activities with French institutions. The Kunstschutz, the German military division charged with protecting cultural patrimony in France, created a unit devoted to archeology and prehistory. The head of the service, Hans Möbius, worked regularly with Lantier, who remained curator of the Museum of National Antiquities. In August 1941, for example, Lantier initiated an exchange of research

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materials with German archeologists. Several months later, he contributed to a German exposition by providing Möbius with a mold from the tomb of Childeric, the presumed father of Clovis. (A fifth-­century king of the Germanic Franks, Clovis was an early conqueror of modern-day French territory and thus a particularly appealing figure to the Nazis.) Lantier also remained in close contact with German archeologists who were excavating at Entremont, a site near Aix-en-Provence, after artifacts were discovered during military operations. In addition, German archeologists in the Reich’s employ regularly established a rapport with local French researchers to coordinate their activities. While maintaining cordial ties with French archeologists, the Germans planned eventually to control archeological affairs in France through a centralized archeological administration in Paris, in which excavations in France would be managed by five German scientists—one assigned to the Paris region and four to the provinces.24 German archeologists developed only a few projects related to the Gallo-Roman period. One such proposal from the DAI aimed to determine the chronology of Frankish invasions and demonstrate the influence of Germanic culture during the Roman Empire. German archeologist Hans Zeiss developed another project with the support of both Rosenberg and Himmler’s networks, a study of medieval Germanic cemeteries located between the Seine and Loire rivers. As a general rule, however, the Reich’s archeological apparatus prioritized research in prehistory, leaving Gallo-Roman sites to French scientists. Thus, there was little competition among German and French archeologists to dominate specific sites. French archeologists focused on Gallo-Roman excavations in southern France, a scientific and intellectual preference that held the added benefit of allowing research within the unoccupied zone. Just as German prehistorical projects affirmed the worldview of National Socialism, the French focus on Gallo-Roman sites served the ideological goals of the Vichy regime.25

Vichy Ideology and French Archeology Vichy traditionalists sought to assert the regime’s legitimacy by linking it to what they believed was the founding of the French nation during the Gallo-Roman period (121 b.c.e. to the fifth century c.e.). The regime’s official Francisque insignia consisted of two symbols from the Gallic period: the baton and the double-headed hatchet. According to

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French legend promoted by Vichy propaganda, the Gauls and their leader, Vercingetorix, used the hatchet in their unsuccessful uprising against Julius Caesar in 52 b.c.e. By harking back to this moment in Gallic history, Vichy leaders chose to emphasize the Gauls’ courageous heroism, but also a period that ended in defeat by an occupying power. Just as the defeat at Alésia was viewed as a defining moment in French history, the 1940 defeat would, in the end, unify the French nation.26 As stated in January 1941 by agriculture minister Pierre Caziot: Gaul accepted its defeat. Julius Caesar brought the Roman peace; victors and vanquished came together and from this great upheaval the Gallo-Roman civilization was born, making us what we are today. Two thousand years later, we find ourselves in the same position as our Gallic ancestors, and we profoundly hope that an understanding between the victors and the vanquished will finally give rise to a European peace, which alone can save the world.27

This commemoration of ancient Rome’s influence over the Gauls, moreover, emphasized the Latin roots of the French nation, an idea that suited the classicist proclivities of Vichy traditionalists. A more Germanophile interpretation of the founding of the French nation might instead highlight the overthrow of the Romans by the Germanic Franks under Clovis in 486 c.e.—a moment that perhaps too closely resembled the defeat of 1940 and thus held less symbolic appeal for the French than the legend of Alésia. As Krzysztof Pomian has argued, Vichy’s celebration of Gallic history and culture reflected a long-term public debate from the early eighteenth century on the origins of the French nation. When was it established? Who were its true ethnic ancestors? The Franks, the Gauls, or a combination of the two? Were certain twentieth-century descendants more French than others, depending on their ancestry?28 According to Pomian, French interest in the Gauls, historically, has been most intense during periods of crisis—during the religious wars of the sixteenth century, in the wake of social uprisings in 1848 and the 1871 Paris Commune, and during the two world wars.29 Between 1870 and 1914, French histories and imagery of the Gauls had a particularly anti-German slant. The Roman conquest was viewed in positive terms, allowing the French to claim ancestry in a superior civilization that had defeated the bearers of an inferior German Kultur. Under Vichy, propaganda instead emphasized parallels between the Gallic period and the Occupation as times of national strength in response to war and defeat.30

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A ceremony on 30 August 1942 celebrating the second anniversary of the Legion, the veterans’ organization created by the Vichy regime, illustrates this instrumentalization of the past. Several thousand veterans attended the event held at Gergovie, a site near Clermont-Ferrand where Vercingetorix had won a key battle against Caesar. In a solemn ceremony, a packet of soil from each commune in France was placed in a marble cenotaph sealed by Pétain, symbolically affirming the nation’s territorial integrity—despite the various occupation zones established by the armistice. An accompanying text written by René Giscard d’Estaing, uncle to the future president of the Fifth Republic, juxtaposed the heroic Gallic past, when warriors became united under Vercingetorix and a sense of French nationhood was born, with the present unity and promise of national renewal under Pétain. Another commonality in this parallel was the eventual submission to a stronger power—the Gauls to the Romans and the French under Vichy to the Germans. As Pomian puts it, the anti-German message in Gallic history and imagery from the early Third Republic had given way to an interpretation of Gallo-Roman history that justified collaboration with the Germans in founding a new European civilization.31 In this context, the Vichy regime used archeological excavation to bolster an official narrative of French history. In 1941 and 1942, the state launched excavations at key Gallo-Roman locations: Gergovie; the Fourvière hill near Lyon, the former capital of Gaul, where two arenas were discovered; the fortifications at Alésia near modern Dijon, where Caesar finally triumphed over Vercingetorix; and at Autun, the former capital of the powerful Aedui Gallic tribe.32 Along with these highly symbolic excavations, the Vichy regime created the country’s first national archeological policy through the Carcopino Law of September 1941.

Archeological Policy under Vichy Since the turn of the century, several European governments had developed national archeological policies as a way to prevent the clandestine exportation of valuable artifacts. In this area, France lagged behind Italy, Germany, and Spain, mainly because of fierce opposition to any sort of centralized policy by amateur French archeologists. Jérôme Carcopino was determined to overcome this antagonism. He intended to follow the example of other European countries in professionalizing French archeology and creating a centralized administrative framework.

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Most of the archeological reforms enacted under Vichy had already been proposed during the Third Republic, and the main principles were promoted by international cultural institutions in the 1930s. Although the specific provisions of the policies were not new ideas, they were implemented under Vichy within the ideological framework of the National Revolution. Until the Second World War, provincial learned societies had dominated French archeological research and excavation. The first known archeological association was created in Normandy during the Restoration. Archeologist Arcisse de Caumont founded the Société des antiquaires de Normandie (SAN; Normandy Society of Antiquaries) in 1824, aiming to prevent a return to the vandalism and iconoclasm that had characterized the revolutionary period. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Bastille, the memory of this destruction continued to prompt local elites to ensure that art and artifacts in their cities would be preserved for future generations. As explained by August le Prévost, who became SAN president in 1825, the revolutionary violence may have “shaken all existence,” but it also provoked “a taste for research and serious study” all across France and “in all the enlightened classes of society.” Although these amateur researchers had been stripped of much of their ancestors’ cultural heritage, “our efforts . . . are carried out with even more determination [to preserve] what we have left.” This research was no longer a matter of isolating a small number of objects for the benefit of a privileged few, Le Prévost continued, but to rescue from oblivion “all the monuments and mementos attached to our soil that have not yet perished.”33 Over the next ten years, the SAN developed into a sizable organization with ties to national cultural institutions. It attracted a relatively large membership of amateur enthusiasts, including 182 foreign members, and used cash donations to build a large endowment, which totaled nine thousand francs by 1841. This financial independence allowed the association to carry out its own excavations and publish a journal. The SAN worked closely with the national Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, the section of the Institut de France responsible for historical and archeological research. The académie and the SAN thus coordinated efforts in planning and implementing research projects in Normandy.34 The SAN and other provincial learned societies increasingly became an important political force and received a proportional increase in funding from the national government. They attracted members of the local educated and professional elite—doctors, lawyers, and notaries public.

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These professionals spent their spare time studying artifacts and carrying out research in local archives and library collections, and the associations’ directors often had important personal and political ties to the national government. François Guizot, for example, served as director of the SAN during the 1830s.35 As education and interior minister during the July Monarchy, Guizot believed that local cultural associations could be instrumental in shaping a sense of national identity. “National unity,” he claimed, “exists in time and space, across the centuries and across provinces or departments.” Guizot argued that French people should escape the “narrow viewpoint of the locality. Only on this condition will we seize the idea of national unity, in all its dimensions, in all its beauty.”36 Beginning in the 1830s, the state gradually exerted more control over archeological excavation. In 1830, Guizot created the administrative position of general inspector of historic monuments who was responsible for producing an inventory of key landmarks throughout France. The July Monarchy, as we have seen, expanded the fine arts administration in 1837 by establishing the Commission of Historic Monuments. While this cultural administration was developing, archeological objects remained a lower priority than churches, palaces, and chateaux and thus were not regulated by a separate entity.37 In 1838 the interior ministry, which at the time oversaw the fine arts division, distributed a circular to prefects that for the first time reflected principles of a national archeology policy, some of which later would be codified by the 1941 Carcopino Law. According to the circular, prefects were to create a list of sites in their departments where amateur archeologists wished to excavate. Each project would then be approved by the Commission of Historic Monuments in Paris, which in some cases would provide subsidies for the projects. Prefects would choose competent individuals to lead the excavations and furnish a report of the group’s findings. They would also determine which objects would be suitable for national museum collections and procure them from the researchers. These guidelines, however, were not strictly enforced in the mid-nineteenth century, and amateur archeologists were free to excavate and claim artifacts without state intervention.38 Nearly forty years passed until the next significant attempt at creating a national archeological policy under the Third Republic. A proposal in 1887 would have allowed excavations without prior state approval, but it would have enabled the fine arts administration to expropriate any objects

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that were found, both on public and private property. The measure would have made mayors responsible for obtaining high-quality objects from the excavators and submitting the pieces to the prefect, who in turn would hand over the artifacts to the fine arts administration. This proposal, however, did not have widespread support in the Chamber of Deputies, and the reform effort was abandoned for another twenty-three years.39 Finally in 1910, the Radical government of Aristide Briand created a reform law that included many of the principles from the 1838 proposal. Submitted to the Chamber of Deputies by premier and interior minister Aristide Briand, and education and fine arts minister Gaston Doumergue, the proposal recognized archeology as a science, not merely an intellectual pastime. The authors underscored the importance of allowing the state to determine who was competent to carry out archeological research. They cited examples in which amateurs had collected valuable objects and promptly sold them to foreign collectors. “Thus we find ourselves, on our own territory, dispossessed of objects that were essential to the study of our origins,” objects that “will forever escape scientific examination.”40 The authors also expressed concerns about amateur archeologists destroying valuable sites and artifacts.41 Based on these concerns, the proposed law would have enabled the state to forbid excavation by individuals whom it deemed incompetent, increasing regulation over amateur excavations. In addition, it would have allowed the state to sponsor excavations on private property and expropriate objects found in any project carried out on French soil. The state would provide an indemnity for seized objects, based on appraisals of two experts, one representing the education ministry and another representing the finder. All private excavation projects, by French or foreign archeologists, would have required an approved application, submitted to the territory’s prefecture at least one month before digging began. Once the project was under way, a state inspector would have the right to observe the work site and view the excavated objects. An inspector who had concerns about the project’s impact on objects or monuments could suggest alternative methods or suspend the project. The proposal also addressed the problem of exportation, giving the state a right of first refusal on sales of archeological objects to foreign buyers. Customs declarations would be submitted to the prefecture of the department from which the object would be exported. If the state failed to exercise its right of first refusal within three months, the application automatically would be approved.42

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Members of learned societies in the provinces, who still dominated archeological research in 1910, vigorously protested the proposed law, focusing on two related issues: excessive central control by Parisian administrators who were unfamiliar with local sites and the potential diminution of individual initiative, which had traditionally driven excavation in France.43 Both issues were raised by the Société préhistorique de France (SPdF; Prehistorical Society of France), which organized a national campaign against the proposed law. With the written support of thirty-seven other learned societies, the SPdF submitted a counterproposal that maintained a few provisions in Doumergue’s proposal, such as mandatory authorizations for the exportation of artifacts and an affirmation of the state’s right to requisition all objects found on French soil. The SPdF proposal, however, distinguished between French and foreign excavations, requiring foreign researchers to seek state approval before excavating in France. This last provision was the primary departure of the SPdF’s counter­proposal from Doumergue’s bill; it would have preserved the ability of French amateurs to excavate freely, submitting only foreign researchers to mandatory state approval.44 The SPdF published the comments it had received from cultural associations and concerned individuals who also opposed the government’s proposal. Several individuals predicted an overall reduction in archeological discoveries because of the limits the law would place on individual initiative. A. M. Depéret, professor of geology at the University of Lyon, wrote in December 1910 that the proposed law would “surely result in the complete suppression of individual initiative, the customary source of discovery for new deposits.” Another geology professor, Emmanuel Fallot, echoed this idea: “I consider this project among the most harmful to personal initiative, which it suppresses completely, and an absolute hindrance to the productive development of paleontological and prehistorical research.”45 Others voiced concern about the proposed increase in central control over local leaders and scholars. Jules Welsch, a geology professor at the University of Poitiers, wrote in January 1911, “I energetically protest against the bill. . . . I see in it proof of a craze provoked by partisans of excessive centralization and by Parisians, who want to give themselves the right to dispossess provincial geologists and paleontologists.” The Polymath Society of Morbihan summarized the bill’s goals: “To centralize in Paris all transportable objects and keep them available only to a certain number of scholars, thus granting studies of the objects only to them!” Doomsayers

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predicted no less than the “disappearance of regional archeological associations” and a “fatal blow to the prosperity of local museums.”46 Other critics considered the bill patently un-republican. From Algeria, members of the Society of Geography and Archeology of the Oran Province argued that “within the territory of the free French Republic, a privileged class of officials should not be favored by the application of draconian measures, copied from those decreed by certain monarchies.”47 The Linnean Society of Bordeaux emphasized that French researchers were not the source of current problems; rather, the reform should limit the access of foreign archeologists to French sites, as the SPdF had proposed.48 In the end, the Chamber of Deputies relented to public pressure from the provinces and tabled the proposal. Three years later, in December 1913, the Third Republic greatly expanded state conservation of historic palaces, churches, monuments, and other landmarks. The 1913 law, however, focused on historic structures and included only one article on archeological excavation. Article twentyeight required all researchers to declare discoveries to the fine arts administration, whose supervising minister would decide if special conservation measures should be taken, and whether to expropriate the given site. In reality, however, the provision had little practical effect, enabling individual researchers and amateurs to maintain control over excavations and their discoveries.49 Over the next twenty years, archeological policy increasingly became a matter of international concern as leaders realized that governments must cooperate with one another to prevent the illegal exportation of valuable artifacts. In 1937, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, the cultural division of the League of Nations, sponsored an international conference on excavations in Cairo. The League of Nations General Assembly approved the basic principles established at the conference: each state should control excavations on its territory and allow individuals to excavate only with prior approval; states should enjoy de jure ownership of all objects found in excavations, and excavators should declare all discoveries.50 Four years later, with archeologists working for the Nazis on French soil, and Carcopino heading the education ministry, these principles became part of French law. The September 1941 reform established the following provisions: All excavations required approval from the education ministry, which would make its decision after consulting with the Division

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of Historic Landmarks within the fine arts administration (article one). Excavations were to be supervised by an accredited representative of the fine arts administration, and all objects found would be declared to the supervising administrator (article three). The state further asserted its right to excavate on both public and private property (article nine). The law also addressed the delicate question of ownership over objects that were found on private property, either through approved excavations or fortuitously—for example, during construction projects. Some countries such as Greece and Egypt had nationalized their territory’s subsoil, allowing the state to claim artifacts found on private property. In the French civil code, private ownership extended through the subsoil, prompting the authors of the 1941 French law to borrow a concept from Italian legislation, which established co-ownership over artifacts found on private property. Any discoveries on private land would be divided between the state and the property owner (article eleven). The state could supersede this co-ownership, however, by expropriating objects from private projects or fortuitous discoveries and dividing an indemnity between the finder and property owner (articles five and sixteen).51 Following the promulgation of the Carcopino Law, the state implemented a few related measures in early 1942. A law of 21 January 1942 organized archeological research through the Centre national de la ­recherche scientifique (CNRS; National Center of Scientific Research), indicating the shift of archeology from an endeavor of amateurs to professional and scientific realms. A new division within the center, the Fifteenth Commission, was devoted to excavations, research, and the publication of discoveries (article one). The law of January 1942 also established the archeological journal Gallia, first published during the Occupation in 1943. In the preface of the inaugural publication, the editors emphasize that the review solicits notes from archeologists detailing the results of excavations rather than scholarly analyses or intellectual critiques. It would publish “the facts,” emphasizing the practical ends of archeological science rather than academic theorizing. Although there is no mention of the Occupation or the presence of German archeologists at French sites, the editors enthusiastically thank Louis Hautecoeur for access to archives in the fine arts administration.52 The law of January 1942 also divided metropolitan France into archeological research districts, creating separate categories for prehistorical and ancient (Celtic, Greek, Gallo-Roman) excavation.53 Two ordinances

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of 12 February and 27 March 1942 further defined twenty-one districts, six for prehistorical research and fifteen for the later periods54 —an unequal distribution that reflected the priority of classical research. A director of antiquities would manage archeological affairs in each district, processing excavation requests, supervising the sites, and coordinating the activities of local learned societies (articles two and three). In their respective memoirs, both Jérôme Carcopino and Louis Hautecoeur claimed to have initiated the archeological reform law of 1941, largely as a form of resistance against Nazi excavations, and each takes credit for creating the text. Yet the law was not the original work of either man and had no impact on German wartime projects. Carcopino claimed that he created the law first and foremost as an act of resistance against the Germans, in that it was designed to “limit the damage of the Occupation.”55 He emphasized the support given to him by the Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, of which Carcopino had been a member since 1930. In its meeting of 1 August 1941, the body unanimously approved a statement recommending that the state, “without hindering individual initiative,” give itself the right to coordinate “the diverse domains of research, methodical and rapid publication, and the conservation of the country’s archeological treasures.”56 Louis Hautecoeur, in contrast, claimed that he had developed the law after Raymond Lantier informed him “in autumn 1941” that the Germans were excavating in Brittany. Hautecoeur allegedly then asked two Collège de France professors—Henri Breuil and Albert Grenier, chair of National Antiquities—to join him in Vichy and help him draft the new policy. According to Hautecoeur, the three men pooled their knowledge of other countries’ policies, particularly those of Egypt, Italy, and Tunisia (still a French protectorate), and adapted them to suit the needs of France. Carcopino, or “the new minister” as Hautecoeur called him (Carcopino had held the position since February 1941), then “took” the text and promulgated it on 27 September 1941.57 Disproving Carcopino’s and Hautecoeur’s authorship claims, a fine arts report written in April 1941, most likely from the Division of Historic Landmarks, indicates that many of the details of the proposed law had already been established by midlevel civil servants.58 Hautecoeur’s postwar assertion that he created the law upon learning of the German excavations is also dubious, as the Nazi projects had been ongoing in France for over a year with Lantier’s full knowledge and, at times, assistance.59 It is highly

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unlikely that Hautecoeur remained unaware of the German projects until the fall of 1941. The German presence was indeed significant in the law’s creation, not as an act of resistance but because the Vichy regime promulgated it by executive decree, eliminating opposition from parliament and learned societies. The archeological reform law of 1941 also affirmed traditionalist regionalism within the Vichy regime’s domestic program for national renewal. A 1942 circular from Carcopino and Pierre Pucheu, then interior minister, to the regional prefects described the role of archeological policy within this broader reform. The new system, in their view, would not only enrich “the historical and artistic national patrimony” but also have a positive impact on the intellectual elites in provincial towns: The intellectual elite of our cities—an essential component of regional life—ought to understand better the meaningful origins, history, and culture of the generations who gave character to provincial life; [the elite] will be able to draw upon an increased vitality and new activity. . . . Thus, the practical application of the law . . . will equally serve the renown of archeological studies in France and the renewal of provincial life.60

The benefit of the new system, in this vision, was not merely limited to scientific research but extended to the more general revival of regional identity under the guidance of local elites. The Vichy regime thus placed a new spin on the reform: the new policy measures would affirm the political and social status of the local elite, not reduce its influence as amateurs had feared in 1910. The law’s proponents faced potential opposition from the Germans. As with all legislation pertaining to cultural affairs in the occupied zone, the archeological reform laws were subject to German approval. In May  1941 Jonathan Schmid, an official in the administrative section of the MBF, reminded Carcopino that all cultural legislation required his approval prior to its publication in the Journal Officiel.61 Respecting this procedure, the French education ministry forwarded a copy of the Carcopino Law to Schmid’s superior, Werner Best, before publishing it. Best allowed the law’s implementation in the occupied zone—“under the condition that it does not disrupt German projects and research studies.”62 French authorities thus understood that the new law would not apply to scientists who were excavating in France under the auspices of the Third Reich. Given this significant accommodation by the Vichy regime, the

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law clearly was not an act of resistance, despite Carcopino’s and Haute­ coeur’s claims. Amateur archeologists and members of learned societies voiced little opposition to the new laws. Communication among these groups was hampered during the Occupation, as association meetings became sporadic and journal publishing was restricted. Given the more urgent concerns of the French people, it is also likely that members were less preoccupied with archeological affairs than they might have been in peacetime.63 By the early 1940s, moreover, many amateur archeologists believed that state intervention was indeed necessary to provide effective protection of French artifacts. One such observation came from Franck Delage, a member of the Historical and Archeological Society of Périgord. In his analysis of the law, Delage admitted that amateurs would undoubtedly miss the liberty of digging where and when they wanted, “like the liberty of historical research or artistic creation.” Yet in his view, the law was necessary and in the public interest, eliminating clandestine and dishonest excavations. Other countries had developed archeological legislation that placed research in the hands of qualified professionals, making France the exception: “from this, she gained nothing and could only lose.” In the end, “state intervention will have given archeology in the provinces new strength that is both protective and stimulating,” even benefiting the country as a whole: “It is a way to serve national science, an excellent way to serve France.”64 Not all amateurs were so quick to accept the law. For example, the new measure generated concerns among members of the Société préhistorique française (SPF; French Prehistorical Society),65 who felt particularly alarmed by the law’s bias toward research in the ancient period. A former president of the SPF, H. Desmaisons, declared that the new law “significantly restricts the liberty of prehistorical research.” Calling prehistory “an essentially French science,” Desmaisons argued that the discipline was created and maintained by amateurs. Doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, priests, etc. . . . edified prehistorical science because the research benefited from a certain liberty, and because research requires enthusiasm, that sacred flame, which administrative orders cannot create. The new legislation, which is extremely harsh, strikes a fatal blow to all of these beautiful passions.66

Aware of these concerns, Carcopino invited a few amateur archeologists to Vichy to discuss the reform—after the law already was in place. One

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of these amateurs was a M. Saint-Just Péquart, member of the SPF. A letter from Péquart describing the encounter was read at the association’s meeting on 24 December 1941. According to Péquart, Carcopino told his guests “that all necessary measures would be taken to ensure that the surveillance of excavation sites would not create an obstacle to research.” Péquart reassured his colleagues that amateur excavation would continue, evidenced by the fact that the government already had been issuing excavation permits.67 In a later letter, however, Péquart voiced some concern that the fine arts representatives who would oversee projects might not have an adequate background in prehistory and excavation techniques. He suggested that state supervision of excavations would work only if representatives of the state concentrated on excavation methods and refrained from interfering with theoretical conclusions drawn from the projects.68 Péquart also pointed out that traditionally, the science of prehistory had been neglected in the educational system and wondered if government inspectors would be adequately trained to monitor prehistorical excavation. He suggested that the government create a school of prehistorical excavation (Ecole pratique de fouilles préhistoriques) to help train inspectors, prehistorians, and archeologists.69 In addition, early reports from regional directors of the research districts indicated some tension between amateurs and local officials. In August 1942 a M. Peyrony, director of prehistoric antiquities in the Centre region, reported to the education ministry that he was hearing about cases of “bad interpretation” of the 1941 law and “abuses in its implementation.” Peyrony forwarded a letter to the ministry in which an amateur, Jean de la Roche, described a conflict with the curator of a local museum. De la Roche had been collecting pieces of ancient pottery at Glanum, a GalloRoman site outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The local museum curator, Henry Roffand, learned of de la Roche’s discoveries. “Since we knew each other,” de la Roche explained, “he asked if he could see the pieces and promised to give them back to me.” Instead, Roffand kept the most impressive shard of pottery for two months, threatening to fine de la Roche ten thousand francs for illegally obtaining it. When Roffand finally gave back the artifact, de la Roche donated it to a neighboring museum in Arles, claiming that Roffand “did not deserve it.” The amateur archeologist predicted that such experiences would prevent amateurs from carrying out excavations, out of fear of retribution, or would encourage them

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to dig in secret, hiding their discoveries rather than publishing them. A self-proclaimed “adept devotee of the National Revolution,” de la Roche felt he had become a kind of “prehistoric revolutionary—though not very dangerous, I assure you.”70 Although there is some evidence of resentment toward archeological reform, the new laws did not generate significant opposition.71 By 1943, Péquart was able to give a more optimistic prognosis in yet another letter to the SPF. Responding to other members’ concerns about the new law, he reassured them of the government’s good intentions. The regional directors of the prehistorical districts, Péquart pointed out, would at least in theory seek to carry out their duties conscientiously. “The administration, like our colleagues, has only the desire to give researchers all the assistance possible in every domain, as long as they demonstrate the seriousness, competence, and scientific integrity that should be required of them.”72 There was also some favorable press coverage of the reform. In August 1942 an article in La Depêche reported that the reform “ended an anarchical situation that was tolerated for too long at the expense of science.” In creating this reform, the government intended to support only “serious excavations” with “true scientific interest,” instead of merely serving as a “pastime of amateurs.” Archeological sites in the Midi-­Pyrénées, the article continued, had “too often been sabotaged” in the past, and now the regional director of prehistoric antiquities, Count Begouen, would be responsible for establishing order. The count inspected sites in the department of Ariège and reported being “satisfied with the understanding spirit and goodwill” that he found among the amateurs.73 Amateurs and administrators, overall, appeared to be adapting to the new policies in a general consensus that the development was a positive one for French archeology. .  .  . The archeological reform laws of 1941 and 1942 reflect a common trend during the Occupation, in which a continuity of ideas from the Third Republic underlay the Vichy regime’s new policies. The reform laws reflected principles that had been debated in parliament for decades, most notably in 1910, and had been promoted in the 1930s by the League of ­Nations’ International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. The French laws were not unique; they reflected a policy trend occurring from western and southern Europe to Egypt, in which governments were

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professional­izing archeology and regulating the commerce of valuable artifacts—a key component of each nation’s historic and cultural heritage. Archeology gained official recognition as a science, not merely an intellectual pastime, as evidenced by its inclusion in the CNRS. However, to describe the reform laws as merely the culmination of previous proposals isolates Vichy policy from its wartime context.74 It is not mere coincidence that the reforms finally came to fruition under Vichy. The two highest-level arts officials, Jérôme Carcopino and Louis Hautecoeur, both believed the new laws were necessary and long overdue. The Occupation also eliminated potential opposition from parliament and the learned societies. Many amateur archeologists were not even aware of the new policy until it had already been promulgated. There was also a growing consensus among amateurs that an increase in state intervention was necessary to preserve the nation’s archeological treasures. In contrast to their predecessors in 1910, many amateurs in 1941 believed that France ought to follow other Western countries in developing a national archeological policy, one that professionalized and regulated excavations but maintained a certain amount of freedom for amateurs. Even though many of the policy details had been proposed during the Third Republic, the National Revolution provided a new justification for archeological reform. By establishing districts for archeological research, leaders in the Vichy regime claimed to be promoting regionalism and reinvigorating a sense of national identity. Archeology would thus contribute to the construction of a certain vision of French history, one that established continuity between the origin of the French nation during the Gallo-Roman period and the current regime. The presence of German archeologists working for the Nazis also contributed to a sense of urgency among administrators to protect French artifacts and territory. Yet both Carcopino and Hautecoeur later exaggerated the extent to which these new laws were acts of resistance. French officials were aware of German excavations, particularly during the first two years of the Occupation, and they knew the laws would not apply to Nazi agents. Thus, this reform, like others implemented by the Vichy regime, was allowed to operate so long as it did not disrupt German activity. Despite partial implementation under the Occupation, these measures had a lasting impact, as the central policy framework was validated in 1945 and is still considered the foundation of French archeological policy.

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Beyond archeological artifacts, the French government oversaw other cultural objects that keenly interested the Germans—bronze commemorative statues that could be recycled into armaments, and works of art that the Nazis coveted for their homes and German museums. In conflicts and negotiations related to these objects, covered in the following four chapters, the reality of Nazi power repeatedly shattered the illusion of French sovereignty.

7 Recycling French Heroes The Destruction of Bronze Statues

Reliable sources have told me that people across France had not truly come to terms with the defeat. That which the laws, restrictions, and food rations had not shown us, the departure of these heavy masses of nonferrous metal made very clear, with a clarity that, here and there, brings one to tears—so, it really is true, we were beaten? And we must part with these immobile figures, whose meaning is revealed with sudden eloquence, as the honor of our country, our honor! —Charles Maurras, “L’affaire des statues,” Action Française, 22 January 1942

On 11 October 1941 the Vichy regime decreed that all bronze statues on public property that lacked “significant historic or artistic value” would be dismantled and melted down for industrial use. Although Vichy leaders emphasized the importance of this recycling program for French industry, most of the metal was shipped to armaments factories in Germany, where it fueled Hitler’s war machine. Based on conservative estimates, between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred statues and busts were dismantled across France, including more than seventy commemorative statues in Paris alone.1 Over the past sixty years, the statue recycling campaign has remained in French memory and captured the attention of writers and scholars. These references most often have appeared in broader studies of French statuary, however, and few authors based their observations on archival research. Other accounts were largely based on anecdotes, memoirs, or the authors’ own memories.2 I aim to provide a more complete picture of the statue campaign by challenging two common assumptions. Postwar accounts usually refer to the “Nazi destruction” of bronze monuments, indi145

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cating that the Germans imposed the campaign on the Vichy regime and removed at least some of the statues.3 In fact, French authorities created the statue recycling campaign as a way to satisfy German demands for nonferrous metal and implemented the program themselves. Most authors also assume that Vichy officials used the recycling campaign to promote the regime’s counterrevolutionary project. What better way to nullify the Republic than to destroy monuments to its most important heroes? In 1974 former museum curator Yvon Bizardel argued that “the leaders of the hour took advantage of the opportunity to settle some old scores,” targeting icons of the Left such as Louis Blanc and Emile Zola. Twenty years later another former fine arts official, Georges Poisson, seconded Bizardel’s recollection, emphasizing the regime’s stated “pretext” of replenishing supplies of nonferrous metal in what was essentially a manifestation of reactionary politics. Maurice Agulhon also places the regime’s iconoclasm within the broader “Vichyssois counterrevolution.”4 However, as June Hargrove convincingly argues, the fate of each statue depended on important factors beyond the reigning ideology in Vichy. La statuomanie (statuemania) of the Third Republic had led to a proliferation of bronze statues in public spaces,5 many of them widely considered substandard works of art and therefore appropriate fodder for the recycling campaign. Other works by artists such as Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, and Paul Landowski, however, were considered part of the French artistic patrimony. The midlevel officials who selected statues for the metal program, some of them members of the fine arts administration, were keen to preserve “high-quality” statues regardless of their political symbolism. Moreover, the decision-making process was decentralized at the departmental level, where local and regional politics played an important role and did not necessarily follow Vichy’s traditionalist agenda. On a more practical level, the logistics of dismantling sizable monuments also had to be taken into account, along with the availability of workers. This problem became particularly acute after February 1943 with the implementation of the STO, which conscripted young Frenchmen to work in Germany. Across the country, furthermore, French officials were deeply concerned about maintaining public order. When determining which statues to recycle, they often discussed the likely public reaction to the loss of statues commemorating local heroes.6 Most accounts of the statue campaign have focused on monuments in Paris.7 Yet outside the capital, hundreds of French villages sacrificed

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their commemorative statues, and the loss of these monuments often gave rise to fascinating debates about local history and memory. In this chapter, I offer an overview of the origins and implementation of the recycling campaign; in the next I analyze the impact of the campaign in three French cities: Paris (which merits some, though not exclusive, analysis), Chambéry, and Nantes. Each case study provides a unique perspective on public reaction to the government’s selective destruction of local patrimony.

The Origins of the Campaign In tracing the origins of the statue campaign, it is important to distinguish isolated examples of German vandalism from the systematic destruction of bronzes in the Vichy regime’s metal recycling program. On 18 June 1940, German soldiers exploded a bomb under a statue of General Charles Mangin on the place Denys Cochin. Their targeting of Mangin’s likeness is easily explained: he had played a prominent role in the defense of Verdun in 1917 and had commanded troops—colonial troops—in 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr. Also in 1940, occupying soldiers destroyed a statue in the Tuileries garden of Edith Cavell, a British nurse shot by Germans during the First World War for helping Allied soldiers cross the Belgian border into the Netherlands.8 Although these incidents were not part of the metal recycling program, German demands for metal compelled French authorities to destroy hundreds more commemorative statues. As part of Germany’s four-year economic plan, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring initially intended to increase metal supplies needed for armaments by recycling church bells in France, a practice that the Germans had carried out in occupied territories during World War I. Göring was determined to implement a similar requisition program, declaring that no German church bells would be sacrificed for the war effort as long as there were still church bells in France. In the end, Germany did take down its own bells, along with those in Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. Some 1,160 church bells were destroyed in Alsace and Lorraine, French territories annexed to the Reich in 1940 and thus subject to Germany’s own recycling program. More than 148,000 church bells from the Reich and its occupied territories were destroyed during the war, weighing more than 40 million kilograms.9 The metals campaign was part of a broader German exploitation of raw materials in France. For Hitler, the primary role of the occupied

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territories was to sustain the German population and fuel the war effort. France provided the Reich with 400 million francs each day to cover occupation costs, under an exaggerated exchange rate favoring the Germans. Proclaiming that the French were obligated to assist Germany in its continued fight against Britain, the Germans controlled nearly all French mines and raw materials in the northern occupied zone. As a result, threequarters of the French iron-ore supply was shipped to Germany during the Occupation, and by the fall of 1943, some 40 to 50 percent of French industrial production served the Germans.10 Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was a key commodity in the late 1930s. On the eve of the Second World War, Germany and France were the second- and sixth-highest consumers of copper in the world, respectively (the United States was the highest, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Soviet Union). However, neither country produced copper domestically, and both relied on foreign sources to sustain a variety of uses: in rail lines, manufacturing, electrical wiring, and—crucially for France—a fungicide widely used by vintners to combat mildew on grape vines. For the Germans, copper was also essential to armaments production and thus critical for Hitler’s domination of the European continent. According to Kirrily Freeman, between 1936 and 1939, France imported some twenty thousand tons of copper each year, relying on supplies from the United States, Chile, and the Belgian Congo. With the Allied blockade, these sources were no longer available and the French were forced to rely on metal recycling campaigns.11 Göring’s plan to collect church bells from France provoked opposition both from German and French authorities. The MBF argued that such a violation of French religious sensibilities might intensify public resistance to the occupying forces. In April 1941 the French representative to the delegation for Franco-German economic relations, Jacques Barnaud, similarly warned that the French public would vigorously oppose the initiative. As a result, the plan was abandoned, provided that French authorities ensured the shipment of equivalent amounts of metal. After meeting with MBF officials at the Hotel Majestic, Barnaud discussed the matter further with the Council of Ministers in Vichy. This group of French leaders later approved the substitution of bronze statues for the church bells. Of all the countries occupied by Germany, France was the only one to come up with this solution, sacrificing statues for bells.12 Beyond the stated concerns about public opinion, the decision to sacrifice the statues

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rather than church bells could also be viewed as a reflection of Catholic values, central to Pétain’s vision of religious renewal. By targeting secular symbols of the Republic, these leaders reversed the iconoclasm of the Revolution, in which dechristianizers destroyed religious symbols and recycled the metal gathered in churches into armaments.13 Meanwhile, on 11 July 1941, the French Ministry of Industrial Production launched a widespread voluntary program to collect nonferrous metal, targeting supplies of lead, nickel, copper, tin, and zinc, and the principal alloys of the latter three, bronze and brass. To encourage public donations of metal, French authorities paid thirty francs for each kilogram of copper and bronze and seventy-five for nickel and tin.14 Along with the collection of metal, the Ministry of Industrial Production developed several other recycling programs. It gathered old paper, glass, music stands, and brasserie counters. Wine was exchanged for copper donations, champagne for champagne bottles. The ministry sent surveys to restaurant and hotel owners asking them to note all dispensable metal objects. Agents then inspected the businesses and removed ashtrays, coat racks, protective metal on furniture and doors, metal strips on stairways, old pipes—any metal that was not vital to business operations. Beginning in August 1941, the Ministry of Industrial Production also instructed all public administrations in Paris to collect any dispensable metal items in their offices and to deposit them at designated collection points. One inventory, for example, stated that the education ministry could donate 15 faucets, 58 clothes hooks, 378 electrical switches, and 917 door handles.15 Hampered by a well-founded suspicion that the recycled metal would be sent to Germany, and not to domestic producers as French officials claimed, the voluntary campaign yielded only modest results. Some newspapers urged their readers to trust the French government. The clericalist La Croix de la Savoie, whose editors surely welcomed Pétain’s religiosity and perhaps his politics, instructed Savoyards to ignore the skeptics and scour their households for metal objects that could be recycled to benefit French industry.16 In a press conference on 9 October 1941, Minister of Industrial Production François Lehideux implored the French public to augment its contributions to the recycling program. The collection of metal, he explained, was necessary to ensure basic services such as heat and electricity. By asking the public to make voluntary contributions, the state had hoped to encourage a “sense of solidarity” among French citizens. Conversely, according to Lehideux, each French citizen who did not

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contribute metal ultimately was guilty of exacerbating unemployment and depriving French homes of heat and electricity. If donations to the voluntary campaign did not increase, he warned, the state would be forced to impose requisitions.17 Even as Lehideux made this impassioned plea, the Vichy regime was finalizing a law that would authorize the Ministry of Industrial Production to dismantle and melt down bronze statues in both the occupied and unoccupied zones. In July 1941, a group of advisers and officials that included Carcopino, the Conseil de cabinet,18 decided that bronze monuments would be included in the nonferrous metals campaign. The task of writing the proposal into law was given to officials in the Ministry of Industrial Production. In a memo to Pétain that accompanied the text, the authors explained that prior to the war France had been “dependent on other countries for the principal nonferrous metals: copper, tin, nickel and lead.” Beginning in June 1940, imports of metal stopped and stocks were depleted to meet “French requests as well as demands of the Occupation authorities.” Individuals, merchants, and associations were encouraged to donate metal objects to the campaign. One untapped source of metal, the memo continued, was bronze statues that embellished public squares, parks, and boulevards. The French government had “previously decided to proceed with the dismantling of those statues that are not artistic or historic, for which there are no concerns of a psychological nature.” The Ministry of Industrial Production was already compiling lists of statues to include in the campaign, but an executive decree was necessary to “specify the conditions” of the program and provide guidelines for selection.19 Aesthetic fashion in the early 1940s provided another justification for the statue campaign. Realistic-figurative statuary was attacked on two fronts: by avant-gardists, who preferred abstract sculpture, and by classicists, who denounced the “low quality” of the figurative monuments. Avowed classicists Jérôme Carcopino and Louis Hautecoeur never contested the principle of destroying the monuments, in part because they believed most of the statues were eyesores. In his memoirs, Carcopino claims he fought to preserve monuments that were of artistic and historic interest, but he adds that most of the statues “were deplorable examples of an art that is quite subaltern.” Hautecoeur believed that commemorative statuary was contributing to the progressive enlaidissement (uglifying) of France, asserting that the statues were often “the dishonor of a city” and blemishes on the French landscape. Like Carcopino, Hautecoeur claimed

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after the war that he had preserved artistically valuable statues, and, in the end, there was “not a single irreparable loss.”20 The final law, promulgated on 11 October 1941, carried the signatures of Pétain and the ministers of finance, industrial production, the interior, and education (Yves Bouthillier, François Lehideux, Pierre ­Pucheu, and Jérôme Carcopino, respectively). According to the text, the fine arts administration would be responsible for selecting which statues would be destroyed while the Ministry of Industrial Production would dismantle, transport, and melt them down. The processing of statues initially fell under the authority of the Direction of Mechanical and Electrical Industries (DIME). Oversight within the Ministry of Industrial Production shifted in late August 1942 for the second phase of the campaign to the Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals (CMMNF). The commission, headed by a M. Regnier, also managed other metal recycling programs during the Occupation.21 The statues’ owners, usually municipal governments or private associations, would be reimbursed at the same rate used for the voluntary campaign: thirty francs per kilogram of bronze.22

Implementation of the Campaign The selection process operated as follows: A head engineer in each department working for the Ministry of Industrial Production first created a list of all bronze monuments in that area. The prefect then called together a commission of experts who reviewed the list and decided which statues would be dismantled. Each departmental commission would have the same composition: the prefect or his representative who served as chair, a museum curator designated by the prefect, the department’s head curator of antiquities and art objects, the general inspector of industrial production for the relevant district or his representative, and the departmental architect of historic landmarks.23 Directives from Pucheu and Lehideux relayed instructions to prefects from then head of government, Admiral François Darlan. The commissions were to be “very strict” in their decisions and ignore “emotional sentiments.” Only statues of “incontestable national heroes” were to be preserved, specified as monuments to Joan of Arc, Henri IV, Louis XIV, and Napoleon Bonaparte—examples of monarchical and/or anti-British figures that embodied the political values of Vichy traditionalists. The gov-

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ernment also later exempted war memorials, statues on private property, and statues in museums and cemeteries.24 Once the departmental commission selected which statues would be torn down, the prefect coordinated the actual dismantling with a government-subsidized private association, the Groupement d’importation et de répartition des métaux (GIRM; Group for the Importation and Distribution of Metals), created in September 1939 to ensure an adequate ­distribution of metal to French industry.25 Although government ministries oversaw the recycling program, the actual dismantling and processing of metal relied on private companies. The Ministry of Industrial Production designated a “demolition center” in several cities, each with a selected business to handle operations: Angers (Etablissements Savigner), Bordeaux (Dupont et Duran­ deau), Le Mans (Ouest-Métaux), Lille (Mazelier Frères et Fils), Lyon (Noël Dumond et Cie), Nancy (Société Est et Nord), and Paris (Société de Récupération Métallurgique, headquartered in Paris with operations in Pantin). Lyon was the only demolition center in the unoccupied zone in the first phase of the campaign; GIRM studied the possibility of establishing sites in Toulouse and Marseille for the second phase. It also authorized companies in other cities, such as Etablissements Monier in Rennes and Etablissements Marret in Tours, to smelt and process the statues.26 After the first commission meetings took place, it became clear that the number and types of statues selected for the campaign varied widely from department to department. In November 1941 Carcopino sought to streamline the decision-making process by creating a Comité supérieur (Executive Committee) that would review all departmental recommendations and prevent “the adoption of divergent decisions concerning the choice and number of monuments and statues that will be removed.”27 The committee decided which requests for stone replacements would be granted and served as arbiter in contentious cases. Carcopino named five members to the committee: serving as chair was Louis Hautecoeur, or in his absence Léon Lamblin, assistant director of fine arts; Marcel Aubert, curator of the sculpture department at the Louvre; Pierre Ladoué, curator of the Museum of Modern Art; and one representative each from the interior and industrial production ministries. The committee met seven times in 1942 between March 1 and December 31, and sculptors Paul Landowski and Henri Bouchard participated in all but one session in Marcel Aubert’s place.28 Of all the participants in the meetings of departmental commissions and the Comité supérieur, the representatives from the Ministry of

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Industrial Production were perhaps most willing to sacrifice works of art for what they believed was the greater political and economic good. In the first meeting of the Seine departmental commission, for example, the representative of the ministry, a M. Bourkaïb, stressed that “very few works in the end should escape being melted down.”29 In response, the prefect, Charles Magny, reminded Bourkaïb that the government gave “full power to the commission to judge the artistic and historic value of the bronzes in question.” At the same time, Regnier of the CMMNF complained that most of the departmental commissions had preserved too many statues; as a result, he argued, the committee should reverse their decisions. Regnier was particularly frustrated by obstructionism in the Seine departmental commission, which sought to save statues that, in his opinion, did not commemorate “indisputable national heroes.”30 As the departmental commissions and the Comité supérieur continued to review their lists, the GIRM began dismantling condemned statues. Once the removal of statues was under way, some observers applauded the recycling program, particularly in Paris. For these people, the campaign was a welcome solution to the vexing problem of la statuomanie. According to Maurice Agulhon, the number of commemorative statues honoring les grands hommes had increased with shifts in power toward more liberal and secular governments—in 1789, 1830, and 1870. Just as the Third Republic produced an army of Marianne effigies, municipal governments and private associations had embellished public spaces with statues in honor of people of local and national importance who had lived in their town. The installation of commemorative bronze statues had become so fashionable by the late nineteenth century that Parisians feared that la statuomanie would consume every last bit of public space. As Agulhon points out, these critics resented both the lack of artistic quality in realist-figurative sculpture and the tendency of Third Republic politicians to use the statues as political tools. Mediocre sculptors often secured the commissions, it was argued, and then enlisted their students to carry out the work. For some, the statues were also symbols of corruption under the Third Republic, as townspeople viewed them as the product of political favors or suspected leaders of scheduling dedication ceremonies just before elections to win votes.31 Some of these observations appeared in an essay written on the eve of World War I by Gustave Pessard, a member of a historic preservation association in Paris. Arguing that the nineteenth-century penchant for

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celebrating any remarkable individual had led to squares and boulevards cluttered with mediocre, outdated figurative art, Pessard supported a plan to segregate statues in an area specially set aside for them outside Paris. Public spaces in the French capital, he claimed, had been “invaded by a mob of unknown nobles in redingotes [fitted outer garments] and snug pants, a fashion as bizarre as it is ridiculous.” Moreover, the somber style chosen to commemorate individuals “shocks the eye, distorts and saddens the artistic ensembles of our promenades, transforming our gardens into veritable necropolises.”32 Aesthetic debates continued during the interwar years, as Daniel Sherman has shown, with the proliferation of commemorative monuments honoring the Great War’s fallen soldiers. Critics at the time feared that the new monuments would repeat the stylistic errors of nineteenthcentury statuary. In 1920 critic Etienne Bricot summed up this feeling in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts: “We knew well—we knew it from the day it was declared—that the war would stimulate the imagination of sculptors as well as their tools, and that it would do so, as alas it must in any invasion of the crowd, with disorder and mediocrity.”33 These experts preferred the austerity and simplicity of neoclassical commemorations, whether simple, unadorned figures or abstract obelisks. Denunciations of commemorative monuments, therefore, had been brewing for decades prior to the Vichy regime’s recycling campaign, which provided additional moral, economic, and legal justification for destroying works that had long been the subject of critical derision. In 1941, just after the launching of the recycling campaign, a contributor to Beaux-Arts magazine applauded the destruction of statues that “dishonor our public spaces.” In an article entitled “Sus aux navets!” (Down with Bad Art!) the author argues that the removal of statues was long overdue, an accomplishment that “good taste and sane reason” had never attained.34 Other observers who welcomed the removal of bronze statues were also vocal critics of the erstwhile Republic. Also writing for Beaux-Arts, the critic Marcel Ravan called the statue campaign a “fortunate coincidence” that finally addressed the problem of la statuomanie. Showing clear contempt for the Third Republic, Ravan blamed democracy for the unfortunate proliferation of statues, which celebrated a wide range of loyal republicans—from presidents, deputies, and mayors to inventors and writers. Aesthetically, he argued, the statues diminished artistic beauty since the artists and their patrons showed blatant disregard for classic rules

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of urbanism and architectural perspective. Ravan was “pleased to learn” that by February 1942 the statue campaign had already claimed ninetytwo bronzes in Paris,35 including commemorative monuments as well as allegorical and decorative statues. According to Charles Maurras, the generally poor quality of these statues eased the task of destroying them. Similarly, Thierry Maulnier, a loyal disciple of Maurras and a contributor to Action Française, argued that the destruction of statues would be beneficial for aesthetic as well as economic reasons. He further recommended that the campaign focus not only on bronze works but also on low-quality stone statues. The state would thus “recognize true merits and reestablish a bit of order,” removing any statues that made public spaces “ugly.”36 Just as la statuomanie had been largely an urban phenomenon, so was this visceral condemnation of the monuments.37 In contrast, residents of smaller towns with fewer statues often felt an emotional attachment to the monuments that populated their public squares. After authorities began removing them, protests emanated from hundreds of towns all across France, in the occupied and unoccupied zones alike. For provincial populations, this loss of le patrimoine local often was a shocking intrusion in local affairs. Having observed Parisians who welcomed the campaign as a way to eliminate unsightly statues, Maurras detected a much different reaction among rural populations. French authorities who had planned the recycling campaign, he noted, “did not anticipate this depth or degree of local patriotism.” Although there had been little reaction when the campaign was first announced, “the material act [of destruction] stirs up echoes, rumors, movements. One realizes that habit had created a sort of affection toward some little-known great man from the village.” In some places, Maurras continued, “latent but serious emotions, even profound ones were attached to true heroes.” For some people, the destruction of statues crystallized the reality of defeat even more than food rationing. The departure of statues symbolized the defeat “with a clarity that, here and there, brings one to tears” as the townspeople asked themselves, “So, it really is true; we were beaten?” A deeper meaning behind the statues became evident “with sudden eloquence”: they symbolized “the honor of our country, our honor!” This newly achieved sense of honor, in his view, was a positive if unintended effect of the statue campaign. In the end, he believed that the sacrifice of bronze monuments was necessary for the greater economic good, concluding that “it must be done.”38

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Not everyone shared this view. Artists were among those who strongly opposed the program and the way in which it was being implemented. Adolphe Boucher, a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, forwarded to Carcopino several letters of protest from Dijon artists distressed by the irreparable damage being done to works of art by individuals who were “not informed about artistic issues.”39 Representing the Society of French Artists, Henri Bouchard informed François Lehideux that artistic associations were “moved by the massive and precipitous removal of statues in Paris as well as in the provinces.” For the third time in the history of France, after the wars of religion and the iconoclasm of the Revolution, Bouchard argued, works of art were being destroyed “without regard to our artistic patrimony, which we have a duty to protect for future generations.” In response, Lehideux reassured Bouchard that Hautecoeur, president of the Comité supérieur, was “highly competent” and dedicated to “preserving the French artistic patrimony.”40 Protests against the removal of statues came from people with a wide range of political affiliations; proponents and detractors do not fall neatly into categories of Right and Left. For Albert Rivière, a contributor to Le Midi Socialiste, the dismantling of statues posed a threat to national solidarity at a time when such unity was crucial. Some works, he admitted, were artistically worthless and would not be missed. In the interest of national economic security, he even supported the destruction of certain mass-produced statues. However, he lamented the loss of unique statues that often had been erected through public donations. For inhabitants of small towns, he argued, these statues symbolized “work, dedication, sacrifice, science” and the admiration of the townspeople for their illustrious compatriots. The removal of these symbols, he warned, “would have a most unfortunate effect. . . . Whatever impartiality one tries to apply, regrettable conclusions will be drawn and will provoke unnecessary divisions.”41 To underscore the campaign’s negative impact on rural communities, the prefect of Deux-Sèvres pointed out a fundamental contradiction between the dismantling of commemorative statues and the Vichy regime’s “return-to-the-soil” program. He contacted the fine arts administration after learning that a statue of a local farmer, Jacques Bujault, would be torn down in the small town of Melle. According to the prefect, Jacques Bujault was remembered by farmers in the region for his extraordinary agricultural skills: “His advice is still followed, and his words and proverbs still listened to in the Mellois.” The government, the prefect ar-

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gued, had “an interest in maintaining the memory of an immensely prestigious farmer” at a time when “the return to the soil is more necessary than ever.” However, the local farmer clearly was not a national hero; economic necessity won out over local interests, and the statue was destroyed—despite apparent contradictions with the Vichy regime’s regionalist project.42 Elsewhere, protests abounded. In March 1942, Louis Hautecoeur informed the Ministries of Education, the Interior, and Industrial Production that his office had received “a considerable number of requests” to save statues. The inquiries came from prefects, mayors, chambers of commerce, artistic associations, and individuals, nearly all of whom sought to save monuments to local heroes. Following the government’s directives, Hautecoeur reported, his office “in general did not give [the petitioners] a favorable response.”43 Pétain’s administration also protested the decisions of the Comité supérieur. In a letter to Regnier of the CMMNF, Pétain’s head of civil affairs complained that certain monuments had not been dismantled, equating “republican” and “ugly” in his evaluation. “I am surprised that so many ugly and useless statues are preserved—such as the statue of the République on the place de la République and the statue of Danton in Paris,” while notable works of art in French towns were often condemned. He then relayed instructions to preserve a statue that, in Pétain’s view, was truly valuable.44 It was a monument in the town of Agen to Jacques Jasmin (1798–1864), an Occitan poet who had received the Legion of Honor in 1845 and was a well-known philanthropist. The statue had been dedicated in 1870 in the presence of Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914), founder of the félibrige literary movement and perhaps the greatest modern Provençal poet, having shared the Nobel Prize for literature in 1904 with Spain’s José Echegaray y Eizaguirre. Although the Vichy administration did not preserve the commemorative statue in Melle, it chose to spare the monument to Jasmin, a nationally known figure who was a much more potent regionalist symbol.45 Yet lower authorities did not always follow orders from the highest Vichy officials to preserve or dismantle certain statues. They flatly disregarded several other directives from Pétain, including one to destroy large republican allegories in Lyon and Paris. Departmental officials sought to preserve these politically charged monuments to avoid the protests that might follow their removal. Even Abel Bonnard, the ultra-­collaborationist education minister who succeeded Carcopino in April 1942, favored saving

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Léopold Morice’s grandiose allegory on the place de la République in Paris to maintain public order.46 As mentioned previously, the law of 11 October 1941 permitted the state to provide stone replacements for particularly meaningful statues. The administration’s goal was not to simply reproduce “mediocre” works but to replace them with higher-quality ones. Hautecoeur explains in his memoirs that the fine arts administration hired artists to create the replacements, both to combat unemployment among artists and to provide communities with higher-quality works of art. In May 1942, a M. Norguet, director of mechanical and electrical industries, lobbied the Ministry of Finance for a special fund that would provide the replacement statues, arguing that the campaign had caused a strong emotional reaction in some regions and that, as a result, the replacements held a “clear psychological interest.”47 The Comité supérieur approved projects for 153 stone statues, including a monument to François I in Le Havre; three to Joan of Arc in Mehun-sur-Yèvre, Pothières, and Laval; one to Alphonse de Lamartine in Belley; and one each to Victor Hugo and Pierre Joseph Proudhon in ­Besançon—a wide range of subjects that included not only monarchical or arguably anti-British symbols that might appeal to traditionalists but also important figures normally associated with the political Left. In the end, however, the state funded few replacements. The fine arts administration received a credit of 10,000,000 francs for replacement statues, of which only 3,380,000 francs were used in 1943 and 1,265,000 in 1944. The difference is explained in part by the frequent inability of sculptors to obtain stone for their commissions. Artists also blamed their sluggish production on poor working conditions and a lack of heat in studios.48 By 1944, moreover, the commissioning of stone statues was less a concern for the fine arts administration, as we will see, than facing German demands for works of art from French museums. During the initial phase of the campaign, from October 1941 to June 1942, the amount of metal collected fell short of the administration’s goal. According to government estimates at the time, about 1,600 statues had been “mobilized,” below the target number of 1,825. From the unoccupied zone the recycling program had provided five hundred tons of metal, most if not all of it exported to Germany. CMMNF receipts indicate that a German company, Rohstoffhandelsgesellschaft (ROGES; Raw Material Trading Company), purchased the metal derived from the bronze statues. A report from the GIRM to Regnier of the CMMNF indicates that as

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of 15 May 1942, fifty tons of metal derived from bronze statues had been shipped to Germany. A subsequent shipment of fifty tons was being prepared in Lyon, Béziers, Toulouse, Marseille, Nice, and Perpignan.49 The recycling campaign had two distinct phases, the first from October 1941 to June 1942, and the second from June 1942 to August 1944. Most of the destroyed statues were dismantled in the first phase, but the second phase saw an increase in German involvement. Even though the Germans still were unwilling to pull down the remaining statues themselves, French government archives related to the second phase contain more letters and directives from Occupation authorities. German interest in the bronze campaign was directly linked to Hitler’s war effort on the Eastern Front. Following the initial German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and Hitler’s failure to force a quick surrender from Stalin, it became clear that the Reich would need to extract even more resources from the occupied areas of western Europe to sustain a protracted eastern campaign. After the devastating German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, ­Goebbels announced that the Reich had shifted into a state of “total war.”50 German pressure in the recycling of statues thus reflects a broader increase in the exploitation of France from mid-1942. In the spring of 1942, the Germans had demanded that Pétain reinstate Pierre Laval as head of government. Pétain relented, ushering in a cabinet reshuffling and a period of heightened Franco-German collaboration. Laval’s key concern for the security of France was the defeat of Bolshevism, which he felt could be achieved only through collaboration with Nazi Germany. This obsession led Laval to commit the Vichy regime’s most egregious compromises—the conscription of workers to German factories and Jews to death camps. Yet Laval failed to realize that Hitler sought exploitation, not collaboration,51 and the statue campaign was part of this general funneling of French resources to Germany. In June 1942, the newly named minister of industrial production, Bichelonne, was confident that with some encouragement by Abel Bonnard, the new education minister, the departmental commissions would review their lists of statues and commit more of them to the metals campaign, “without badly harming our artistic patrimony.”52 Bonnard quickly became the most forceful advocate of the recycling effort, maintaining all along, at least publicly, that the metal would help French industry. In his view, the program also provided the opportunity for a “necessary revision of national heroes [gloires nationales].” While some statues would disappear out of economic necessity, new ones would

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replace them to commemorate the most honorable Frenchmen and reflect a “better understanding” of the nation’s past and present. He encouraged provincial academies and learned societies to study illustrious figures from the past and choose subjects according to “the importance of their services, the nobility of their nature, or the contours of their character.”53 Encouraging prefects to intensify the statue campaign, Bonnard explained that “only the requisition of statues can satisfy the most pressing needs of agriculture and industrial life.” A small number of monuments, he admitted, should be preserved for their artistic value, along with others that should be saved “for political reasons,” such as the large-scale republican allegories in Lyon and Paris. Yet he argued that sentimentality should not prevent authorities from recycling lesser statues. He instructed prefects to assuage the “legitimate and touching emotion of the people who witness the disappearance of a monument that is dear to them.” The solution, however, was not to exempt monuments from the metals campaign, which would only encourage requests for additional exemptions. Rather, the prefects were to “explain that the physical removal of a statue does not at all erase the glory that it represents.” Stone replacement statues would symbolize that glory once again, perhaps even celebrating figures who were more worthy of commemoration than the original subjects. Thus, in a matter of years, according to Bonnard, there would no longer be unworthy examples “in this small population of statues that must everywhere provide noble examples for the innumerable human population.” 54 In the fall of 1943, one of Pétain’s attachés informed the head of state that “German authorities have intervened for some time” in the statue campaign. They had obtained copies of French lists of statues that indicated which monuments were to be preserved, as well as those for which a decision had not yet been made. From these lists, the Germans created their own inventory for the CMMNF. It included explicit instructions to dismantle the chosen statues as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the Germans collected metal objects from buildings they had requisitioned, including Marianne allegories and commemorative plaques.55 On 4 December 1943, Léon Lamblin, assistant director of fine arts, met with German authorities to discuss the statue campaign. The Germans demanded an inventory of statues that had been selected for destruction but were still in place. Hautecoeur instructed Regnier of the CMMNF to provide the inventory “as quickly as possible.”56 Two months later, the Germans further demanded the destruction of several prestigious works, a move that

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even Bonnard opposed. In a letter to the Kunstschutz, he explained that the list contained “highly valuable monuments” and prime examples of French art, including The Age of Bronze by Rodin; The Son of Cain by Landowski; and Delacroix and The Triumph of Silenius, two works by Dalou in the Luxembourg gardens.57 Though it is difficult to assess the impact of Bonnard’s protests, in the end all of these monuments were preserved. His opposition to their removal at least indicates that even the most ardent proponent of collaboration in the fine arts administration was not willing to sacrifice such important examples of the French patrimoine artistique. The additional German pressure during the second phase of the campaign did not significantly increase the number of mobilized statues. The Ministry of Industrial Production most likely dismantled only around one hundred bronzes in the later phase, or 6 percent of the total number destroyed.58 There are two primary reasons for the slowdown. After Laval implemented the STO in February 1943, there were fewer workers to dismantle, transport, and process the statues.59 Perhaps more important, departmental authorities often delayed removing the remaining statues or flatly disobeyed orders from Paris or Vichy to dismantle them. After the first phase of the campaign, local and departmental officials often believed they had already contributed their fair share and opposed further destruction of their statues. Despite orders from the Comité supérieur to remove certain statues, a number of them remained intact because of obstructionism by ­mayors or prefects. Local authorities intervened to save a statue of Danton in Arcis-sur-Aube, for example, and the prefect of Isère blocked the removal of several statues as a result of “the current état d’esprit [state of mind].”60 As local or departmental commissions delayed final decisions about a statue’s fate, it became more likely that the statue would be preserved because of the labor shortage, a lack of enforcement, and a shift in priorities by 1944 with the impending Allied invasion.

Analysis of Destroyed Statues Although it is difficult to know exactly how many bronzes were dismantled and destroyed, reports by the Ministries of Industrial Production and National Education suggest the following estimates.61 About 1,700 statues and busts were dismantled during the metals campaign, along with 26 medallions, 21 commemorative plaques, and 6 bas-reliefs. About 1,600 works, or 91 percent, were collected during the first phase of the campaign,

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between October 1941 and June 1942. Of the dismantled statues, 63 percent were from the occupied zone and 37 percent from the unoccupied zone.62 The destroyed bronze statues may be divided into two main categories: commemorative monuments and allegorical or decorative statues. Of these, 70 percent were in the former category, 30 percent in the latter. Few destroyed statues commemorated women. The female form most often appeared in decorative and allegorical statues such as ones of Marianne or Liberty. This gender gap is not due to efforts by the Vichy regime to preserve statues of female subjects; instead, it reflects the small number of commemorative statues dedicated to women in the first place. Noncommorative statues with mythological, literary, and conventional subjects made up a sizable 20 percent. Some titles of these works reflect the whimsical nature of nineteenth-century statuary: The Childish Dance in Asnières, The Dancing Faun in Albi, and Cupid in La Ciotat. Examples of conventional subjects are A Shepherd in La-Roche-sur-Yon, Bread Carrier in Paris, and Grieving Woman in Pontoise. In Paris such decorative and noncommemorative statues constituted the majority of removed bronzes. From all of France, republican allegories such as Marianne, Liberty, and The Republic made up 6 percent of removed works, while 4 percent were decorative statues such as those on fountains and representations of plants and animals.63 Commemorative statues were most often monuments to local ­heroes who had lived in the host cities and who were considered model citizens due to their extraordinary accomplishments. As indicated on page 163, I

Republican allegories 6%

Decorative, animal 4%

Other figurative 20%

Removed statues by subject

Commemorative 70%

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suggest an approximate breakdown by profession for 889 subjects that I have identified. However, this analysis must be understood with a few important caveats. Certain professions are more easily identified in CMMNF reports, and their relative presence may be exaggerated in the overall analysis. Military leaders, for example, are often listed as “General,” “Captain,” or “Admiral.” In addition, some subjects could be listed in more than one professional category, such as the writer and politician Victor Hugo. The iconography and inscription of Hugo’s statue in Paris, in this instance, suggest that it primarily commemorated his career as a writer.64 Given the ambiguity of information of the CMMNF reports and the significant number of unidentified monuments, therefore, the following statistics provide only a rough breakdown of the statues’ subjects. About 27 percent of the destroyed statues commemorated political leaders. Strikingly, another 22 percent were dedicated to physicians and scientists. Seeing this relatively high number of destroyed monuments to scientists, one might conclude that Vichy leaders wanted to eliminate them as symbols of post-Enlightenment secularism. However, there is no evidence that scientists were targeted as ideological symbols. It is more likely that in a period of accelerated scientific discovery and industrial development, nineteenth-century French society honored a relatively high number of scientists in the first place. As Freeman points out, the prevalence of these monuments reveals more about secular society under the Third Republic than Vichy policy.65 Most of these subjects, moreover, would not qualify as “incontestable national heroes.” The campaign even Religious 3% Other 7% Artists, musicians 9%

Politicians 27%

Military 13%

Writers, intellectuals 19%

Physicians, scientists 22%

Removed commemorative statues by profession

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claimed five monuments to Louis Pasteur, one of the few French scientists who could have been considered a gloire nationale.66 Despite the common postwar impression that Vichy authorities targeted leftist political symbols, these statues were actually a small minority of those destroyed. Among commemorative statues, about 17 percent could be classified as widely known leftist or republican symbols. The criterion used in making this determination is whether the subject was predominantly commemorated for his or her political, philosophical, or literary contributions in promoting republicanism or socialism.67 The most frequent commemorated figures, overall, were two political leaders who were assassinated: sixteen monuments to Jean Jaurès and fourteen to Sadi Carnot—again, telling us more about the politics of commemoration under the Third Republic than Vichy iconoclasm. Six bronzes each of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Léon Gambetta were destroyed, along with two monuments each to Emile Zola, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and Camille Desmoulins, and one statue of Victor Hugo, formerly on the place de Victor Hugo in Paris.68 .  .  . Although bronzes of widely known leftist leaders and republican allegories made up only a small minority of the statues destroyed, the postwar perspective that these statues were the prime target of the campaign is in itself revealing. It shows the extent to which republican statuary had entered the consciousness of the French people, allowing the empty pedestals to symbolize a host of French sacrifices during the Occupation. The fixation on destroyed republican symbols also allowed postwar observers to charge the Nazis and Vichy collaborators with iconoclasm, without scrutinizing the actions of midlevel French authorities who actually implemented the statue campaign, particularly at the departmental level. If political symbolism was not the primary factor in the selection process, it was nevertheless an important one. Political symbolism mattered a great deal to local officials, associations, and the general public once the campaign was under way—though not necessarily along the lines laid out initially by traditionalists in Vichy. Case studies of Paris, Chambéry, and Nantes underscore the symbolic power of statuary and the complexity of a decision-making process that often yielded surprising results.

8 Endangered Local Patrimony Bronze Statues in Paris, Chambéry, and Nantes

Our [bronze statue] commissions worked slowly. We negotiated to save everything that we considered valuable. . . . One can say that we did not grieve a single irreparable loss. —Louis Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 1948 The pedestal of the statue [La Savoyarde] is constantly covered with flowers and serves as a pilgrimage site for the entire city and surrounding areas. . . . But it would be a mistake to prevent the expression of these feelings, which above all convey patriotism across social classes. —Prefect of the Savoie to Louis Hautecoeur, 25 April 1942

during the Occupation varied widely according to where one lived, the impact of the statue recycling campaign on communities largely depended on geography. The choices made by departmental and local leaders also were crucial and were shaped by several factors: the leaders’ own political inclinations, the extent to which they were willing to follow directives from Vichy and Paris, and whether concerns about public reaction to the loss of local patrimony influenced their decisions. As we have seen, statistics on the types of statues destroyed do not fully explain the various factors that determined which monuments were selected for recycling. Perhaps the best way to understand how these factors operated in various contexts is through local case studies. Although the statue campaign has been portrayed as a means to rid the French landscape of leftist symbols, the following examples of Paris, Chambéry, and Nantes reveal important factors beyond political symbolism that ­influenced French authorities: local political dynamics, the statues’ artistic Just as individual experiences

165

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quality, decision makers’ aesthetic preferences, logistical issues and worker availability, and the extent of intervention by German authorities. Even within the occupied zone, the level of German intervention varied widely depending on the local context. Until recently, analyses of the statue recycling campaign have focused on its impact in Paris. Yet hundreds of French villages sacrificed their commemorative statues, and the loss of these monuments gave rise to fascinating debates about local history and memory. Recent research in local history, by Stéphane Gerson and Philippe Poirrier, among others, reveals the importance of local political culture in the consolidation of the modern French nation-state, insights that illuminate wartime debates about which statues should be destroyed.1 The competing narratives of local history that surface among these elites in reaction to the recycling campaign help us understand the dynamics of local politics in communities distant from Vichy, both geographically and ideologically. These narratives also reveal the French people’s emotional attachment to statuary that had long been considered low-quality works of art but that became infused with new significance when threatened by the wartime regime.

Paris The city of Paris contributed some 191 bronze statues and busts to the campaign, 41 percent of which were commemorative monuments. The capital provided nearly 11 percent of the total number of removed statues and about sixteen thousand tons of recycled metal. Art historian Georges Poisson estimates that there were 250 commemorative and decorative statues in the French capital in 1940, of which around 76 percent were dismantled during the Occupation. The city’s example is unique because of the sheer number and types of statues destroyed.2 More than a dozen administrators and art experts participated in the Seine departmental commission. Pierre Revilliod, secretary general of the prefect’s office, chaired the meetings, and Messrs. Lamy and Bourkaïb represented the Ministry of Industrial Production. Jacques Dupont, inspector of historic sites, represented Louis Hautecoeur and the fine arts office. The city of Paris sent Messrs. Baudot and Azéma from the Office of Architecture and Urbanism; M. Bouly from the division of Paris streets (La voirie parisienne); Jean de Castellance, municipal councilor; Pierre Darras, hon-

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orary director of fine arts; and Georges-Armand Masson, general inspector of fine arts. Two participants represented the Commission of Old Paris, a M. Debidour and art critic Léandre Vaillat. Employees of several Parisian museums also participated: Pierre Ladoué, curator of the new National Museum of Modern Art; M. Terrier and Jacques Wilhelm of the Carnavalet museum of Parisian history; and Heron de Villefosse, assistant curator of the Musée du Petit Palais and a specialist in urban planning. The commission participants thus were civil servants, art experts, and museum curators who had built their careers during the Third Republic—not Vichy ideologues or Germanophile collaborationists. For the most part, they avoided making decisions about highly charged political symbols, referring these decisions to the Vichy government, and their discussions focused on whether the statues were artistically valuable. In keeping with aesthetic fashion of the time, most members harbored disdain for realist-figurative statuary, which made up the vast majority of bronzes in Paris. As Poisson puts it, “If this campaign had been decided during peacetime merely for aesthetic reasons, the carts [taking the statues away] would have been filled even more.”3 The Seine departmental commission held its first meeting on 8 November 1941, facing the formidable task of reviewing more than two hundred statues. The commission members decided to break down the selection process into phases, examining first the statues on boulevards and public squares in Paris, then those statues in public buildings, and finally monuments in the outlying suburbs. The commission met ten times between November 1941 and March 1942, systematically reviewing statues by arrondissement. During the first meeting, each member agreed to inspect a certain number of statues in person and offer recommendations. Some members examined statues in a state sculpture depot in Auteuil, while others viewed monuments in the city’s gardens, public squares, and suburbs.4 Once these inspections were completed, the commission created three lists. The first contained the statues that would be dismantled, such as monuments to Le Play in the Luxembourg gardens, Victor Hugo on the eponymous public square, and the poet François Coppée on the place Mithouard. Numerous allegorical and decorative statues met the same fate, such as Maternity, Elderly Chouan, and Spirit and Matter. The second list contained statues to be preserved because of their “historic or artistic nature,” such as Balzac by Rodin on the boulevard Raspail, the statue of Henri IV on Pont-Neuf, Triumph of the Republic by Dalou on the place

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de la Nation, and the monument to Diderot on boulevard Saint-Germain. Interestingly, another monument to Diderot on the square d’Anvers was destroyed, most likely because commission members found it artistically inferior to the one that was saved.5 The commission avoided making decisions about statues whose removal might have “political implications.” These monuments constituted the third list of statues, for which decisions were deferred to the education ministry. As the commission created this list in January 1942, decisions rested first with Jérôme Carcopino and then, after April 1942, with Abel Bonnard. The list included highly charged political symbols, such as ­Danton on Odéon Square; military heroes from the First World War, including ­Joffre, Galliéni, and Fayolle; and monuments to foreign leaders such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Belgium’s Albert I.6 In the end, no statues on the third list were destroyed.7 The Seine commission requested stone replacements for a number of commemorative statues, including monuments to Vercingetorix, Corneille, Voltaire, Rousseau, Camille Desmoulins, Berlioz, Le Play, Claude Bernard, Hugo, and Lamartine. Some replacement requests were made in response to petitions by private associations. For example, the Academy of Medicine asked to replace a monument to Pelletier and Caventou, scientists who discovered quinine in 1820. The French Olympic Committee also requested a new monument to Franz Reichel (1871–1932), an athlete and journalist known for promoting physical education and the construction of stadiums.8 Unfortunately, the minutes from these departmental meetings do not contain many details about why certain statues were preserved and others were not. The commission examined dozens of statues in each meeting and did not discuss each case in depth. However, we can infer the following: A  few monarchical symbols such as Henri IV and Louis XIV were “untouchable” because of Darlan’s instructions to preserve monuments to “incontestable” national heroes. Regarding republican symbols, there is no evidence to suggest that these statues were targeted at the departmental level. As the commission referred decisions about the most politically charged symbols to the education ministry, the overriding factor in its selection of statues was artistic quality, as evidenced by the significant amount of time the members spent inspecting nearly all of the statues in person. Some outside observers believed that the Seine commission was trying to preserve too many statues. The Comité supérieur issued a state-

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ment to the commission, most likely prompted by its representatives from the Ministry of Industrial Production, claiming that the number of condemned statues was “insufficient.”9 A contributor to the radical antiSemitic weekly Au Pilori was distressed to find in April 1944 that the republican allegory on the place de la République continued to stand, “an authentic and notorious navet, symbol of a fallen regime—ho! ho!— whose corpulence equals several tons of household chandeliers and jam pots.” Citing monuments to Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, the author added that these too could be sacrificed to the campaign, unless the Square of the United States was considered “Yankee territory.”10 Indeed, perhaps the most contested bronze monument in Paris was the large allegory on the place de la République, created by Léopold Morice in 1884. It serves as a monumental pendant to another large republican allegory on the place de la Nation, created in 1879 by Jules Dalou (1838–1902), a highly esteemed sculptor. The commission considered the statue by Dalou an important work of art, but Morice’s statue did not inspire the same level of admiration. During its meeting of 15 November 1941, the commission decided to dismantle the statue, preserving a few bas-reliefs by Dalou that surrounded the pedestal.11 Despite the commission’s decision, the Comité supérieur received a “verbal instruction” in March 1942 from the Ministry of Industrial Production to “stay” the statue’s removal. Unfortunately, the reason for this directive is unclear, though it may have stemmed from concerns about potential public disorder.12 When the second phase of the recycling campaign began later that year, the committee reviewed the case once again and, finding that the case was beyond its jurisdiction, referred it to the education ministry. The statue remained in place for several more months, but by June 1943, a letter from Pétain’s Cabinet civil to the CMMNF indicates that the head of state was pleased to learn of the statue’s imminent destruction. Pétain had ordered the dismantling of a similar statue in Vichy and was frustrated to find that large republican allegories still remained in Paris and Lyon.13 However, by early 1944 Morice’s Republic was still standing. Bonnard aimed to preserve it for “political reasons,”14 fearing public protests that might follow the statue’s removal. Amid the bureaucratic confusion and lack of enforcement from Vichy, Bonnard was able to dismiss Pétain’s order to dismantle it. As a result, the intervention of an unlikely fascist ally helped preserve the republican allegory.

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Analysis of Statues Destroyed in Paris The table below compares the number and types of statues removed in the capital to those recycled from the rest of the country. Perhaps the most striking difference is the percentage of removed statues that were commemorative monuments: 41 percent in the capital and 74 percent outside Paris. The remaining 59 percent in Paris were allegories such as Crowning the Arts, Musical Genius, and mythological or conventional subjects such as Sisyphus and Bread Carrier. The lower percentage of allegorical and Table 1. 

Removed bronze monuments and works of art

Category

Number

Percentage

Percentage of identified commemorative statues*

Paris (191 total) Allegorical, decorative Republican allegories

113

59

4

2

Commemorative*

78

41

Writers, intellectuals

28

36

Politicians

15

19

Physicians, scientists

14

18

Artists, musicians

9

12

Military leaders

5

6

Other

7

Leftist (includes above commemorative categories)

21

27

Outside Paris (1,557 total) Allegorical, decorative

400

Republican allegories

107

7

1,157

74

Commemorative

26

Politicians

227

28

Physicians, scientists

192

24

Writers, intellectuals

147

18

Military leaders

110

14

Artists, musicians

64

8

Other

71

Leftist (includes above commemorative categories)

130

16

Source: Reports of the CMMNF in AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, AN F21 7075. *Professions identified for 811 of 1,157 commemorative monuments outside Paris, and all 78 in Paris.

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decorative statues outside the capital may reflect a tendency for municipal and private associations in smaller cities and villages to use their resources to commemorate individuals rather than celebrate abstract ideas or literary references. The exception, however, was republican allegories such as Marianne, Liberty, and The Republic. These statues made up 7 percent of those destroyed outside the capital and only 2 percent in Paris. Though leaders sought to prevent the loss of significant allegories in Paris, such as those on place de la Nation and place de la République, the higher number of removed allegories in the provinces may be due to a greater proportion in the first place, designed to inculcate republican values outside the capital. Within the subcategory of commemorative monuments, there are a few significant differences between Paris and the provinces. The capital contributed a much higher percentage of monuments to writers, philosophers, and intellectuals: 36 percent in Paris and 18 percent in the rest of the country. As the cultural and intellectual center of France, Paris hosted numerous learned societies that had helped fund the erection of statues in honor of writers and scholars during the nineteenth century. Moreover, municipal authorities in Paris may have been more supportive of such projects than other local governments. The percentage of monuments to artists and musicians was also slightly higher in Paris, 12 percent compared to 8 percent outside the capital. Conversely, the percentage of removed monuments commemorating military leaders was higher outside Paris: 14 percent versus 6 percent in Paris. Although the principal reason for this difference may be greater proportional supply outside the capital, it is possible that monuments in Paris were more likely to commemorate individuals who could be considered national heroes. In Paris, 55 percent of military monuments were preserved (six of eleven), a combination of figures who had served monarchical and imperial leaders such as Marshal Ney and General Daumesnil, and heroes from the First World War such as General Galliéni and Marshals Joffre and Fayolle. About 26 percent of monuments to writers were saved (ten of thirty-eight), along with about 30 percent of those to politicians (seven of twenty-two) and scientists (six of twenty).15 The percentage of destroyed monuments to politicians also was higher in the provinces: 28 compared to 19 percent in the capital. These monuments often commemorated local elites who would have been known regionally but not nationally. The percentage of monuments to scientists and physicians also was higher in the provinces: 24 percent com-

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pared to 18 percent in Paris. This professional category of removed commemorative statues was second only to political leaders in the provinces. As previously discussed, scientists played an important role in provincial politics and social life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their influence extended well beyond scientific work and discovery. The relatively high number of destroyed monuments to scientists reflects the level of esteem these men enjoyed during the height of commemoration in public statuary.16 Despite the postwar impression that the recycling campaign targeted leftist figures, these symbols made up less than a third of dismantled commemorative monuments in Paris, and only 16 percent of those destroyed outside the capital. Well-known monuments to figures commonly associated with the Revolution, republicanism, or socialism endured in Paris: Danton, on Odéon Square, Diderot on the boulevard Saint-German, as well as the large allegories on the place de la Nation and place de la République. Aesthetic considerations played a role in the preservation of some, such as the allegory by Dalou on the place de la Nation, whereas concerns about negative public reactions to their removal helped save the monument to Danton and Morice’s allegory on the place de la République.17 Today, art historians regret what they believe were errors committed by the Seine commission, such as the decision to destroy a monument to Victor Hugo by Louis-Ernest Barrias. Although Barrias was a well-known and celebrated sculptor, receiving the Legion of Honor in 1878 and joining the Académie des beaux-arts in 1884, the recycling campaign claimed nearly all of his work in Paris, which was typical of the realist-figurative statuary that had fallen out of fashion by the 1940s. The Danton on Odéon Square was the only Barrias statue that survived.18 Yet the commission managed to preserve a number of bronze monuments that remain key components of the Parisian landscape, such as the Saint Michel fountain, the Medici fountain in the Luxembourg gardens, and the monument to Francis Garnier on the place de l’Observatoire. A few commemorative statues were reinstalled after the war thanks to persistent lobbying by private associations. A commemorative medallion, for example, replaced the statue of François Coppée in 1959, near Les Invalides.19 Most monuments, however, were not replaced; the era of allegorical and realistic-figurative statuary had passed. Detractors of la statuomanie, in the end, won the battle over public statuary in Paris.

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Chambéry, Savoie Chambéry, the capital of the Savoie department in the French Alps, provides a useful case study, as the removal of several politically charged monuments led to intense struggles over official interpretations of local history. From the early fifteenth century until the revolutionary wars, the region was held by the Dukes of Savoie, who also controlled Piedmont in present-day Italy. Annexed by revolutionary France in 1792, the Savoie was restored to its traditional rulers in 1815 and, following a treaty between Napoleon III and Piedmont, was definitively returned to France in 1860, along with the city of Nice. Under the Vichy regime, Chambéry initially was part of the unoccupied zone, though Italian troops occupied the department in December 1942 amid rumors that Mussolini intended to claim the region. The key events and debates related to the statue recycling campaign, however, occurred prior to the Italian occupation.20 Carrying out the Vichy regime’s instructions to review the supply of bronze statues, a departmental commission held its first meeting on 5 December 1941. The commission members were the prefect, M. Maillard, who served as chair; André Jacques, head curator of antiquities for the Savoie department; M. Latil, general inspector of industrial production for the district of Lyon, which included Chambéry; and M. Petriaux, head architect of the Savoie department, who specialized in the preservation of historic landmarks.21 The members reviewed the following five statues in Chambéry.22 The city had erected its first bronze monument in 1838 in honor of General Benoît de Boigne, an important local philanthropist who died in 1831. Created by Pierre-Victor Sappey, the monument contains three elements: a square fountain, supporting a column, with the bronze statue of the general on top. On each of the fountain’s four sides, a cast-iron elephant head and front legs symbolize De Boigne’s missions in India from 1778 to 1796. (Since the elephants were made of iron, they were not considered for the bronze metals campaign.) Next, a statue of Antoine Favre by A. ­Guméry, recipient of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1850, had been dedicated in 1865. Favre was the first president of the Savoie Senate and a well-known jurisconsult in the late sixteenth century. The Academy of Savoie funded the project and placed the statue in front of the Palais de Justice.23 The third bronze statue was La Savoyarde by Alexandre Falguière, dedicated in an 1892 ceremony attended by Sadi Carnot, then president of the Third Republic. The statue commemorated the French annexation

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Monument to General De Boigne, Chambéry. Photo by the author.

of the duchy of Savoie in 1792, one among hundreds of such monuments that celebrated the centenary of the Revolution.24 The figure is a peasant woman with a Phrygian bonnet, proudly stepping forward and holding the tricolor flag to her chest. The statue had been criticized for its aesthetic shortcomings from the day of its dedication. Because of the woman’s generous proportions, Chambériens derided her in the local dialect as “La Sasson,” or “the Fat Woman.” In addition, conservative notables rejected the statue’s political symbolism, preferring to commemorate the definitive annexation of the Savoie during the Second Empire.25 In response to the installation of the Savoyarde, the predominantly conservative Academy of Savoie sponsored a project to commemorate two brothers associated with the political Right, Joseph and Xavier de ­Maistre. Chambéry was the birthplace of the Maistre brothers, and Joseph, the

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counterrevolutionary philosopher, was among the first members of the Academy of Savoie. The municipal council approved the project in 1895, at a time when partisan political conflicts had cooled. Sculptor Ernest Dubois secured the commission, and the statue was dedicated in 1899.26 Chambéry’s statue battle continued a few years later when a leftist coalition solidified its power on the municipal council. Militant radicals organized the installation of a monument to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which was dedicated in 1910. The council granted the commission to a native Chambérien, Mars Vallett. Prior to the ceremony, the Catholic newspaper La Croix de la Savoie encouraged its readers to boycott the event, which would celebrate “a dangerous rhetorician, a revolutionary sophist and a dishonest man.”27

La Savoyarde (“La Sasson”), by Alexandre Falguière (1892), Chambéry. Photo by the author.

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The symbolism of the bronze statues in Chambéry thus ranged from one extreme on the political spectrum to the other, arguably representing the founders of both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary thought. Weighing the merits of each statue, the Savoie departmental commission discussed artistic quality and symbolic value, and whether the monument complemented the city’s architectural design. It decided to preserve the statues of Rousseau and General de Boigne, sacrificing the Savoyarde and the monuments to Favre and the Maistre brothers. They sought to spare the Rousseau statue mainly because of its artistic quality. The statue’s sculptor, Mars Vallett, claimed that Auguste Rodin had admired it during a trip to Chambéry and had told him that he would have been “happy to sign this work of art.”28 Moreover, the commission may have been influenced by the fact that Vallett not only was still living but was the local museum curator and an active figure in cultural affairs. The commission decided to preserve the monument to General de Boigne in part because of its symbolic value. De Boigne was admired for his philanthropic contributions to Chambéry, including the foundation of several charitable associations that continued to operate. The monument, moreover, stood at the end of a central axis in the city center, thus serving as an anchor in the urban layout. The commission also considered the practical challenges of removing the statue and decided that the small quantity of metal collected would not be worth the logistical difficulties of dismantling it, or the possible weakening of local morale.29 Several conservative organizations reacted sharply to the commission’s decisions. The president of the Academy of Savoie, Charles ­Arminjon, argued that the statue of Antoine Favre “is a part of the moral patrimony of this city and of the entire province. . . . It would be illogical and incomprehensible,” he explained, “to sacrifice a statue of an authentic Savoyard when, for example, the one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a citizen of Geneva, remained.” Arminjon also defended the symbolic value of the monument to the Maistre brothers. He admitted, however, that it was not an exceptional work of art and thus that it was less valuable than the monument to Favre. In a reply to Arminjon, the prefect explained that the commission was forced to follow the government’s order to “exclude all emotional consideration” in selecting statues for the campaign. The commission decided to remove the Maistre monument, he continued, because of its lack of artistic quality and its awkward location near the chateau of the Dukes of Savoie.30

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Henry Planche, president of Young Savoie: Savoyard Group for the National Revolution, also denounced the decision to preserve the statue of Rousseau. True to Pétainist traditionalism, Planche described Rousseau as the “author of principles that brought our country to disaster” and a man who was not even truly a Savoyard. Planche linked Rousseau to the official enemies of the Vichy regime, arguing that the memory of the philosopher was celebrated in Chambéry only by “a Freemason minority, of which the last gathering was honored by Jean Zay, today in prison for desertion and Pierre Cot, today on the run and stripped of his French citizenship.” The prefect forwarded the letter to the education ministry but decided not to respond to Planche “because of the letter’s tone.”31 In January 1942, the Comité supérieur in Paris reviewed the Savoie commission’s recommendations. It approved the preservation of the monument to General de Boigne and ordered the destruction of all the other statues: the Savoyarde and the monuments to Rousseau, Favre, and the Maistre brothers. However, the committee approved two stone replacements, one for the Savoyarde and one for the statue of Rousseau.32 The decision to recycle the Maistre monument and replace the two leftist symbols strikingly reveals the limits of traditionalist ideology in the selection process, even in the Vichy regime’s Comité supérieur, chaired by Louis Hautecoeur. The first statues removed were the Savoyarde and the monument to Rousseau. While there was little public reaction to the loss of the latter, the removal of “La Sasson” generated heated protests in Chambéry. In an unfortunate coincidence, the statue was dismantled on 22 April 1942, the eighty-second anniversary of the 1860 plebiscite that allowed France to annex definitively the duchy of Savoie. Some Chambériens were aware of the anniversary, prompting the prefect to admit that the removal date had been “poorly chosen.” Soon after the departure of “La Sasson,” demonstrators began to gather around the empty pedestal several times a week, laying flowers on it, singing the “Marseillaise,” and shouting “Long live French Savoie!” The prefect thought the demonstrations reflected a “touching” form of nationalism and decided not to intervene. He also believed that the protests were fueled by rumors that Italy would once again claim Nice and Savoie, a fear that prompted demonstrators to express “the unanimous desire to reject the possibility of no longer being French.”33 On a broader level, the protests also provided a benign forum for resistance against all that troubled Chambériens at the time: fears of repression by

178  Accommodation, Opportunity, Compromise

the Germans and the Vichy regime, Italian machinations, and everyday struggles, such as securing food rations. The loss of the Savoyarde also revived a broader debate about when the Savoie truly became part of the French nation. Since the Comité supérieur intended to provide Chambéry with a stone replacement for “La Sasson,” various organizations drew up proposals for the new statue. The associations were divided into two main camps. Mars Vallett, the local museum curator and creator of the Rousseau statue, led the group that advocated a plan to erect an exact stone replica of the statue to be created by Vallett, which would commemorate the 1792 annexation. The group believed that Vallett, a native of the Savoie, would best know how to “capture regional sentiment.”34 At the other end of the political spectrum, a Pétainist camp sought to erect an entirely new monument. Léon Costa de Beauregard, regional head of the Legion veterans organization, led this group, driven by a mission to spread the principles of the National Revolution among the French population. Beauregard proposed the creation of a higher-quality statue that would symbolize the plebiscite of 1860, in which Savoyards had approved the region’s annexation under the Second Empire. In his view, the date of 1792 on the pedestal of the Savoyarde commemorated revolutionary violence, “an invasion, a conquest, troubles and divisions.” The new statue that he envisioned would symbolize the peaceful love of Savoyards for the French nation. According to Beauregard, the plebiscite of 1860 was the moment when the Savoie chose to become a part of the nation, when the population was “in control of itself, peaceful, unanimous in its enthusiasm, conscious of its duties.”35 Hundreds of kilometers away, the fine arts administration in Paris served as arbiter in this debate. The office of Hautecoeur, a traditionalist conservative himself, decided that the replacement statue would represent the conservative version of Savoyard history. Hautecoeur granted the commission to Philippe Besnard, a sculptor from Haute-Savoie also known for his right-wing sympathies. When Besnard visited the site in Chambéry and met with local leaders to discuss the project, he received a decidedly mixed reaction. Those in the Mars Vallett camp were openly hostile to Besnard, claiming that the town had already decided that Vallett would create the replacement statue. Conservatives close to Beauregard, however, reassured Besnard that many Chambériens supported his commission, despite these “little provincial quarrels.” After months of wrangling between

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the two groups, the mayor of Chambéry convinced the prefect that discussions should be postponed until after the war, when the city could better focus on the replacement project.36 Meanwhile, as debates about the destruction of statues continued, a group of Chambériens developed a project to erect an entirely new stone monument in Chambéry. The conservative association Young Savoie sought to honor one of the Vichy regime’s favorite historical figures, Joan of Arc. The group’s plan reflected a kind of Joan of Arc cult fostered by the Vichy regime during the first two years of the Occupation. Right-wing observers found much to celebrate in the Maid of Orléans. Collaborationist Parisians emphasized her Anglophobia, while Vichy propaganda glorified her piety, her ability to unify the French in driving out foreign occupiers, and, when targeting French youth, her young age.37 Demobilized French soldiers founded Young Savoie in the fall of 1940, determined to honor their fallen comrades by supporting Pétain’s program for national renovation. In a manifesto written on 11 May 1941, the group stated that “by celebrating the heroine of national unity, we affirm our faith in the destinies of France, of which Joan of Arc is the purest symbol.”38 Young Savoie received public donations to finance the statue project and support from local Legion members, the Academy of Savoie, and other associations. The statue commission was granted to Maxime Real del Sarte (1888–1954), recipient of the Grand Prix National in 1921 and a well-known creator of commemorative monuments and war memorials. In addition, Real del Sarte was a key figure in conservative political circles, having played an active role in Action française since the early 1900s. The new stone statue was dedicated on 10 May 1942 during a week of festivities devoted to youth affairs,39 and just two weeks after the Savoyarde was dismantled. The image of one patriotic woman thus gave way to one more attuned to the wartime political climate. During the second phase of the statue campaign, the Comité supérieur in Paris decided that all the statues in Chambéry would be destroyed, including the one to De Boigne. However, the prefect of the Savoie refused to order the destruction of remaining statues, invoking a concern for public order. He explained in a letter to Hautecoeur that the removal of the De  Boigne monument “would seriously upset” the local population, perhaps inciting more trouble than the dismantling of the Savoyarde. The Chambéry municipal council echoed this view in a motion adopted during a plenary session on 15 February 1943, asking national authorities to preserve

180  Accommodation, Opportunity, Compromise

the De Boigne statue “in the name of the entire population of Chambéry.” Unmoved, Hautecoeur’s office reiterated in April 1944 that due to the acute shortage of metal, no monument would be preserved in the Savoie. In what may have been a final delaying tactic, the prefect reported to the fine arts administration that he had approved a plan drafted by the Chambéry municipal council to create molds of statues before they were destroyed.40 In the end, the prefect and local authorities prevented the removal of the monuments to Favre and De Boigne; only the Savoyarde and the monuments to Rousseau and the Maistre brothers had been dismantled in Chambéry. The Maistre monument was later found intact at the Etablissements Dumont-Girard in Lyon and was returned to Chambéry, where it stands today outside the chateau of the Dukes of Savoie. Chambériens eventually dedicated a replica of the Rousseau statue in 1955 and a refurbished Savoyarde in 1982, replacing all the monuments that had been dismantled during the recycling campaign.41 Unlike in the other two case studies, in Nantes German authorities became directly involved in the selection of statues that would be recycled. Violent resistance activity in the Loire-Inférieure department incited the Germans to intervene not in dismantling statues but in preserving them.

Nantes, Loire-Inférieure The case study of Nantes, capital of the Loire-Inférieure department (renamed Loire-Atlantique in 1957) in German-occupied Brittany, differs from those of Paris and Chambéry in that occupying authorities became directly involved in the selection and preservation of statues. Relations between the Germans and the local population were particularly hostile in Nantes, and occupying authorities continually worked to quash threats to public order. On 20 October 1941, two unknown assailants shot and killed the Feldkommandant of Nantes, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Hotz.42 The German officer had worked as an engineer in Nantes in the 1920s and 1930s and generally had a favorable reputation among the Nantais. A French interpreter at the prefecture, Edmond Duméril, wrote in his diary after the assassination that Hotz “was a just, intelligent man who was in no sense Hitlerian, a friend of the French.” Duméril also wondered whether the Nazis would “replace him with some odious Prussian saber rattler.”43 The German retaliation was swift. Occupation authorities blocked telephone lines, established an evening curfew at 7:00 p.m., and rounded

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up three hundred French suspects. The following day General Otto von Stülpnagel, the top-ranking commander of German forces in France, ordered the execution of fifty suspects, to be followed by fifty more executions if the assassins were not found within forty-eight hours. On 22 October, twenty-seven hostages were shot at the internment camp at Chateaubriant, five were killed in Paris, and sixteen prisoners were pulled from jails and shot in the Champ du Bêle near Nantes. A Czech and a Polish prisoner whom the Germans had already sentenced to death were also shot as part of the retribution, bringing the total to fifty executions. The assassins were not found, despite an offered reward of 15 million francs for information leading to their arrest, but the Germans did not carry out the additional fifty executions as threatened.44 The executions intensified French hostility toward the Germans in Nantes. Yet in the fall of 1941, the Resistance movement was still fractured and even angry residents felt powerless to oppose the occupier.45 In response to the Hotz assassination, Pétain called for an end to the violence in a radio address: A stream of blood once again flows over France. The ransom is frightful, for it does not directly affect the real criminals. My fellow Frenchmen, your duty is clear; you must stop the killing. With the armistice, we gave up our arms. We do not have the right to take them up again to shoot Germans in the back. . . . Do not let anyone further harm France!46

Amid these dramatic events, local officials actively sought to preserve their artistic patrimony from the metals campaign. In particular, the mayor, M. Rondeau, used the threat of public uprisings to his advantage in convincing French and German authorities to preserve some of his city’s monuments. The departmental commission of the Loire-Inférieure met three times in November 1941. The members of the commission were M. Viellecage, the prefect, or M. Olivieri, his secretary general, who served as chair; M. Depralon, general inspector of industrial production; M. Stany-Gauthier, curator of the Chateau of the Dukes in Nantes; M. ­Giraud-Mangin, the department’s curator for antiquities and art objects; and M. Moreau, architect in the Division of Historic Landmarks.47 During the commission’s first meeting on 10 November, Depralon emphasized the “extremely urgent” need to supply nonferrous metals. In the city of Nantes, nineteen bronze works were under consideration,

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including pieces with multiple objects, such as two lions outside the Palace of Justice, a group of mountain sheep in the Jardin des Plantes, and several allegorical statues adorning a fountain on the place Royale. Despite the sense of urgency to collect metal, the commission members decided unanimously to preserve several statues that they believed were important, including an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc; a monument to General Cambronne, a French hero from the Battle of Waterloo; and a statue of Colonel Villebois-Mareuil, a known admirer of Charles ­Maurras who was killed in 1900 while fighting the British alongside the Boers. ­Although the commission spared those monuments, it authorized the removal of two allegories at the entrance of the fine arts museum, the statues of mountain sheep in the Jardin des Plantes, and a monument to Auguste Billault, a conservative lawyer and politician who opposed the Second Republic and became a senator and interior minister in the Second Empire.48 Members of the commission most likely were aware of Billault’s history, but his political affiliations were not significant enough to preserve the statue. At the end of the meeting, the members remained divided over several remaining statues, including a bronze group of deer, described as “a remarkable work,” by a well-known animal sculptor, Georges Gardet; and a statue of a physician, Dr. Guepin, “a mediocre work . . . that hampers the perspective of the boulevard Delorme, but one that pays homage to a very popular Nantais, the memory of whom remains tied to local history.”49 During its second meeting, the group again preserved the statue by Gardet but allowed the destruction of the monument to Dr. Guepin, if “absolutely necessary.”50 The commission reversed its prior decision about the Villebois-Mareuil statue, recommending its removal.51 Thus, the group preserved deer statues for their exceptional artistic quality while allowing the destruction of a right-wing, anti-British symbol, which potentially could have been used by Vichy propaganda. The Comité supérieur in Paris reversed the decisions of the commission, ordering the destruction of nearly all the monuments—including the one to Villebois-Mareuil—and saving only the statues of Joan of Arc and Cambronne. The committee also allowed stone replacements for statues embellishing the fountain on the place Royale and a bust of Jules Verne.52 Thus, the committee sought to save two statues that arguably complemented Vichy traditionalism but decided to destroy another potential right-wing symbol (Villebois-Mareuil). Moreover, it chose to replace

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decorative statues and a modest bust of a science-fiction writer over the monument to Colonel Villebois-Mareuil. A German officer in Nantes, however, recognized the propaganda value of the Villebois-Mareuil monument.53 In February 1942, Lieutenant Colonel von und zu Bodman issued the following statement to the mayor of Nantes: The removal of the Colonel de Villebois-Mareuil monument seems to me, from a political viewpoint, undesirable if one takes into consideration the fact that the colonel fought against England, the common enemy of Germany and France. I thus demand the replacement of this monument to its former site.54

Other Germans, however, disagreed. Nine days after Bodman had ordered the mayor to replace the statue, the Feldkommandant ordered its removal. Bodman, the notice explained, was no longer serving in Nantes.55 In the end, the fine arts office in Paris followed the initial German instruction to reinstall the statue. The most widely read newspaper in Nantes, Le Phare de la Loire, praised this decision, arguing that it would have been “a shame to watch a statue disappear that recalls the odyssey of a great Frenchman who did not hesitate to give his life in order to save a courageous people who were hideously oppressed.” The reinstallation of the statue was a wise decision “at a time when the English are acting against the French with the same cold cruelty they used against the Boers.” 56 However, municipal and departmental authorities in Nantes protested the decision of the Comité supérieur to remove all statues except those of Joan of Arc and Cambronne. They demanded, in particular, that the statues on the fountain of the place Royale be preserved. In fact, the prefect contacted the Feldkommandantur to circumvent the authority of the Comité supérieur in Paris. The Germans agreed to intervene, ordering the committee to preserve the statues on the condition that the city of Nantes would collect for Germany an amount of copper equivalent to the estimated amount contained in the five bronze statues.57 The decision stood for several months until the second phase of the recycling campaign was under way. On 21 September 1942, the departmental commission of the Loire-Inférieure met once again to review its previous decisions. By then, the department had sacrificed twenty bronze monuments, fifteen in Nantes alone. Only four remained, all of them in Nantes: the monuments to Joan of Arc, Cambronne, Colonel VilleboisMareuil, and the statues on the place Royale fountain. The commission

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believed it did not have the authority to order the destruction of any of these monuments since the Comité supérieur had previously ordered the preservation of the first two and the Germans had intervened to preserve the statues of Villebois-Mareuil and those adorning the fountain.58 The assistant mayor, Abel Durand, also informed the commission that the city was unable to provide the required amount of metal necessary to save the place Royale fountain. However, he read a statement from the mayor’s office that underscored the fountain’s symbolic value. According to the statement, the amount of metal collected from the statues would not be worth the subsequent “moral liability.” The stripped fountain would be “a permanent publicity” that would be exploited “to the benefit of propaganda organized in Nantes by the Communist Party” and its “terrorist organization.” The removal of the statues, the statement warned, would create “certain danger for the moral climate” of the city, a major preoccupation of the municipality, “especially under the current circumstances.” After Durand finished reading the statement, the commission voted unanimously to preserve the fountain.59

Fountain on the place Royale, Nantes. Photo by the author.

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Apparently unmoved by Durand’s dramatic warnings, the Comité supérieur reversed the commission’s decision and ordered the destruction of all the statues, except the monument to Joan of Arc and some smaller figures on the place Royale fountain.60 The prefect, however, did not act on the committee’s instructions. He reminded the fine arts office that the monument to Villebois-Mareuil and the statues on the fountain initially had been preserved on orders from the Germans, adding that their removal would “provoke very regrettable clashes.”61 The prefect managed to postpone further the removal of the statues, and they all survived another year. In the meantime, Nantes had suffered from heavy Allied bombing in September 1943. A number of buildings in the center of town were demolished, including those surrounding the place Royale. The fountain survived the bombing intact but was again threatened by the recycling campaign in early 1944, when the education ministry informed the prefect that all of the remaining statues in the Loire-Inférieure would be dismantled.62 Yet within a matter of weeks, on 27 March, Bonnard issued a surprising statement to the mayor of Nantes, in which he finally agreed that the fountain statues should be preserved. Despite the urgent need for metal, he wrote, the “marvelously intact fountain and statues in the center of the destroyed city are for me the symbol of its persistent life and of its coming renaissance.” 63 The best explanation for this sudden change of heart may be that when Bonnard had ordered the fountain’s destruction, he was not aware that the Germans had already intervened to preserve it. (He became education minister two months after the German order.) On 18 March 1944 the assistant director of the Paris fine arts office, Léon Lamblin, had informed Bonnard that the Feldkommandant had preserved the fountain statues in February 1942, whereas Bonnard had “recently decided that no bronze work would be preserved in the Loire-Inférieure department.” 64 By reversing his earlier decision, Bonnard thus appears to have been backpedaling to avoid contradicting the German orders. All of the remaining monuments survived the campaign, given the lack of enforcement from Paris. In the end, however, the city of Nantes lost most of its bronze works—fifteen of nineteen, or nearly 80 percent. .  .  . These three local case studies illustrate the competing interests of numerous French and German authorities and the variety of factors that

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shaped the impact of the campaign at the local level. A representative example of the national experience, were it possible to find one, would be much less dramatic than these three cities in the number of statues destroyed, the intensity of public reaction, and the extent of German intervention. The examples given here suggest a wide range of experiences that defy generalized conclusions about the campaign’s impact on French communities. In Paris, some members of the cultural and political elite welcomed the campaign, viewing it as an effective solution to the problem of la statuo­manie. As the Seine Departmental Commission deferred decisions on some of the most politically charged symbols to the education minister, artistic quality appears to have been the decisive factor in its selection of statues—more so than in Chambéry or Nantes. Although a number of artists and private associations wrote letters protesting the campaign, there was little public reaction in Paris. The fate of the bronze monuments was not a primary concern for most Parisians. Critics of nineteenth- and early ­twentieth-century figurative statuary such as Carcopino and Hautecoeur also provided an aesthetic justification for the campaign, welcoming the opportunity to eliminate what they considered outmoded works of art. After the war, republican administrations continued this bias against figurative commemorative monuments, and for that reason, as well as a shortage of funding, many statues were not replaced.65 In Nantes as in Paris, there was little public reaction to the statue recycling campaign, though local officials struggled behind the scenes to preserve the city’s artistic patrimony. What makes this city’s case unusual is the direct intervention by the Germans, who ordered the replacement of an Anglophobic symbol that had been torn down. Moreover, the prefect of the Loire-Inférieure sought the assistance of German authorities in defiance of the Comité supérieur to preserve the statues on the place Royale fountain. French authorities in Paris then were unwilling to counteract German orders to preserve the bronzes. There was greater public reaction to the campaign in Chambéry, particularly in response to the removal of the Savoyarde, which awakened century-old political divisions between leftists and conservatives. Prior to the Italian occupation in late 1942, the city was not under foreign surveillance and the inhabitants were able to stage peaceful protests without retribution. These protests undoubtedly played a role in the prefect’s dismissal of instructions from Paris to destroy additional statues.

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Despite these differences in the campaign’s impact, there were also a few common elements. In all three cities, the most zealous proponents of the statue campaign were the representatives from the French Ministry of Industrial Production. These officials, pressured by German demands, sought to obtain as much metal as possible, regardless of the statues’ political symbolism. They faced opposition from other members of the departmental commissions, usually representatives of the fine arts administration. Although many arts experts were not enthusiasts of realisticfigurative statuary, there was a consistent effort at the departmental level to preserve as much of the region’s patrimony as possible, regardless of political symbolism, either by exempting statues from the campaign or by requesting replacement statues. Departmental commissions and prefects also proved reluctant to pursue further removals during the second phase of the campaign after mid-1942. They often believed that their departments had already contributed their fair share and that additional removals would not be worth the potentially harmful psychological effect on the population. The impact of the statue recycling campaign on a given department depended in large part on the willing participation of the prefect, who was responsible for implementing the decisions of the Comité supérieur and instructing the GIRM to remove the condemned monuments. Yet prefects often disregarded instructions from the committee in Paris, usually because of fears about public reaction or, as in the case of Nantes, a desire to avoid conflict with German authorities. Their responses to the directives of the Vichy regime thus varied considerably.66 These three local case studies also reflect the limited importance of political symbolism in the decision-making process. If key conservatives supported the campaign as a belated corrective to la statuomanie, and some vocal leftists opposed it, the selection of statues for the campaign does not break down so easily into categories of Right and Left. At each level of decision making—national, departmental, and local—authorities often were not willing to accept Darlan’s initial definition of valuable statuary and instructions to preserve important monarchical symbols. Beyond a statue’s political symbolism, French authorities assessed its artistic quality, the logistical difficulties of removing it, the available workforce, and the potential public opposition. For example, if the decision makers in Chambéry had been guided above all by Pétainist traditionalism, they would have most likely sought to preserve the monument to the Maistre brothers and

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condemn the Savoyarde and Rousseau statue; one would expect the Comité supérieur in Paris to reach the same conclusion. Instead, the departmental commission requested replacements of the two leftist symbols, which were approved by the executive committee. Although Haute­coeur eventually envisioned a replacement Savoyarde that commemorated the second annexation under the Second Empire, the committee in Paris approved the replacement before this idea was discussed. The Paris committee, moreover, condemned the Maistre monument, a potent counterrevolutionary symbol, without planning to replace it. In the case of the Savoyarde, there was general agreement at both government levels that the statue was artistically inferior to the other bronzes, which helps explain why it was one of the first dismantled monuments. However, authorities underestimated the political implications of their decision to remove it. A symbol of the fallen Republic, the statue’s empty pedestal sparked political divisions that had ebbed and flowed since the Revolution, at times latent beneath the surface of social relations, then erupting into open conflict during periods of political uncertainty. The conflict over the Savoyarde reveals the ways in which notions of local and regional cultural identity inform one’s sense of national belonging.67 The project to create a replacement for “La Sasson” prompted Chambériens to define their heritage not only as Savoyards but also as French citizens. For those who embraced a republican version of Savoyard history, only a replica of “La Sasson” would accurately symbolize the region’s annexation to France. Those who rejected this interpretation of history believed that the Savoyarde should be replaced by a monument that commemorated the imperial plebiscite of 1860. Both ideas expressed a sense of belonging to the French nation, grounded by a strong identification with Savoyard history and culture: one honored republican tradition; the other, a dictatorship and, implicitly, the Vichy regime. In other words, the city’s political and cultural elite framed the debate with two competing, dominant memories that remained irreconcilable throughout the Occupation.68 Only when socialists played a prominent role on the city council in the 1980s were Chambériens willing to put “La Sasson” on a pedestal once again and publicly embrace their region’s revolutionary heritage. The selection of statues in Nantes similarly eludes simple conclusions about the manipulation of political symbols. In its early meetings the departmental commission chose to preserve Gardet’s deer because of the statues’ remarkable artistic quality but condemned the monu-

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ment to Villebois-Mareuil, a symbol of anti-British military heroism. The Comité supérieur, in turn, validated the decision to dismantle the monument, without providing for a replacement statue. The German Lieutenant Colonel Bodman, in ordering the reinstallation of the monument to Villebois-Mareuil, was more willing than French authorities to use the statue as anti-British or collaborationist propaganda. That the statue survived the Occupation intact, in the end, had more to do with the confusion of competing Franco-German directives than the statue’s anti-British propaganda value. The statue campaign also illustrates tensions between central and provincial authorities. On the one hand, the recycling campaign is an example of state intervention into local cultural affairs under the Vichy regime, intervention that coincided with a general centralization of policy toward the French patrimoine artistique during the Occupation. On the other hand, local and departmental authorities played an important role in determining how this program—imposed by authorities in Paris and Vichy—would be carried out. Working in different political situations around the country and with varying degrees of deference to the Vichy regime, prefects in the end usually decided which statues would be spared. It shows that policy of this nature could not be entirely centralized, and provincial authorities were determined to maintain control over measures with a direct impact on their patrimoine. Moreover, the metal recovery program also underscores the complexity of Franco-German relations in policy making during the Occupation. It most likely would not have been implemented without German pressure, but for the most part the French were allowed to administer the program themselves. Although the Germans circulated among the statues daily, particularly in Paris and other northern cities, they were unwilling to seize the monuments themselves. Even in the shift to total war during the last two years of the Occupation, the Germans relied on French authorities and workers to remove and process the statues. The statue recycling program thus contradicts some standard assumptions about French collaboration and resistance. In the case of Paris, the ultra-collaborationist Bonnard challenged German directives by arguing that certain works of art in Paris ought to be saved, including Jules Dalou’s Delacroix and Auguste Rodin’s The Age of Bronze. Though it would be granting Bonnard too much credit to argue that he single-handedly saved these works, he did delay the removal process until the Germans

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were too preoccupied with the impending Allied invasion to pursue it vigorously. When negotiations turned to key works in the French cultural patrimony, there were limits even to Bonnard’s willingness to accommodate German demands. Postwar accounts of the recycling campaign have also minimized the role of French authorities in the destruction of statues, a tendency that coincided with the broader crafting of a Gaullist resistance myth.69 By claiming that the statues had been destroyed by the Nazis and ardent collaborators, these accounts overlooked the origins of the campaign and the work of French officials who actually implemented it. That many of these departmental and midlevel civil servants remained in the administration after the Occupation helps explain why French actions—in this area as in many others—were not scrutinized more critically. These accounts are also misleading because they focus on the loss of monuments to widely known republican or socialist leaders, which made up a small minority of the lost statues. Many of the recycled monuments commemorated regional or local figures who were neither known on the national level nor primarily celebrated for leftist political activities. Yet the fact that observers cited first and foremost the loss of republican symbols underscores the emotional attachment of the French to the departed bronze figures. The statues became symbols of suffering and loss under the Germans, all the more meaningful when only the empty pedestals remained. In the end, the decentralized decision-making process and a widespread desire to protect local artistic patrimony thwarted the plans of Pétain and Darlan to preserve only monuments to select national heroes—those who embodied their ideals of Catholicism, militarism, and monarchism. The metals campaign was only one of many Nazi tactics to seize resources from France. The Vichy leadership negotiated away raw materials, foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and people—particularly workers and Jews. Then there were assets that the Nazis looted, without French consent, including works of art, libraries, musical instruments, and valuable furniture collections. Vichy leaders vociferously opposed Nazi art pillages, not in defense of the victims, who were primarily Jewish, but because they wanted to control the plunder themselves.

9 Jewish Art Collections

By defeating France, the German army liberated the French government and people from the influence of the international Jewry. . . . The [German] protection of works of art owned by Jews should be considered a small indemnity for the heavy burdens and significant sacrifices of the Reich benefiting European populations in the battle against the Jewry. —Gerhard Utikal, 3 November 1941 The Schloss collection was the last of the great Dutch art collections built in France during the nineteenth century. It would be deplorable if this entire collection went abroad, which surely will happen if the Louvre does not keep a portion of it. . . . With this acquisition, the Louvre’s gallery of Dutch painting . . . would become the top Dutch gallery in the world, just after the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It thus would greatly enhance our museum’s prestige. —René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 18 August 1943

On the morning of 3 November 1940 , Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring visited the Jeu de Paume museum, the Nazis’ repository in Paris for freshly looted art. German officers awaited him, along with chilled champagne and an array of potted palm trees. The small museum was filled with antique furniture, precious sculpture, and paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Renoir, and Gauguin—a wide range of highly valuable works of art. Dressed down in civilian clothes, Göring carefully surveyed the collection, his steps cushioned by rare oriental rugs. He continued studying the treasure the following day and handpicked twenty-seven paintings for his private collection, most of them previously owned by Edouard de Rothschild and Georges Wildenstein. He also selected dozens of furniture pieces 191

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and decorative objects, including four tapestries and an eighteenth-century sofa with six matching chairs. Throughout the Occupation, Göring profited handsomely from his position of influence and made twenty-one such visits to the Jeu de Paume to procure looted art.1 Like other Nazi leaders, the Reichsmarschall was an avid collector who enjoyed surrounding himself with fine works of art and relishing their aesthetic beauty. But he also sought to expand his collection as a symbol of his status and power in the Reich leadership. With each new batch of looted art, Göring and other top Reich officials selected prize pieces for themselves, allowing curators in the Nazis’ employ to survey the remaining works and choose objects for German museums. In the Nazi vision of Europe, the Thousand-Year Reich would dominate the continent not only militarily but also culturally, thanks in large part to these spoils. French authorities, however, were not willing to relinquish the Jewish art collections without a fight. Officials from several agencies banded together to protest the German looting, not in defense of the collectors’ private property but in defense of French sovereignty and cultural heritage. Postwar memoirs and histories written by French museum officials, even in recent years, have focused on the German side of this story. In 2000, this perspective even appeared in the report of the Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, created in 1997 by Prime Minister Alain Juppé. Headed by Jean Mattéoli, a former Resistance activist and political deportee, the commission is more commonly known as “la mission Mattéoli.” The extensive, multivolume report was to serve as a kind of national mea culpa, recognizing the role of the French state in the seizure of a wide range of Jewish assets—bank accounts, real estate, businesses, furniture, musical instruments, and assets seized at the transit camps of Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Roland. It details the history of spoliation under the Vichy regime and offers recommendations for providing appropriate compensation to Jewish victims and their heirs.2 Historian Annette Wieviorka, who served on the Mattéoli Commission, has emphasized in her scholarship the importance of distinguishing spoliation from pillages.3 Spoliation was a form of “legal theft” carried out by the Vichy regime, based on French legislation, in an effort to Aryanize the French economy. Pillages, in contrast, were carried out almost entirely by the Germans and were considered illegal by French authorities as a result of the Hague Convention’s ban on the wartime looting of private property. The Mattéoli report echoes this distinction, asserting that the spoliation of

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Jewish assets was an act of “Nazi inspiration, but essentially carried out by the Vichy regime,” whereas art pillages were “a German affair.”4 This framework allows the authors of the volume on art looting to focus almost exclusively on German actions: “In contrast to other areas studied by the [Mattéoli] Commission, an analysis of the art dossier underscores the preponderant role played by German agencies, mobilized under the circumstances to play a specific role in the ideology and intrigues of the National Socialist state.”5 Yet the dichotomy of “French spoliation” and “German pillage” tends to oversimplify the very complicated reality of art seizures during the Occupation. In several key cases, French officials themselves were able to appropriate works from prestigious Jewish art collections in the southern unoccupied zone, including valuable works from the collections of ­Edouard, Henri, Maurice, and Robert de Rothschild and the heirs of A­dolphe Schloss. For Jacques Jaujard, René Huyghe, and their colleagues in the museum administration, the private collections were part of the French patrimoine national that was being depleted each day as loaded trains carried thousands of paintings and other cultural objects to Germany. Since the Liberation, museum officials have correctly argued that an overriding French goal was to keep the works in France and out of Nazi hands. It is a heroic narrative that tells an important, courageous tale of conservation. Yet there is another side of the story that has remained untold: wartime archives also reveal that these curators and civil servants intended to place the works of art in the Louvre and other French museums—not temporarily, as a ruse to keep the works away from the Germans, but permanently. A significant body of archival evidence refutes postwar assertions that the museum administration merely was protecting the French cultural patrimony and acting in the interest of Jewish collectors. These documents also reveal continuities with postwar cultural policy, implemented by some of the same men who remained in the fine arts office, in which the Louvre and other museums began a complicated guardianship over more than two thousand objects from Jewish collections that had been recovered from Germany, were returned to France, but not claimed by victims or their heirs.

German Art Looting Before Hitler fought in the trenches of World War I, experiencing a surge of pan-German patriotism, before he organized the National Socialist Party and became the Reich’s Führer, he was a failed artist. As a young

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man, he twice tried to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and twice faced rejection from the cultural elite. Yet he fancied himself an art connoisseur and, once in power, ambitiously built a vast personal collection, setting into motion plans to create the most extensive and prestigious art museum in the world. A vast cultural complex featuring a Führermuseum would be created in his childhood hometown of Linz, Austria. Hitler recruited some of the top art historians, curators, and dealers in Germany to help him build the museum collection, which would pool masterpieces once housed across the European continent.6 Hitler thus sought to expand both his personal art collection and the holdings of the future Linz museum. Other members of the Nazi leadership followed Hitler’s lead and built sizable art collections of their own. They did so not merely for the aesthetic pleasure of owning beautiful works of art; a Nazi leader’s art collection also symbolized his social status and political influence. As self-styled members of a new German aristocracy, Nazi henchmen such as Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, and party leader Martin Bormann used art collections to flaunt their success and to shape their identity within the political and cultural elite.7 As the Reich conquered vast expanses of territory across the European continent, bands of German pillagers scoured museums and private collections for cultural spoils. The pillaging campaign first began in Poland and followed the path of Hitler’s war machine to the Baltics, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and eventually to the Soviet Union. The Nazis above all sought “Germanic” works, those either created by artists of German heritage (an elastic notion that included the seventeenth-century Dutch masters) or works that were previously owned by Germans. In a parallel to the “repatriation” of thousands of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe to the Reich territory, the pillages were to reverse a centuries-old scattering of Germanic art across the continent. In particular, top Nazi officials sought to reclaim works of art that had been stolen by Napoleon’s armies.8 The seizure of cultural objects had been considered a natural extension of military operations through the early nineteenth century. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, to which Germany was a signatory, banned the plunder of private property by occupying military powers, but the Nazis felt no obligation to honor international law in their quest to reverse Napoleon’s plunder.9 The directors of the Linz museum project, Hans Posse until December 1942, succeeded by Hermann Voss, seized works from German-­occupied

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territories and bought objects on the flourishing art market. Money was no object for Hitler. Between April 1943 and March 1944 alone, Voss was able to purchase 881 paintings. By the end of the war, the collection destined for Linz contained some five thousand paintings, ninety-five tapestries, and a wide array of furniture and other art objects. In comparison, the permanent collection of the Louvre in 1960 held a relatively scant fifteen hundred paintings.10 In their mission to recover “Germanic” art, Nazi leaders particularly coveted works by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish old masters— Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Rubens, Ruisdael. They also sought traditional artistic genres such as domestic interiors, still-life paintings, and landscapes. They denounced as “degenerate” the cubist, expressionist, and surrealist movements. In March 1937, the Nazi cultural administration held an exhibition in Munich of Entartete Kunst, or “degenerate art,” as a way to teach the public about the negative impact of modernism. Under the leader­ship of Joseph Goebbels, the cultural administration confiscated nearly sixteen thousand modernist works from the Nationalgalerie and other public museums, targeting pieces by artists such as Kokoschka, Kirchner, and Chagall. The works were either sold on the art market or destroyed. On 20 March 1939, nearly five thousand paintings, drawings, sculptures, and engravings were secretly burned in the courtyard of the Berlin fire department headquarters. As Lynn Nicholas points out, this dramatic cleansing of art collections is a disturbing portent of the Final Solution that would develop over the next few years.11 Despite official denunciations of modernist art, Göring and other top leaders filled their own collections with postimpressionist works similar to those that had been confiscated from public museums. They knew which paintings would fetch a good price on the art market and used proceeds from sales to purchase works from earlier periods. Göring, for example, sold a Cézanne and two Van Gogh paintings that he had acquired from the Nationalgalerie purge to buy older paintings and tapestries.12 As the Reich expanded its control over the European continent, stockpiles of valuable art grew accordingly, emanating from both public and private collections. In France the looting began in the summer of 1940, soon after the armistice had been signed. Initially, Hitler sought to gain control over all art collections—public and private. In August 1940 he instructed Propaganda Minister Goebbels to launch an extensive survey of “all works of art and historically important objects,” owned

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by governments and private individuals alike, that were held in France and other occupied countries. Goebbels was to determine whether a “lawful change of ownership” would be feasible in the final peace treaties.13 As previously discussed, Goebbels commissioned a team of art historians headed by Otto Kümmel, director of Berlin State Museums, to create a list of works that had been owned by Germans since the sixteenth century but currently were housed in other countries. Goebbels charged the group with researching art in three categories: works that were Napoleonic war spoils, pieces of German origin held abroad, and art that in some way reflected Germanic character.14 Goebbels and Göring together oversaw the research, which resulted in a three-volume, five hundred–page inventory, commonly known as the Kümmel Reports. The fact that Goebbels and Göring headed this effort shows its crucial importance to Hitler and the Nazi elite.15 The Germans were not the first to create such an artistic wish list. The Allies had drawn up a similar inventory after World War I to recover works from Germany as part of the reparations agreements. Article 247 of the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to return to Belgium twelve panels from the Ghent altarpiece, a fifteenth-century Flemish masterpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, also known as the Mystic Lamb altarpiece. The Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Berlin had bought the panels legally in the nineteenth century, but in 1919 Germany dutifully returned them to Ghent, where they were housed at the Church of Saint Bavo.16 As we will see in Chapter 10, the altarpiece became the subject of an intense diplomatic struggle in 1942. In a quest to restore their cultural patrimony, German agents seized the Mystic Lamb from a French art depot in the southern town of Pau, where the Belgian museum administration had sent it for safekeeping. Thus, the issue of artistic “repatriation” was not new, but the Nazis pursued it with unprecedented zeal. The art looting in France took place in two phases. The first began in the summer of 1940 and targeted the assets of prominent Jewish collectors and dealers, including Alphonse Kann, David David-Weill, Georges Bernheim, Jacques Seligmann, Georges Wildenstein, Paul Rosenberg, and members of the Rothschild family. Particularly vulnerable were the collections left by those who had fled abroad before the invasion. A Vichy law of 23 July 1940 stripped emigrants of French citizenship, leaving their assets in a precarious legal situation and at increased risk of spoliation and looting.

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The second phase of German plunder was launched in 1942 and extended to less wealthy Jews whose properties were ransacked, often after their arrest and deportation but, in some cases, while the owners still occupied their homes. This operation, known as Möbel-aktion or M-­A ktion, aimed to distribute furniture, clothing, décor, and other household items to ethnic Germans settling in the occupied territories of eastern Europe— the Lebensraum that undergirded Hitler’s entire quest for European domination. Some works of art belonging to smaller collectors were looted during M-Aktion operations. Annette Wieviorka tells the story of her mother’s family, who had fled to Grenoble just before the roundups of July 1942. The family members returned to their home after the Liberation, only to find that the looters had taken everything, even private papers and photographs. In the end, the recipients of the furniture and other domestic goods were not settlers in the eastern territories occupied by the Reich but victims of Allied bombings within Germany.17 As in other areas of the Reich administration, Hitler deliberately fostered competition among a few agency leaders as a way of solidifying loyalty to him and preventing any one official from gaining too much power over looting operations. As historian Jonathan Petropoulos explains, “At no point during the war did one minister or agency have sole jurisdiction over the plunder.”18 While Goebbels’s team carried out its research on coveted items, Hitler instructed Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to “secure” all artistic treasures in France—particularly from Jewish collections—through the German embassy in Paris. Ambassador Otto Abetz entrusted this task to field police agent Eberhard Freiherr von Künsberg. Künsberg had already led similar operations in The Hague and Brussels, accompanied by a team of art experts who selected works of art worthy of German collections. The actual pillages were carried out by field police group 627 led by Commissioner Gerum, who was placed under Künsberg’s authority to “protect” archives and works of art. Accompanied by a team of art experts, Gerum’s unit initially was instructed to search for “all works of art in France owned by the state, cities, and individuals” and to “safeguard” them in Hitler’s name. Eventually, Hitler instructed the foreign office to limit the campaign to Jewish-owned collections, sparing the fine arts museums. Yet according to Albert Speer, “This restraint was not so unselfish as it seemed, for [Hitler] occasionally remarked that in a peace treaty the best pieces from the Louvre would have to be delivered to Germany as part of war reparations.”19 Even though the Germans did

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not seize works from fine arts museums, they confiscated several thousand objects from the Musée de l’armée (army museum), some of which France had acquired from Germany through the Treaty of Versailles.20 Gerum’s junta also targeted evacuated archives housed temporarily at various locations in the Loire Valley. On 11 August 1940, the unit raided archive depots in Tours and Langeais and walked away with original copies of the Treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain. By early December, German field police also seized documents housed in the small towns of Saint Patrice, Saint Etienne de Chigny, Luynes, and Fontevrauld-l’Abbaye. Dossiers of particular interest to the Nazis were shipped to Berlin, including documents on French interwar policy toward the Rhineland, the Ruhr Valley, and territories that were now dominated by the Reich, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Alsace-Lorraine.21 The German looters easily tracked down the most important Jewish art collections in the occupied zone, whether they were located in private homes or with evacuated works in the national museum depots. A German ordinance of 15 July 1940 required collectors, dealers, and temporary guardians in the occupied zone to declare all cultural objects in their possession worth at least one hundred thousand francs. As a result, the museum office was forced to declare cases of privately owned objects that had been evacuated to art depots in the occupied zone along with the public museum collections. The Germans thus quite effortlessly obtained lists of valuable objects and their locations.22 In some cases, Jewish collectors had agreed to carry out simulated donations to integrate their pieces into French national collections and thus, in theory, protect them from the German confiscation of private property. Following the declaration of war in 1939, Jaujard had drawn up false contracts, sometimes predating them to appear that the donation had occurred prior to the war. He used special stamps and old paper to make the donations look authentic. According to Louvre curator Germain Bazin, “It was understood that the works would be returned to [the Jewish owners] after the hostilities.” There was an inherent risk in this transfer of property, Bazin adds, since one could not predict the future “nuance of the political government in place and what its attitude would be in this matter.”23 Rose Valland, a French attaché of the Direction des musées who monitored operations at the Jeu de Paume, explains in her memoirs that the Germans were not deterred by the simulated donations. Hitler de-

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creed on 17 September 1940 that any donation of property to the French state after the declaration of war, 3 September 1939, was null and void. Thus, French officials needed to prove that the dates on the contracts were accurate. As Valland explains, this procedure would have required indepth discussions with German authorities, “which never occurred. The legal battle thus seemed definitively lost despite all French efforts.”24 On 8 August 1940, a German police officer accompanied by two French civilian officers, who identified themselves as part of the Paris police force, demanded access to the extensive Wildenstein collection housed at the Moire chateau. Despite an interdiction barring access to the depot, the officers seized thirty-eight paintings from the collection. On 15 August 1940, Gerum and several German embassy officials inspected national museum depots in Chambord, Amboise, and Brissac. As the depot director held lists of three thousand cases but not the cases’ contents, the group returned to Paris and demanded from French officials inventories of the evacuated works. Künsberg’s art experts received the detailed lists on 27 August 1940 and quickly began selecting objects from Jewish collections that would be worthy of German museums, subject to Hitler’s approval. Later, on 14 May 1941, the Germans seized additional works from the Wildenstein collection at the Sourches chateau in the Sarthe department, where Bazin served as depot director.25 In the summer of 1940, Gerum’s unit also plundered numerous objects from the French foreign office, including a bust of Frederick the Great, a statue of Napoleon at Leoben, Austria (where the Habsburgs had hosted negotiations regarding French expansion into Holland and west of the Rhine), two quills formerly used by Bismarck, a history of relations between Jesuits and the papacy, and a two-volume history of the 1409 Council of Pisa, in which church authorities unsuccessfully sought to resolve the papacy’s Great Schism. Gerum’s unit carefully wrapped the objects and shipped them to the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin along with numerous maps and intelligence documents.26 The looters then focused their energies on Jewish homes known to hold important works of art, particularly vacant residences whose owners had fled abroad or been arrested. On 27 August 1940, the group seized fourteen paintings from the home of Georges Mandel, a Jewish parliament member who had joined other opponents to the armistice agreements on the Massilia and was eventually assassinated by the French militia in 1944. Two weeks later, group 627 pillaged the home of Maurice de Rothschild,

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seizing more than one hundred pieces of furniture and several cases filled with works of art. By the end of August 1940, Künsberg’s group had seized about fifteen hundred works and stored them in a building adjacent to the German embassy on the rue de Lille.27 The plunder prompted vigorous protests from at least one German official—Franz Graf von Wolff Metternich, head of the Kunstschutz in the German army. Metternich reported the embassy’s pillages to the MBF, arguing that the seizure of Jewish-owned works of art violated article forty-six of the 1907 Hague Convention, which forbade the confiscation of private property by an occupying authority. As a result, General ­Walther von Brauchitsch issued an order forbidding the transfer of all objects in the French museum depots.28 Despite Metternich’s efforts, the looting intensified. Abetz and his minions soon faced competition from the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), led by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. On 5 July 1940, Hitler had instructed Rosenberg to seize archives and libraries from declared enemies of National Socialism. His charge was greatly expanded on 17 September 1940, when Hitler further authorized him to seize all “ownerless” works of art, including those under the protection of the French museum administration.29 Rosenberg’s ERR quickly eclipsed the German embassy as the predominant looting agency in France. In November 1941 the administrative head of the ERR, Gerhard Utikal, issued a report outlining the agency’s ideological justifications for German seizure of Jewish assets. According to Utikal, the ERR did not intentionally confiscate works owned by the French state or by non-Jews, and in any case of confusion, it promptly returned the seized pieces. The Reich, in his words, was perfectly justified in confiscating Jewish-owned assets, as “the war against the great German Reich was provoked by the global Jewry and Freemasonry, which in alliance with like-minded politicians, drove various European states and peoples into the war against Germany.” By invading France, “the German army liberated the French state and people from the influence of the international Jewry.” Using the Rothschild family as an example, he argued that the German origins of Jewish wealth had been “irrefutably demonstrated by history,” and thus the confiscation of Jewish assets was merely a relatively insignificant “reprisal measure” against the Jews.30 Similarly, Rosenberg argued that the Rothschild dynasty had robbed treasures from all parts of the world, and the ERR was merely placing the objects in safety.31

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According to Utikal, the German seizure of Jewish assets reflected an established legal principle that in wartime, individuals have the right to use principles or reprisal measures that the enemy has already used against them. Judaic law, he argued, treats non-Jews like cattle and disregards property rights of Gentiles. Thus, in defending Jews’ rights, one may not invoke the Hague Convention, which forbade the confiscation of privately owned assets: “The Jew and his property are outside the law because for millennia, he has held that all non-Jews lack all rights.” Moreover, Utikal claimed, the French ought to be grateful that the Germans had not seized all Jewish assets in France, such as bank accounts and real estate. “Thanks to the German army, the French people once again are masters of important Jewish properties,” including a number of historic buildings. These assets, previously “stripped from the French nation by stock market deals and deceptions,” were once again available to France.32 Even as late as August 1944, when only the most fervent Nazis continued to believe in a Reich victory, Rosenberg laid out a plan for a new European Order. “The four great civilizations,” Germany, France, England, and Italy, would “back to back, adjust their interests to each other and not against each other.”33 He envisioned promoting five cultural spheres in ­Europe: the central Lebensraum in Germany and Austria, northern (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark), western (France, Spain, Portugal), southern (Italy, the Balkans, North African coastal areas), and eastern (to the Urals and Caucasus) spheres. Rosenberg continued to argue that “pluto­cratic” and “Bolshevik” Jews were “political agitators for the destruction of European culture” and believed it imperative that “all nations little by little identify with the German solution in order to prevent forever Jewish-Bolshevik development.”34 In solidifying his own position and fending off administrative rivals, Rosenberg solicited the protection of Göring, who stood to benefit greatly from an alliance with Rosenberg. According to their agreement, Göring would ensure adequate funding and transportation for the ERR, and in return he would have privileged access to the spoils for his personal collection. For Rosenberg, Göring’s stewardship would solidify his agency’s control over most of the looting operations.35 In November 1940 Göring assured Rosenberg that he would “support energetically” the work of his colleagues and “give them access to transportation and personnel that was not available until now. The Luftwaffe has received orders to support fully this effort.” To clear up any possible

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misunderstandings about his own claims to the spoils, the Reichsmarschall explained that Hitler had approved the expansion of Göring’s personal collection at his Carinhall retreat, which he would eventually bequeath to the Reich. In Göring’s effort to complete his already sizable collection, which he immodestly described as “perhaps the most important private collection in Germany if not all of Europe,” he hoped to buy “a small number of works from seized Jewish collections,” using a special fund approved by Hitler. He felt that this personal gain was entirely justified, as “unquestionably a large number of works were removed from hiding places because of my efforts.”36 From the fall of 1940 through the following summer, the alliance between Göring and Rosenberg proved extremely fruitful to both men. The ERR oversaw objects seized by its own men, including works collected within the M-Aktion operation, plus the objects that had been seized by the German embassy. Added to this growing cache was art found in safes and bank vaults by the Devisenschutz Kommando, or foreign currency protection commando. Rosenberg’s agency broadened its reach to Jewish collectors who had not emigrated, were not affected by the law of 23 July 1940, and remained French citizens. One case in point is the collection of a Mlle  L. Wassermann, who resided in the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris. In November 1940, German officials inventoried some seventyfive paintings stored in a Bank of France vault to which the family no longer had access. Four months later, on 12 March 1941, Germans seized the paintings but, in a curious twist of events, returned them the next day. A Lieutenant Mewe of the Devisenschutz Kommando questioned Mlle Wassermann: Was she French? Was her father French? Why did he buy the paintings, and were they purchased in Paris? According to Wassermann, the line of questioning “aimed to confuse us with non-French people.” It is possible that the looters initially thought the vault assets belonged to a collector who had been stripped of citizenship but realized the error and returned the collection while investigating further. In the end, Wassermann’s citizenship status made no difference. In the following week, all of the paintings were plundered and sent to the Jeu de Paume along with thousands of other looted objects. In a protest to the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, Wassermann pleaded for assistance. She hoped to bolster her case by mentioning that she was a decorated World War I veteran, having served in an ambulance on the battlefront, and was an active member of the Union nationale des combattants. Exasperated that French citizens could be victims of outright German theft, she emphasized that she did

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not want money but the return of “French artistic patrimony.” The commissariat responded simply that Xavier Vallat, commissioner for Jewish affairs, had discussed the case with the French ambassador to occupying authorities, Fernand de Brinon, but could not “take effective action.”37 Nazi looting intensified in 1941. By the middle of the year, the Germans had confiscated about three-fourths of all objects that would be seized during the Occupation. Particularly hard hit were several members of the Rothschild family, who lost 3,978 objects. These works included world-­renowned masterpieces, such as Vermeer’s Astronomer, which Göring reserved for Hitler, and Boucher’s Portrait of Madame ­Pompadour.38 ­A lthough Wolff Metternich of the Kunstschutz was unable to halt the activity of the ERR, which operated under Göring’s direct authority, he went so far as to notify the French Direction des musées of upcoming raids. On 8 April 1941, for example, Metternich informed French officials that the ERR would search the Sourches chateau three days later for the DavidWeill collection, one of the largest given to the Direction des musées for safekeeping. Prior to the war, David-Weill was one of the most important benefactors to the national museum administration and president of its advisory council. The German officials indeed arrived at Sourches to seize his collection on 11 April, as expected by the depot director, Germain Bazin. Despite the advance warning from Wolff Metternich, Bazin was unable to prevent the Germans from taking 130 cases from the David-Weill collection.39 Bazin writes very little of this important event in his memoirs. He notes simply, “I had the painful duty at Sourches of giving the Rosenberg service the collection of our president of the Museum Council, David ­David-Weill.”40 Between 1940 and 1944, the Nazis seized a total of fourteen private collections from the evacuation depots: six from Chambord, six from Brissac, and two from Sourches.41 The ERR also confiscated Polish and Czechoslovakian national libraries housed in Paris and valuable private libraries of prominent Jewish intellectuals, including historian Marc Bloch and André Maurois, a French writer who had amassed a collection of some ten thousand volumes. The Germans intended to house the books in a new Berlin library dedicated to understanding the Jewish psyche. As Rosenberg solidified his control over the growing stockpile of pillaged objects, he demanded that the German embassy relinquish the pieces that it had seized. Abetz acquiesced, keeping only pieces that Ribbentrop was authorized to hold. The embassy sent about twenty works of art to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin and

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kept twenty-six “degenerate” paintings, to be used in exchanges for older works. Though the full scope of the embassy’s looting remains unknown, by 30 October 1940 it had transferred some 450 cases of objects from its headquarters to the Louvre, where the ERR first deposited the growing stash of confiscated objects.42 In early November 1940, Jaujard allowed the ERR to transfer the works to the Jeu de Paume. The museum normally held exhibitions of foreign contemporary art but was empty at the time. In an agreement between the Kunstschutz and the French museum administration, Metternich assured Jaujard that a double inventory would be created of the works brought to the Jeu de Paume, with one copy given to French authorities, the other copy to the Germans.43 As more and more pieces filled the museum, however, it became clear that the Germans had no intention of allowing French authorities to document the flow of objects. Directing this flurry of activity was the Paris head of the ERR, Kurt von Behr, whom Rose Valland described as a “cynical activist” with an “implacable personality.”44 Von Behr oversaw the art shipments in and out of the Jeu de Paume, which became a triage center where pillaged works were inventoried and sent to storage locations in Germany. Although the Germans did not provide the inventories that Jaujard had demanded, they did allow him to appoint Valland as a French national museum attaché. She remained on-site at the Jeu de Paume as German art experts and historians fastidiously sorted and documented the looted works of art. An unassuming individual, she attracted little attention as the Germans studied the treasure filling the museum. Valland was born in 1898 to working-class parents and grew up in Saint-Etienne-deSaint-Geoirs, a small village in the Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. She was a good student with ambitions that took her beyond her small hometown. Through scholarship programs, she was able to study at the prestigious Ecoles des beaux-arts in Lyon and Paris, and at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, where she earned a master’s degree in art history. These were exceptional accomplishments at the time, particularly for a woman and even more so for one outside the French social elite. In 1932 she became an attachée bénévole at the Jeu de Paume, meaning that she worked as a volunteer but was able to gain valuable experience by helping plan a wide range of foreign art exhibitions.45 After the German invasion the Jeu de Paume curator, in Jaujard’s words, had “retired from the museum” and Jaujard asked Valland to keep track of the ERR’s activities, coûte que coûte, or “cost what it may.” She was

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paid for her work only beginning in 1941, but she immediately became an invaluable source of information, tracking the daily activities of the ERR. To the Germans, Valland merely supervised the maintenance staff, ensuring adequate light and heat in the museum and hanging works of art. Showing remarkable courage, she also secretly worked on her own inventory of the looted works after the Germans had left the museum for the night.46 Valland knew that she was risking her life by carrying out this kind of espionage. One day while trying to note an address surreptitiously, she was startled by Bruno Lohse, a German art historian recruited by Göring to serve in the Paris ERR. Lohse reminded her that everyone working in the museum was part of a secret operation and anyone who leaked information would be taking a great risk. As Valland later reported to Jaujard, “He looked me in the eyes and said that I could be shot. I calmly replied that no one here is stupid enough to be unaware of such risks.” Yet she continued to provide crucial information to Jaujard, noting the destination of art shipments in the Reich. She would eventually use these invaluable notes after the Liberation while assisting the Allied forces with the recovery of looted art in Germany.47 Valland’s work was dramatized in the 1964 film The Train, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Burt Lancaster. The film is based on an August 1944 episode in which Valland helped prevent von Behr from making a final shipment to Germany, just as Allied forces were approaching Paris. She contacted French railway workers, impressing upon them the importance of keeping the train in France. The workers agreed to stage mechanical “accidents” that prevented the train from reaching the FrancoGerman border. After a few days of delays, which surely enraged von Behr, General Leclerc’s forces were able to take over the train at the town of Aulnay in the Aube department. In a strange twist of fate, the son of Paul Rosenberg, a formerly prominent Jewish gallery owner, was part of this Allied force and discovered that works belonging to his father were among the train’s precious cargo.48 Though Valland was instrumental in repatriating thousands of pieces, her notes also reflect the tragic loss in Paris of so-called degenerate art. In July 1943, the Nazis decided to apply the artistic purification methods they had used in the Reich. While they recognized the value of some modernist works for the price they would fetch on the art market, particularly impressionist and postimpressionist paintings, the Nazis considered degenerate pieces unusable and even dangerous. The head of the ERR

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technical service, Robert Scholz, traveled to Paris on a mission on 19 July, meeting with his colleagues at the Jeu de Paume, including Walter Bor­ chers, an art expert who had recently returned to Paris from Berlin. At this meeting, the Nazis were to determine the fate of paintings that had been sequestered at the Louvre—modernist works that could be shipped to Germany, sold for a good price or, in the case of degenerate art, destroyed. Scholz and Borchers relayed a message, ostensibly from Hitler himself, that works by Courbet, Monet, Degas, and Manet would be saved, more for their monetary than aesthetic value. The ERR also created categories of paintings that could sell at a good price on the international market, including pieces by Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Braque, and Dufy. While these paintings earned a kind of clemency, the ERR condemned hundreds of others as enjuivés (“Jewified”) and destroyed them. They targeted portraits of the Jewish elite in the Rothschild and Lévy-Hermanos families, regardless of the artist, and paintings by Masson, Miró, Klee, Ernst, Léger, Picasso, and Kisling. Nazi agents sliced the canvases with knives and piled the vandalized works in the Jeu de Paume garden. A note handwritten by Valland describes the scene, which she later called an artistic “holocaust”: 23 July 1943: The massacred paintings sequestered at the Louvre were brought back to the Jeu de Paume (in filled trucks, around five or six hundred pieces) and burned under the Germans’ watchful eye in the museum garden from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Impossible to save anything.49

Note written by Rose Valland after watching Germans burn hundreds of “degenerate” paintings in the Jeu de Paume garden. Photo: Archives des musées nationaux, R32 1, page 116.

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Paintings labeled “degenerate” by the Nazis, held at the Jeu de Paume in a space that Rose Valland dubbed the “Room of Martyrs.” Photo: Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes, Direction des archives.

Although it remains difficult to know exactly how many works of art the Nazis looted in France, Allied recovery teams in Germany located 61,233 objects from 216 French families.50 The number of works taken from each collection varied widely. Some 5 percent of the despoiled collectors provided 75 percent of the looted works. Collections from four families— Rothschild, David-Weill, Kann, and Seligmann—together contained more than ten thousand objects. Among the pillages carried out in Paris, the vast majority took place in the capital’s prestigious western neighborhoods. Of the 131 known pillages, 13 were in the seventeenth arrondissement, 28 were in the eighth, and 70—more than half—took place in the sixteenth. Although a high percentage of works were looted from the very wealthy, the majority of despoiled collections held fewer than twenty objects.51 In response to this widespread plunder, the Vichy regime enacted legislation to assert its control over Jewish assets on French soil.

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Asserting French Sovereignty The German art pillages prompted vehement and persistent protests from a wide range of French officials, all of whom had an interest in keeping the nation’s artistic patrimony on French soil. None, however, denounced the confiscation of Jewish-owned art in principle but instead argued that German looting violated French national sovereignty. It is important to place this assertion of French sovereignty within the broader scope of the Vichy regime’s anti-Semitic legislation. The regime enacted its own anti-Semitic policies, without German pressure, in order to eliminate Jewish presence from the public sphere. This objective resulted in the Jewish Statute of 3 October 1940, which excluded Jews from positions of influence—education, the arts, journalism, publishing, and the upper ranks of the civil service—and established a quota system in the liberal professions, such as law and medicine. In July 1941 a second statute widened restrictions against Jews, one of fifty anti-Semitic measures implemented in 1940 and 1941.52 For Vichy leaders such as Xavier Vallat, commissioner of Jewish affairs from March 1941 to March 1942, the purge of Jews from positions of influence was necessary to protect French national culture against foreign elements and to provide employment opportunities for French citizens—“true” French people. The basis for this official anti-Semitism was more cultural than racial; decorated veterans and individuals from distinguished families repeatedly received exemptions from exclusionary measures, as they or their relatives had provided a valuable service to the French nation.53 Jews who had fled the country, however, were considered traitors. Many of these émigrés had left behind sizable assets—businesses, real estate, art collections—all of which the Vichy regime sought to keep out of German hands and liquidate for its own benefit. To prevent the Germans from controlling the Jewish assets, the Vichy regime created an agency of provisional administrators, or Service de contrôle des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP).54 This division established a network of Aryan (non-­Jewish) trustees who managed the liquidation of Jewish assets, which would be auctioned off to Aryan buyers. This arrangement suited the Germans perfectly, as the French would handle the administrative details of Aryanization, leaving the Germans free to muscle their way into the abandoned homes and seize portable items such as works of art, books, musical instruments, and furniture.55

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Following the Vichy law of 23 July 1940 nullifying the citizenship of emigrants, another law of 5 October 1940 provided for the liquidation of emigrants’ assets, which would be sold at public auction to benefit a national charity program called Secours national (National Aid). There was a precedent in France for this kind of seizure and public sale of “enemy” assets, a common wartime practice. During World War I, French authorities seized works of art from German nationals living in France, such as the prominent modern art dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler. From 1921 to 1923, thousands of Kahnweiler’s former holdings were auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot in four different sales.56 The state property administration within the Ministry of Finance, the Direction générale de l’enregistrement des domaines et du timbre (hereafter “Domaines”), managed the liquidation of Jewish assets. French finance officials at the time were concerned that the Germans were undermining the National Aid program by seizing works of art that otherwise would have been sold at public auction. Lucien Hubert, legal adviser to the French delegation for occupied territories, called the National Aid program “a work of charity and social solidarity par excellence.” In order to keep expanding the fund, Hubert explained to German authorities, it was “highly desirable” that Jewish assets be liquidated in the “most methodical and useful manner.”57 Of course, this act of “social solidarity” was meant to benefit French citizens and exclude state enemies. However, in July 1941 the Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQ J; Commissariat for Jewish Affairs) submitted a curious proposal. Drawing a sharp distinction between wealthy and indigent Jews, the commission regretted that some of the “obligatory measures” taken by the Vichy regime to “eliminate Jewish influence in our political and economic life” had created hardship for the less fortunate. Funds from the National Aid program, the commission argued, should also help destitute Jews: “It is both moral and reasonable that the funds to assist suffering Jews come from the liquidation of assets belonging to wealthy Jews.” The commission suggested that 10 percent of the proceeds from the sale of Jewish assets could be deposited into a special fund for “Jewish solidarity.” At a finance ministry meeting, a representative from National Aid, M. Hyon, opposed the idea on the grounds that it would be unwise to allot part of the resources to a specific cause without knowing how much funding would be needed overall. Furthermore, he found it “shocking” to suggest “giving resources from National Aid to the

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Jews.” A representative from the public treasury, the Caisse des dépôts, explained that the CGQ J should merely request funds from his office to aid indigent Jews rather than create a separate program for Jewish solidarity. In the end, the CGQ J abandoned the proposal.58 The Vichy regime accumulated considerable funds for National Aid through voluntary donations and the sale of seized real estate. In the 1940 winter fund-raising drive, it collected 65 million francs in donations from the unoccupied zone and 85 million from the colonies. According to a report issued by the director of the Domaines agency for the Seine department, by August 1942 his office had collected just under 888 million francs through the sale of seized assets.59 While members of the finance administration contested the German art looting in terms of lost proceeds for National Aid, the Direction des musées sought to prevent an irreversible loss of the nation’s cultural heritage. Though works of art belonging to individuals were private property, French officials still considered them part of le patrimoine national, a collective asset worthy of state protection. Jérôme Carcopino implored Admiral Darlan to confront the Germans on this issue, arguing that the looted collections constituted “a considerable part of the French artistic patrimony.” In a similar letter to Fernand de Brinon, Carcopino claimed that some of the “ownerless” paintings that had belonged to Jewish ­émigrés “would be worthy of the national collections.” Admiral Darlan also encouraged Brinon to pursue negotiations with the Germans to show the occupier that the French would not “bow down before such unjustifiable measures, which not only prevent the legal liquidation of assets that have been sequestered but also greatly harm the National Aid program and the country’s patrimoine artistique.”60 Various divisions of the French government thus had their own reasons for defending the cultural patrimony. As Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton put it, “The focus was no longer Jews, but a patriotic defense of French national treasure. What pushed Vichy to near panic was its sense of powerlessness.”61 Under these conditions, an unlikely coalition was developing among French officials. Jaujard, who later earned a Resistance medal, held a common interest with the Vichyite leadership, including Darlan, Carcopino, and members of the CGQ J. Vallat viewed the issue of art collections within his broader mandate to remove Jewish influence from the French economy and to liquidate Jewish assets for the National Aid program. He thus strongly opposed the German pillages and in August 1941 submitted

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an impassioned report to Werner Best in the MBF. Vallat argued that the Jewish assets were private property and thus enjoyed protection under article forty-six of the Hague Convention. The French state, following the law of 5 October 1940, was not absorbing these assets but using proceeds from their sale to benefit National Aid. Jewish assets that were under the control of a provisional administrator also remained private assets, he argued, and as such also were protected under the Hague Convention.62 Vallat then emphasized the important “humanitarian mission” of the National Aid program. In another stunning example of French naïveté, he suggested that these problems related to seized Jewish assets could be solved “in a very simple way”: Domaines representatives could enter the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, and properties occupied by the Germans and inventory the cultural objects in question. The Germans would then hand over selected objects to the Domaines agents upon French request, providing a “favorable solution to problems that have arisen in this area.”63 While Vallat could be seen as a potential ally to the museum office in keeping the Jewish collections out of German hands, Jaujard certainly did not want the paintings to be bought at auction by Germans who benefited from a favorable exchange rate or other foreign dealers and collectors. Under Jaujard’s leadership, museum officials thus developed a strategy to acquire—à titre définitif (permanently)64 —certain Jewish-owned works of art for public museums. Knowing that the seized collections contained masterpieces that would be worthy of the Louvre and other public museums, Jaujard sought to prevent public sales of the most valuable works. Joining forces with the Ministry of Finance, the Direction des musées developed a strategy in which the museum administration would exercise a droit de préemption (right of first refusal) of important collections that otherwise would be sold at auction. It was an idea promoted by art connoisseurs outside the museum administration. In March 1941, Louis Hautecoeur received a handwritten letter from Prince Poniatowski, a Frenchmen from a noble Polish family. The letter omits his first name, but it was most likely Charles Casimir (1897–1980). A self-described collector for forty years, Poniatowski was concerned about “a very sensitive issue,” the fate of Jewish art collections that might be sold at auction, particularly from the Rothschild family. Such a sale, in his view, would be highly undesirable. But at the same time, one would not want critics of the regime to claim that the government “creates laws but does not enforce them.” The prince proposed that the state seize the works of art and distribute

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them among provincial museums “that had suffered the most during the war.” Drawing inspiration from Napoleon’s looting, he pointed out that “Bonaparte did not sell seized paintings; he gave them to the Louvre.” Such a policy, he argued, would surely have a positive effect on the revival of tourism.65 Hautecoeur responded that the state lacked the authority to seize the collections outright but could acquire sequestered assets through a right of first refusal. He assured the prince that his office was requesting funds for “the eventual acquisition of these collections.”66 The museum administration’s right of first refusal was not new; the office had held this right in all public art sales since 31 December 1921. During the Occupation, however, the Direction des musées had to cooperate with other French agencies involved in the liquidation of Jewish assets. In April 1941 the Domaines agency created a committee to oversee the liquidation process, the Comité supérieur de séquestres et liquidations. Jaujard served on the committee as the fine arts representative as the museum office developed its own plan for sequestering art collections. Agents from the museum administration, rather than those from Domaines, would search sequestered homes formerly owned by Jewish émigrés—even those currently occupied by the Germans. The agents then would make a list of the most valuable works for which the museum administration would exercise its right of first refusal, regardless of the objects’ estimated value. Using some tricks in creative public accounting, the museum office would then pay Domaines for the works of art, and the funds would be transferred to National Aid. Trucks from the National Aid office would transfer the selected works to the Louvre, other public museums, and art storage depots. Objects not chosen by the Direction des musées would be sold at public auction “as soon as possible,” with proceeds benefiting National Aid. Foreseeing German opposition to the plan, committee members would request assistance from top leaders in the Vichy government in taking “all necessary measures” to negotiate with the occupier. In the end, the museum office did not search sequestered properties but, through cooperation with the Domaines agency, was indeed able to sequester pieces from several prestigious Jewish collections in the unoccupied zone and exercise its right of first refusal.67 The fine arts budget increased significantly in 1941 and 1942 to accommodate the planned acquisitions. In January 1941, representatives from various agencies, including Jaujard, met to discuss the liquidation of Jewish assets. At the time, Jaujard estimated that the Direction des musées

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would need a special credit of 10 million francs to exercise its right of first refusal. He emphasized to Louis Hautecoeur that this first credit should not be less than 10 million, “given the importance of works of art in certain collections, particularly those from the Rothschild family.”68 However, as the Domaines agency managed to secure sizable collections in the unoccupied zone, this amount grew substantially. The Direction des musées sequestered works from prestigious collections belonging to four members of the Rothschild family (Maurice, Henri, Robert, and Edouard), Elie-Joseph Bois, Paul-Louis Weiller, Edouard Jonas, the Bonn family, Jacques-Ernest May, and—showing a willingness to seize assets from all state enemies, not just Jews—the Bonne-Foy Masonic Lodge of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.69 The Direction des musées also exercised its right of first refusal in a unique case involving the highly coveted collection of Dutch paintings belonging to the heirs of Adolphe Schloss, which I will examine separately. By January 1942 the Ministry of Finance had approved special art acquisition credits totaling 60 million francs for the sequestered items, plus another 6 million to buy other nonsequestered objects on the art market, for a sum of 66 million francs. These credits enabled the Direction des musées to carry out its right of first refusal on sequestered collections and, at the same time, compensate National Aid. (In the end, these funds were not used to purchase works from the May, Bonn, or Schloss collections.) In comparison, the original fine arts credit for acquisitions in the 1941 and 1942 budgets was 7 million francs each year, for a total of 14 million.70 Thus, the new credit of 66 million francs was almost five times greater than the original acquisitions credit for those two years— this during a wartime economic crisis. The finance ministry approved this stunning budgetary increase because of the importance of “keeping these works in the national patrimony.”71 Although one might argue that these sums were a fictional creation of public accounting, they represent a widespread consensus among high-level officials—from committed collaborationists to active Resistance members—that the art was worth protecting through acquisition. Quiet protection of art would not necessarily require the direct intervention of various ministries and advisory councils; purchasing them does, and one can trace this cooperation in letters produced by the fine arts office, the finance ministry, and advisers to the national museum administration. Descriptions of the sequestered collections by museum officials have been remarkably consistent, from postwar memoirs written by those who

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experienced these events to more recent texts, such as the fine arts volume in the Mattéoli report. All of these accounts describe the exercised right of first refusal as “simulated acquisitions” designed to keep precious works of art out of German hands. Valland explains, “It was by no means a way to profit from easy and beneficial acquisitions, but to remove threatened works of art from the German sphere of influence, by integrating them into the national collections for the occupation period.” She further denies the financial importance of the sequestrations, as the state was both debtor and creditor, asserting that the transfer of funds was “little cause for concern.” Lucie Mazauric also echoes this perspective in her memoir (1978), picked up more recently by Lynn Nicholas in The Rape of Europa (1994). René Huyghe boasts that he “offered to save” the private collections by sequestering them. Similarly, in the Mattéoli report published in 2000, the volume on art looting submitted by the Musées de France calls the sequestered collections “the method created by French museums to attempt to shield from Nazi appetites some key elements of the national patrimony, in particular those of the Rothschild collections.”72 However, a close analysis of wartime documents from the national museum archives leaves no doubt that French officials believed they were permanently acquiring these coveted works of art for the Louvre and other museums. Two case studies provide particular insight into the wartime perspective of museum officials: the collections of Robert and Maurice de Rothschild (sequestered together) and the Schloss family.

The Robert and Maurice de Rothschild Sequestration The French branch of the Rothschild family had been an important aristocratic dynasty since the early nineteenth century, when James— the son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild of Germany—settled in Paris and extended the family’s banking network in France. The family fortune in France had been built on banking, investment in railroads across Europe, and Russian oil. Its vast assets included numerous historic homes—one hundred buildings in Paris alone, the Lafite and Mouton vineyards in the Bordeaux region, precious jewels, rare-book collections, and several racing stables. The Nazi confiscation of Rothschild assets in France was a tremendous coup, as the dynasty was a symbol of international Jewish wealth and political influence.73 The ERR estimated that the family also held some five thousand

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works of art and targeted four collections in particular. Three were owned by Rothschild cousins, all grandsons to James, born between 1868 and 1881: Edouard, Maurice, and Robert. Edouard was a partner in the Rothschild bank and considered the head of family in France. Maurice was a senator from the Hautes-Alpes who had a playboy reputation but showed fortitude in July 1940 by opposing the law that granted Pétain full powers. Robert and Edouard bought out Maurice’s share of the family bank on 26 September 1939 after a contentious and high-profile family dispute. The fourth great art collection was owned by Henri, a distant cousin from the British branch of the family who was a trained physician and lived in Paris.74 Just as Jaujard and his colleagues sought art sanctuaries in French rural chateaux, so did the Rothschild collectors. They scattered the collections in national museum depots and placed important works in other chateaux throughout the countryside. The collectors themselves then joined the exodus. Edouard and Robert went to the United States, Maurice to Canada, and Henri, who was in Switzerland when the war began, relocated to Portugal for medical treatment. The Vichy law of 23 July 1940 stripped French citizenship from all of them, setting into motion French spoliation of their extensive assets along with the Nazi plunder.75 By the middle of 1941, the Germans had already looted thousands of objects from the Rothschild collections in the occupied zone. In the unoccupied zone, however, French authorities were able to sequester pieces from all four collections. In April 1941 the Domaines agency seized works from Robert’s collection that had been discovered in an abandoned truck in Auvergne—Rembrandt portraits, Fragonard’s The Kiss, and paintings by Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, and Renoir. By July the same year, French authorities had also seized forty-six cases of art and fifty-eight tapestries owned by Maurice. The tribunal of the Hautes-Pyrénées in southwestern France had ordered the sequestration of the collector’s assets, and French authorities transferred them from the small town of Argelès-Gazost to a medieval castle in nearby Lourdes. The collection included Persian artifacts, Boucher’s Danae, Fragonard’s The Swing, and paintings by Goya and Greuze. The Direction des musées coordinated with the Domaines agency to sequester the two collections together, storing them at the Calvin Institute in Montauban, which also held national museum pieces.76 The standard postwar narrative, from 1944 to the present, is that the Direction des musées then pursued a fictional acquisition, with phony

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public accounting, in an effort to keep these pieces out of German hands. Yet there is consistent and compelling evidence in the archives—internal documents of the Direction des musées, particularly between René Huyghe and Jacques Jaujard—that at least some French curators and fine arts officials believed they were pursuing true and durable acquisitions. On 4 July 1941, Huyghe explained to Jaujard the impact that sequestered pieces could have on the Louvre’s holdings. Highly valuable works such as those in the Robert and Maurice de Rothschild collections were becoming “more and more difficult for a museum like the Louvre to obtain.” Over the past several years the Louvre had been incapable of buying the high-quality works of art that would maintain its world-class collection. “Our credits,” Huyghe explained, “have not kept pace with the increase in prices.” If the Direction des musées were able to obtain the sequestered works, the acquisition would not only substantially enrich museum collections but also provide a much-needed “moral benefit” to the French people: “The state’s ability to maintain a growth policy for the Louvre museum would be a sign that the defeat did not lead to French laxity and that our country considers itself faithful to its civilizing mission.”77 Huyghe then analyzed the inventory of the Robert de Rothschild collection, noting the works that would best complement the Louvre’s permanent collection. Of particular interest were two portraits by Rembrandt. “While the Louvre is among the top museums with Rembrandt pieces,” Huyghe explained, “his early years as a portrait artist are unfortunately quite poorly represented; these two masterpieces,” with a combined estimated value of 5 million francs, “would fill a gap in our collection.” Another “gap would be filled” by the acquisition of a portrait by the ­English painter Gainsborough, estimated at 2 million francs. The collection, moreover, contained three high-quality Renoirs that were “completely different from what we have already shown to the public.” One was a still life, “a veritable masterpiece with striking lyricism,” all the more valuable to the Louvre, according to Huyghe, since “we do not have any still-life paintings by Renoir.” The Bathers by Cézanne, estimated to have a value of 500,000 francs, would also complement the museum’s current holdings.78 Huyghe’s language in this letter reflects the mission of the Louvre to house an encyclopedic range of objects, an idea that dates to its establishment as a national museum during the French Revolution.79 In order to fulfill this ambitious mission, curators must constantly expand the museum’s holdings and “fill gaps” in the collections.

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In all, Huyghe estimated that nearly 13 million francs would be necessary to acquire the desired works of art from the Robert de Rothschild collections alone, plus a similar amount for those of Maurice de Rothschild and Edouard Jonas, another Jewish émigré. Huyghe added that it was difficult to give accurate price estimates since currency values had shifted dramatically since the beginning of the war. Thus, he deliberately gave high estimates so that “no one would suspect the state of exploiting the situation to benefit from favorable conditions.”80 At the time, Huyghe was serving as the art storage depot director at Montauban and was able to view the collections firsthand. Jaujard suggested to him that curators from the national museums “would have an interest in examining this collection soon, planning for an eventual acquisition.” There were pieces of interest to the departments of art objects (sixteenth-century gold and clockwork pieces, eighteenth-century Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries), sculpture (fifteenth- and sixteenth-century statues), and Persian objects (tapestries, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century figurines).81 Thus, in October 1941, a group of French curators—Aubert, Merlin, Salles, Vandier, Mauricheau-Beaupré—traveled to Montauban, joined by a M. Porcher from the Bibliothèque nationale, who would inspect some historic manuscripts. According to Mazauric, they made the trip to decide which departments and museums would temporarily house the objects, until they could be returned to their rightful owners.82 Yet the tone in this correspondence does not convey an interim arrangement. The group, which included Huyghe and Chamson, discussed which museum departments would acquire the objects and even disagreed on the appropriate destinations, suggesting a long-term acquisition. Even at the end of July 1944, the curator at the decorative arts museum, Jacques Guérin, told Jaujard that he was still dissatisfied with the works destined for his collection: “I am surprised . . . that in the Maurice and Robert de Rothschild collections there were not more significant objects found for the decorative arts [museum], even considering the priority that is naturally granted to the Louvre museum. The items on the lists that you provided are so few and, based on their description, are of such mediocre quality, that I find myself forced to voice these objections.”83 Though the Allies had already landed at Normandy and were working their way toward Paris, and the fall of Hitler and Vichy appeared increasingly certain, disputes continued over which museum would display the sequestered items.

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A Unique Case: The Schloss Collection The curators’ belief that they were pursuing true acquisitions is also evident in the case of the Schloss collection, a coveted cache of more than three hundred paintings by Dutch and Flemish painters, from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. This case provides a unique example, as the collection’s Jewish owners remained in France during the Occupation and maintained their French citizenship. The museum administration exercised its right of first refusal on forty-nine paintings in the collection, yet the sequestration is entirely absent from the Mattéoli report. The reason may be that the collection did not have the same legal status as the other sequestered collections. Since the owners were citizens, the collection escaped provisions of the 5 October 1940 law that allowed the French state to liquidate assets of Jews who had lost their citizenship. Thus, it is not included in the report’s analysis of sequestered art. Through a complicated turn of events, however, the Direction des musées temporarily held pieces from the collection, aggressively pursuing a permanent acquisition for the Louvre. The events surrounding the Schloss collection, therefore, are best understood in light of the wartime policy toward sequestered objects.84 The stunning art collection contained 333 works by Dutch and Flemish old masters—precisely the period and “Germanic” style most coveted by Göring and other Nazi collectors. Adolphe Schloss, a Jewish emigrant from Austria who acquired French citizenship in 1871, had amassed a significant fortune in the late nineteenth century as a commodities broker. He painstakingly built the vast art collection, which included paintings by minor Dutch artists and some works attributed to Rembrandt, Rubens, Ruisdael, Van Dyck, Van der Neer, and Frans Hals. Schloss displayed the paintings at the family’s luxurious hôtel particulier (private townhouse) on the avenue Henri-Martin in Paris, and the collection earned an international reputation for its quantity and quality. On the eve of the Second World War, art experts generally agreed that it was the finest Dutch art collection in France.85 Adolphe Schloss died in 1911, leaving the collection to his wife, Lucie. In the late 1930s, René Huyghe learned that Mme Schloss was willing to donate or sell part of the collection to the Louvre. He met with her in person, wisely cultivating a relationship between curator and patron, and secured an oral agreement that she would donate several paintings to the Louvre. However, she passed away in November 1938 before making the donation and left the collection to five adult heirs. As there was

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no record of Huyghe’s oral agreement with Mme Schloss, the heirs felt no obligation to honor it.86 When war with Germany appeared imminent the following year, the oldest son, Lucien, moved the collection from Paris to the chateau of Chambon near Tulle in the Corrèze department (not to be confused with Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Auvergne, where villagers sheltered thousands of Jews). A trusted friend of the family, Maurice ­Renaud, owned the property and was also head of the Jordaan bank in Paris. The chateau thus seemed a safe hiding place both for the art collection and some Jewish bank assets. And for the first two years of the Occupation, the art collection indeed remained safe from military operations and Nazi looting.87 But Vichy and German authorities alike knew that the valuable collection had been hidden somewhere in the unoccupied zone, and both sides scrambled to locate it. For Pierre Laval, the collection could provide much-needed leverage with the Nazis, not to mention millions of francs for the state budget. In March 1943 he instructed the CGQ J to launch the search from the French side. The radically anti-Semitic Louis Darquier de Pellepoix had replaced Xavier Vallat, whom the Nazis had considered too moderate, as director of the CGQ J in May 1942. From the German side, Hitler and Göring both had a keen interest in locating the collection, and Gestapo agents were told to use all means at their disposal to find it.88 The role of French agents in the ensuing pillage is remarkable, dispelling notions that looting in France was merely “a German affair.”89 On 8 April 1943, Henry Schloss, one of Adolphe’s sons, and his wife were at a bus station in Nice, heading to a funeral, when they were forced into a car. Inside the car were Edmond Favier, the commissioner of Jewish Affairs for Marseille; Georges Perrier, a police inspector; and Jean-François Lefranc, an art dealer. They said Laval himself had ordered Henry’s arrest, demanding that he reveal the location of the hidden art collection. The group went to Henry’s villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where Lefranc further demanded to know where Henry’s brother Lucien was residing. Henry feigned ignorance when, as luck would have it for Lefranc, a telegram arrived from Lucien, with the sender’s address in Lamastre. A French police report indicates that Lefranc told Favier, “Don’t worry about ­Lucien; the Germans will take care of him.” When Henry refused to reveal the location of the art collection, he was imprisoned in Marseille. German authorities also arrested Lucien in Lamastre, and both brothers received trumped-up charges of “Gaullist intrigues.”90

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The actual plunder of the art collection was a combined FrancoGerman effort, though far from a friendly collaboration. Lefranc was a wily businessman who took on the role of detective to find the collection and was able to track down a key witness who knew approximately where it was hidden: the truck driver who had transported it from Paris. Lefranc knew the collection was somewhere near Tulle and suspected it was in the chateau of Chambon. Darquier named Lefranc provisional administrator for the collection and instructed the prefect of the Corrèze department, Fernand Musso, to provide a requisition order that would enable Lefranc to seize it.91 On 10 April 1943, Lefranc, Favier, and Perrier went to the chateau and presented the requisition order to Henri Tixier, who turned out to be director of the storage depot there for the Jordaan bank. Tixier was unable to prevent the men from searching the chateau, where they found the cache of paintings in the strong room, along with other Jewish assets. They placed seals on the eighteen cases of paintings and left them in the chateau as Lefranc strategized his next move. He went to Paris to arrange the transfer, convincing Darquier that the paintings must be evaluated by experts there. But Lefranc was playing a double game, having already contacted Bruno Lohse in the ERR, to offer his services in locating hidden art collections. Lefranc, naturally, would require a share of the loot for his efforts. A rather naïve Darquier, most likely unaware of Lefranc’s scheming with the Germans, also met with Von Behr and Lohse to discuss the planned transfer of the Schloss collection to Paris, seeking reassurance that the ERR would not interfere in French management of it. Lohse reported the French demands to Göring, who was “very interested in the collection,” and authorized Lohse to satisfy Darquier’s request.92 Lohse thus gave Darquier “his word” and a written confirmation that the Nazi agency would not disrupt the French operation. Meanwhile, Abel Bonnard had learned of the discovered collection and ordered the provisional administrator of the chateau, Jean Petit (appointed by Lefranc himself), to keep the collection on-site and wait for further instructions.93 Yet once again, Germans took control of the plunder, illustrating the rivalry between experts loyal to Göring and those working for Hitler on the Linz project.94 On 15 April, Petit learned that police inspectors “from Paris” had traveled to the Corrèze to seize the collection. The next afternoon a moving truck and a luxury Salmson convertible carrying several men stopped in front of the chateau. An “Alsatian” police officer with a

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strong German accent got out of the convertible, accompanied by ­Favier, Petit, and four armed French police agents. The Alsatian presented a phony French police identity card and informed the chateau owner, Maurice Renaud, that the agents were seizing Jewish assets stored there. Petit protested to no avail, having received instructions to bar the paintings’ removal. The Alsatian turned out to be Emil Hess, an officer in the S.D. (Sicherheitsdienst, security service of the SS). (The more famous ­Rudolf Hess was at the time a prisoner of war in Britain.) The French “policemen” were members of the notorious French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston, nicknamed the “Bonny-Lafont” gang after its leaders. Lohse would later claim that the Germans had respected a Vichy demand that French agents oversee the transfer, but Lefranc was unable to provide a suitable truck. As the collection was in the so-called unoccupied zone, Von Behr arranged a civilian rather than military escort led by Hess. French workers loaded all the paintings into the moving truck, owned by a French company based in Tulle, and the agents set off for Paris with the Schloss collection and Petit, perhaps against his will.95 Yet once the prefect Musso learned of the seizure, he alerted Laval and ordered French police forces to halt the two vehicles, which they did near Limoges. After a tense standoff between the armed agents on both sides, Hess directed the convoy to an occupied army base in Tulle (the Germans had occupied all of the French territory in November 1942, following Allied landings in North Africa). Both Laval and Pétain demanded that forces under the German commandant in the southern zone return the collection to Chambon. Wanting to “avoid controversy,”96 Göring ordered Lohse to contact S.D. forces in Limoges and relinquish the collection to Lefranc, who placed it in the city’s Bank of France vaults.97 It was a significant concession by Göring to release the collection, even temporarily. Though Göring’s methods may appear rapacious, Petropoulos points out that the Reichsmarschall actually sought to maintain an outward appearance of respectability when acquiring art, and he may have felt an obligation to acknowledge French sovereignty in the southern zone.98 Because the collection was found there and belonged to French citizens, the German embassy would need to negotiate with Vichy; Göring could not act alone.99 Also, by mid-1943 his influence was waning in the Reich, supplanted by that of Himmler and the SS, and Martin Bormann in the Nazi Party Chancellery. The status of Bormann, in particular, rose during the war, as he also was Hitler’s private secretary

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and financial manager of the Linz project. No Nazi leader could seize a collection so coveted by Hitler and his Linz curators—certainly not Göring in 1943. The collection stayed in Limoges for several weeks as French and German officials planned their next steps.100 On the French side, the Direction des musées had a crucial opportunity to exercise its right of first refusal on the Schloss collection. René Huyghe explained to Jaujard that “specialists around the entire world” were familiar with the collection and that it should not be “sold or removed from France without the Louvre keeping some key pieces [quelques pièces capitales].”101 Yet museum officials needed to work with the Jewish affairs agency to manage the liquidation. On 10 June 1943, René Huyghe and Germain Bazin first met with Louis Haute­ coeur, who as fine arts director had the administrative clout to discuss the matter with both Darquier and Laval. Hautecoeur informed Laval of the Louvre’s desire to exercise the right of first refusal and arranged a meeting for Darquier, Bazin, and Huyghe, which took place on 17 June. Huyghe explained to Darquier that before the war Lucie Schloss had agreed to donate some paintings to the Louvre. This oral agreement, according to Huyghe, gave the Direction des musées “legal rights” as well as “special moral rights to certain pieces in the ensemble.”102 Persuaded by Huyghe’s arguments, Darquier supported the Louvre’s plan to purchase some pieces but wanted to secure Laval’s approval as well, knowing the collection was of keen interest to Hitler. The following day, Laval approved the transfer of the collection to Paris, where it could be inspected and evaluated.103 On 9 August, Jaujard requested Bonnard’s approval to sequester the Schloss paintings in the same manner used for the Maurice and Robert Rothschild collections. Given the “exceptional importance of the Schloss collection, considered by those who are familiar with it as worthy of the national patrimony,” he urged Hautecoeur to secure Bonnard’s quick approval of the plan. This would then enable the Direction des musées to work with the Domaines administration in liquidating the collection.104 The next day, Jaujard wrote to Bonnard directly, clarifying that at no point did the Direction des musées negotiate with German authorities regarding their right of first refusal.105 This side of the liquidation was a French affair. With Bonnard’s authorization, on 10 August 1943 the chauffeur Nériec, who had transported the collection from Paris to the chateau of Chambon, took it from Limoges to the Aryanized Louis Dreyfus bank in Paris, which served as a CGQ J depot.106

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Meanwhile, the Germans allowed the French to select paintings first, another remarkable concession, given the ferocity of Nazi looting over the previous three years. Göring, not Hitler, initially had consented to the terms presented by the French, perhaps wagering that it was best to allow the Louvre to choose a limited number of pieces and still acquire quality paintings for his own collection. When Hitler learned of the events in Limoges, however, he was furious, abhorring the thought of receiving mere French rejects. Yet he allowed plans for the French selection to move forward, ordering Bormann’s staff to acquire remaining pieces for the Linz collection.107 The affair had caused considerable embarrassment at Hitler’s headquarters, and no one in German services wanted to accept responsibility for it. Even the administrative head of the ERR, Gerhard Utikal, denied involvement in the deal and protested Göring’s handling of it to the Reich Chancellery. Göring in turn blamed Lohse and other underlings in Paris.108 Louvre curators thus were able to exercise the right of first refusal with Hitler’s acquiescence. Between 13 and 23 August 1943, representatives from several French agencies created an inventory of the Schloss collection. These officials included Huyghe and Bazin representing the Louvre, Lefranc, police officials, and members of the CGQ J. Huyghe and Bazin were in the enviable position of choosing the best pieces for the Louvre. They selected forty-nine works, for which the Direction des musées would pay an estimated 19 million francs. Ever since, French accounts of the selection process have been similar to those regarding the sequestered Jewish collections, in that they describe the procedure as a way to keep precious works of art away from the Nazis, enabling the museum office later to return the works to Jewish owners.109 However, wartime and postwar correspondence reveals that Huyghe, Jaujard, and their colleagues were pursuing a permanent acquisition for the Louvre that, in their minds, would greatly enhance the museum’s collection and ensure its status as a world-class institution. Huyghe, in particular, appears to have maintained this belief, quite enthusiastically, well into 1944. Having surveyed the collection, he wrote an extensive report to Jaujard explaining the urgency of this acquisition and the importance of receiving the special credit from the finance ministry. The Schloss collection included paintings by great masters, “the absence of which we have long regretted at the Louvre and which have become extremely rare.” He cited the example of a Pietà by Petrus Christus and works by Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Van der Neer, Brouwer, Van der Heyden, and Jan Bruegel the Elder. The Louvre already held some works

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by these artists, Huyghe explained, but the works that he and Bazin had selected for purchase would further enhance the museum’s collection. A landscape by Rembrandt, for example, “allows us to fill a notable gap that we have not hoped to be able to address, as there are only about a dozen known landscapes by this master.”110 For Huyghe, the acquisition would also enable the Louvre to fulfill an important educational mission. He wrote to Jaujard, “You know that I have always wanted the Louvre museum not only to show interest in masterpieces that are vital to its prestige, but also to complete its collections from a historical standpoint.” Paintings at the Louvre create “the world’s Pinacotheca where one can study all schools of painting with the fewest gaps,” giving the Louvre an “imperious duty” to complete collections “each time it is possible for us to do so.” He continues, “I cannot argue strongly enough that this group of works be acquired for our museum through a special credit. . . . It would be deplorable if this entire collection went abroad, which will surely happen if the Louvre does not keep a portion of it.” With “this acquisition, the Louvre’s gallery of Dutch painting . . . would become the top Dutch gallery in the world, just after the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It thus would greatly enhance our museum’s prestige.”111 Paintings chosen by Bazin and Huyghe included a Rembrandt landscape, Venus and Cupid by Jan Gossaert, three portraits by Corneille de Lyon (a.k.a. Corneille de la Haye), and Enchanted Island by Jan Bruegel the Elder. On 13 September 1943, Abel Bonnard approved the acquisition and the forty-nine paintings remained in the hands of the Direction des musées.112 The key French players in this story—Jaujard, Huyghe, Lefranc, and Bonnard—all were pleased by the outcome. Lefranc proclaimed to Bonnard that the deal benefited France, as “the national museums could enrich their collections from the Dutch period with forty-nine paintings of exceptional quality, including one of the rare Rembrandt landscapes.” He also felt that the arrangement would benefit all of Europe: “We should also congratulate ourselves if the majority of paintings in the collection go to the museums of a country with an old culture, our neighbor.”113 Hitler did not view the affair quite so favorably, though the director of Bavarian museums, Ernst Buchner, reassured him that the pieces destined for Linz were indeed high quality.114 Officials in various French administrations worked to finalize payment for the paintings—another indication that they expected the Direc-

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tion des musées to acquire them permanently. The advisory committee and technical council of the national museums both unanimously approved the acquisition of the forty-nine paintings in their meetings of 30 September and 6 October 1943, respectively.115 The head of the technical council, ­Gabriel Cognacq, urged Finance Minister Pierre Cathala to sign the decree that would provide funding needed by the Direction des musées. He underscored the urgency of the situation: “We would be sorry if these extremely important paintings, which would make the ­Louvre collection of canvases in the Dutch school the most complete in the world, went to foreign museums!”116 On 29 March 1944, Bonnard further urged the budget office to settle the payment, and approval finally came at the end of April. The funds were not transferred before the Liberation, but the fact remains that fine arts officials persistently sought to settle the payment and the budget office approved it; in the minds of these men, the payment was not fictional.117 When Louvre curators went to the Dreyfus bank to collect the chosen paintings, they encountered German officials from various services: art experts Erhard Goepel and Bruno Lohse, Helmut von Hummel representing Bormann, and Rudolf Schleier of the German embassy in Paris.118 Curators working with Voss on the Linz museum project bought most of the remaining paintings, with funds paid to the CGQJ, and sent them to the Jeu de Paume.119 The Germans considered the estimated price of 60 million francs “very favorable” and noted that the “general atmosphere for negotiations” was “extremely amicable since the Louvre was freely able to choose some pieces.” Lefranc had proposed a deal with Lohse: Lefranc would help the Germans find hidden art collections and receive 25 percent of objects located in the occupied zone and 50 percent of those found in the unoccupied zone. His cut of the Schloss collection was far less, but he was indeed rewarded with twenty-two paintings, which he promptly sold on the booming Paris art market.120 After the Liberation, in 1947, Lefranc would be sentenced to five years in prison for his shady dealings.121 But in May 1944 Huyghe effusively praised him for facilitating the Schloss acquisition. As referenced in the Introduction, he wrote a friendly note to Lefranc expressing remorse that he had not been able to thank him in person while Huyghe was briefly in Paris: I greatly regret it because I would have liked to shake your hand and tell you how much I appreciate all of your dedication in promoting the Louvre’s interests in the Schloss

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affair. I assure you that I have not forgotten the difficulties in the negotiations you pursued, remaining constantly aware of our interests, and the very effective role you played in getting into the Louvre some masterpieces that greatly enhance the value of our Dutch gallery.122

Given the context of May 1944, when the Allied landing was widely anticipated and the Nazi defeat increasingly likely, Huyghe clearly did not expect to return the paintings to the Schloss family. The office of Abel Bonnard provided another gracious note to Lefranc: “I should like to express my thanks, not only for your scrupulous probity but also the zealousness with which you achieved this result.”123 The Direction des musées thus benefited, at least temporarily, from a partnership with Lefranc, a rogue who enriched himself through Vichy’s Aryanization program. In doing so, they also negotiated with Darquier, who led Vichy’s anti-Semitic agency during the regime’s collaboration in genocide and later claimed that only lice were killed at Auschwitz.124 A defender of the Direction des musées might argue that Huyghe and his colleagues strategically played a double game to keep at least some of the paintings on French soil, safeguarding them until they could be returned to the Schloss family. This line of thinking, however, is untenable given numerous internal Direction des musées documents and correspondence with Lefranc that reflect the officials’ elation at the prospect of permanently acquiring the paintings for the Louvre. Furthermore, after the Liberation, museum officials held the paintings for nearly two years while Huyghe unsuccessfully tried to persuade the family to sell or donate some pieces to the Louvre, a point to which we shall return. I have found no evidence that French museum officials discussed any kind of acquisition plan regarding the collections that were placed in the national museum depots for safekeeping. Jaujard’s efforts to protect the collections in 1939 and 1940, partly through the false donations, appear to be genuine. It was only after the implementation of the Vichy regime’s anti-Semitic laws, after extensive German looting was under way and the French developed an administration devoted to the liquidation of Jewish assets, when le patrimoine was seriously threatened, that any language of “acquisition” or “enriching collections” appears in French correspondence. An important distinction must also be made between individuals who seized art in wartime France out of ideological zeal or personal profit and those who sought to expand public museum collections. Whereas the Nazis under the leadership of Rosenberg and Göring were driven by an

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ideological quest, linked to their goal to eliminate altogether the European Jewry, and scoundrels like Lefranc enriched themselves enormously through the sale of art, there is no evidence that French museum officials were motivated by ideology or personal greed. Rather, it was a case of institutional opportunism—not for individual profit but for the enrichment of French museums.125 Their ultimate objective may have been noble, to preserve le patrimoine and make it available for public display and education. But the fact remains that they sought to exploit the liquidation of Jewish collections. Some curators and staff members such as Valland may have genuinely believed that Jaujard and Huyghe always meant the acquisition to be temporary, until the paintings could be returned to the Jewish owners. However, as we will see in Chapter 11, the recent accounts published by the Musées de France that reiterate this perspective, in a time of hailed transparency, are seriously flawed.126 Outside the museum administration, numerous French dealers and gallery owners sought to make a quick profit from the confiscated works of art. Unaffected by Vichy’s exclusionary laws, they benefited from the flourishing art market and were willing accessories in the sale of plundered works. Some, like Lefranc, profited by serving as provisional administrators of seized galleries for the CGQ J. An estimated 80 percent of French dealers, moreover, sold works to German buyers during the Occupation, many knowing that the pieces came from looted collections, and often without recording the transactions.127

The Art Market Boom For most people living in France, the war’s outbreak in 1939 began a period of instability, insecurity, hunger, and deprivation. For many art dealers, however, the Occupation provided unprecedented prosperity. Parisian galleries and auction houses had just begun to recover from the debilitating economic crisis of the 1930s when the conflict began. As inflation rose, the value of the franc plummeted and consumer goods grew increasingly scarce. In this uncertain financial environment, art became a safe investment. Unlike other assets, high-quality works of art were likely to appreciate, and they were often easy to transport and hide from tax agents. Art was even commonly used as currency in international trade agreements. As Raymonde Moulin explains, “A deed of sale for a painting could easily compensate a banker for handling an overseas financial transaction.”128

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A number of French art dealers gained huge profits during the Occupation as eager buyers drove up prices. In 1941 and 1942 the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris alone sold more than a million objects. Small, decorative paintings were particularly popular, along with landscapes and stilllife paintings. Works by Dutch masters sold for the highest prices, but modern paintings by Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, and Seurat skyrocketed in value. In December 1942, for example, Hôtel Drouot auctioned works from the estate of dentist Georges Viau, an avid impressionist collector, for more than 53 million francs, with one Cézanne landscape alone fetching 5 million. Prices only went up from there. By March 1944, some modern paintings sold for 50 percent more than the price paid for comparable works in 1942.129 This prosperity in the art world, however, was limited to a privileged and particularly savvy segment of the population. Jews, communists, and Freemasons were banned from all aspects of art production and commerce. Excluded artists were not allowed to exhibit or sell works in galleries, and Jewish gallery owners and dealers were forced to close down their businesses. Prominent gallery owners Paul Rosenberg and Georges Wildenstein fled for the United States, lost their French citizenship, and suffered huge financial losses when German and French authorities confiscated their holdings in France. Other galleries remained in business under new names. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler sold his Galerie Simon to his nonJewish sister-in-law, Louise Leiris, an arrangement that allowed the gallery to operate under her name. For non-Jews, the exclusionary laws created some new opportunities. Ambitious dealers and gallery owners replaced their Jewish counterparts through Aryanization initiatives, at times further profiting from sales of art seized from Jewish collections.130 The Germans fed the art market boom in Paris, boosting supply by selling looted works that did not suit the tastes of Nazi collectors. Dealers working for Hitler and Göring also purchased works at a lopsided exchange rate set by the armistice agreements that greatly favored the Germans. This system was made possible by the willing cooperation of numerous German and French art historians and experts who appraised objects, and dealers who were willing to sell them, often fully aware that they came from looted collections. Nazi leaders relied on the assistance of German dealers who either lived in Paris or had extensive contacts in the French capital. For example, Walter Bornheim of the Galerie der Alte Kunst in Munich assisted Göring with some of his purchases. Karl Haber-

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stock, a prominent German dealer based in Berlin, siphoned off more than a hundred works for Hitler and the Linz curators. Other curators from long-established German museums such as the Nationalgalerie in Berlin also shopped for new acquisitions in Paris. The Dutch art market experienced a similar boom, as dealers hunted down coveted pieces for Nazi chieftains.131 Alarmed by the unusually high number of objects being sold to Germans and other foreign buyers, French authorities sought to implement export restrictions on older works that were considered part of the French cultural patrimony. The effort to restrict the flow of art involved not only the fine arts division but also the Ministry of Industrial Production, which oversaw domestic commerce; the finance ministry for its role in managing international commerce; the French customs office; and the CGQ J, which sought to facilitate all transfers of Jewish assets. Jean-François Lefranc explained the export problem to Darquier as a “veritable hemorrhage,” an “irreparable loss for our national patrimony as well as a material loss totaling billions of francs.”132 Concerns about the art market’s threat to the nation’s cultural heritage prompted a law of 23 June 1941 restricting the exportation of certain works. Although the law was implemented under unusual circumstances, it was not a new idea. Spain and Italy had similar laws in effect, and France had already tried to enforce export restrictions. A French law of 31 August 1920 had required export visas for works of art, but it was repealed in December 1921 because of logistical difficulties encountered by French customs services.133 Louis Hautecoeur first proposed the new export law to Jérôme Carcopino in March 1941. He was prompted to do so by impending sales of works emanating from pillaged and sequestered Jewish collections. Hautecoeur argued in an apparent oxymoron that these works were among “the most precious of our private patrimony [notre patrimoine privé].” Here, he is not referring to the private assets of Jewish collectors— an individual or family’s financial patrimony—but privately owned works of art that are part of the French national patrimony.134 While one might expect Hautecoeur to underscore the flow of art across the Rhine, he was particularly alarmed by the potential threat of wealthy buyers across the Atlantic. He reminded Carcopino that in the 1930s American financier Andrew Mellon had acquired from the Hermitage Museum works by Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci for 125 million francs. Fine arts officials were acutely aware that by

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1940, the center of the art world was already shifting from Paris to New York. Although sales to German buyers easily outpaced those to Americans during the Occupation, particularly after the United States entered the war in December 1941, Hautecoeur sought to stem the flow of art to both countries. He asked Carcopino, “Should we take a risk and watch foreign countries—that is to say, the United States and perhaps Germany, which has millions to spend from Occupation payments, buy hundreds of pieces that were among our nation’s treasures?” The only way to prevent such a loss, he argued, was to take immediate measures and “temporarily ban art exports.”135 Hautecoeur suggested that the administration could model the new legislation on the Spanish system. Individuals who wished to export a work of art of “national historic or artistic interest” would be required to obtain authorization from the fine arts administration, which had one month to review the dossier. If no response was issued within this time period, the export visa would be granted by default. The new law also incorporated Hautecoeur’s view that the ban should apply to works created before 1900, a parameter that included impressionist and postimpressionist works while exempting more recent objects. Hautecoeur claimed that this exemption would allow French dealers to generate income by exporting contemporary works. But it also reveals an aesthetic distinction between older and more recent works, which in his view were not truly part of the French patrimoine. The export ban thus applied to furniture created before 1830 along with paintings, engravings, drawings, sculptures, and decorative objects created before 1900. The law also banned exports of archeological objects found in metropolitan France and Algeria. According to the new regulations, the seller would provide an estimated value of the object, which the state could choose to buy at the stated price. Once sellers received the export authorization, they paid a 5 percent tax on the items, which was designed to prevent sellers from exaggerating the works’ value. The fine arts administration would use the tax proceeds to acquire works of art that otherwise would be exported. Any illegal attempt to export protected works would be punished by a fine at least equal to and at most double the value of the work, which would be impounded.136 Although the law initially may have appeared to solve the export problem, several factors stymied its implementation throughout the Occupation. Most important, and not surprisingly, the Germans opposed it. All cultural legislation applicable to the occupied zone first had to be

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reviewed and approved by Jonathan Schmid, head of the administrative staff in the MBF. Knowing that the Germans would not accept the law in its original form, Carcopino developed a compromise known as the “Carcopino-Schmid accord.” This “accord” was actually a letter from Carcopino to Schmid dated 15 July 1941, in which the former exempted exports to Germany for the duration of the war. Carcopino wrote: I declare by the present letter in the name of my government that . . . the aforementioned law as applied in the occupied zone will not oppose the exportation of works of art to collectors living in the German Reich and in other territories where Franco-German accords are in effect, that is: Danzig, Eupen, Malmedy, Moresnet, the protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia, and the eastern annexed territories.137

He allowed this exemption on the condition that Schmid would not require an amendment to the law itself stating the exemption, which might prompt foreign dealers to funnel all of their imports from France through Germany. In reality, however, most exports indeed were going to the Reich; Germany’s exemption from the law virtually nullified it. Moreover, the law created widespread confusion among French civil servants. The director of customs, J. Leroi, was not consulted about technical aspects of the law and pointed out several major flaws. First, he opposed the visa application procedures, according to which works of art would be stored in the customs office, potentially creating security problems. He also found that the law duplicated other measures that already banned the exportation of works created before 1801. “The new measures,” he explained, “add nothing to measures already taken” to protect “our national artistic patrimony.” Far from increasing the powers of the government in limiting exports, the law “would reduce them considerably with regard to German sales, that is, those sales that require the closest vigilance.” Leroi suggested that the state should “repeal purely and simply the law of 23 June 1941.” In addition, the original text stated that an administrative decree would detail the law’s implementation. Since no decree was ever published, some officials claimed that the law was never truly in effect. Despite this significant detail, the fine arts administration worked to implement the law anyway, at times even applying it to German exports, despite the Carcopino-Schmid accord.138 As there was little consistency in the export law’s implementation, it seems to have created more administrative confusion than genuine protection of the cultural patrimony. The most clever buyers and sellers simply

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learned to work around the bureaucratic entanglements. Many sold or exchanged works on the black market, ignoring the export regulations altogether. Lefranc reported to the CGQ J that a highly organized network in Spain illegally received works of art from France and rerouted them to the United States. Dealers also clandestinely exported works to Switzerland, passed them off as Swiss works, and transferred them across the French border once again into Spain, where they finally were shipped to American collectors.139 One case in particular illustrates the inability of French legislation to halt the exports. It involved a seventeenth-century Gobelins tapestry known as Dance of the Satyrs. In January 1943 Werner Grote-Hasenbalg, an art dealer in Berlin and official buyer for the governor of Danzig and western Prussia, submitted an application to buy the tapestry for 1.2 million francs. Had officials truly followed the Carcopino-Schmid accord, the application would have been unnecessary since the sale involved a German buyer. Nonetheless, officials on both sides continued with the application process. The fine arts administration inadvertently let pass the one-month review period without issuing a decision. Realizing the error, which involved a piece of significant historic interest, the domestic commerce office of the Ministry of Industrial Production asked GroteHasenbalg to resubmit the application. He agreed to do so, and in the meantime, Guillaume Janneau, head of the fine arts division charged with the conservation of furniture and tapestries (Mobilier national), reviewed the dossier and determined that the work was “a precious document for the history of French tapestry, and no similar piece from this time period is in the national collections.”140 Thus, the education ministry denied the export request.141 However, Grote-Hasenbalg claimed to have understood that the letter from the commerce office was in fact an export authorization and the second application was a mere formality. He proceeded with the shipment and even resold the tapestry after it arrived in Berlin. Several meetings ensued among French and German cultural officials as the French sought to requisition the tapestry. A German official from the Kunstschutz of the MBF, Hans Möbius, proposed to Janneau an exchange: Germany would return the Dance of the Satyrs on condition that the French provided a tapestry of equal value and beauty. Janneau believed this would be an effective solution for both sides, provided that the tapestry had not been destroyed in recent Allied bombing of Berlin. However, in March 1944 the

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Germans refused the first tapestry proposed by Janneau, and the exchange was never carried out. Bureaucratic confusion thus allowed part of the artistic patrimony to slip away to Germany.142 In November 1942 officials at the finance ministry, still alarmed by the number of works of art being shipped to Germany, suggested that the French administration create a maximum annual value for art exports to the Reich. Louis Hautecoeur relayed the idea to Abel Bonnard, explaining that unless the administration established limits on exports to Germany, “the impoverishment of the national patrimony” would compound “the impoverishment of the French market.” Germany had imposed a similar restriction on exports to France in the mid-1930s, establishing a maximum annual value of 2 million francs. Bonnard supported the idea in principle, but negotiations never took place and no ceiling was established.143 Despite Hautecoeur’s efforts, numerous works of art flowed to Germany, legally and illegally. Of the known art exports in the first half of 1942, pieces worth 18 million francs went to Germany alone, a full 80 percent of the overall value of exports (22.5 million francs). One inventory shows fifty-six shipments to the Reich between November 1942 and 10  February 1943, worth more than 31 million francs. The list includes a request by a dealer named Schitthof to export “furniture and tapestries” worth 6,586,480 francs; another dealer’s application to ship “nineteenth-century paintings” worth 11,512,880; and the above-mentioned tapestry bought by Grote-Hasenbalg for 1.2 million.144 Despite the law’s limited impact during the Occupation, it was validated by the postwar provisional government and remained in effect until 1992, when it was replaced by European Economic Community legislation.145 .  .  . The Vichy regime’s approach to Jewish art collections shows the extent to which notions of public and private blurred in its defense of le patrimoine national. French officials believed that the nation’s cultural heritage lay not only in public museums but also in private collections threatened by Nazi looting. French officials tried all diplomatic channels to protest German pillaging of Jewish collections, not in defense of the owners’ private interests but in defense of French sovereignty and cultural heritage. Various government divisions sought to seize the works of art themselves, either to benefit the National Aid program or to enrich public museum collections. A central goal of the museum administration was to

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prevent an exodus of masterpieces to foreign collections abroad by banning exports and exercising its right of first refusal in public art sales. By purchasing works that otherwise would have gone to auction, the museum office hoped to enrich collections in the Louvre and other public museums, not as a temporary wartime measure but permanently. In a wartime example of patrimania, Jaujard, Huyghe, and their colleagues opportunistically pursued museum acquisitions that potentially could harm the interests of the Vichy regime’s Jewish victims. One could argue that they did indeed keep important works of art on French soil, thus saving them from the Nazis and possible disappearance or destruction in Germany. However, I wish to emphasize the justifications behind their actions: the defense of national treasures for the common good. Officials were very quick to make plans to acquire the works for museums, and they were not playing a double game—for example, using the language of national sovereignty to appease Laval or the Nazis, while protecting Jewish assets. Rather, they aggressively pursued the acquisitions from seized collections, hoping for a revival of the Louvre’s international stature and taking advantage of an unforeseen opportunity to expand French museum collections. Though the Nazis limited wide-scale looting to privately owned art collections, they sought to acquire certain key pieces from the Louvre and other national museums through proposed art “exchanges.” Jaujard and his colleagues in the museum administration were forced to hone their diplomatic skills in facing this additional threat to their control over the French patrimony.

10 Art as a Negotiating Tool

The Basel altar is too significant to find an equivalent object; it is too important for an exchange; it could only pass from France to Germany as a gift, within general conditions and circumstances recognized by the leaders of the two countries, and only then would this idea rise to a higher and magnificent plane where two great countries would recover their dignity. —Abel Bonnard, 29 December 1943 Marshal Göring instructed me on 11 January 1944 to let you know that he would accept the Basel altar as a gift from the French nation, as a token of gratitude for measures taken by German authorities to protect and preserve historic sites and art in France during and after the 1940 campaign. —Hermann Bunjes to Abel Bonnard, 26 January 1944

Jewish-owned collections in their looting operations, top leaders restively sought to acquire several key masterpieces from French art museums, either for themselves or fellow party members. Ribbentrop and Göring, in particular, proposed art “exchanges,” in which the works they sought from French museums would be traded for pieces from German collections. In order to carry out their plans, the Germans needed ready accomplices in the French government, which they found in two heads of government: Admiral François Darlan and Pierre Laval. Pursuing broader goals in Franco-German collaboration, both statesmen were willing to facilitate German schemes to appropriate masterpieces from French museums. Though the Nazis primarily targeted

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Vichy’s Concessions: Private and Foreign Works For top officials in the Third Reich, a respectable personal art collection was a status symbol, a sign of the owner’s cultivation, power, and influence. Nazi leaders also offered art as gifts to court the favor of their superiors and solidify their position in the state hierarchy. For Hitler’s fiftieth birthday in 1939, for example, Heinrich Himmler offered Menzel’s Frederick the Great on a Ride, and finance minister Walther Funk gave the Führer Titian’s Venus before the Mirror, with funding assistance from the Reichsbank.1 Yet the task of acquiring art owned by French public museums or non-Jewish private collectors posed legal and diplomatic challenges. Hitler decided to wait for the final peace treaty to demand museum pieces, and without his authorization, Nazi leaders did not attempt to seize art from public collections—with rare exceptions. When acquiring art for personal use, Nazi leaders wanted transactions to appear honorable.2 This seemingly paradoxical concern for respectability, along with Hitler’s decision to spare museum collections for the time being, helps explain why the Germans did not use force to pillage art from the Louvre and other art museums. In a striking example of Nazi gift giving, Funk sought to impress Göring by offering him a precious work of art for his fiftieth birthday, 12 January 1943. Göring had learned of two spectacular fifteenth-century Gothic tapestries in the Limoges region owned by the de Sèze family, headed by Viscount Louis-Marie and Viscountess Hermine. The French fine arts administration was also aware of the impressive hangings, each of which measured about thirty by fifteen feet. Inconveniently for Funk, the viscount and viscountess were not Jewish or any other kind of state enemy whose assets could be handily seized. They simply owned stunning works of art. In June 1942, two French dealers posing as fine arts officials appeared at the chateau of Bort, the family residence, requesting permission to photograph the pieces for a book on medieval tapestries. The owners found the request disquieting but allowed the photos to be taken a few weeks later. During a third visit, the two “officials” told Hermine that an industrialist in Paris would like to buy the tapestries. She declined and invited them to leave, but they said they would return the next day, giving her time to reconsider their offer. The viscountess was now alarmed and promptly notified the police. When the two men returned the next day, carrying a suitcase of cash, they were arrested and taken to Limoges for questioning. They confessed that they were not fine arts officials but art dealers working on Göring’s behalf.3

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French fine arts director Louis Hautecoeur later claimed that when he heard about the dealers’ intrigues, he signed a decree that classified the tapestries, banning their exportation. As an added precaution, he arranged for the tapestries to be donated temporarily to the state, an act finalized on 26 June 1942. The Division of Historic Landmarks carefully wrapped and transported the hangings to the national tapestry headquarters at Aubusson, where they were to be restored.4 Soon afterward the French head of government, Pierre Laval, summoned Hautecoeur to his office and informed him that the tapestries were part of important negotiations with Göring. Yielding to pressure from Laval, Hautecoeur declassified the tapestries on 20 August 1942 and returned them to the viscount and viscountess. Later, when the French regional prefect appeared at the de Sèze home and demanded the tapestries, the owners could only watch as the pieces were taken away. Vichy representatives then ceded the tapestries to German authorities, who shipped them to Carinhall, Göring’s country retreat and primary art repository outside Berlin. To maintain the appearance of propriety, Funk paid 20 million francs for the hangings, not to the owners but to the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the French public account that held assets stemming from the liquidated property of Jews and other state enemies. Though an account was created in her name, Hermine de Sèze refused the payment.5 While the de Sèze affair was taking place, Laval also committed his most egregious act of cultural collaboration, relinquishing to the Germans an altarpiece sent from Belgium to France for safekeeping. The scandal began in the summer of 1942, during the height of Hitler’s power. German troops were making progress on the Eastern Front, and the Reich continued to control North Africa. It was in this context that Hitler decided the moment had come to reverse cultural provisions from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. As required by the peace accords, Germany had ceded to Belgium panels from the Ghent altarpiece, a fifteenth-century Flemish masterpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. Also known as the Mystic Lamb altarpiece, because of the theme of the central panel, it contains twelve panels with twenty-four compartmented paintings, displaying different scenes when opened and closed. (One panel was stolen in 1934 and re-­created in 1945.) The polyptych was commissioned in 1432 by a patron for the Cathedral of Saint Bavo in Ghent, where it rested until French revolutionary forces looted the central panels in 1794. The European coalition that defeated Napoleon in 1815 forced the French to send the panels to Brussels. Eventually,

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the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Berlin bought them through a perfectly legal transaction and displayed them along with the wing panels, which also reached the museum after a series of legal purchases. Yet in article 247 of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies granted the altarpiece to Belgium within a broader effort to force German compensation for cultural losses, including the destroyed library at the University of Louvain. The Weimar Republic transferred the altarpiece to Ghent, where it returned to its original, fifteenth-century home at the Cathedral of Saint Bavo.6 To Hitler, the Mystic Lamb was a symbol of the Diktat imposed on Germany by the Allied powers in 1919. German art historians working on his behalf, moreover, considered the altarpiece an example of pure Nordic expression. Otto Kümmel highlighted it in his five hundred–page inventory of “Germanic” works of art that were to be recovered by the Reich. Once it was transported to Germany, the intact altarpiece would symbolize the Reich’s victory over the Allied powers and the spiritual renaissance of the Germanic people.7

The Ghent or Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 1432. See color plate 1. Image: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Pl ate 1.  

The Ghent or Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 1432. Image: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Pl ate 2.  

Ghent altarpiece, detail of central panel, 1432. Image: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Pl ate 3.   Presentation in the Temple (The Seven Joys of the Virgin), by artist known as Master of the Holy Family (fl. 1470/80–1515). Image: Réunion des musées nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

Pl ate 4.  

Antependium of Basel, ca. 1019. Image: Réunion des musées nationaux.

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Ghent altarpiece, detail of central panel, 1432. See color plate 2. Image: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

During the phony war period of early 1940, Belgian authorities feared that the altarpiece and other artistic treasures might be damaged in combat operations. The Belgian director of museums asked his French counterpart, Jacques Jaujard, to house the precious works of art as a precautionary measure. Both sides agreed that the art would be held at the chateau of Pau, a national museum located in the southwestern Pyrénées Atlantiques department and, it was assumed, out of harm’s way. On 24  May 1940, the chateau received 125 paintings from the Ghent Museum, including the Mystic Lamb panels.8 In July 1941, the French Direction des musées learned that German agents had visited the Pau museum, which was in the unoccupied zone, and inspected the works from Ghent. Jaujard quickly contacted Count Wolff Metternich of the Kunstschutz. The two men jointly drafted an accord stating that works of art from Belgium could be removed from the French storage depot only with written authorization signed by three people: Jaujard, Metternich, and the mayor of Ghent or the Belgian director of national museums.9 However, about a year later, on 8 August 1942, Joseph Billiet learned that the altarpiece had been turned over to German agents without the

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required authorization. Astounded, Billiet scrambled to find out what had happened so he could notify Jaujard, who at the time was inspecting museum storage depots and vacationing in southern France. After making numerous phone calls from the national museum office in Paris, Billiet pieced together the events from the previous week. On Saturday, 1 August 1942, the German director of Bavarian collections, Ernst Buchner, appeared at the Pau museum and informed the curator, Jean Molle, that he had instructions from the Reich Chancellery to secure the ­Mystic Lamb. The timing for Buchner’s visit to the chateau of Pau had been well planned on the German side: it was on a weekend, when Bonnard and Hautecoeur were busy in Paris preparing for the inauguration of the National Museum of Modern Art, and when Jaujard was on vacation in southern France. Laval, moreover, appeared to be a willing accomplice in the de Sèze affair, and Wolff Metternich had been removed from the Kunstschutz.10 According to Jaujard and Wolff Metternich’s previous agreement, Molle ought to have responded to Buchner’s demand by contacting the national museum office in Paris. Finding it difficult to reach a superior in the fine arts office, he also contacted the education ministry in Vichy. As Bonnard was in Paris at the time, the call was forwarded to Laval’s office. On 2 August, Molle received the following telegram: “By order of the government, transfer to Director Buchner the panels of the Ghent altarpiece by Van Eyck currently housed at the Pau museum.” Molle later claimed that he had learned of the accord between the Direction des musées and the Kunstschutz through the national education office in Vichy and believed the correct course of action was to consult Bonnard rather than Jaujard. The museum office only learned of the transfer a week later, when Billiet happened to call the national education office regarding an upcoming visit by Belgian authorities who wished to inspect the works at Pau.11 As the museum administration investigated the affair, it became clear that Laval alone was responsible for the order given to Molle. Georges Hilaire, who served as secretary general of administration for the interior ministry at the time, and later replaced Hautecoeur as fine arts director in March 1944, stated in a postwar deposition that Laval sought to boost his broader project of Franco-German collaboration by giving up the altarpiece. Hilaire had attended a meeting with Laval and Bonnard in which Laval allegedly declared, “Our refusal will not prevent the Germans from

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sending an officer in civilian clothes to seize the work of art. I need to negotiate,” he continued; “all of France is being held by the throat. This is not the time to play a false hero.”12 In November 1940, Laval had carried out a similar negotiation involving a supply of Belgian gold being held in safekeeping by the Bank of France in western Africa. Although French authorities had initially refused to relinquish the Belgian gold, Laval eventually approved the transfer. As German historian Eberhard Jäckel explains, “Laval believed this act would get him closer to the goal [of collaboration] he so passionately desired, but he was wrong.”13 The foreign press immediately publicized the Mystic Lamb affair. The New York Herald Tribune ran a lengthy article declaring in a misleading title, “Van Eyck Art Believed Vichy Gift to Goering.” This negative press would later create difficulties for Göring when he tried to secure works from French museums but was wary of provoking public opposition.14 The Belgian general consul in Paris, Count Hubert Carton de Wiart, had asked the French museum administration to keep the affair in complete confidence while the Belgians negotiated the return of the polyptych from the Germans. Jaujard respected this request for a few months, but when details of the affair became publicly known, Jaujard believed it necessary to convoke the national museum curators in the Comité des conservateurs. The consultative body, established by the museum reform law of 1941, met on 20 November 1942. After Jaujard summarized the events of the past three months, Marcel Aubert, dean of curators and head of the sculpture department at the Louvre, praised Jaujard and Billiet for their fine handling of the situation. Robert Rey, who had served in several curatorial positions, and Georges Fontaine, curator of art objects at the Louvre, declared that the committee should issue a protest to the Vichy government. The signatures of the committee’s “eminent personalities,” observed Rey, would draw worldwide attention to the matter.15 Within the next week, several curators drafted the protest and presented the text to the rest of the committee on 26 November. The group supported Jaujard’s actions and called for the government to work with Belgian authorities in recovering the panel. Jaujard opened the meeting but left the room to allow the curators to discuss his handling of the affair. Only one curator refused to sign the protest: Pierre Ladoué of the recently opened National Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Although ­Ladoué wanted the committee to denounce the affair unanimously, he feared the repercussions of a written protest.16

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In an eloquent response to Ladoué’s concerns, Rey noted that even though the museum administration had been unable to prevent the German appropriation of the Mystic Lamb, the committee was free to make the following choice: to remain silent or issue a protest. In his view, the dignity of the national museum administration was at stake. If the committee remained silent, Rey continued, how would it explain its inaction to the Belgians, to intellectuals and historians? Those who signed the text might take a risk of facing retaliation by higher authorities, but those who did not sign, Rey concluded, would eventually bear an even greater responsibility in the future and before history. In its final form, the last two paragraphs of the protest read as follows: Without wishing to exceed its technical and scientific duties, the committee believes it has a duty to firmly express its strong regret that the provisions of a joint accord created by the Direction des musées nationaux, Belgian authorities, and the German commission for the protection of art [Kunstschutz] were not respected. The committee entreats the French government to join Belgian authorities in steps being taken to achieve the altarpiece’s restitution.

Twenty-two curators approved the text, all of those present, except ­Ladoué.17 In response to the committee’s declaration, Abel Bonnard gave ­Jaujard un blâme, or an “official reprimand,” for insubordination. In a letter to Hautecoeur, Bonnard sympathized with the curators’ reaction to the affair: “I certainly understand their emotion,” he explained, “and any Frenchman in their place would have felt it.” Yet they had a duty “to contain it.” Given the “spirit of discipline and confidence in the head of government” required by the circumstances, Bonnard considered the protest “misplaced and inappropriate.” As the curators did not feel this sense of duty themselves, Bonnard argued, it was Jaujard’s responsibility to impress it upon them. By abstaining from the curators’ declaration, Jaujard gave the protest his tacit approval, thus earning Bonnard’s formal reprimand.18 Despite Bonnard’s denunciation of Jaujard and the curators committee for insubordination, the minister sought to clarify his own role in the affair to the Belgian general consul, explaining that he had not instructed Molle to relinquish the Mystic Lamb; the order had come from Laval. During Bonnard’s postwar trial, Jaujard acknowledged that Laval alone was responsible for the order to turn over the panel, confirming that Bonnard could not have given the order from Vichy, as he was in Paris that day.19

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Laval had believed that the de Sèze tapestries and the Ghent altarpiece would help make the Germans more amenable to his broader project of Franco-German collaboration. Relentlessly pursuing this ultimate goal, Laval was also willing to negotiate away art from French museums to gain leverage with Nazi leaders.

Precursors to German Exchange Proposals As Petropoulos points out, giving gifts of art had long been a part of diplomatic relations, and by the 1940s most countries had developed bureaucratic means for handling gestures of goodwill that involved publicly owned objects. In early 1939, for example, the fine arts administration of the Third Republic arranged a cultural exchange with Italy. The goal of the exchange was to strengthen the cultural patrimonies of both France and Italy by “repatriating” objects that previously had been held in the other country’s museum collections. According to the agreement, the Louvre would offer several archeological artifacts from Italy, including a bas-relief fragment of the Ara Pacis, a world-renowned Roman altar that celebrates the Pax Romana. In return, Italy would give France a stele, or commemorative stone pillar. Art experts considered the piece, entitled Young Girl with Dove, a symbolic representation of Gaul. On the French side, Jérôme Carcopino, who at the time directed the French art school in Rome, signed the accord on 19 May 1939 for education minister Jean Zay.20 The agreement stated that the fragment of the Ara Pacis would recover “its full meaning and beauty in the ensemble of the frieze to which it belongs.”21 The Italian exchange of 1939 reflects a spirit of international cooperation in cultural affairs that reigned in western Europe throughout the 1930s. In 1931 the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation sponsored a conference in Athens, during which member states agreed to collaborate in protecting archeological objects and combating illegal exports. A year later the League of Nations General Assembly approved a resolution encouraging “a large current of exchange between public collections.” These exchanges would enable countries to recover pieces of their cultural heritage that were housed in foreign collections. The 1937 Cairo conference reiterated these principles of international cooperation with regard to archeological excavations.22 During the Occupation, however, official exchanges of publicly owned works resonated in new and politically problematic ways. In ­October 1940

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representatives from the Spanish education ministry proposed an exchange of works between Spanish and French museums. Prior to the war, Pétain had served as the French ambassador to Spain, and he maintained ties to Franco. Jaujard had established good relationships with Spanish curators and artists during his experience in the Prado museum evacuation. The French National Museum Curators Committee and Advisory Council approved the principle of the exchange, as long as the Spaniards would offer suitable pieces. René Huyghe traveled to Spain in December 1940 and developed a list of possible works with Spanish curators.23 Hautecoeur, Jaujard, and Huyghe were all present for the exchange ceremony in Madrid on 27 June 1941. Franco’s government offered Doña Mariana of Austria, a painting by Velázquez from the Prado; Covarrubias by Greco, formerly housed in the Toledo fine arts museum; and a tapestry made from a design by Goya. In return, the French museums presented The Apparition of the Virgin by Murillo; a bust of a woman known as the “Lady of Elché,” considered an exceptional example of ancient Iberian art; and six Visigoth crowns from the Cluny museum. As an additional token of goodwill, Pétain offered documents from the French national archives known as the “archives of Simancas,” which had been donated to the French state a century earlier. Franco responded by providing nineteen sketches by Antoine Caron, a sixteenth-century French mannerist painter.24 An article by Georges Preuilly in the French cultural weekly Comoedia praised the Franco-Spanish exchange. According to Preuilly, the ceremony took place in a “cordial” atmosphere, and it was an event that “those who had the good fortune of attending will never forget.” The Louvre museum was particularly pleased to “enrich itself with a Velázquez and a Greco,” and the ceremony went beyond “the normal scope of artistic exchanges between two neighboring countries,” cementing “a friendship that nothing should ever tarnish.”25 A more critical perspective appears in the memoirs of Lucie Mazauric, a national museum archivist and, during the Occupation, an art depot administrator. Although Mazauric believed that the art exchange benefited both countries, Pétain’s gift from the national archives, in her view, showed that he “did not at all appreciate the inviolability of le patrimoine national.” Louis Hautecoeur appears more sympathetic to Pétain, arguing that the Marshal did not initially offer the archival gift. Rather, the Spanish government had proposed the documents within the exchange deal, and the Vichy regime “decided to satisfy this request.”26 Whether the idea was

Art as a Negotiating Tool  245

proposed first by Pétain or Franco, the French government went beyond the usual scope of artistic exchanges by including the archival collection. The Spanish exchange signaled a disturbing shift in French policy under Vichy. The Italian exchange of 1939 had developed in an atmosphere of international cooperation, and, by all accounts, both sides benefited equally. The 1940 Franco-Spanish exchange, in contrast, began as an exchange authorized by museum officials of both countries but ended as an exchange of gifts between two heads of state, without the full support of the French administration. By adding the archival collection to the deal, Pétain generated concern among French curators that the Spanish exchange portended future acts of misguided largesse.

German Exchange Proposals To the Germans, the French agreements with Italy and Spain provided an intriguing precedent in art exchanges. Their proposals, however, heavily favored the Germans, involving masterpieces from French museum collections and inferior works from the Reich. In the short term, moreover, the art from France was not destined for German museums. Individual Reich leaders aimed to acquire the pieces for themselves or fellow Nazis. The first German proposal surfaced in early 1941, while the French were negotiating the Spanish exchange. It involved an eighteenth-century rococo masterpiece housed at the Louvre, François Boucher’s Diana Bathing. Ribbentrop had seen the painting at the Louvre in December 1938 and wanted to display it in his office. Eager to please his superior, Abetz convinced the French head of government at the time, Admiral François Darlan, to pull the painting from the art depot where it had been placed in safekeeping. In his memoirs, Carcopino describes being called to Darlan’s Vichy office in March 1941 to discuss the matter. Darlan allegedly told Carcopino that offering the painting to Ribbentrop would lead to the release of “several thousand” French prisoners of war. Darlan rather crudely explained that he had learned the German foreign minister was “madly in love with the thighs” of Diana, and Carcopino should not mind if he made “Ribbentrop’s dream come true.” He ordered Carcopino to “send the painting to Berlin!”27 On 24 April 1941 Darlan gave Hautecoeur a written order to have the painting removed from the art storage depot in Montauban and sent to his office. According to Hautecoeur, the Admiral did not wish to displease Ribbentrop over what was, in Darlan’s view, a

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minor issue. Hautecoeur later claimed to have told Darlan such a transfer would require approval by the curators committee as well as a law removing the painting from the national collections. Yet the fact remains that Hautecoeur transmitted Darlan’s order to the museum administration, allowing the Admiral to seize the painting and send it to Ribbentrop— without the required approvals.28 In exchange, the German embassy offered the Louvre, in vague terms, “an impressionist painting,” raising Jaujard’s suspicion that the Germans would simply choose a painting looted in France. Jaujard rejected the proposal and informed the embassy that an equitable exchange would require Ribbentrop to provide another eighteenth-century French painting of equal value. Both Hautecoeur and Carcopino later claimed to have suggested an appropriate contribution from the museum of Dresden— Gersaint’s Shopsign (ca. 1720) by Antoine Watteau, another French rococo painter who had greatly influenced Boucher. Hautecoeur maintained that he had suggested the Watteau painting as a reasonable exchange for the Boucher, and one that the French curators committee most likely would be willing to authorize. Carcopino, in his own account, asserted he chose this painting because he knew that German museum officials would oppose the trade, forcing Ribbentrop to return the Boucher to the Louvre.29 Indeed, officials at the museum of Dresden refused to relinquish the Watteau painting, and Ribbentrop ended the negotiations for the time being. In August 1941 he instructed Abetz to send the painting back to the French museum administration and to keep searching for another ­eighteenth-century painting that might be suitable for the exchange. A year later, Abetz informed his superior that he could still obtain the Diana with a simple telephone call. However, the order from Ribbentrop never materialized, and the Direction des musées held the Boucher in safekeeping for the rest of the Occupation.30 Given the German embassy’s role in art looting, the lack of an order from Ribbentrop may seem puzzling. Yet it exemplifies the desire for Nazi leaders to maintain the appearance of propriety when negotiating art deals for their own personal use. Undeterred by Ribbentrop’s failure to secure a publicly owned French masterpiece, Göring developed his own plans for such an exchange toward the end of 1942. After the negative press of the Mystic Lamb affair, Göring knew he would need to acquire works through the more tedious process of official exchanges rather than outright theft. Fortunately for Göring, Laval was back in power as head of government and the Reichs-

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marschall had a ready accomplice on the French side. Laval had already demonstrated his willingness to use works of art for leverage with the Nazis by releasing the Mystic Lamb, and by the end of 1942, Göring and Laval agreed to promote cultural exchanges that would benefit both countries.31 Hermann Bunjes, a German art historian and adviser to Göring, presented the Reich’s next proposal. In a meeting with Jaujard and Haute­ coeur on 7 January 1943, Bunjes suggested that the two countries exchange several works of art that, for the German side, would complete “Germanic” ensembles in the Reich. Bunjes’s list included three works from the Louvre. The first was Presentation in the Temple (ca. 1480), the central panel from an altarpiece entitled Seven Joys of the Virgin, of which two panels were housed in Munich. The author was an anonymous Renaissance artist from the Cologne school known as the Master of the Holy Family.

Presentation in the Temple (The Seven Joys of the Virgin), by artist known as Master of the Holy Family (fl. 1470/80–1515). See color plate 3. Image: Réunion des musées nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

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The second work was an early sixteenth-century painted wooden statue of Mary Magdalene by Gregor Erhart. The nude figure has flowing blond hair and was also known as Beautiful German Woman (La belle ­allemande). The statue was part of a four-piece ensemble, the other three of which were located in Berlin. In November 1940, Göring had demanded that French curators organize a special viewing of the statue for him. The third piece from the Louvre was a painting from an eighteen-piece series entitled The Legend of Saint Ursula, whose other panels were housed in Cologne and Nuremberg. In addition, Hitler wished to obtain from the Reims fine arts museum three studies by Lucas Cranach, an important German Renaissance painter. A few weeks later, Bunjes added to the list two works

Saint Mary Magdalene, by Gregor Erhart, ca. 1515–1520. Image: Réunion des musées nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

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Antependium of Basel, ca. 1019. Christ is central figure. See color plate 4. Image: Réunion des musées nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

from private collections: a medieval brooch belonging to Hubert de Ganay and an altarpiece in the Martin Leroy collection. Finally, Bunjes proposed from the French side the Antependium of Basel, an eleventh-century solid gold bas-relief decoration for the front of an altar, one of the most valuable pieces in the Cluny museum collection. Acquired by the museum in 1854, the bas-relief depicts the Holy Roman Emperor Henri II and his wife, Cunegunde, prostrate at the feet of Christ. Art historians working for the Reich considered it a key component of the German cultural patrimony.32 Hautecoeur and Jaujard explained to Bunjes that a few works on the list were not eligible for official negotiations—those from private collections and the Cranach drawings, which the city of Reims owned. The Antependium of Basel, furthermore, was such a precious piece that any proposal involving it would provoke a vehement reaction from French authorities. Thus, there were three works on Bunjes’s list that could be considered in the exchange negotiations: the Presentation in the Temple, the Erhart statue, and the panel from the Legend of Saint Ursula. The three men

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agreed that Jaujard would discuss the proposal with the National Museum Curators Committee and develop a list of works from the German side that would be suitable replacements for French collections.33 In the meantime, Göring persevered in his plan to obtain the golden Antependium of Basel. It is worth noting that this episode coincides with Franco-German negotiations over the Schloss art collection in the summer of 1943. Whereas Göring was not in a position to challenge Hitler’s claim to more than two hundred paintings from the Schloss collection for the Linz museum, he aggressively pursued exchange proposals for a few select pieces from French museums. Yet the French continued to stymie his pursuit of the Basel antependium. The Direction des musées refused to transfer it from Chambord to Paris for a German inspection, so on 1 June 1943, a team of Germans led by Bunjes went to the chateau instead. On the German side, Bunjes was accompanied by Walter Andreas Hofer, artistic adviser to Göring, and Hermann Voss, curator for Hitler’s Linz museum project. On the French side, the director of the Chambord storage depot, Pierre Schommer, joined François de Montremy, head curator at Cluny. Though the Germans only photographed the antependium, the episode was deeply troubling to Montremy, who assumed the jewel in his museum’s collection was all but lost.34 However, the entire French administration opposed including the masterpiece in any kind of exchange. For the Direction des musées, the antependium was an irreplaceable, incomparable component of the French patrimoine national. (The Swiss also claimed the piece as part of their cultural heritage, but the French had repeatedly opposed their claims to it.)35 Even Bonnard opposed the German exchange, though for different reasons. The education minister was most concerned about the negative press that would follow such an exchange, particularly after the public criticism of the Mystic Lamb affair.36 Göring kept pressing the issue. Discussions resumed in July 1943 when Bonnard met with the general consul of the German embassy, Mr. Gerlach. The consul proposed exchanging the antependium for a minor work by ­Benozzo Gozzoli (1420–1497), an early Renaissance Italian painter. Bonnard replied that “this exchange, if it were to happen, could only take place by force” or “by violence.” The minister emphasized the extent to which “this pseudo-exchange would be exploited by all the enemies of Germany and France.” “English radio,” he argued, “would not miss the opportunity to take advantage of it.” At the same time, Bonnard also suggested that ne-

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gotiations regarding the antependium could eventually take place after the war, when a broader peace negotiation would eliminate the “offensive” aspect of the proposal when “presented to us alone.”37 This suggestion shows that Bonnard was not first and foremost concerned about the integrity of the French patrimony; he was far more preoccupied with French international stature and dignity. Despite his opposition to the exchange, Bonnard agreed to transfer the antependium to Paris so that Göring could inspect it along with two other works at the Louvre that were still part of the negotiations: the Erhart statue and the Presentation in the Temple. The viewing was arranged to take place at the Louvre on 11 December 1943. Several French officials—including Jean Mouraille, director of Bonnard’s office in Paris, Hautecoeur, Billiet, Aubert, and Montremy—were awaiting the arrival of Göring when they received a telephone call from Bonnard. (Billiet was serving for Jaujard, who was ill at the time.) Göring, allegedly concerned about his safety in Paris, wanted to view the pieces at his residence in the former French foreign ministry building on the Quai d’Orsay. The idea thoroughly alarmed Billiet, as the palace was part of the German embassy and thus legally on German soil. Before accepting the demand, Bonnard asked a German officer working for Göring, General Hanes, to “vow” that the antependium would be given back to French authorities. This promise was enough to reassure Bonnard, and he instructed the French curators to allow the Germans to transfer the works to the Quai d’Orsay. Bunjes arrived at the Louvre in a Luftwaffe truck and presented a written order for the transfer.38 Billiet, Aubert, and Montremy accompanied the works to the Quai d’Orsay but were not allowed to participate in the discussions between Bonnard and Göring. Instead, they waited in a vestibule outside the office used by Göring, formerly the French foreign minister’s office, listening to the negotiations through closed doors. Inside the office, Bonnard found himself opposite several Germans: the Reichsmarschall, Gerlach, Hofer, and Bunjes, who served as interpreter. After briefly shaking Bonnard’s hand, Göring complained that Bonnard had kept him waiting by insisting on bureaucratic formalities while transferring the pieces. French opposition to an exchange involving the antependium confounded the Reichsmarschall, as France already had negotiated a similar exchange with Spain. Göring then stridently proclaimed, Bonnard recalled, that “if he really wanted to seize an object, no one in the world could prevent

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him from doing it.” The Reichsmarschall alluded to Napoleon’s looting in central Europe, which he mentioned only “to add that he did not want to follow this example.” For the next two hours, the fine arts officials outside the door listened to heated retorts, with Göring shouting in frustration as the French minister stymied his planned “exchange.”39 In the end, Bonnard informed Göring that he could obtain the antependium only as a gift, not within an official exchange. No work of art in Germany could match the value of the golden altar decoration, and any exchange involving it would relegate France to a position of inferiority. Such an exchange could only be “forced” upon the French by Germany, giving them “no advantage.” If the French were to offer the antependium as a generous gift to Germany, however, the gesture would “have an immediate advantage of giving our country more dignity.”40 Ultimately, the meeting of 11 December proved inconclusive, and the three works of art were taken back to the Louvre.41 Several weeks later, on 25 and 26 January 1944, Bunjes resumed discussions with Jaujard and Bonnard. Having just returned from Berlin, Bunjes was pleased to report that Göring was now willing to consider “reciprocal gifts” rather than an “exchange.” This debate over semantics ran through subsequent discussions. France would first offer the Basel antependium as an expression of thanks to the Reich for all it had done to “protect the French artistic patrimony.” Bunjes suggested that, in return for the antependium, Göring could offer Gersaint’s Shopsign by Watteau, the painting that had been proposed earlier by French authorities in exchange for Boucher’s Diana Bathing. He added that successful negotiations could result in the liberation of French prisoners of war who were affiliated with the education ministry and the fine arts administration. The meeting with Bonnard degenerated into a semantics debate as ­Gerlach suggested that if both sides offered gifts, they were back to an exchange proposal. “Not at all,” Bonnard replied, “it’s not a matter of giving both at the same time, but one after the other. Gifts that are exchanged remain gifts.”42 Bunjes further bolstered the German offer by adding that once Göring received the antependium, the Reichsmarschall would order German troops to make a renewed effort to protect all French historic monuments. In the event of an Atlantic invasion, the Reich would provide iron, cement, or any other material necessary to protect cathedrals and other important structures and provide transportation to transfer objects to secure locations within French borders. Although Göring and Bunjes

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were willing to make all kinds of hollow promises, privately the Reichsmarschall told Bunjes that no amount of French resistance would prevent him from restoring the antependium to the German cultural patrimony.43 Discussions over the antependium dragged on for several more weeks. On 9 February, Mouraille told Bunjes that Bonnard remained willing to offer Germany the piece as an official gift and envisioned doing so as part of a grand ceremony. However, the minister wanted to ensure that the gesture would have the desired effect: “In the end,” Mouraille explained, “the goal is to make a strong impression on public opinion.” Bunjes suggested that a French delegation could accompany the antependium to Germany and present it to the Third Reich with complete media coverage—newspapers, radio, and film. Göring would accept the gift on behalf of the Reich and announce his intention to respond with an equally generous gift, which would end up being the Watteau painting. After the war, according to Bunjes’s plan, the antependium would be housed at the National Gallery in Berlin, and its pedestal would be inscribed with the French law that had bestowed it upon Germany.44 By mid-March 1944, no final arrangements had been made for the grand ceremony, and German authorities continued to pressure Bonnard for a quick solution. Bonnard assured Bunjes that Laval had authorized him to manage the affair himself. “It is a heavy responsibility for me,” Bonnard explained. “I am willing to accept it because it involves the meeting of our two countries on the highest level where two great nations can recognize each other and reach an agreement.” Bonnard claimed to be inspired by the thought of representing “the generosity of my country” while across from him, Göring would incarnate “all of German generosity.” The minister vowed to remain in contact with Bunjes to work out the final details of their plan. Inconveniently for Bonnard, the vice president of the French judicial committee of the fine arts administration confirmed that the minister could not use pieces in the national collections as gifts for foreign leaders. Once in the national collections, the works were inalienable, unless a law removed them from the museums, as during the Spanish exchange in 1941. Bonnard may have been considering such legislation in the spring of 1944. By the end of March, however, discussions on the more urgent concern of an Atlantic invasion supplanted those on the antependium. In the end, Bonnard’s negotiations and hesitations at least succeeded in delaying the “gift giving” until it was too late, and the antependium remained in France.45

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Meanwhile, talks continued over two other works that had been part of the exchange negotiations, Erhart’s Magdalene statue and the Presentation in the Temple. In July 1943, the Direction des musées had reached an oral agreement with Bunjes that the final negotiations would take place in Paris, where French officials would review the works proposed by the German museum administration. During the aforementioned, drama-filled meeting with Bonnard at the Quai d’Orsay, 11 December 1943, Göring demanded a different course of action. The two pieces would be shipped to Berlin, accompanied by French fine arts officials selected by Bonnard, who would be welcomed as personal guests of the Reichsmarschall. Bonnard agreed to this plan, as it did not appear “to present any real problems” and the French would be in a much better position if they went to the Reich “voluntarily.” Bonnard nominated two French fine arts officials for the trip to Berlin: Marcel Aubert and René Huyghe of the Louvre’s departments of sculpture and paintings, respectively, as the proposal involved one piece from each department. They would be joined by Gabriel Cognacq, president of the National Museum technical council, and a German-speaking high school teacher, M. Larrose, who would serve as interpreter. Bunjes offered assurances that the French guests would travel to the Reich in an armored train, outfitted with antiaircraft cannon and escorted by fighter planes.46 Despite the generous offer of such security measures, the proposal alarmed Jaujard and he again called a meeting of the National Museum Curators Committee. Bonnard, however, forbade a meeting of the committee without his approval, as well as any direct negotiations between national museum officials and Bunjes. Upon learning of these restrictions on his authority, Jaujard met with Bonnard and informed the minister that any legal exchange involving works from the national museums would require the committee’s approval. Jaujard later would recount in Bonnard’s postwar trial that the minister viewed Jaujard’s actions as insubordination and angrily threatened him. The minister told Jaujard “in extremely strong terms” that “any resistance would be broken,” adding “you will be held by the throat and will pay a personal price.”47 In the end, Bonnard acquiesced. Reversing his position entirely to maintain his authority, he ordered Jaujard to convoke the committee, “urgently,” in a special session on 30 December 1943. Bonnard instructed the curators to determine whether the pieces in question would be held at Laval’s office or sent directly to Germany while negotiations continued.48 One might expect outrage from the curators as they reviewed the ex-

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change proposal, but many of them found it quite reasonable. The underlying principle of the exchange, at least as Bunjes had described it, reflected the commonly held notion at the time that cultural ensembles should be completed through official international exchanges, such as the 1939 FrancoItalian exchange. The National Museum technical council also supported the exchange in principle, declaring, “We are not against the proposed exchange. We find it logical that pieces of art rejoin ensembles to which they belong.” According to Huyghe, the proposal was the same type of exchange that he would have been willing to negotiate during peacetime.49 Yet these discussions were not taking place during peacetime, and the reality of German coercion underlay the curators committee’s discussions. During the meeting of 30 December 1943, Aubert and Huyghe reminded their colleagues that the original German demands had included several other works in addition to the two currently being discussed. They suggested that the committee approve the revised proposal “only due to current circumstances,” with hope of “avoiding a return to the initial demands.” Indeed, the national museum curators approved the exchange conditionally, with the understanding that the pieces would “be exchanged for works of art deemed equivalent by the committee.”50 The following day, 31 December, Jaujard, Aubert, and Huyghe met with Bunjes to discuss whether the final negotiations would take place in Paris or Berlin. Bunjes dropped his proposal to host the French curators in Berlin and agreed to the following arrangement: Louvre curators would give Bunjes the two pieces, and in return, he would prepare a written statement indicating that he would provide works from German museums to be reviewed by French officials in Paris. In the meantime the security of the works from the Louvre would be “assured by German authorities.”51 Bunjes then provided a list of works from which French authorities could make their selection. In exchange for Erhart’s Magdalene, he offered several choices of eighteenth-century works, including a few busts by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. Bunjes offered a selection of nine pieces for the Presentation in the Temple, including three works by Cranach and one by Stefan Lochner, a major fifteenth-century German painter in the Cologne school. Bunjes provided books, photographs, and numerous documents describing the proposed works.52 The curators committee met again on 3 January 1944 to discuss the terms offered by Bunjes. Huyghe noted that he viewed Bunjes’s offer “very favorably.” After some discussion, the committee voted and declared that

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the works belonging to the Louvre would be “given to Dr. Bunjes who will transfer them to Germany.” Works proposed from the German side would be sent to Paris and examined by Louvre curators. In the event that French officials refused the works proposed from the German side, the two pieces would be returned to the Louvre—a provision that makes the curators appear rather naïve given Göring’s personal role in the negotiation. The final agreement would be “subject to approval by the curators committee and national museum [advisory] council.” Despite the curators’ observations that the proposal was similar to exchanges they would have accepted in peacetime, they approved it by secret ballot—underscoring the fact that it was a wartime agreement with the enemy.53 Once the committee approved these terms, Bonnard issued a decree on 4 January 1944 that removed the Magdalene statue and the Presentation in the Temple from the national collections. They were handed over to German authorities, who promptly sent them not to museums where, the Germans had claimed, they would complete ensembles, but to Göring’s country home. Not surprisingly, Bunjes was unable to ­obtain the works he had proposed from the German side. Some of the pieces were in private collections, and their owners proved unwilling to relinquish them. Göring made a feeble effort to uphold his end of the deal by sending to the Louvre a fifteenth-century statuette and a large painting by Antoine Coypel, a court painter for Louis XV. Rose Valland recognized the Coypel painting, which had been looted from a Jewish collection in France. The specious gesture evoked memories of the German embassy’s offer to trade a confiscated impressionist painting for ­Boucher’s Diana Bathing. Jaujard rejected Göring’s offer but held the works as collateral.54 Discussions regarding other pieces in Germany continued into the spring of 1944, but no works were provided from the German side by the war’s end.55 In the meantime, Göring proudly displayed the Louvre pieces to visitors at Carinhall. On 12 January 1944, he showed seven Reich ministers the Magdalene statue, which he considered a symbol of his triumph over recalcitrant French curators. “You see,” he declared, “France is not always deceitful, as the French minister of education and fine arts gave me, in complete confidence, these objects for an exchange.” As Allied forces pushed eastward in the following year, the two pieces were transferred from Carinhall to Berchtesgaden, site of the “Eagle’s Nest,” along with thousands of looted works of art. Art recovery teams working with the ­A llied forces finally found the works in 1945 and returned them to France.56

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Toward the end of the Occupation, a final cultural battle was waged over the Bayeux tapestry, a seventy-meter-long eleventh-century masterpiece that recounts the Norman defeat of the English in 1066. To Nazi officials, it was a fundamental symbol of Aryan racial superiority and an important document of Nordic history, made all the more significant by the ongoing war against Britain.57 The city of Bayeux in Normandy was in the occupied zone, and the tapestry was stored in the basement of the Bayeux cathedral. In 1940 the German High Command (OKH) photographed the tapestry. Members of the Ahnenerbe, the Nazi Party division responsible for researching Aryan history and culture, studied it and commissioned a painter to reproduce the most important scenes. In August 1941, the French fine arts office transferred the tapestry from Bayeux to the art storage depot in Sourches,58 presumably a safer distance from military operations and German art “preservation” efforts. Yet in November 1943 the business manager of the Ahnenerbe, Wolfram Sievers, informed Bunjes that his office intended to appropriate the medieval masterpiece for the Reich.59 Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and Sievers’s superior, attempted to confiscate the tapestry after the Allied landings in June 1944. Using the common pretext of “protecting” the masterpiece, Himmler contacted Abetz in the Germany embassy to arrange its transfer from Sourches to Paris. General Consul Gerlach initiated discussions about the tapestry with Bernhard von Tieschowitz, who had replaced Wolff Metternich as head of the Kunstschutz, and Georges Hilaire, Hautecoeur’s successor as fine arts director. Gerlach explained his concern for the safety of the tapestry and suggested that, for “security reasons,” it should be transferred to Paris. The three men agreed to order the transfer to the Louvre, with Bonnard’s authorization.60 Gestapo officers arrived at the Sourches chateau on 27 June 1944, accompanied by Jacques Dupont, representing the French Division of Historic Landmarks, the agency that oversaw the tapestry’s preservation. The officers gave the director of the Sourches depot, Germain Bazin, an order from the Kunstschutz to cede the tapestry to the Germans. Bazin protested, arguing that he could follow only orders issued by both ­Tieschowitz and Jaujard. Dupont replied that his presence would serve as Jaujard’s authorization. According to Bazin, the Gestapo threatened to destroy the entire depot if he did not furnish the tapestry. “Preferring the security of the works of art over my own security,” Bazin explained, “I ended up conceding.” 61 Reflecting on the affair in his memoirs, Bazin was convinced that Jaujard must have known about the operation but avoided signing the

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order, taking “precautions with regard to future judges [épurateurs].” Bazin then acknowledged that “in this dangerous game where they were all strongly united in the defense of patrimony, not knowing what tomorrow held, the principal actors in this drama each sought to secure their positions in an uncertain future.”62 In Jaujard’s defense, wartime documents indicate that Hilaire, Gerlach, and Tieschowitz most likely arranged the transfer without involving the French museum director. Having survived the short trip from Sourches to Paris, the tapestry arrived safely at the Louvre. It remained there undisturbed for several weeks as Allied forces advanced toward the city. On 15 August, just ten days before the Liberation of Paris, Tieschowitz and General Dietrich von Choltitz, German commander of forces in the French capital, paid a visit to Jaujard. Choltitz had received orders from Berlin to ensure that the tapestry was still at the Louvre. According to Valland, this intervention showed the “primary importance of this affair, despite the preoccupations of the moment.” Yet Choltitz seemed satisfied with Jaujard’s assurances that the tapestry was still in the museum, and he left it there. After the insurrection of Paris was under way, two SS officers visited Choltitz at his office at the Continental Hotel, explaining that they had received orders to seize the tapestry. Choltitz took the officers to his balcony, pointed to the Louvre rooftops where French snipers were picking off the enemy below, and said, “There it is; go ahead and get it.” The tapestry remained in the Louvre.63 .  .  . Both Admiral Darlan and Pierre Laval were willing to use the French patrimoine artistique as a way to gain leverage in negotiations with the Germans. Darlan granted Ribbentrop’s request for a French painting from the Louvre, Boucher’s Diana Bathing, while Laval offered the de Sèze tapestries, a privately owned work, and the Mystic Lamb panel, which Belgian officials had given to the Direction des musées for safekeeping. Both Darlan and Laval considered German demands for French art relatively minor within their broader pursuit of Franco-German collaboration and thus were willing to satisfy Ribbentrop’s and Göring’s demands. They also ignored French cultural protocols, issuing orders to obtain the works of art without seeking requisite approval from the fine arts administration. Laval, moreover, agreed to allow artistic exchanges with works from French museum collections. As a result, Göring succeeded in obtaining two works from the Louvre: Presentation in the Temple and Erhart’s Saint Mary

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Magdalene. Responsibility for this transfer, however, lies not only with Laval but also Bonnard, Hautecoeur, and the curators committee. Hautecoeur’s complicity stems from his inaction; he provided no leadership in this affair and merely relayed communications between Bonnard and Jaujard. As for the museum administration, Jaujard led the curators committee in agreeing to the exchange—in principle only, until suitable works from the German side were received in France. This preliminary authorization, in turn, gave Bonnard authority to issue a decree removing the works from the national collections and sending them to Carinhall. Bonnard respected French law by creating the decree rather than simply pulling the works from the art depots, but he also relinquished French masterpieces to the man who had overseen the looting of thousands of objects in France and who was unlikely to provide equivalent works from German collections. No one on the French side should have expected an equitable exchange from Göring. It is puzzling that the French curators committee would provide even conditional approval for the exchange. Some curators believed the Germans were justified in seeking to complete artistic ensembles in the Reich with pieces from French museums. In addition, some curators believed they would prevent further losses by agreeing to the exchange. Jaujard and the committee members approved the exchange proposal reluctantly; they shared neither Laval’s enthusiasm for the exchange nor his belief that it would help France gain leverage with the Reich in diplomatic negotiations. Yet the fact remains that they allowed Göring to obtain the two pieces before securing suitable German works in exchange. Postwar accounts written by members of the museum administration tend to distort their role in this affair. They describe the art exchanges in Manichean terms, pitting the collaborationist “Vichy regime” against the resistant museum administration. In their memoirs, former museum officials distinguish the Direction des musées from “Vichy,” presumably meaning Hautecoeur, Carcopino, Bonnard, and Laval.64 Even recently, historians have reproduced this perspective, missing the nuance in Bonnard’s opposition to exchanges involving the Antependium of Basel.65 In the end, the minister proved willing to sacrifice a key work of art from the national collections, as long as French stature and dignity, in his view, remained intact. These accounts gloss over the fact that the committee of national museum curators, not just the vague entity of “Vichy,” was willing to send the two Louvre pieces to Germany. Tellingly, Huyghe writes in his mem-

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oirs merely that the discussions with Bunjes had broken down and Göring became preoccupied with more urgent matters: “The negotiations ended there, and the threat to works from the Louvre was definitively deflected.” He then describes his Resistance activities at Montal and the fact that the entire collection of evacuated paintings returned to the Louvre, “without the slightest damage.” There is no mention of the committee’s approval of the exchange or that the two pieces returned to the Louvre museum from Carinhall—not the French storage depots.66 One also wonders why the Germans did not forcibly acquire more works from French museums. Why did Ribbentrop feel compelled to return the Diana to the French museum administration when he had trouble securing an equivalent work in exchange? Why did Himmler fail to obtain the Bayeux tapestry? German plundering of Jewish art collections and the Mystic Lamb altarpiece, even from national museum art depots, proved that no amount of French protesting could prevent armed Reich officials from seizing what they wanted. The key factor was not French resistance, though depot directors, guards, and staff members displayed remarkable courage throughout the Occupation in protecting the French patrimony. The most important factor was Hitler’s decision, as a general rule, not to plunder art museums in France. As he was willing to wait for the final peace treaty to acquire works from French museums, individual Nazi leaders proved unwilling to acquire museum pieces on their own. When pursuing art deals for their own benefit, they aimed to appear honorable.67 In this Nazi code of art-collecting conduct, with Hitler always considered the top collector, Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Göring could not resort to force alone. Given the myriad threats to French museum collections, military and diplomatic, it is remarkable that so few state-owned works were lost during the war. The successful protection of French museum collections was the result of careful planning before the war, a truly heroic effort on the part of numerous French officials who evacuated works of art and watched over the far-flung art depots throughout the Occupation, and the Germans’ willingness to postpone the “repatriation” of works from French museums until the anticipated Nazi victory.

Conclusion

In March 1949 , Louvre curator Pierre Verlet inspected a sequestered art collection; he had been charged with the task of evaluating whether the pieces were worthy of state palaces or museum collections. These pieces were not formerly owned by Jews or Vichy’s other state enemies but by Philippe Pétain himself, now imprisoned on the island of Yeu. Verlet issued his report to the director of French museums, Georges Salles, describing a sorry collection of knickknacks and bric-a-brac. Many of the objects were “unusable”: embroidery, wood or metal work that at times showed notable artisanal craftsmanship but also “hideous taste, filled with francisques [the Vichy two-headed hatchet symbol],” and stars. Other worthless objects, in his view, included engraved glass plaques, candy dishes, Sèvres vases with the inscription “a gift from the Marshal,” evidently unoffered, and “an awful Limoges painted enamel portrait.” More promising, however, were two complete Sèvres porcelain services and a silver flatware service. All of these items also bore the francisque, but, according to Verlet, the symbols could be simply removed or covered up. Once redecorated, the porcelain could be used at official residences, and a flatware service of knives and forks with ivory handles could be used at Rambouillet or the music pavilion at the Hôtel Matignon. Vichy emblems on a coffee and tea service made by Puiforcat, a prestigious French silversmith, could be replaced by insignia of the Republic and used at the presidential Elysée Palace. This recycling of Vichy pieces made sense to Verlet, as the items would not fetch a good price if the state property agency tried to sell them at public auction.1 Verlet’s recommendations, however, go beyond mere practicality. Beneath the Vichy symbols, the objects made by prestigious French firms were part of an enduring French patrimoine, the value of which transcends any short-term government. Vestiges of the Vichy regime could be scraped 295

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away or covered up, making the pieces worthy of elegant republican banquets. One imagines Fourth Republic officials who had once served the Vichy regime wining and dining at state palaces, networking over meals served on the redecorated silver and porcelain. Continuities from the Third Republic to Vichy and the postwar period thus took many forms. As demonstrated throughout this study, the Vichy regime drew on ideas from the Third Republic in implementing cultural reforms to protect the French patrimoine artistique, and postwar governments retained several key measures. One might wonder whether it truly matters that these cultural reforms were promulgated under Vichy, as cultural policies were trending toward centralized preservation before the war and the wartime measures were only fully implemented afterward. Yet the Vichy years do matter because attention only to continuities from the Third to Fourth Republics would overlook the specific circumstances of the Occupation—the rupture that fostered reform. The Occupation created a propitious moment for the development of patrimonial legislation, particularly from 1940 to 1942, as a result of the convergence of several factors. The war and presence of German troops created a new urgency for state protection of public art collections, historic sites, and archeological artifacts threatened by Allied bombs and Nazi looting. The absence of parliamentary governance then enabled officials to promulgate new legislation with relative ease and efficiency. A few activist civil servants—Carcopino, Hautecoeur, and Jaujard—prioritized conservation policy and convinced other key figures such as Pétain and Bouthillier that reform measures should be implemented immediately. In addition, these wartime measures reflect traditionalist notions of patrimoine that arose specifically in the context of war and defeat, a point that histories of postwar cultural policy commonly neglect. For Haute­coeur and Carcopino, protecting the French patrimony bolstered objectives of the National Revolution in rebuilding the French spirit along conservative lines and strengthening the nation’s moral fiber. Hautecoeur, in particular, envisioned cultural reforms as a way to help reshape the French soul in the wake of the defeat, combating what he considered the most dangerous trends in modern French society—excessive individualism, materialism, secularism, and socialism. It would be a mistake, however, to exaggerate the coherence of these wartime measures and the extent to which they were implemented during

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the Occupation. Most were piecemeal measures, at times initiated by Carcopino, other times by Hautecoeur and Jaujard. They did not constitute a planned, more coherent patrimonial policy, the sort that only developed later in the 1960s and 1970s. Full implementation of the laws was continually stymied by a lack of adequate state funding, German requisitions of resources and labor, and the logistical difficulties of a government operating in divided and occupied territory. These significant obstacles to domestic reform make the goals of fine arts leaders under Vichy seem all the more quixotic. Yet they established a policy foundation that postwar administrations would further develop, particularly under André Malraux’s Ministry of Culture (1959–1969), with Jaujard serving Malraux as secretary general until 1967. This case study of the Vichy regime shows that the evolution of patrimonial policy is not merely one of triumphant progress. The circumstances of war and deprivation led the arts administration to allow the destruction of hundreds of bronze statues in France, most of which were recycled into armaments in Germany. The Vichy regime’s exclusionary laws, moreover, stripped Jews of citizenship and property rights, leaving thousands of valuable works of art “ownerless” and vulnerable to looting and appropriation. The wartime policy of saving sequestered art through the right of first refusal continued in the form of the museum administration’s postwar guardianship over unclaimed art from looted collections. French leaders’ actions reflect cultural property norms of the time, relying on claimants to provide proof of ownership instead of using the documents they held to find owners. Today, however, opportunism is apparent in both the wartime and postwar policies toward “ownerless” art, providing clear examples of patrimania. So long as the guardianship exists, the Musées de France will have a duty to continue pursuing research whenever possible and raising awareness of restitution issues. This history raises the difficult question of whether anti-Semitism influenced arts policy. Official correspondence among these leaders shows no hint of anti-Semitism. Jews such as David David-Weill were among the most important benefactors of museums and leaders of advisory councils before the war and dear friends to many in the museum administration. Yet when examining cultural property norms in the early postwar years, one has to ask whether anti-Semitism helped prolong the guardianship over the MNRs without efforts to return works to victims or heirs—not the overt, violent sort of literary anti-Semitism expressed by men like Bon-

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nard, but a more subtle, latent, and durable variety. It is a question with no easy answers, but worth asking and exploring nonetheless. Today in France, a general societal consensus on the importance of le patrimoine has had clear positive effects. As Hautecoeur and his Vichy colleagues foresaw, effective cultural preservation sustains a dynamic and vital tourism industry. The nation’s well-preserved chateaux, cathedrals, and pristine medieval villages help make France the most visited country in the world. In 2007, some 80 million French and foreign tourists spent 117.6 billion euros in France, totaling 6.2 percent of the French gross domestic product.2 Le patrimoine displays the grandeur of France to these visitors, from the palace of Versailles to I. M. Pei’s glass and metal pyramid in the Louvre courtyard. With the heightened awareness of cultural heritage comes new challenges. While the very idea of France seems to be tied to the definition of le patrimoine, ever-expanding parameters threaten to dilute the concept. With the revival of the Inventaire général in 1964, the definition of cultural heritage expanded from the fine arts and pre-1800 historic sites to include modern buildings and works of art, as well as everyday objects that in some way reflect French genius. Once the little dessert spoon becomes part of le patrimoine, how do the French ensure that the concept retains gravitas?3 Some also would argue, as André Chastel has suggested, that too much state intervention in this area has made the French overly dependent on regulation. This reliance on the state, “so characteristically French,” he argues, can actually foster public indifference and a kind of administrative inertia.4 As Alain Guéry puts it, “The originality of the French is to have made the common good into an attribute of the state. In the minds of the French today, it is the state’s duty, and its alone, to implement all that is necessary for the realization of the common welfare.”5 Seen in a more positive light, the expertise of French curators, conservators, and other civil servants, many trained by the state in the Institut national du patrimoine (National Institute of Patrimony), appears to guarantee a continuing important role for France on the world stage in cultural and patrimonial affairs. This case study of France during the Second World War, on a broader level, is useful for understanding postwar international cooperation to protect cultural patrimony. With massive Nazi looting and widespread destruction from bombing by Axis and Allied powers across Europe, the war is a milestone in the twentieth century toward greater appreciation and preservation of heritage, building on protections afforded after the First

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World War. The Nuremberg trials of 1945–1946 codified art plunder as a war crime, and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict expanded previous measures to protect cultural heritage in wartime.6 Unfortunately, the priorities of war at times override concerns for art and heritage. Iraq ratified the 1954 Convention in 1967, but forces under Saddam Hussein looted the Kuwaiti National Museum in the 1990 invasion. War in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s claimed numerous important sites, such as the national library of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Stari Most Bridge in Mostar, both destroyed by Serb shelling.7 Although the United States was not a party to the 1954 Convention during the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991, having signed but not ratified the treaty, the U.S. military claimed to have respected its provisions by establishing nostrike zones around important historical and archeological sites. The effort appears to have been genuine, coordinated among coalition forces,  and largely effective, demonstrating an awareness of the 1954 Convention and the importance of Iraqi and Kuwaiti heritage. However, in the 2003 U.S.led invasion of Iraq, members of the George W. Bush administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, disregarded pleas from archeologists and other experts to protect Iraqi art and heritage. As a result, U.S. forces failed to prevent the looting of thousands of precious objects in the Iraqi National Museum. According to Wayne Sandholtz, this devastating loss of art and artifacts from the earliest human civilizations prompted a new cycle of international cultural property norms that, one hopes, will prevent the loss of heritage in future military operations. Partly in reaction to international outrage over the looting in 2003, the U.S. Senate finally ratified the 1954 Convention on 25 September 2008. The United States is now among 123 states that are parties to the treaty, including most European countries except Andorra, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.8 Along with conventions to protect cultural heritage in wartime, the postwar period yielded greater international cooperation in establishing ethical guidelines for museum acquisitions. In 1946, a group of museum directors, including Georges Salles, founded the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a nongovernmental organization with twenty-eight thousand members—museums and museum professionals—in 137 countries. Housed within the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, ICOM is “committed to the conservation, continuation and communication to society of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and

300  Conclusion

intangible.”9 It adopted a Code of Professional Ethics in November 1986, retitled the Code of Ethics for Museums in 2001 and most recently revised in 2004. The code “sets minimum standards for professional practice and performance for museums and their staff,” including guidelines for acquisitions, the return of cultural property “to a country or people of origin,” and appropriate relationships with the communities museums serve.10 International treaties and conventions have further aimed to prevent the illicit trade of objects looted during the Second World War. In 1998 the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, produced a set of nonbinding restitution principles, approved by representatives from forty-four countries. Five years later the European Union initiated talks to establish a common set of rules to settle claims over looted assets.11 As discussed previously, the Musées de France and the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris cohosted an international symposium in September 2008 on restitution issues and challenges. Several months later, the European Union sponsored a conference in Prague on Holocaust-era assets. The conference yielded the nonbinding Terezin Declaration on 30 June 2009, signed by forty-six countries—including France, Germany, and the United States—who agreed to promote just and fair resolutions to asset disputes.12 Outside the realm of Holocaust-era assets, countries also have coordinated efforts to prevent illegal trafficking of art and antiquities. The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property aimed to prevent trafficking in objects considered part of a nation’s cultural patrimony. As of 2010, some 120 countries were parties to the Convention, at least agreeing to its central principles. Among these parties, France and Germany ratified the treaty in 1997 and 2007, respectively, while the United States has avoided ratification.13 Despite cultural property norms established by professional codes of ethics and international treaties, numerous heritage disputes around the world remain intractable, at times degenerating into lengthy and highly publicized lawsuits. An ongoing dispute between Britain and Greece over Parthenon sculptures also known as the “Elgin marbles” dates to the early 1800s, when Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed the sculpture fragments from the Parthenon. Held by the British Crown since 1816, the marbles are housed at the British Museum, which has repeatedly rejected Greek claims to them.14 Over the past thirty years,

Conclusion  301

museums in the United States have been embroiled in numerous ownership cases. Former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Marion True, testified in a Rome court on 20 March 2009 regarding her role in antiquities acquisitions between 1986 and 2005. In a trial that began in 2005, True and American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht have faced charges by the Italian government of knowingly acquiring looted objects. Meanwhile, the Getty agreed to return to Italy forty objects from its collection, some of which had been under scrutiny in True’s trial. Though the restitution had no effect on the case, it reflected Getty officials’ desire to quiet the international controversy. The Italian government has made similar charges against the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.15 Domestically, museums in the United States face restitution claims from Native American nations. With an increased awareness of their cultural patrimony, Native Americans have claimed their right to recover from museums sacred objects lost over the past two hundred years to successive waves of settlers, vandals, and fortune seekers. Congress responded to these claims in 1990 by creating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which allows tribes to recover treasured pieces of their heritage.16 The Louvre also has faced high-profile claims. In 2008, the Egyptian government accused the museum of purchasing four fresco fragments in 2000 and a fifth in 2003 that it knew may have been stolen from an Egyptian tomb in the 1980s. Questions about the fragments’ origins had been raised in November 2008, when a team of archeologists found a 3,200-yearold tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, from which the frescos appeared to have been stolen. French minister of culture Frédéric Mitterrand convened an advisory committee of the nation’s museum administration to review the evidence provided by Egypt. The committee confirmed unanimously that the pieces most likely had been illegally removed from the tomb. Putting more pressure on the French government, Egyptian officials suspended archeological cooperation with the Louvre on 7 October 2009, announcing that the research projects would resume when the fragments were returned to Egypt. The French could no longer avoid restitution, though Mitterrand continued to assert that the Louvre had purchased them “in good faith.”17 The case shows how cultural property norms have shifted since the Second World War. Curators and museum directors are under much greater media and public scrutiny to ensure that acquisitions have been fair and ethical. Negative press and the appearance of scandal

302  Conclusion

can be damaging enough to prompt restitution, even when officials may be able to claim a legal right to hold the objects in question.18 International agreements to prevent art trafficking are only as strong as national regulations established by individual countries. A lack of adequate cultural and archeological regulation still exists across the globe in antiquities-rich nations—developing former colonies as well as developed former colonizers like Italy. With so many potential buyers in the art market willing to pay high prices, through the black market and legal sales, looters remain motivated to bolster supply. As David Lowenthal argues, “The growing worth of heritage aggravates conflicts over whose it is, what it means, and how to use it.”19 There is a tension common to disputes over Holocaust-era assets and objects claimed as cultural patrimony: the mission of museums to acquire, preserve, and display art versus property ownership rights claimed by other parties. On the one hand, museums showcase extraordinary examples of human genius, democratizing culture for the benefit of the collective. On the other hand, disputes over acquisitions carried out years or decades ago call into question the museums’ right to use certain objects in carrying out their mission. The art market exacerbates this tension, promising great profits to successful claimants who are willing to sell recovered art. As these disputes play out, some may lament that we have entered an age of increased patrimonial litigation. Cultural historian Dominique Poulot prefers to see our time in a positive light, suggesting that heightened public awareness of cultural justice issues may foster a “new age of ethical patrimony.”20 Such a cultural environment would entail a widespread and global recognition of the ways in which people have plundered the heritage of others and a willingness among curators and political leaders alike to relinquish objects once stolen from colonies, tribes, exploited communities, or societies that lack adequate cultural protections. Governments around the world also would need to regulate archeological sites on their territories to diminish the market supply of looted artifacts, perhaps drawing inspiration from French legislation—created under Vichy. With market forces strong and regulations weak, the ideals of Poulot’s ethical age may continue to elude us. Yet there appears to be widening acceptance of a self-evident truth that governments, museums, and other institutions have a solemn duty of just restitution in response to just claims. This may be the most valuable lesson to be learned from the legacy of Vichy patrimonial policy.

Reference Matter

Appendix A Primary National Museum Storage Depots, 1939–1940

Chateau

Department

Objects

Aillères

Sarthe

Paintings

Brissac

Maine-et-Loire Medieval religious art, private Jewish collections

Chambord

Loir-et-Cher

Louvre masterpieces, triage center

Cherreperinne

Orne

Large paintings such as Wedding Feast at Cana, Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon

Cheverny

Loir-et-Cher

Ancient Greek artifacts, small statues, pottery, medieval objects from the Cluny museum

Courtalain

Eure-et-Loir

Ancient Egyptian artifacts

Louvigny

Sarthe

Italian paintings, Mona Lisa

La Pelice

Sarthe

French paintings

Sourches

Sarthe

Large paintings, Raft of the Medusa

Valençay

Indre

Ancient statuary, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, Michelangelo’s Slaves

Source: Valland, Le front de l’art, 6–18.

305

Appendix B Provincial Museums in 1939 Protection Plan

Department

Number of museums

Allier

1

Aisne

7

Alpes-Maritimes

7

Basses-Alpes

2

Hautes-Alpes

1

Ardenne

2

Aube

3

Belfort

1

Bouches-du-Rhône

11

Calvados

1

Cher

2

Côte d’Or

5

Doubs

3

Drôme

1

Eure

2

Finistère

1

Haute-Garonne

3

Gard

4

Gironde

8

Ille-et-Vilaine

1

Indre-et-Loire

1

Isère

7

Jura

9

Loire-Inférieure

4

306

Appendix B  307

Department

Number of museums

Loiret

3

Haute-Loire

2

Marne

7

Haute-Marne

5

Meurthe-et-Moselle

4

Meuse

3

Moselle

5

Nord

17

Oise

4

Pas-de-Calais

6

Bas-Rhin

8

Haut-Rhin

4

Rhône

8

Saône-et-Loire

4

Haute-Saône

6

Savoie

3

Haute-Savoie

2

Seine-Inférieur

6

Seine-et-Marne

3

Somme

5

Var

5

Vaucluse

4

Vosges

3

Haute-Vienne

1

Total

205

Source: “Note relative à la protection et à l’évacuation des musées de province,” n.d., AN F21 3981.

Appendix C Evacuation of Provincial Collections, 1941–1944

Primary museums affected Date

Museum

Depot, department

41 museums

17 depots in 11 departments

Amiens

Rougère, Mayenne

Arras

Chardonneux, Sarthe

Boulogne

Chardonneux, Sarthe

Caen

Baillou, Loir-et-Cher

Calais

Chardonneux, Sarthe

Cambrai

Grand-Lucé, Sarthe

Dieppe

Sassy, Orne

Le Havre, Musée des beaux-arts

Sassy, Orne

Le Havre, Musée des antiquités

Carrouges, Orne

Lille

Grand-Lucé, Sarthe

Rennes

Chardonneux, Sarthe

Saint Omer

Chardonneux, Sarthe

Valenciennes

Grand-Lucé, Sarthe

Fall 1941 Western coast May–December 1942 Northern region, Normandie, Bretagne

308

Appendix C  309

Primary museums affected Date

Museum

Depot, department

Aix-en-Provence

Laval, Basses-Alpes

Avignon

Javon, Vaucluse

Lyon

La Bastie d’Urfe, Loire

Marseille

Laval, Basses-Alpes

Montpellier

Saint-Guilhem, Hérault

Toulouse, Musée des Augustins

Saint-Félix, Haute-Garonne

Bordeaux

Hautefort, Dordogne

March 1943 Mediterranean coast, Rhône Valley

Early 1944 Atlantic coast

Consolidation of depots from 58 to 41, 10 for national museums, 31 for provincial museums Only the largest museums are listed. Sources: “Note pour M. le ministre de l’education nationale au sujet de l’organisation financière des évacuations d’objets d’art,” 9 February 1943, AMN R1 4; “La protection des collections françaises de 1939 à 1942,” La Revue des Beaux-Arts de France 1 (October– November, 1942): 58–59; Valland, Le front de l’art, 233–234.

Appendix D Composition of the National Museum Advisory Councils

Conseil d’administration

Conseil technique

Director of fine arts

Director of fine arts

Director of national museums

Director of national museums

State adviser (Conseiller d’état)

Permanent secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Literature

Senior adviser in the Accounting Office (Cour des comptes)

Permanent secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts

General inspector of finance

President of the Friends of the Louvre association

Assistant director of national museums

General inspector of historic monuments

Financial officer of the Réunion des musées nationaux

Two professors from the Collège de France or the Sorbonne Three honorary curators for the national museums Two artists Four collectors

Source: “Décret du 10 août 1941 pour l’application de la loi du 10 août 1941 sur les musées des beauxarts,” articles fourteen and sixteen, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5154.

310

Notes

Abbreviations ADLA

Archives départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes

ADS

Archives départementales de la Savoie, Chambéry

AMN

Archives des musées nationaux, Paris

AN

Centre d’accueil et de recherche des archives nationales, Paris

BIF

Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris

BSDA

Bibliothèque de la sous-direction de l’archéologie, Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Paris

CAC

Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau

CDJC

Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Paris

MP

Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris

Introduction 1.  Note from René Huyghe to Jean-François Lefranc, 2 May 1944, AMN R32 3(3). I analyze this affair extensively in Chapter 9. 2.  For accounts by museum officials, see Valland, Le front de l’art, 104–110; Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 94–98. A recent history is Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 5. 3.  Report from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 19 June 1943, transcribed in letter from Jaujard to Abel Bonnard, 10 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 4.  Henry Rousso analyzes the explosive Darquier interview in The Vichy Syndrome, 139–144. 5.  Philippe Dagen and Hector Feliciano, “Les musées détiennent 1,955 oeuvres d’art volées aux juifs pendant l’Occupation,” Le Monde, 28 January 1997. 6.  Louis Hautecoeur, “Projet d’équipement national: Beaux-Arts,” 13 January 1943, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris, Hautecoeur Papers, MS 6889. 7.  See Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, 1–6; Babelon and Chastel, La notion de patrimoine, 11–12, 87–106; Leniaud, L’utopie française, 1. 8.  See André Desvallées, “A l’origine du mot ‘patrimoine,’” in Poulot, Patrimoine et 311

312  Notes to Introduction

modernité, 7–67. On the difficulties of defining le patrimoine, see Nora, “Conclusion des entretiens,” in Science et conscience du patrimoine, 391–397. 9.  See Hoffmann, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in Hoffmann et al., In Search of France; Paxton, Vichy France. For an analysis of continuities in cultural policy, see Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie et culture,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, 19–39. 10.  See Ory, Les collaborateurs (1973); Gordon, Collaborationism in France (1980). 11.  Sweets, “Hold That Pendulum!” 731–758. 12.  Laborie, L’opinion française sous Vichy (1990); Gildea, Marianne in Chains (2002); Vinen, The Unfree French (2006); Fogg, The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France (2009). 13.  See Burrin, France under the Germans (1996), initially published as La France à l’ heure allemande (1993); Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration (2000); Judaken, “Intellectuals, Culture, and the Vichy Years,” 84. 14.  Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide (1992); Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (1993); Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution Finale” (2006). 15.  Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy (1989); Bertin-Maghit, Le cinéma français sous l’Occupation (1994); Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite (1993); Cone, Artists under Vichy (1992); Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy (1990); Corcy, La vie culturelle sous l’Occupation (2005). 16.  Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (1983); Lowenthal and Binney, eds., Our Past before Us (1981); Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985). 17.  Nora, ed. Les lieux de mémoire (1984–1992). Among Henry Rousso’s works are The Vichy Syndrome and The Haunting Past. 18.  Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome, 4. 19.  Sherman, Construction of Memory in Interwar France, 7. In “Collective Memory and Cultural History,” Alon Confino offers a convincing critique of Rousso’s analysis of “official memory.” 20.  See Nora, Les lieux de mémoire ; Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident (2006); Babelon and Chastel, La notion du patrimoine (1994); Leniaud, L’utopie française (1992); Poirrier, L’ état et la culture en France (2000) and Les enjeux de l’ histoire culturelle (2004); Vadelorge, Rouen sous la IIIe République (2005); Gerson, Pride of Place (2003). 21.  Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade, xiii–xiv, initially published in the United States as Possessed by the Past (1996). 22.  Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? 146. 23.  An important academic study of Nazi looting across Europe, including France, is by Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich. 24.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (1995), Feliciano, Le musée disparu (1995), English translation, The Lost Museum (1997); Rayssac, L’exode des musées (2007); Edsel, Rescuing Da Vinci (2007). 25.  For an overview, see Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général (2000). 26.  Ibid., 79.

Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1  313

27.  An example of published German documents is Cassou, Le pillage par les Allemands (1947). 28.  For example, Schlösser in Frankreich (1944); Jäckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa (1966); and articles by Leube, “Deutsche Prähistoriker im bestzten Westeuropa,” and ­Schreiber Pedersen, “Deutsche Archäologie im okkupierten Dänemark” (2007), in ­Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, L’archéologie nazie en Europe de l’Ouest. 29.  On the evolution of international norms related to cultural patrimony, from the Napoleonic wars through the 2003 invasion of Iraq, see Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder. See also Rothfield, The Rape of Mesopotamia.

Chapter 1 1.  On the armistice signing, see Jäckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 37–38; Jackson, The Dark Years, 126–129. 2.  Henri du Moulin de Labarthète cited in Marc Olivier Baruch, Le régime de Vichy, 17. On the transfer to Versailles, see memo from Philippe Pétain to ministers, 25 July 1940, AN 2AG 458. 3.  “Note,” no author given, n.d., AN 2AG 458. 4.  Ibid. 5.  The Journal Officiel recorded a total of 569 “yes” votes. But Olivier Wieviorka points out that one member of parliament, Jean Stuhl, changed his vote from “no” to “yes,” bringing the total to 570. (Wieviorka maintains the total of 80 “no” votes.) See Orphans of the Republic, 365n2. On the transfer of power to Pétain, see also Jackson, The Dark Years, 121–136; Paxton, Vichy France, 24–33. 6.  Jackson, The Dark Years, 144–148. 7.  Jäckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 20–21. 8.  Alfred Gosser, preface to Jäckel, La France dans l’Europe de Hitler, 18. See also Baruch, L’administration française sous Vichy, 58. 9.  Cited in Breker, Paris, Hitler et moi, 101. 10.  Cited in ibid., 108. 11.  Ibid., 105–106. 12.  Jäckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 46. 13.  On the French government’s working conditions, see Baruch, Servir l’ état français, 81–90, 413–417. The Germans held captive 1.5 million French prisoners of war. Julian Jackson estimates that by the end of 1943, some 646,421 French workers were in Germany, the third-highest number of foreign workers in the Reich, following Soviet and Polish workers. See The Dark Years, 233–235. 14.  Burrin, France under the Germans, 14. 15.  See Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy. 16.  Jackson, The Dark Years, 104. 17.  On antiforeign sentiment between the world wars, see Lewis, Boundaries of the Republic.

314  Notes to Chapter 1

18.  On the Final Solution in France, see Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews. 19.  Jackson, The Dark Years, 161–165. 20.  On the role and composition of the Conseil d’état, see Baruch, Servir l’ état français, 181–184. 21.  On anti-Americanism in artistic and literary circles in the 1930s, see Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 79–83. 22.  Letter from G. Ripert, Yves Bouthillier, and Raphaël Alibert to Pétain, 1 December 1940, MP 80 3 68. 23.  Report from the Secrétariat général des beaux-arts to the Ministry of National Education, “Note relative à la réorganisation de l’administration des beaux-arts,” n.d., AN F17 13368. 24.  Pierre Drieu La Rochelle was director of La Nouvelle Revue Française from 1940 to 1943. The first wartime issues reflect a thinly veiled attempt at neutrality, publishing authors such as André Gide and Paul Valéry. Soon, however, the publication featured collaborationists, including Abel Bonnard, Bernard Faÿ, and Henry de Montherlant. ­According to Pascal Ory, by 1942 Drieu was “the head of the pro-Nazi intelligentsia.” See Les collaborateurs, 208–215. 25.  Fernand Lemoine, review of Définitions de la France by Lucien Maury, La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 329 (1 July 1941): 119. 26.  Jean Bazaine, “Guerres et évasions,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 326 (1 April 1941): 617. 27.  Once a supporter of the Popular Front, Bazaine led a group of artists known as the Jeunes peintres de tradition française, whose conservative style and ambiguous political allegiances made them appear as resisters to some, pro-Vichy and collaborationist to others. See Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 216–223. 28.  Pierre du Colombier, “Défendons notre patrimoine artistique,” Comoedia, 13 (13 September 1941): 6. 29.  Pétain cited in Tunis-Soir, 7 December 1941, AN 3W 121, document 319. 30.  Carcopino quoted in ibid. 31.  “Note explicative de Carcopino sur son activité,” AN 3W 121, document 13; GranAymerich, “Jérôme Carcopino,” 71–76. 32.  For Hautecoeur’s biography, see Ballon, “History of Louis Hautecoeur,” 218–229; see also Namer, La politique artistique de Vichy, 154–155. 33.  Ballon, “History of Louis Hautecoeur,” 222–225. 34.  Hautecoeur, Considérations sur l’art d’aujourd’ hui, 48. 35.  Ibid. 36.  Ibid., 51–53. 37.  “Projet d’équipement national: Beaux-Arts,” 13 January 1943, BIF MS 6889. 38.  Ibid. 39.  Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 167–178. 40.  On the Carcopino Law, see Chapter 6; on corporatism and cultural affairs, see Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 155–159.

Notes to Chapter 1  315

41.  See Ory, La belle illusion, 122–123. 42.  “Projet d’équipement national,” 13 January 1943, BIF MS 6889; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 274. On postwar democratization programs, see Looseley, The Politics of Fun, 22–48; and the first chapter of Urfalino, L’ invention de la politique culturelle. 43.  Cited in Burrin, France under the Germans, 408. 44.  Mièvre, “L’évolution politique d’Abel Bonnard,” 2; Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 81. 45.  Cited in Mièvre, “L’évolution politique d’Abel Bonnard,” 4–5. 46.  Observation by Jean Galtier-Boissière in ibid., 1. 47.  Contribution by Abel Bonnard as chair of conference entitled “France seule ou France Europe,” 22 December 1941, AN 3W 77. The notion of “France seule” referred to Maurras’s opposition to collaboration, in defense of French interests alone. See ­Weber, Action française, 435–476. On the Anti-Bolshevik Legion, which became the Légion des volontaires français (LVF) in January 1943, see Gordon, Collaborationism in France, 244– 266; see also Ory, Les collaborateurs, 240–247. 48.  Abel Bonnard, “Impressions d’Allemagne,” Aujourd’ hui, 12 December 1941, 1–2. 49.  “Allocution déjeuner Arno Breker,” 22 November 1943, AN 3W 77, document B228. 50.  Ibid. 51.  Huyghe, Une vie pour l’art, 131. 52.  Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 82. 53.  See AN 3W 195, “Pièces parvenues après clôture,” document III 3, “Réquisition définitive,” 2 January 1947. 54.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 328. 55.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 289; Baruch, “Qui sont les préfets de Vichy?” 56.  Waldemar George, “Un homme a sauvé les trésors de nos musées,” Résistance, 15 September 1944; Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 222; article clipping from Le Monde, 23–24 June 1967, AMN Dossier Jacques Jaujard 030 460. 57.  Huyghe recalls his wartime experiences in his memoir, Une vie pour l’art, 111–149. 58.  See, for example, accounts in Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 31–32; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 128–130; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 123–124. 59.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’ éxode du Louvre, 43. 60.  Poster located in series AN AJ40 573, folder 12. 61.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to the Direction générale des beaux-arts, 21 August 1940, AMN R20 6 1. 62.  Burrin, France under the Germans, 296–298. 63.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 18. 64.  Ibid., 18–19. 65.  “Prise de position à l’égard du film ‘Le Train,’” by Tieschowitz, 20 October 1964, BIF MS 6890. Tieschowitz wrote this analysis of a documentary on the wartime pillages while he was a cultural adviser for the West German embassy in Paris. 66.  Ory, La belle illusion, 21–22. 67.  Peer, France on Display, 53–70. On regionalism in the visual arts, see Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia.

316  Notes to Chapter 1

68.  Cited in Peer, France on Display, 69. 69.  Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy, 52. 70.  Ory, “La politique culturelle,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, 232–237. 71.  Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot, “La politique sportive,” in ibid., 83–115. 72.  Ory, La belle illusion, 103–115. 73.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 55; Golan, “The ‘Ecole Française’ vs. the ‘Ecole de Paris,’” in Silver and Golan, The Circle of Montparnasse, 81–83. 74.  Translated passage cited in Golan, “The ‘Ecole Française’ vs. the ‘Ecole de Paris,’” in Silver and Golan, The Circle of Montparnasse, 86. 75.  See Cone, Artists under Vichy, 235n5. 76.  On the exile of artists, see Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 65–69; Cone, Artists under Vichy, 3–10. 77.  On denaturalizations, see Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 4. 78.  Cassou told Laurence Bertrand Dorléac in a 1983 interview that Hautecoeur shed tears while dismissing him as assistant curator of the Musée national d’art moderne. See Bertrand Dorléac, “Art, culture et société,” vol. 2, 429. 79.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 303. 80.  Hautecoeur, Considérations sur l’art d’aujourd’ hui, 54–55. 81.  Cited in Ballon, History of Louis Hautecoeur, 228. 82.  Cone, Artists under Vichy, 108, 110. 83.  Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 151. 84.  See Corcy-Debray, “Le ministère Carcopino,” 301–302. 85.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 81–82; Bouchard cited in Cone, Artists under Vichy, 157. 86.  “Salut à Breker,” Comoedia, 48 (23 May 1942): 1. 87.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 104–106. 88.  Cited in Burrin, France under the Germans, 352. 89.  Circular from the minister of finance to the civil services, 5 April 1940, AN F21 3981. 90.  Paxton, Vichy France, 53. 91.  On Bouthillier and the budgetary process, see Baruch, Servir l’ état français, 191–200. 92.  Analyzing public spending during the Occupation is a formidable challenge, as budgetary items repeatedly were added and removed, and funds often were transferred from one area to another. In offering some estimates, I am relying on my own archival research as well as the findings of cultural historian Marie-Claude Genet-Delacroix, who used several different series at the National Archives in Paris. As Genet-Delacroix emphasizes in her analysis, the numbers provided should be considered only preliminary estimates. I consulted the series AN F21 3981, F21 4723, and F21 7095; see also GenetDelacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” 413–438. 93.  Genet-Delacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” 413. 94.  “Note pour messieurs des rapporteurs du budget des beaux-arts,” from the Service des travaux d’art, musées et expositions, n.d., AN F21 3981. 95.  “Le budget des beaux-arts a encore été diminué,” Beaux-Arts, 352 (15 January 1940): 1. 96.  Ibid.

Notes to Chapters 1 and 2  317

97.  The 5 million franc credit appears in a report entitled “Budget de 1941, dévelop­ pement par chapitres des modifications apportées au budget de l’exercise 1941,” AN F21 4723. See letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 13 October 1941, AN F21 7095. The law of 1 October 1941 establishing the 20 million franc credit appears in the Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 4 October 1941, 4274. 98.  Letter from the president of the Budgetary Committee of the French state to the minister of national education, 19 September 1941, AN F21 4723. 99.  Letter from director of the state property administration to Jaujard, 14 January 1942, AMN R20 4 2; from Jaujard to director of the state property administration, 21 January 1942, AMN R20 4 2. 100.  See Lucie Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 134–136; Valland, Le front de l’art, 111–115. 101.  Letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 4 July 1941, AN F21 4723. 102.  Genet-Delacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” 438. 103.  Ibid., 419–420. 104.  Ibid., 413. 105.  On funding of youth affairs and sports in 1943, see Baruch, “L’administration française sous Vichy,” 112; figure for the fine arts administration found in Genet-­Delacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” 10.

Chapter 2 The chapter epigraph source is BIF MS 6910. 1.  See Silver, Esprit de Corps; and Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia. 2.  For the history of the Celtic movement and its position on the eve of World War I, see Antliff, “Cubism, Celtism, and the Body Politic,” 655–668. 3.  For definitions of classicism, see Silver, Esprit de Corps, 97–100. 4.  For discussions of the Latinist viewpoint, see Herbert, Paris 1937, 92–93; and Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 202–205. 5.  Hautecoeur, Les Beaux-Arts en France, 114. 6.  Silver, Esprit de Corps, 93. 7.  Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 28–36; Herbert, Paris 1937, 90–93. 8.  Peer, France on Display. 9.  Herbert, Paris 1937, 84. 10.  Ibid., 99. 11.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 202–205. 12.  Raymond Lécuyer, “Les grandes disciplines de l’art français,” France Européenne: Revue Mensuelle de l’Exposition du Grand Palais 1 (June 1941): 36. 13.  Cited in Burrin, France under the Germans, 345. 14.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 101–106, 204–205. 15.  Both Rebatet quotes cited in Cone, Artists under Vichy, 31. 16.  Cone’s words in ibid., 31. 17.  Cited in ibid. 18.  Jean Bazaine, “Guerres et évasions,” La Nouvelle Revue Français 29, no. 326 (1 April 1941): 617–623.

318  Notes to Chapter 2 and 3

19.  Jean Giraudoux believed that Jews were invading France just as barbarians had overrun the Roman empire. See Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 52–53. 20.  Giraudoux, Pleins pouvoirs, 105–106. 21.  Ibid., 122. Giraudoux also viewed mismanagement in the decentralized municipal government as justification for an increase in central power. See Pleins pouvoirs, 112–113. 22.  Hautecoeur, “Défense de la beauté française,” BIF MS 6910. 23.  Ibid. 24.  Editorial article, Nouveaux Temps, 18 December 1943, 3. 25.  Abel Bonnard, “Le règne de la laideur,” Aujourd’ hui, 30 October 1941, 1–2. 26.  “Pour une renaissance de notre peuple,” Le Cri du Peuple, 14–15 February 1942, 3. 27.  Project proposal, “Direction de l’esthétique nationale,” AN 2AG 572, cc 176. 28.  See Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 74–83; and Cone, Artists under Vichy, 154–169. 29.  “Projet pour la sauvegarde des beautés naturelles et du patrimoine artistique en France,” from A. Dunoyer de Segonzac and Pierre Chevrillon to Conseil national member Lucien Romier, 17 April 1941, AN 2AG 654, dossier 302. 30.  Ibid.

Chapter 3 1.  “La protection des collections françaises de 1939 à 1942,” Revue des Beaux-Arts de France 1 (October–November, 1942): 58. For a comparison with evacuations in other European countries, see Coremans, La protection scientifique des oeuvres d’art, 9–21. 2.  Report by Jean Zay, “Instruction sur la protection en cas de guerre des monuments et oeuvres d’art dans les départements de l’intérieur,” 12 August 1937, AMN R1 4. Details on evacuation preparations found in circular from the Direction des musées nationaux to Conservateurs des musées, 20 January 1936, AMN R1 4; secret letter from Henri Verne, directeur des musées nationaux to Georges Huisman, directeur général des beaux-arts, 16 October 1936, AMN R1 4. 3.  Letter from Georges Huisman to the Direction des musées nationaux, 21 January 1937, AMN R1 4; letter from the Direction générale des beaux-arts to the Direction des musées nationaux, 10 March 1936, AMN R1 4. 4.  Journal Officiel de la République Française, 13 July 1938, 8330–8331. 5.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 15 February 1944, AN AJ 40 573; “Note relative à la protection et à l’évacuation des musées de province,” n.d., AN F21 3981; letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 7 May 1941, AN F21 4889. 6.  Résolution prise par l’Assemblée de la société des nations, 10 Octobre 1932, AN F21 4889. 7.  Note by B. Mazodier, inspection générale des finances, “Origine et action du Comité international pour la sauvegarde des trésors d’art des musées espagnols,” 19 February 1941, AN F21 4900 (review of expenses under Vichy). 8.  Ibid. 9.  These ideas also reappear in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-

Notes to Chapter 3  319

tural Organization’s (UNESCO) 1972 “Convention pour la protection du patrimoine mondial culturel et naturel,” which led to an inventory of “les merveilles du monde” worthy of international protection. See André Chastel, “La notion du patrimoine,” in Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 1463–1465. 10.  Louis Hautecoeur, “L’évacuation des oeuvres d’art français,” Radio mondial, May 1940, BIF MS 6910. 11.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 4–6. 12.  Report by Joseph Billiet to the directeur général des beaux-arts, 15 October 1939, AMN R1 4. 13.  “Rapport sur l’évacuation des collections des musées nationaux,” n.d., AN F21 3981. 14.  Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 25–26. 15.  “Rapport sur l’évacuation des collections des musées nationaux,” AN F21 3981. 16.  Report from Joseph Billiet to the directeur général des beaux-arts, 15 October 1939, AMN R1 4. 17.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 12. I examine these issues in Chapter 9. 18.  “Note relative à la protection et à l’évacuation des musées de province,” n.d., AN F21 3981. 19.  Report from Joseph Billiet to the directeur général des beaux-arts, 15 October 1939, AMN R1 4; “Note relative à la protection et à l’évacuation des musées de province,” n.d., AN F21 3981. 20.  Report from Joseph Billiet to the directeur général des beaux-arts, 15 October 1939, AMN R1 4. 21.  “Note relative à la protection et à l’évacuation des musées de province,” n.d., AN F21 3981. 22.  Billiet estimated that the museum administration would need to allot 375,000 francs in the 1941 budget for the payments. See letter from Joseph Billiet to Louis Haute­ coeur, 16 May 1941, AN F21 4889. 23.  Report from Joseph Billiet to the directeur général des beaux-arts, 15 October 1939, AMN R1 4. 24.  Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 578, 931–932n29. 25.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 86. 26.  Letter from Keitel, commander in chief of the Wehrmacht, to General von Boe­ ckelberg, commander in Paris, 30 June 1940, cited in Cassou, Le pillage par les Allemands, 77; “Ajournement des oeuvres d’art,” in series of statements from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 21 August 1940, AMN R20 6 1. 27.  “Regroupement des dépôts de la peinture,” from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Haute­ coeur, 21 August 1940, AMN R20 6 1; “Retrait de pastels de la Banque de France,” from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 21 August 1940, AMN R20 6 1; Letter from Billiet to Busley, Kunstschutz, 6 September 1943, AMN RP2 C. Weapons agreement signed by Jacques Jaujard and Bernhard von Tieschowitz, AN AJ 40 573. In recruiting depot guards, the Direction des musées hired students and other young men who otherwise would have been forced to serve in the STO. See Jaujard deposition in postwar trial

320  Notes to Chapter 3

of Abel Bonnard, 4 May 1959, AN 3W 82, document R28. Letter on inspections from Jacques Jaujard to Kunstschutz, n.d., AN AJ 40 573. 28.  For Metternich’s role in blocking Abetz’s efforts, see Nicholas, The Rape of ­Europa, 123–124. According to Lucie Mazauric, Metternich convinced Goebbels in 1941 not to plunder public collections. Valland points out, however, that Goebbels was prepared to do so but never received the order from Hitler. See Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 76; Valland, Le front de l’art, 23. 29.  Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 214. 30.  Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 578. 31.  Secrétariat général des beaux-arts, “Demande de crédits pour grands travaux,” n.d., AN F21 4900. 32.  Letter from the Direction des musées nationaux to the secrétaire d’état aux finances, Direction du budget, n.d., AMN R1 4. 33.  Ministre de l’éducation nationale to the ministre secrétaire d’état à l’économie nationale et aux finances, n.d., AMN R1 4. 34.  Circular from the ministère de l’intérieur, Direction des affaires départementales et communales, n.d., AMN R1 4. 35.  “La protection des collections françaises,” 59. 36.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 16. 37.  Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 59. 38.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 24. 39.  Letter from Billiet to Louis Hautecoeur, 10 September 1941, AN F21 7095. 40.  Ibid. 41.  “La protection des collections françaises,” 58–59. 42.  “Note pour M. le ministre de l’éducation nationale au sujet de l’organisation financière des évacuations d’objets d’art,” 9 February 1943, AMN R1 4. 43.  Lucie Mazauric accompanied these paintings from Chambord to Loc-Dieu, then Montauban, and finally the Château de la Treyne in the Périgord. See Mazauric, Le ­Louvre en voyage, chapters 3–7. 44.  Letter from Joseph Billiet to Louis Hautecoeur, 19 March 1943, AMN R1 4. 45.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 75. 46.  He was most likely Dr. Felix Kuetgens of Aachen, author of several art histories, including Johann Baptist Joseph Bastiné (Aachen, 1928), on one of Jacques-Louis David’s students. 47.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to the Kunstschutz, n.d., AN AJ 40 573. 48.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Abel Bonnard, 14 January 1944, AN F17 13368. 49.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 15 February 1944, AN AJ 40 573; Valland, Le front de l’art, 234. 50.  Huyghe, Une vie pour l’art, 142. Interestingly, Huyghe refers to the fighters as “le maquis espagnol” (Spanish maquis), though their true nationality is unclear—perhaps a device to distance his Resistance activity from that of the more scrappy guerrilla fighters. 51.  See Valland, Le front de l’art, 191–211. 52.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 82.

Notes to Chapter 4  321

Chapter 4 Chapter epigraph source is AN F21 4900. 1.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 218. 2.  “Ordonnance n° 45-1546 du 13 juillet 1945 portant organisation provisoire des musées des beaux-arts,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 14 July 1945, 4342–4344. 3.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 197. 4.  Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 154–155; article clipping from Le Monde, 23–24 June 1967, Dossier Jacques Jaujard, AMN 030 460. 5.  Letter from Georges Huisman to the minister of national education, 22 December 1939, AN F21 3978. 6.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 194. 7.  See Sherman, Worthy Monuments. 8.  Pierre Darras, “Pour qu’on aime mieux les musées de province,” Beaux-Arts 40 (17 October 1941): 3. 9.  Louis Réau, “Notes sur les musées de Province,” Beaux-Arts 82 (20 October 1942): 8. 10.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 196. 11.  “La nouvelle organisation des musées des beaux-arts (Musées nationaux et musées de province),” Revue des Beaux-Arts de France (February–March 1943): 182. 12.  See letter from Joseph Billiet to Jacques Jaujard, 21 March 1941, AMN R1 4; and Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 199–202. 13.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 198. 14.  Law of 18 December 1940, article nineteen, on the legislative deliberation by the Council of State cited in letter from Pétain to Carcopino, 13 June 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 15.  Letter from Yves Bouthillier to Louis Hautecoeur, 24 April 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 16.  Letter from Admiral Darlan to Jérôme Carcopino, 6 June 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 17.  Letter from Philippe Pétain to Jérôme Carcopino, 13 June 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 18.  See Baruch, Servir l’ état français, 181–184; Paxton, Vichy France, 194–195. 19.  Statement by Louis Hautecoeur, “Différences essentielles entre le projet de loi sur les musées tel qu’il a été soumis au Conseil d’état et le texte adopté par le conseil,” 4 September 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 20.  “Note sur le projet de loi rélatif aux musées nationaux (texte établi par le Conseil d’état),” 6 September 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 21.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Jérôme Carcopino, 13 September 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 2. 22.  Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5138–5140 (law), 5152–5156 (decree). 23.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 197. 24.  “Loi du 10 août 1941 relative aux musées des beaux-arts,” article one, Journal ­Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5138.

322  Notes to Chapters 4 and 5

25.  “Décret du 10 août 1941 pour l’application de la loi du 10 août 1941 sur les musées des beaux-arts,” articles one and twelve, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5152, 5154. The Réunion today includes an expanded group of thirty-four national museums. Visit the Réunion Web site at www.rmn.fr. 26.  “Loi du 10 août 1941,” articles three and seven, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5138; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 193–195. 27.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 198–199. 28.  “Décret du 10 août 1941,” article eleven, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5154. 29.  “Loi du 10 août 1941,” article ten, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5138. 30.  For a version of the 1936 proposal, see AN F21 4909. 31.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 198. 32.  “Décret du 10 août 1941,” article twenty-one, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5155. 33.  “Loi du 10 août 1941,” article twenty-three, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5139. 34.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 196. 35.  “Décret du 10 août 1941,” articles twenty-two and twenty-five, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5155. 36.  “Loi du 10 août 1941,” articles twenty and twenty-two, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 29 November 1941, 5139. 37.  Ibid., article twenty-nine, 5156. See also “La nouvelle organisation des musées des beaux-arts,” 180–182. 38.  “‘Les musées Longchamp et Borély vont devenir musées de l’état’ nous dit Monsieur Hautecoeur secrétaire général aux beaux-arts,” Le Petit Marseillais, 17–18 January 1943, 1; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 198. 39.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 199. 40.  “Longchamp a tout pour être un musée vraiment digne de Marseille,” Le Petit Marseillais, 19 January 1943, 2. 41.  Pierre du Colombier, “Un statut des Musées de France,” Comoedia, 13 December 1941, 2. 42.  “‘Les musées Longchamp et Borély vont devenir musées de l’état,’” 1; letter from the Direction des musées to Pétain, n.d., AN 2AG 572, cc 176, dossier a; “Projet de lettre à M. le ministre secrétaire d’état aux finances,” n.d., AN 2AG 572, cc 176, dossier a. 43.  Jacques Jaujard, “Rapport à M. le conseiller d’état, secrétaire général des beauxarts,” May 1944, AN F21 4909.

Chapter 5 Chapter epigraph source is MP 80 3 68. 1.  See Gordon, “Warfare and Tourism,” 629. 2.  An explanation of terminology: the common French term for historic landmarks is

Notes to Chapter 5  323

les monuments historiques, whereas protected rural areas are les sites naturels. I use the English word site referring to both types of protected places but describe les monuments as buildings, structures, or landmarks, and les sites as natural areas, landscapes, or sites. I use the word registration for designation on both the primary register (monuments classés) and secondary register (inventaire supplémentaire), in French le classement and l’ inscription, respectively. 3.  Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 8; Yann Harlaut, “La restauration de la cathédrale de Reims,” in Poirrier and Vadelorge, eds., Pour une histoire des politiques du patrimoine, 256–257. 4.  Silver, Esprit de corps, 7–8; on the circulation of photographs during the interwar years, see Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 7–9. Rostand cited in Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 55; Report by the Service des monuments historiques, “Monuments historiques—Travaux,” n.d., AN F21 3981, document 20. 5.  Report by the Service des monuments historiques, n.d., AN F21 3981, document 19. 6.  Report by Jean Zay, “Instruction sur la protection en cas de guerre des monuments et oeuvres d’art dans les départements de l’intérieur,” 12 August 1937, AMN R1 4. 7.  Ibid. 8.  Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux, “Note sur l’activité du Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux en 1939,” 3 November 1939, AN F21 3981, document 25; Service des monuments historiques, n.d., AN F21 3981, document 19. 9.  Service des monuments historiques, n.d., AN F21 3981, document 19. 10.  Service des bâtiments civils et palais nationaux, “Note sur l’activité du Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux en 1939,” 3 November 1939, AN F21 3981, document 25. 11.  Bureau des monuments historiques, “Dommages de guerre 1939–1940,” n.d., MP 80 3 68. 12.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 131. 13.  Ibid., 91–93. 14.  “Loi portant organisation de l’administration centrale de l’instruction publique (section beaux-arts),” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 13 December 1940, 6090. (In the publication’s title, République Française was changed to Etat Français in January 1941.) The Direction générale des beaux-arts was upgraded to a Secrétariat général when Jérôme Carcopino became education minister in February 1941. 15.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 91. 16.  Paxton, Vichy France, 210–220. 17.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 99. 18.  Ballon, “History of Louis Hautecoeur,” in Pollack, ed., Education of the Architect, 227. 19.  Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 50. 20.  Ibid. 21.  Audrerie, La notion et la protection du patrimoine, 50–51; Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 32–57. 22.  For buildings and structures, see Direction générale de l’architecture, Bureau des monuments historiques, “Etat Français,” n.d., BIF MS 6890; for natural sites, see “Renseignements statistiques,” n.d., BIF MS 6890.

324  Notes to Chapter 5

23.  Hilaire cited in Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 174. 24.  On registrations after World War I, see Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 55. 25.  Service des monuments historiques, “La protection des sites,” n.d., AN F21 3981, document 22. 26.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 117–120. 27.  Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux, “Note sur l’activité du Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux en 1939,” 3 November 1939, AN F21 3981, document 25. 28.  Henri Dorgères, “Avant le 15 août: Les reconstructeurs des villages de France doivent être à pied d’oeuvre,” Le Jour: L’Echo de Paris, 5 August 1940, 1–2. Dorgères’s organization, influenced by fascist groups, boasted four hundred thousand members in 1939, with a green-shirted private militia. He later would hold a minor position in Vichy’s Peasant Corporation. See Paxton, Vichy France, 202–203, 206. 29.  Louis Hautecoeur, “Projet d’équipement national: Beaux-Arts,” 13 January 1943, BIF MS 6889. 30.  Paul Verdier, inspecteur général des monuments historiques, “La réparation des monuments historiques endommagés par la guerre,” Revue des Beaux-Arts de France 8 (December 1943–January 1944): 119. 31.  Ibid., 114–119; circular from René Perchet to prefects, 13 December 1941, MP 80 3 68. 32.  Paul Verdier, “La réparation des monuments historiques endommagés par la guerre,” 111–113. 33.  Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux, “Note sur l’activité du Service des bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux en 1939,” 3 November 1939, AN F21 3981, document 25. 34.  Service des monuments historiques, “Note concernant les déclarations des dommages de guerre,” 9 April 1946, MP 80 3 68. 35.  “Loi du 27 août 1941 augmentant à titre temporaire certains délais fixés par les lois des 31 décembre 1913 sur les monuments historiques et du 2 mai 1930 sur la protection des monuments naturels et des sites,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 30 August 1941, MP 80 1 26; letter from Pierre Pucheu and Jérôme Carcopino to Philippe Pétain, n.d., MP 80 1 26. 36.  “Loi n° 66 du 13 janvier 1942 relative à l’érection des monuments,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 15 January 1942, 215; circular from Louis Hautecoeur to prefects, 5 August 1942, AN F21 7079. 37.  Loi n° 92 du 25 février 1943 portant modification de la loi du 31 décembre 1913 sur les monuments historiques,” article one, Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 4 March 1943, 610; “Projet d’exposé des motifs,” n.d., MP 80 1 26. 38.  Letter from the Ministry of the Interior, Departmental and Municipal Affairs, to the Fine Arts Department, 16 September 1941, MP 80 1 26. Letter from Délégué général à l’équipment national to René Perchet, Direction des services d’architecture, 1 July 1942, MP 80 1 26. 39.  “Loi n° 92 du 25 février 1943,” articles one to four; Services d’architecture, ­Bureau

Notes to Chapters 5 and 6  325

des monuments historiques et des sites, “La protection des abords des monuments historiques: Commentaire de la loi n° 92 du 25 février 1943,” 31 March 1944, MP 80 1 26. 40.  Services d’architecture, Bureau des monuments historiques et des sites, “La protection des abords des monuments historiques,” 31 March 1944, MP 80 1 26. See also Ca­ roline Poulain, “Un exemple de la continuité de la politique du patrimoine sous le régime de Vichy: La loi sur les abords des monuments historiques,” in Poirrier and ­Vadelorge, eds., Pour une histoire des politiques du patrimoine, 335–349. 41.  Giraudoux, Pleins pouvoirs, particularly chapter 3, “La France moderne.” 42.  Report draft from the Ministry of Education to Pétain, n.d., MP 80 1 29. 43.  Dates cited in Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 120. 44.  Senator Maurice Faure, “Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargé d’exa­ miner la proposition de loi, adopté par la Chambre des députés, contre l’abus de l’afficheréclame,” 2 March 1910, MP 80 1 2. 45.  Sénat, “Projet de loi tendant à protéger les monuments historiques ou artistiques et les paysages contre les abus de l’affichage et le développement excessif des enseignes: Annexe au procès-verbal du séance du 21 juin 1935,” MP 80 1 29; excerpts from Journal Officiel de la République Française, 31 October and 10 November 1935, “Rapport au président de la République française,” 30 October 1935, MP 80 1 29; report from the president of the council and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education, Finance, Interior, and Public Works to president of the Republic, October 1935, MP 80 1 29. 46.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 121–122. 47.  Report draft from the Ministry of Education to Pétain, n.d., MP 80 1 29; Haute­ coeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 120–121. 48.  Bureau des monuments historiques, “Dommages de guerre,” n.d., MP 80 3 68. 49.  Ibid. 50.  Report from M. Haug to the Direction des musées nationaux, 9 December 1944, AMN RP2 A. 51.  Rey, “Violations du droit international commises,” 44–45. 52.  Bureau des monuments historiques, “Dommages de guerre,” n.d., MP 80 3 68. On the fine arts budget, see Genet-Delacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” 413–438. 53.  Patrice Pusateri examines the example of Rouen in “La reconstruction of Rouen, un nouveau regard,” in Poirrier and Vadelorge, eds., Pour une histoire des politiques du patrimoine, 381–397; Patrice Gourbin documents the continuity between Vichy policy and the reconstruction period in Les monuments historiques de 1940 à 1959.

Chapter 6 Chapter epigraph source is AN F17 17264. 1.  See Rigambert, Le droit de l’archéologie française, particularly part 1. 2.  Ministère de l’éducation nationale et de la culture, “Le cadre législatif et réglementaire de la recherche archéologique en France,” 4.

326  Notes to Chapter 6

3.  Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, “Introduction: L’archéologie nazie en Europe de l’Ouest,” 26–29. 4.  Schreiber Pedersen, “Deutsche Archäologie im okkupierten Dänemark 1940– 1945,” 379. 5.  Lindenberg, preface to Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, L’archéologie nazie en ­Europe de l’Ouest, 9–13. 6.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 95–96; quoted passage, 95. 7.  Leube, “Deutsche Prähistoriker im besetzten Westeuropa 1940–1945,” 93; Schnapp, “Archéologie, archéologues et nazisme,” 292–295. 8.  Leube, “Deutsche Prähistoriker im besetzten Westeuropa 1940–1945,” 97–98. 9.  Schnapp, “Archéologie, archéologues et nazisme,” 296. 10.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 96. 11.  Leube, “Wolfram Sievers—der gewichtige Mann im SS—‘Ahnenerbe,’” 121–131; on the complicity of archeologists, see Schnapp, “Archéologie, archéologues et nazisme,” 301–307. 12.  Schnapp, “Archéologie, archéologues et nazisme,” 295–296. 13.  Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, “Introduction: L’archéologie nazie en Europe de l’Ouest,” 33. 14.  Hitler cited in Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 115. 15.  Hitler cited in ibid., 113; for Hitler’s view of Rosenberg’s and Himmler’s obsession with early Germanic history, see also Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, “Introduction: L’archéologie nazie en Europe de l’Ouest,” 26. 16.  Legendre, Olivier, and Schnitzler, “Introduction: L’archéologie nazie en Europe de l’Ouest,” 33. 17.  Ibid., 39. 18.  Cited in Olivier, “L’archéologie du Troisième Reich et la France,” 4–5. 19.  Ibid., 5–12. 20.  Leube, “Deutsche Prähistoriker im besetzten Westeuropa 1940–1945,” 103–104. 21.  Ibid., 103. 22.  Olivier, “L’archéologie du Troisième Reich et la France,” 8. 23.  Ibid., 8–9; Leube, “Deutsche Prähistoriker im besetzten Westeuropa 1940–1945,” 103–104. 24.  Olivier, “Une ‘ambassade de l’archéologie allemande en France,’” 145–162; Olivier, “L’archéologie du Troisième Reich et la France,” 12. 25.  Olivier, “Une ‘ambassade de l’archéologie allemande en France,’” 145–162. 26.  Olivier, “L’archéologie française et le régime de Vichy,” 18. 27.  Speech by Minister of Agriculture P. Caziot, 19 January 1941, cited in Olivier, “L’archéologie française et le régime de Vichy,” 18. 28.  Krzysztof Pomian, “Francs et Gaulois,” in Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 3, Les France, 45–46. 29.  Ibid., 93–94. 30.  Ibid., 44. 31.  Ibid., 43–44; Olivier, “L’archéologie française et le régime de Vichy,” 18.

Notes to Chapter 6  327

32.  Olivier, “L’archéologie française et le régime de Vichy,” 19. 33.  Cited in Rigambert, Le droit de l’archéologie française, 17. 34.  Ibid., 16–17. 35.  Ibid., 18. 36.  Cited in ibid. 37.  André Chastel, “La notion de patrimoine,” in Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 2nd ed., vol. 2, La nation, 1448–1449; Rigambert, Le droit de l’archéologie française, 20. 38.  Ministère de l’éducation nationale et de la culture, “Le cadre législatif et réglementaire de la recherche archéologique en France,” 4. 39.  “Loi pour la conservation des monuments et objets d’art ayant un intérêt historique et artistique,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 31 March 1887, BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 40.  “Projet de loi sur les fouilles préhistoriques, Chambre des députés, Annexe au procès-verbal de la séance du 25 octobre 1910,” reproduced in Société Préhistorique de France (n.d.): 612–619; citation 612–613. BSDA, journal excerpt in dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 41.  Ibid., 612. 42.  Ibid., articles one to six, 614–616. 43.  “La réglementation des fouilles archéologiques en France,” 30 April 1941, BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 44.  Société Préhistorique de France (n.d.): 635, BSDA, journal excerpt in dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 45.  Ibid., 620–621. 46.  Ibid., 620–624. 47.  Ibid., 624. 48.  Société linnéenne de Bordeaux, “Extrait de la résolution de la séance du 18 janvier 1911,” MP 80 6 10. 49.  Commission des monuments historiques, “Rapport au président de la répu­blique française,” 12 April 1933; “La réglementation des fouilles archéologiques en France,” 30 April 1941, both documents in BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 50.  Office internationale des musées, Acte final de la conférence internationale des fouilles, 7–21. 51.  “Loi du 27 septembre 1941 portant réglementation des fouilles archéologiques,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 15 October 1941, 4438–4439. On Italian legislation, see “La réglementation des fouilles archéologiques en France,” 30 April 1941, BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 52.  See “Avant-Propos,” Gallia: Fouilles et Monuments Archéologiques en France Métro­ politaine 1 (1943): 1–3. 53.  “Loi n° 90 du 21 janvier 1942 tendant à assurer la coordination des recherches archéologiques sur le territoire métropolitain,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 14 February 1942, 646–647. 54.  Letter from Pierre Pucheu and Jérôme Carcopino to the regional prefects, 16 April 1942, AN F17 17264. 55.  Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 442.

328  Notes to Chapter 6

56.  Letter from the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres to Jérôme Carcopino, 8 August 1941, BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 57.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 217. 58.  See “La réglementation des fouilles archéologiques en France,” 30 April 1941, BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 59.  Olivier, “Une ‘ambassade de l’archéologie allemande en France,’” 145–162. 60.  Circular from Pierre Pucheu and Jérôme Carcopino to regional prefects, 16 April 1942, AN F17 17264. 61.  Letter from Jonathan Schmid to Maurice Roy, 3 May 1941, AN F17 13374. 62.  Letter from Dr. Werner Best to Maurice Roy, 8 October 1941, AN F17 13374. 63.  See Laborie, L’opinion française sous Vichy, 52–55. 64.  Delage, La législation des fouilles, 4–7. 65.  The SPF appears to be a distinct organization from the Société préhistorique de France, which spearheaded the protest in 1910. The two are distinguished here as the SPdF (Société préhistorique de France) and the SPF (Société préhistorique française). 66.  Letter from M. H. Desmaisons to Ch. Schleicher, 21 November 1941, in Le Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 39, no. 5 (1942): 130–131. 67.  Letter from M. Saint-Just Péquart to the Société préhistorique française, read during session of 24 December 1941, cited in Le Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 38, no. 12 (1941): 240. 68.  Letter from M. Saint-Just Péquart to the Société préhistorique française, read during session of 26 March 1942, cited in Le Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 39, no. 3 (1942): 67. 69.  Ibid. 70.  Letter from D. Peyrony to Abel Bonnard, 2 August 1942; letter from Jean de la Roche to D. Peyrony, 19 July 1942. Louis Hautecoeur forwarded both letters to the CNRS in October 1942. BSDA, dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” 71.  Journals consulted, which were published at least once in 1941 and 1942, include national publications such as the Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquités Françaises and the Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, as well as regional publications: Bulletin de la Société Archéologique et Historique de la Charente, Bulletin Trimestriel de la Société Archéologique de Touraine, Bulletin de la Société Archéologique et Historique de l’Orléanais, and Provincia: Revue Mensuelle d’Histoire et d’Archéologie Provençales. 72.  Letter from M. Saint-Just Péquart to the Société préhistorique française, read during session of 27 May 1943, cited in Le Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 40, no. 4 (1943): 85. 73.  “La nouvelle réglementation des fouilles,” La Dépêche, 18 August 1942, found in BSDA dossier “Loi 1941 préparation.” The newspaper title of the excerpt is listed only as La Dépêche but most likely was the Dépêche du Midi, given the article’s focus on sites in this region. 74.  See Ministère de l’éducation nationale de la culture, “Le cadre législatif et réglementaire de la recherche archéologique en France,” 5.

Notes to Chapter 7  329

Chapter 7 Parts of this and the following chapter appeared in “Recycling French Heroes: The Destruction of Bronze Statues under the Vichy Regime,” French Historical Studies 29, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 143–181. Copyright 2006, Society for French Historical Studies. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press. 1.  Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 15 October 1941, 4440. Due to contradictory information in several archival sources, and the challenge of determining whether dismantled statues were smelted or later replaced intact, it is difficult to know the exact number of destroyed statues. I estimate that 1,699 statues and busts were dismantled in two phases of the recycling campaign. Kirrily Freeman focuses on the first phase, estimating a loss of 1,527 statues. Both estimates are conservative and invite further research. See Freeman, Bronzes to Bullets, 191n4. 2.  Important works on French statuary include Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir; Agu­ lhon, “La statuomanie et l’histoire”; Hargrove, The Statues of Paris; and Poisson, “Le sort des statues.” In contrast, Freeman’s Bronzes to Bullets incorporates extensive archival research. 3.  An article by Yvon Bizardel includes a catalog of statues “removed by the Nazis.” See “Les statues parisiennes,” 129–148. Georges Poisson also argues that the campaign was of “German inspiration.” See “Le sort des statues,” 166. 4.  Bizardel, “Les statues parisiennes,” 130; Poisson, “Le sort des statues,” 173–174; Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir, 388–389n5. 5.  The term “la statuomanie” was used in the early twentieth century and is analyzed by Agulhon in “La statuomanie et l’histoire.” 6.  See Hargrove, The Statues of Paris, 303–304. Philippe Poirrier and Loïc Vadelorge have also recognized factors beyond ideology that influenced the decisions of Vichy authorities. See their joint article “La statuaire provinciale sous la Troisième République.” 7.  Freeman’s Bronzes to Bullets again is an exception, with analysis of the campaign’s impact outside Paris. 8.  The National Assembly approved a replacement statue of Mangin in 1952, which was dedicated in 1954 and stands near the place Denys Cochin. See letter from Jacques Jaujard to minister of education, 18 January 1951, AN F21 7075. On the Edith Cavell statue, see letter from Robert Rey to Jacques Jaujard, 5 March 1945, AN F21 7075. 9.  Telegram from Rudolph Schleier, German embassy in Paris, to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Berlin, 26 April 1941, AN 3W 352; Freeman, Bronzes to Bullets, 40; Price, Bells and Man, 232. 10.  For Occupation costs and negotiations on shipments of raw materials, see Paxton, Vichy France, 53–55; see also Baruch, Le régime de Vichy, 33; regarding the iron-ore supply and French production for the Germans, see Mazower, Dark Continent, 152–157. 11.  Freeman, Bronzes to Bullets, 13–15. 12.  Secret letter from the Délégué général aux relations économiques franco-allemandes to the Ministry of Industrial Production, 10 November 1941, F12 10841; Jérôme Carcopino describes the cabinet’s discussions about the statues campaign in Souvenirs de sept ans, 461–462.

330  Notes to Chapter 7

13.  On revolutionary iconoclasm, see Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution, chapter 8. 14.  “Récupérations des métaux non-ferreux,” La Croix de la Savoie, 19 October 1941, 1. 15.  Report on the “Mobilisation of Non-Ferrous Metals in Industrial and Commercial Sites,” n.d., AN 68 AJ 164. On the champagne bottle campaign, “Une bouteille de champagne sera délivrée au prix de la taxe en échange de trois bouteilles vides,” Le Petit Marseillais, 15 January 1943, 1; letter from Berthelot, Ministry of Industrial Production to the Division of Public Buildings, Office of Fine Arts, 18 September 1941, AN F21 7116. 16.  “Récupérations des métaux non-ferreux,” 1. 17.  “La mobilisation des métaux non-ferreux,” Le Phare de la Loire, 10 October 1941, 2. 18.  Memorandum from the Ministry of Industrial Production to Jérôme Carcopino, 19 July 1941, AN F21 8086. Baruch explains the role of the regime’s various committees and councils, as defined in the summer of 1940. In theory, one committee would draft a law, and another would approve and submit it to the Conseil de cabinet. The Conseil d’état would ensure the measure’s legality before final review by the Conseil des ministres. In reality, legislation often did not systematically follow this rather inefficient process. See Baruch, Servir l’ état français, 171–174. Jérôme Carcopino later claimed in his memoirs that he had argued for the protection of statues in the Conseil de cabinet. See Souvenirs de sept ans, 461–462. 19.  Memorandum from the Ministry of Industrial Production to Jérôme Carcopino, 19 July 1941, AN F21 8086; report from the Ministry of Industrial Production to Pétain, 1941, AN 68 AJ 312. 20.  Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 461; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 315. 21.  Circular from director of the DIME to head engineers in the occupied zone, 27 August 1942, AN F21 7071. 22.  Letter from the director of interior commerce to the head military engineer of Montaignac, 20 April 1951, AN 68 AJ 312. 23.  Memorandum from the Secrétariat général des beaux-arts to prefects, 22 November 1941, AN F21 7071. 24.  The specific examples of French heroes appear in a draft circular, though not in the final version from Pierre Pucheu and François Lehideux to prefects, 19 November 1941, AN F21 7071 (both documents found here). On other exemptions, see memorandum from Pierre Couissin, Ministry of Education, to Pierre Laval, 13 August 1942, AN F21 7071. Vichy traditionalists also sought to revise French history by banning school books that, in their view, focused excessively on the Revolution. Instead, they wanted French youth to read new texts that would celebrate figures from the prerevolutionary period, such as Louis XIV, Henri IV, and Richelieu. They believed that this revision of French history would help inculcate traditional values associated with Catholicism and monarchism, as opposed to republican secularism. See Atkin, “Reshaping the Past,” 7–16. 25.  Circular from Pierre Pucheu and François Lehideux to prefects, 19 November 1941, AN F21 7071; letter from Norguet, director of mechanical and electrical industries, to general inspector, 2 November 1941, AN 68 AJ 312. 26.  “Mobilisation des métaux: Liste des centres de démolition des statues et zones de

Notes to Chapter 7  331

récupération,” n.d.; “Liste des entreprises agrées pour la démolition des statues et monuments déclassés, zone occupée,” 9 December 1941; “Liste des centres de démolition des statues déposées par les soins du Commissariat à la mobilisation,” 26 May 1943. All documents in AN 68 AJ 312. 27.  Memorandum from Jérôme Carcopino to prefects, 18 November 1941, AN F21 7071. 28.  Minutes from the meetings of the Comité supérieur can be found in the series AN F21 7071 and AN 68 AJ 312. Pierre Ladoué had replaced Jean Cassou as the curator of the Museum of Modern Art, which at the time was still under construction. It was dedicated ahead of schedule, on 6 August 1942, in order to prevent the German requisition of the building. See Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 211–216. Sculptors Paul Landowski and Henri Bouchard replaced Aubert in all but one of the committee’s sessions. It appears that the administration wanted at least one expert in French sculpture to serve on the Comité supérieur. The fine arts administration may have also included Landowski and Bouchard in response to complaints that the decision-making process had originally excluded artists. Yet their participation also created a conflict of interest. Both had been granted numerous official commissions in the interwar years, and as a result, their own work was under review during the statues campaign. Despite their participation in the commission, both artists lost works in the campaign; at least one by Bouchard was destroyed, as were two by Landowski. See reports of the CMMNF in the series AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. 29.  In his memoirs, Yvon Bizardel demonizes Bourkaïb, calling him “an insatiable Turk,” implying that such a strong proponent of the statues campaign could not be truly French. See Bizardel, Sous l’Occupation, 101. 30.  Minutes from the meeting of the Seine Departmental Commission, 8 November 1941, AN F21 7075; minutes from meetings of the Comité supérieur, 30 October 1942 and 25 November 1942, AN 68 AJ 312. 31.  See Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir; Agulhon, “La statuomanie et l’histoire,” 145–146. 32.  Pessard, Statuomanie parisienne, 12. 33.  Cited in Sherman, Construction of Memory in Interwar France, 148. 34.  “Sus aux navets!” Beaux-Arts 41 (24 October 1941): 4. 35.  Marcel Ravan, “La rue, premier musée,” Beaux-Arts 56 (6 February 1942): 10–11. 36.  Charles Maurras, “L’affaire des statues,” Action Française, 22 January 1942, 1; ­Thierry Mauliner, “L’affaire des statues,” Action Française, 2 February 1942, 2. 37.  Agulhon, “La statuomanie et l’histoire,” 145. 38.  Charles Maurras, “L’affaire des statues,” 1. 39.  Letter from Adolphe Boucher to Jérôme Carcopino, 18 November 1941, AN F21 7071. 40.  Letters exchanged between Henri Bouchard and François Lehideux, February and March 1942, AN F21 7071. Bouchard’s reputation was tainted by his decision to join several other French artists on an infamous trip to Berlin in November 1941. See Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 74–106. In his memoirs, Louis Hautecoeur claims to have learned of the statues campaign only in 1943. However, his administration was directly

332  Notes to Chapter 7

involved in the campaign beginning in October 1941. See Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 315–316. 41.  Albert Rivière, “Sentimentalisme,” Le Midi Socialiste, 28 January 1942, 1. 42.  Letter from the prefect of Deux-Sèvres to Jérôme Carcopino and Louis Haute­ coeur, 8 January 1942, AN F21 7071; lists of removed statues, AN 68 AJ 312. For an analysis of the Vichy regime’s regionalist programs, see Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy. 43.  Louis Hautecoeur to the ministers of education, industrial production, and the interior, “Rapport sur l’enlèvement des statues et monuments métalliques en vue de la refonte,” 1 March 1942, AN F21 7071. 44.  Letter from Pétain’s chef du Cabinet civil to the commissioner for the mobilization of nonferrous metals, 13 February 1943, AN 68 AJ 312. 45.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to commissioner for the mobilization of nonferrous metals, 16 March 1943, AN 68 AJ 312. On the history of the Jasmin statue, see CDROM issued by the Musée d’Orsay and the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, A nos grands hommes. 46.  Letter from Pétain’s chef du Cabinet civil to the commissioner for the mobilization of nonferrous metals, 22 June 1943, AN 68 AJ 312; circular from Abel Bonnard to prefects, 11 February 1944, AN F21 7071. 47.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 315–316; letter from Norguet to the minister of finances, 23 May 1942, AN 68 AJ 312. 48.  “Liste des statues et monuments dont le remplacement en pierre est prévu après décision du Comité central de Paris,” 30 January 1942, AN F21 7075; dossier “Budget 1944,” preparatory reports for the budgets of 1944 and 1945, AN F21 7095. 49.  Letter from Bichelonne to Abel Bonnard, 30 June 1942, AN 68 AJ 312; Freeman, Bronzes to Bullets, 48; “Rapport sur l’enlèvement des statues en zone libre à la date du 15  mai 1942” from the Groupement d’importation et de répartition des métaux to the commissaire de la mobilisation des métaux non-ferreux, 15 May 1942, AN 68 AJ 312. Freeman estimates that France shipped nearly a million kilograms of metal derived from statues in 1942, a total that does not include figures for the months of September, November, and December. See Bronzes to Bullets, 48–50. 50.  According to Philippe Burrin, the winter of 1942–1943 was the turning point in German intervention in the French economy, when there was “a certain rationalization of the exploitation of occupied countries.” See Burrin, France under the Germans, 137; and Jäckel, La France dans l’Europe de Hitler, 378–379. 51.  Paxton, Vichy France, 309–326. 52.  Letter from Bichelonne to Abel Bonnard, 30 June 1942, AN 68 AJ 312. 53.  Abel Bonnard, “Une révision nécessaire des gloires nationales: Statues à abattre, statues à élever,” AN 3W 77, document B 227. This article also appeared in Inter-France, 22 March 1943. 54.  Memorandum from Abel Bonnard to prefects and Louis Hautecoeur, 11 February 1944, AN F21 7071. 55.  Letter from Sutterlin, chargé de mission, to Pétain, AN 2AG 572; letter from A. S. Henraux, president of the Commission of Artistic Recuperation to Robert Rey, director

Notes to Chapter 7  333

of education and artistic production, 27 November 1948, AN F21 7071. After the end of hostilities, the Art Recovery Commission found paintings, sculptures, and other works of art that came from France. See Valland, Le front de l’art, 191–230. 56.  Letter from German military command in Paris to Ministry of Education, 23 December 1943, AN F21 7071; letter from the secretary general of fine arts to the commissioner of the mobilization of nonferrous metals, 7 December 1943, AN F21 7071. 57.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to the Kunstschutz, 7 February 1944, AN 68 AJ 312. 58.  Reports of the CMMNF, series AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. 59.  On the STO, see Jackson, The Dark Years, 226–230. 60.  “Statues et monuments encore en place bien que l’enlèvement en ait été décidé (arrêté à la date du 10 décembre 1943),” AN 68 AJ 312. 61.  These figures are based on the analysis of an electronic database that I created based on several reports of the CMMNF in the series AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. Some of the information in the reports is contradictory; thus, the figures listed here are initial, conservative estimates. I also used the CD-ROM A nos grands hommes to identify people honored in commemorative statues. 62.  These statistics include the removal of statues in the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais, two French departments attached to the German command in Brussels, as well as the “forbidden” zone to the north of the Somme and the Aisne rivers and the “reserved” zone located northeast of the Meuse, the Aisne, and the Saône. The annexed zone, which included the Bas-Rhin, the Haut-Rhin, and the Moselle, were incorporated into the German administration and thus were not part of the French statue campaign. 63.  Reports of the CMMNF, series AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. 64.  Poisson, “Le sort des statues,” 244–250. 65.  Freeman, Bronzes to Bullets, 184. 66.  According to Theodore Zeldin, scientific discovery was fundamental to the notion of progress in the nineteenth century: “As scientists gradually transformed more and more aspects of daily life, they increasingly came to be seen as benefactors of mankind and as national heroes. A new kind of hagiography developed, which praised them for their genius and disinterested devotion to their work.” See “Science and Comfort,” in A History of French Passions, vol. 2: Intellect, Taste and Anxiety, 585. These destroyed monuments to Pasteur were located in Les Mées (Basses-Alpes), Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), Melun (Seineet-Marne), Bollène (Vaucluse), and Mirecourt (Vosges). See reports of the Commission de la mobilisation des métaux non-ferreux in AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. 67.  This exercise, of course, is subjective, and I included monuments in this category based on government reports and inscription records. I defined as “republican” figures who were commemorated for republican opposition to monarchs or the Bonapartes, such as Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1851. Leaders identified as centrists during the Third Republic, however, would not necessarily fit in this category if they were not commemorated for significant activity defending the Republic. 68.  As Maurice Agulhon points out, a significant number of statues commemorated leaders who were assassinated or who died prematurely, as in the case of Jaurès, Gambetta, and Carnot. The assassination of Sadi Carnot in 1894 engendered perhaps the most pro-

334  Notes to Chapters 7 and 8

lific statuary movement dedicated to a single individual. See Agulhon, “La statuomanie et l’histoire,” 156, 163. On the destruction of specific statues, see reports of the CMMNF, series AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075.

Chapter 8 Source of chapter epigraph, letter to Hautecoeur, is AN F21 7074. 1.  Works focusing on Parisian statuary include Hargrove, The Statues of Paris; Bizar­ del, “Les statues parisiennes”; and Poisson, “Le sort des statues.” Freeman’s Bronzes to Bullets shifts focus away from Paris with useful local case studies. On local political culture, see Gerson, The Pride of Place, as well as Gerson’s review essay, “Une France locale.” See also Poirrier, “L’histoire des politiques culturelles des villes”; and Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History.” 2.  These figures include statues that were dismantled, later found intact, and reinstalled. Metal objects such as decorative vases are not included in the totals. According to Poisson, the city of Paris was reimbursed 1,140,000 francs for the statues. See “Le sort des statues,” 166, 173. 3.  Ibid., 176. 4.  Minutes from the meeting of the Seine Departmental Commission, 8 November 1941, AN F21 7075. 5.  “Liste des statues qui doivent être envoyées à la refonte,” n.d., AN 68 AJ 164. 6.  “Monuments conservés en raison de leur caractère historique ou esthétique,” n.d., AN 68 AJ 164. Despite the primary title of this report, it includes a section entitled “Monu­ ments réservés à la décision de M. le ministre secrétaire d’état de l’éducation nationale.” 7.  Reports of the Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals, AN 68 AJ 312, AN F21 7071, and AN F21 7075. 8.  Minutes from the meeting of the Seine Departmental Commission, 14 March 1942, AN F21 7075. 9.  Minutes from the meeting of the Seine Departmental Commission, 4 December 1942, AN F21 7075. 10.  “Ragoût de navets,” Au Pilori, 13 April 1944, 2. 11.  “Liste des statues qui doivent être renvoyées à la refonte,” Seine commission meeting of 15 November 1941, AN 68 AJ 164; “Monuments conservés en raison de leur caractère historique ou esthétique,” n.d., AN 68 AJ 164. 12.  “Statues dont l’enlèvement a été décidé, mais differé sur instructions non confirmées,” 1 March 1942, AN 68 AJ 312. 13.  Letter from Pétain’s chef du Cabinet civil to the Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals, 22 June 1943, AN 68 AJ 312. 14.  Circular from Abel Bonnard to prefects, 11 February 1944, AN F21 7071. 15.  For a list of statues preserved in Paris, see Poisson, “Le sort des statues,” 291–294. 16.  See Zeldin, “Science and Comfort,” in A History of French Passions, vol. 2, 574–612. 17.  “Monuments conservés en raison de leur caractère historique ou esthétique,” n.d., AN 68 AJ 164; circular from Abel Bonnard to prefects, 11 February 1944, AN F21 7071.

Notes to Chapter 8  335

18.  Poisson, “Le sort des statues,” 178. 19.  Letter from Horn-Maval to Jaujard, 1 June 1959, AN F21 7075. 20.  Sorrel, “D’une guerre à l’autre,” in Histoire de Chambéry, 210–214. 21.  Minutes from the meeting of the Savoie Departmental Commission, 14 September 1942, ADS T 137. 22.  All of the following information on the statues at Chambéry comes from ADS T 137, unless otherwise noted. 23.  Sorrel, “Vie urbaine, cultures et mentalités (1860–1947),” in Histoire de Chambéry, 228; Juttet et al., Regards sur Chambéry, 80–83, 172. 24.  See Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir, chapter 4 in particular. 25.  Sorrel, “Vie urbaine, cultures et mentalités,” in Histoire de Chambéry, 228. 26.  Ibid. 27.  Ibid.; article cited in Juttet et al., Regards sur Chambéry, 191. 28.  Letter from Mars Vallett to Louis Hautecoeur, 4 December 1941, AN F21 7074. 29.  Minutes from the meeting of the Savoie Departmental Commission, 14 September 1942, which includes the decisions of the commission’s first meeting of 5 December 1941, ADS T 137. 30.  Declaration by Charles Arminjon, Académie des sciences, belles lettres et arts de Savoie, December 1941, ADS T 137; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the president of the Academy of Savoie, 18 December 1941, ADS T 137. 31.  Letter from Henry Planche to the prefect of the Savoie, 11 January 1942, ADS T 137; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the minister of national education, 17 January 1942, ADS T 137. 32.  Letter from Léon Lamblin to the prefect of the Savoie, 22 January 1942, ADS T 137. 33.  Letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the secretary general of fine arts, 25 April 1942, AN F21 7074; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the ministers of national education, the interior, and industrial production, and the director of mechanical and electrical industries, 12 May 1942, AN F21 7074. 34.  Letter from Mars Vallett, president of the Friends of Old Chambéry, to the prefect of the Savoie, 2 June 1942, ADS T 137. 35.  Letter from Beauregard to the prefect of the Savoie, 19 May 1942, AN F21 7074. 36.  Letter from Philippe Besnard to Louis Hautecoeur, 14 April 1943, AN F21 7074; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the secretary general of fine arts, 12 August 1943, AN F21 7074. 37.  Sorrel, “A propos d’un cinquantenaire,” 11. 38.  Ibid. 39.  Ibid., 12. At age twenty, Real del Sarte had served as president of the Camelots du roi, whose members hawked Action Française on the streets of Paris. Later in the early 1930s he invited Laval to his home and introduced him to royalist friends. Laval then facilitated Real del Sarte’s trip to the Vatican in 1935 to seek a pardon for Action Française. See Weber, Action Française, 53, 248. 40.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to the prefect of the Savoie, 14 January 1943, ADS T 137; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to Bureau des travaux d’art, 11 February 1943,

336  Notes to Chapter 8

ADS T 137; “Enlèvement des statues. Motion votée par le Conseil municipal réuni en séance plénière,” 15 February 1943, ADS T 137; letter from Léon Lamblin, secrétariat général des beaux-arts to the prefect of the Savoie, 11 April 1944, ADS T 137; letter from the prefect of the Savoie to the secrétariat général des beaux-arts, 10 May 1944, ADS T 137. 41.  Letter from the mayor of Chambéry to the prefect of the Savoie, 16 February 1945, ADS T 137; “La Sasson . . . quelques dates,” dossier Falguière, Musée d’Orsay documentation center; on the restored Rousseau monument, see Juttet et al., Regards sur Chambéry, 189. 42.  This assassination was part of a larger series of violent attacks against German authorities beginning in July 1941. In October of that year alone, 162 violent acts were committed throughout France. In response to the rise in Resistance activities, largely attributed to communists and anarchists, the Darlan government produced a flurry of legislation to maintain public order. See Paxton, Vichy France, 223–228. 43.  Duméril cited in Gildea, Marianne in Chains, 230. 44.  Chantepie, Nantes et la Loire-Inférieure, 63–65; “Avis,” Le Phare de la Loire, 22 October 1941, 1. 45.  Laborie, L’opinion française sous Vichy, 254. 46.  Cited in Le Phare de la Loire, 23 October, 1941, 1. 47.  Decree establishing the composition of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 25 October 1941, ADLA 138W0081. 48.  Minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 10 November 1941, ADLA 138W0081; Musée d’Orsay and the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, CD-ROM, A nos grands hommes. 49.  Minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 10 November 1941, ADLA 138W0081. 50.  Minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 17 November 1941, ADLA 138W0081. 51.  Minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 27 November 1941, ADLA 138W0081. 52.  Letter from Léon Lamblin to the prefect of the Loire-Inférieure, 27 November 1941, AN F21 7073. 53.  Letter from the prefect of the Loire-Inférieure to the inspector general of industrial production, 9 February 1942, ADLA 138W0081. 54.  Cited in letter from the Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals to Major Sachert, 13 February 1943, AN 68 AJ 312. 55.  Letter from Sachert, for the Militärbefehlshaber, to the Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals, 18 February 1943, AN 68 AJ 312. 56.  “La statue de Villebois-Mareuil a repris sa place,” Le Phare de la Loire, 20 February 1942, 2. 57.  Letter from the Feldkommandant von der Forst to the prefect of the Loire-­Inférieure, 11 February 1942, ADLA 138W0081. 58.  Minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 21 September 1942, ADLA 138W0081. 59.  Statement attached to minutes of the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Depart-

Notes to Chapters 8 and 9  337

mental Commission, 21 September 1942, ADLA 138W0081; minutes from the meeting of the Loire-Inférieure Departmental Commission, 21 September 1942, ADLA 138W0081. 60.  Letter from the secrétariat général des beaux-arts to the prefect of the LoireInférieure, 15 January 1943, AN F21 7073. 61.  Letter from the prefect of the Loire-Inférieure to the secrétariat général des beauxarts, 10 February 1943, AN F21 7073. 62.  Letter from the Ministry of Education to prefect of the Loire-Inférieure, n.d., AN F21 7073. 63.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to Henri Orion, mayor of Nantes, 27 March 1944, AN F21 7073. 64.  Letter from Lamblin to Bonnard, 18 March 1944, AN F21 7073. 65.  Agulhon has linked the decline in public statuary since 1945 to three phenomena: an artistic shift away from figurative sculpture, a crisis of liberal optimism, and the reduction of open public space in the wake of urbanization. See “La statuomanie et l’histoire,” 165. 66.  According to Sonia Mazey and Vincent Wright, prefects’ actions were highly individualized, despite the goal of the Vichy regime to create a unified prefectural corps. See their article “Les préfets,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Le régime de Vichy et les français, 267–286. 67.  Alon Confino describes the “multiplicity” of memory and social experiences that simultaneously shape local, regional, and national identity. See “Collective Memory and Cultural History,” 1386–1403. 68.  On notions of dominant memory, see Sherman, Construction of Memory in Interwar France, 7. 69.  On official constructions of memory in postwar France, see Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome; and the epilogue in Jackson, The Dark Years, 601–632.

Chapter 9 Chapter epigraph source for Utikal is AN 3W 122; for Huyghe, AMN R32 3(3). 1.  “Rapport de Mlle Rose Valland de 1941 à 1944,” AMN R32 1; Valland, Le front de l’art, 59–70; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 127–128. 2.  The commission published several volumes on the various areas of spoliation. All of these reports are public documents that may be consulted online at www.ladocu mentationfrancaise.fr. For a general overview of the commission’s findings, see Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général. 3.  Wieviorka, “Des spoliations aux restitutions,” in Bruttmann, Persecutions et spoliations des Juifs, 15–18. 4.  Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général, 79. 5.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 17. 6.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 90. 7.  Ibid., 3–16, 262–307. 8.  On the plunder of patrimony outside France, see Petropoulos, Art as Politics, part 1; and Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, particularly chapters 2, 3, 4, and 7.

338  Notes to Chapter 9

9.  Francis Rey, “Violations du droit international,” 8–9; Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder, 71–100. 10.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 164–165; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 142–143, 181. 11.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 25; on the Nazi “cleansing” of German museums, see also ibid., 22–25; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 51–58. 12.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 23. 13.  Cited in Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 125. 14.  Ibid. 15.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 21; Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain, 55. 16.  Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 24–30. 17.  Wieviorka, “Des spoliations aux restitutions,” in Bruttmann, Persécutions et spoliations des Juifs, 16–18. 18.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 131. 19.  Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 214. 20.  “Pillage du Quai d’Orsay et des dépôts d’archives et d’objets d’art par les Allemands; Note préliminaire,” AN 3W 357. Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 125; on confiscations from the French foreign office and the Musée de l’armée, see Rey, “Violations du droit international,” 43. 21.  Telegram from German Foreign Affairs Special Commando to the German Foreign Office in Berlin, 13 January 1941, AN 3W 357. 22.  From Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, “Ordonnance du 15 juillet concernant les collections particulières,” AMN R20 6 1. 23.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 93; Valland, Le front de l’art, 115. 24.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 115–116. 25.  Summary of relations with the Kunstschutz from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Haute­ coeur, “Collection Wildenstein,” 21 August 1940, AMN R20 6 1; on the Sourches raid, see letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Fernand de Brinon, 23 June 1941, AN 3W 121; secret telegram from Gerum to Major Heidschuh, German High Command of the Armed Forces, and to the Army Secret Police, 30 August 1940, AN 3W 357. 26.  Secret telegram from Gerum to Major Heidschuh, German High Command of the Armed Forces, and to the Army Secret Police, 30 August 1940, AN 3W 357. 27.  On the pillage of Georges Mandel’s home, see ibid.; on the home of Maurice de Rothschild, see Rapport de la Geheime Feldpolizei, Gruppe 627, 7 September 1940, AN 3W 357; on the Künsberg group pillages, see Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 129. 28.  “Exposé Wolff-Metternich,” in Cassou, Le pillage par les Allemands, 166–168. 29.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 130. 30.  Gerhard Utikal, ERR, 3 November 1941, AN 3W 122. 31.  Letter from Alfred Rosenberg to Franz Xaver Schwarz, Nazi Party treasurer, 18 September 1940, CDJC CXLIII-275. 32.  Utikal in Cassou, Le pillage par les Allemands, 94–98. 33.  Alfred Rosenberg to Hans-Heinrich Lammers, cover letter for report, “Kampf um Europa: Grundsätze einer europäishen Neuordnung,” 1 August 1944, CDJC CXLIII-358.

Notes to Chapter 9  339

34.  Alfred Rosenberg report, “Kampf um Europa: Grundsätze einer europäischen Neuordnung,” submitted to Lammers, 1 August 1944, CDJC CXLIII-358. 35.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 19; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 133. 36.  Letter from Göring to Rosenberg, 21 November 1940, CDJC XIII-28a. 37.  Letters from L. Wassermann, 3 and 4 May 1941, CDJC XXI-27–28. She addressed them to “Monsieur le ministre,” but it appears she sent them to the Commissariat général aux questions juives. Response from the CGQ J to Wassermann, 10 May 1941, CDJC XXI-29. Letter from Xavier Vallat to Fernand de Brinon, 23 June 1941, document 48, in Cassou, Le pillage par les Allemands, 210–211. 38.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 23; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 131. 39.  See Valland, Le front de l’art, 87; letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Admiral Darlan, 29 May 1941, AN 3W 121. 40.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 93. 41.  For statistics on private collections seized from depots, see Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 23. 42.  Simon, Battle of the Louvre, 72–73. On the embassy’s holdings, see Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 18. 43.  Letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Admiral Darlan, 29 May 1941, AN 3W 121. 44.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 51. 45.  Jacques Jaujard, “Activités dans la Résistance de Mademoiselle Rose Valland conservateur des musées nationaux,” n.d., AMN R32 1; Bouchoux, Rose Valland, 9–20; online biography also by Bouchoux, “Rose Valland, sur ‘le front de l’art,’” available at http:// musea.univ-angers.fr. 46.  Ibid. 47.  Notes from Rose Valland to Jacques Jaujard, 8 February 1944, AMN R32 1; on Valland’s role in the recovery effort, see Valland, Le front de l’art, 221–230. 48.  Valland’s account of the events is in Le front de l’art, 184–186. The film’s fictionalized depiction is far more dramatic, in which French Resistance members in several towns alter station names to make the Germans think that they have crossed the German border, when they have merely traveled in circles. The fictionalized von Behr character in The Train is played by Paul Scofield. See Frankenheimer, The Train, DVD. 49.  Notes from Rose Valland to Jacques Jaujard, 23 July 1943, AMN R32 1. See also Valland, Le front de l’art, 178–182, in which the “holocaust” reference appears. Valland contradicts herself in these two sources regarding the date of the fire. In her memoir, she writes that the fire occurred on 27 May 1943 but later indicates that the meeting with Scholz and Borchers took place in July 1943. Her handwritten note, however, clearly indicates that the fire was set on 23 July 1943, which appears to be the correct date. 50.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 37. 51.  Ibid., 21–24. 52.  Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 3; Jackson, The Dark Years, 355. 53.  Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 3–21; Paxton, Vichy France, 168–179.

340  Notes to Chapter 9

54.  As Marrus and Paxton point out, the SCAP initially operated only in the occupied zone in conjunction with German laws, and the Vichy regime later extended it to the unoccupied zone. See Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 8. 55.  Ibid., 101–103; Michèle Cone examines the impact of Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies on Jewish artists, dealers, and gallery owners in Artists under Vichy, 116–130. 56.  Moulin, The French Art Market, 17–18. 57.  “Note verbale,” Lucien Hubert to the MBF, 18 December 1940, CDJC, XXI-19. 58.  Statement from the CGQ J, “Fonds de solidarité juive,” n.d., AN AJ38 1150; Ministry of Finance meeting minutes, 13 July 1941, AN AJ38 1150. 59.  Le Phare de la Loire, 1 December 1941, 2; letter from Domaines to head of Pétain’s civil affairs office, 24 September 1942, AMN R20 4 2. 60.  Letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Admiral Darlan, 29 May 1941, AN 3W 121; letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Fernand de Brinon, 23 June 1941, AN 3W 121; letter from Admiral Darlan to Fernand de Brinon, 10 June 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 4. 61.  Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 103. 62.  Report from Xavier Vallat to Dr. Werner Best, MBF, 5 August 1941, AMN R32 2. 63.  Ibid. 64.  A letter from the Domaines agency to Jaujard dated 5 August 1941 indicates the following: “Il serait entendu que les biens que votre administration désirerait conserver à titre définitif seraient cédés à l’état par contrat soumis à l’homologation du président du tribunal civil, conformément aux articles 6 et 10 de l’arrêté interministériel du 23 novembre 1940” (my emphasis). AMN R20 4 2. 65.  Prince Poniatowski to Louis Hautecoeur (his emphasis), 13 January 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 4. 66.  Louis Hautecoeur to Prince Poniatowski, 14 March 1941, AN F21 8090, dossier 4. 67.  “Extrait du procès verbal du Comité supérieur de séquestres et liquidations,” 8 August 1941, AN F21 7095; Valland, Le front de l’art, 111–113. 68.  Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 30 January 1941, AMN R32 2. 69.  The list of sequestered collections provided by Le Masne and Schulmann does not include those of Jacques-Ernest May or the Schloss or Bonn families, perhaps in part because state funds were not used to purchase works from these collections. However, Direction des musée documents include all three in lists of sequestered collections. See Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 28–29; Georges Salles to Albert Henraux, president of the Art Recovery Commission, 16 February 1945, AMN R32 3. 70.  For the original acquisitions credits, see “Budget de 1941: Développement par cha­ pitres des modifications apportées au budget de l’exercise 1941,” Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1941, AN F21 4723; Genet-Delacroix, “Le budget des beaux-arts sous l’Occupation,” in La direction du budget, 436. For the new acquisitions credit, see letter from Jacques Jaujard to the Direction générale d’enregistrement, des domaines, et du timbre, 21 January 1942, AMN R20 4 2. 71.  Letter from the budget office, Ministry of Finance to the Direction générale d’enregistrement, des domaines, et du timbre, 3 March 1942, AMN R20 4 2.

Notes to Chapter 9  341

72.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 112–113; Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 134–136; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 136; Huyghe, Une vie pour l’art, 121; Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 28. 73.  Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 43–46. 74.  Ibid.; Lottman, The French Rothschilds, 178–220. 75.  Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 43–46; Lottman, The French Rothschilds, 178–220. 76.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 114; Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 134–136. Mazauric asserts that the Domaines agency seized pieces from Maurice’s collection in September 1941, but fine arts correspondence indicates that this had occurred at least by early July. See letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 4 July 1941, AN F21 4723. 77.  Letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 4 July 1941, AN F21 4723. 78.  Ibid. 79.  In 1792, Minister of the Interior Jean Roland wrote that “this national monument must show the riches of the nation. . . . France must extend its glory through the ages and to all people.” See Oliver, From Royal to National, 22. 80.  Letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 4 July 1941, AN F21 4723. 81.  Letter from René Huyghe to Louis Hautecoeur, 2 September 1941, AMN R32 6. 82.  Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 136–137. 83.  Letter from Jacques Guérin to Jacques Jaujard, 31 July 1944, AMN R32 6. 84.  Archival and secondary sources give contradictory details of this affair, such as dates, key figures, and German-versus-French responsibility. I have compared the various accounts, aiming to provide the most accurate description possible. 85.  Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 3. 86.  Report from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 19 June 1943, transcribed in letter from Jaujard to Abel Bonnard, 10 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 87.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 96. 88.  Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 96; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 172; Hamon-­ Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 3; Valland, Le front de l’art, 104–105. 89.  Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France (Mattéoli Commission), Rapport général, 79. 90.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; Valland, Le front de l’art, 105; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 172. (Archival sources most often spell Henry’s name with a y; some secondary sources use the more common French spelling “Henri.”) 91.  Darquier claims to have named Lefranc provisional administrator of the Schloss collection, though Hamon-Jugnet argues that the French director of Aryanization refused the nomination, prompting German authorities to designate Lefranc. See Darquier de Pellepoix to Laval, 21 April 1943, CDJC XCVI-88; Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 4. 92.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; “Déclaration de Lohse au sujet de l’affaire Schloss,” 15 December 1945, AMN R32 3(3). 93.  Darquier de Pellepoix to Laval, 21 April 1943, CDJC XCVI-88; Judicial Police

342  Notes to Chapter 9

Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 4–5; Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 470–479. 94.  See Valland, Le front de l’art, 104–110. 95.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; “Déclaration de Lohse au sujet de l’affaire Schloss,” 15 December 1945, AMN R32 3(3); Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 4–5. Rayssac speculates that ­Petit may have been working with Hess all along, feigning his protest at the chateau. See L’exode des musées, 481–483. 96.  Rudolf Schleier, German embassy in Paris, to Martin Bormann, 26 April 1943, CDJC CXXVa, 47. 97.  Déclaration de Lohse au sujet de l’affaire Schloss, 15 December 1945, AMN R32 3(3). 98.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 192. 99.  Rudolf Schleier’s report to Martin Bormann, 26 April 1943, shows the involvement of the German embassy, keeping Hitler’s key adviser in the Party Chancellery informed. CDJC CXXVa, 47. 100.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88. 101.  René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 29 May 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 102.  Report by René Huyghe submitted to Jacques Jaujard, 19 June 1943, AMN R32 3(3) (my emphasis). See also letter from Jacques Jaujard to Abel Bonnard, 10 August 1943, which includes Huyghe’s report, AMN R32 3(3). 103.  Report by René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 19 June 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 104.  Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 9 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 105.  Jacques Jaujard to Abel Bonnard, 10 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 106.  Judicial Police Commissioner Decarreaux to divisional commissioner, 31 July 1945, CDJC XCVI-88; Valland, Le front de l’art, 103–107; Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, 4–5; Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 521. 107.  “Déclaration de Lohse au sujet de l’affaire Schloss,” 15 December 1945, AMN R32 3(3). 108.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 108–109. 109.  In her text intended to disseminate information about works that still have not been returned to the Schloss family, Marie Hamon-Jugnet argues that the goal of French intervention was to “put the works in safekeeping until the eventual restitution.” See Collection Schloss, 5. 110.  Letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 18 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 111.  Ibid. 112.  Decree signed by Abel Bonnard, 13 September 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 113.  Jean-François Lefranc to Abel Bonnard, 24 August 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 114.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 108. 115.  Abel Bonnard to Ministry of Finance budget office, 29 March 1944, AMN R32 3(3). 116.  Gabriel Cognacq to Pierre Cathala, 26 November 1943, AMN R32 3(3). 117.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to Ministry of Finance budget office, 29 March 1944; letter from Pierre Cathala to Jacques Jaujard, 26 April 1944, both in AMN R32 3(3).

Notes to Chapter 9  343

118.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 108. 119.  Hamon-Jugnet offers the following breakdown: 49 paintings went to the French Direction des musées, Lefranc obtained 22, leaving 262 pieces for Linz, which were sent to the Jeu de Paume. However, according to shipment records, only 230 pieces were sent to Munich in November 1943, creating a difference of 32 paintings. She cites Valland’s assertion that Lohse had obtained 3 paintings, but the fate of the others is unclear. See Collection Schloss, 6–9. 120.  On the German purchase, see secret telegram from Gerlach to von Hummel, 20  August 1943, AN 3W 354. On Lefranc’s proposal to Lohse, see Lohse, “Note d’archives,” n.d., CDJC XCVI-88. According to Hamon-Jugnet, Lefranc’s twenty-two paintings initially were set aside for Göring, who declined the offer because of concerns that such a deal might anger Hitler. See Collection Schloss, 5–7. 121.  Paris court of appeals, sentencing of Jean-François Lefranc, 26 April 1947, AMN Schloss papers. 122.  Note from Huyghe to Lefranc, 2 May 1944, R32 3(3). 123.  Letter from the Ministry of National Education to Jean-François Lefranc, 31 January 1944, F17 13368. 124.  Darquier’s comment appeared in a controversial 1978 interview with L’Express from his refuge in Spain. French courts in 1947 had sentenced him to death in absentia. See Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome, 139–144. The head of French police in the occupied zone, René Bousquet, held more power than Darquier in the deportations. Bousquet organized and implemented the rounding up of Jews, particularly the notorious Vel d’Hiv roundup in July 1942. Still, Darquier oversaw the implementation of Vichy’s anti-Semitic legislation that made the roundups possible and aggressively pursued the Aryanization of Jewish assets. See Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution Finale.” 125.  The Direction des musées implemented similar measures to acquire an “abandoned” collection of archeological artifacts owned by an American citizen. The owner, Mr. Kelley, worked at the Musée de l’homme before the war and returned to the United States when the conflict began, leaving his collection of thirty-five thousand prehistoric artifacts at the museum. Under the Vichy regime, the fine arts administration succeeded in placing the collection on the national register of protected works of art. After the war, the French government sought a voluntary agreement from Mr. Kelley to keep the collection on the national register. (There is no discussion in this correspondence of Mr. Kelley’s ethnic background and thus no indication that he was Jewish.) See MP 80 6 10, folder six. 126.  See Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces ta­ bleaux? 107–113. 127.  On the profiteering of provisional administrators, see Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 156–157. 128.  Moulin, The French Art Market, 20. 129.  Bertrand Dorléac, “Le marché de l’art à Paris sous l’Occupation,” in Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Pillages et restitutions, 89–96. The high-priced ­Cézanne landscape was La vallée de l’Arc et la montagne Sainte-Victoire. See “Vente de la

344  Notes to Chapters 9 and 10

collection Georges Viau, déc. 1942,” AN AJ40 574. On wartime price changes, see Moulin, The French Art Market, 21. 130.  Cone, Artists under Vichy, 13–15; Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 145–151; Bertrand Dorléac, “Le marché de l’art,” 90–91; Moulin, The French Art Market, 22. 131.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 157; Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 143, 182; Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 126–128. 132.  Letter from Jean-François Lefranc to CGQ J, 10 January 1944, AN F17 13368. 133.  “Loi du 23 juin 1941 relative à l’exportation des oeuvres d’art,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 19 July 1941, 3030; letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Jérôme Carcopino, 20 March 1941, CAC 860306; letter from J. Leroi, director of customs, to Division of Historic Landmarks, 25 September 1941, CAC 860306. 134.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Jérôme Carcopino, 20 March 1941, CAC 860306. 135.  Ibid.; Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 122–128. 136.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Jérôme Carcopino, 20 March 1941, CAC 860306; “Loi du 23 juin 1941 relative à l’exportation des oeuvres d’art,” Journal Officiel de l’Etat Français, 19 July 1941, 3030. 137.  Letter from Jérôme Carcopino to Dr. Schmid, 15 July 1941, CAC 860306. 138.  Letter from J. Leroi, director of customs, to Division of Historic Landmarks, 25 September 1941, CAC 860306; letter from René Georgin, director of Abel Bonnard’s office in Vichy, to Ministry of Finance, office of foreign commerce, 16 March 1943, AN F21 7117. 139.  While this complicated rerouting of works of art indeed took place, Lefranc also claimed that Jews controlled the network in each country. See letter from Jean-François Lefranc to CGQ J, 10 January 1944, AN F17 13368. On the repeated transfer of works of art, see also Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 164–166. 140.  Janneau cited in report from Poli to Hautecoeur, 18 November 1943, AN F21 7117. 141.  For details on this affair, see ibid. 142.  Letters from Janneau to fine arts office, 3 December 1944, 10 March 1944, AN F21 7117. 143.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Abel Bonnard, 30 November 1942, AN F21 7117; letter from office of domestic commerce to fine arts office, 4 January 1943, AN F21 7117; letter from René Georgin, director of Abel Bonnard’s office in Vichy, to Ministry of Finance office of foreign commerce, 25 January 1943, AN F21 7117. 144.  Letter from office of domestic commerce to fine arts office, 2 November 1942, AN F21 7117; “Exportations à destination des territoires du Grand Reich allemand de novembre 1942 au 10 février 1943,” n.d., AN F21 7117. 145.  Châtelain, Droit et administration des musées, 611–617.

Chapter 10 Source for both chapter epigraphs is AN 3W 78. 1.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 5–16, 275. 2.  Ibid., 325n41.

Notes to Chapter 10  345

3.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 145; Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 370–371. 4.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 300. 5.  Ibid., 300–301; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 145; Valland, Le front de l’art, 116–117. Nicholas and Valland refer to Hermine as “the Marquise,” though her proper title was “Viscountess.” 6.  Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder, 113–114; Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 29. 7.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 123. 8.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 31 August 1942, AN 3W 78; ­R ayssac, L’exode des musées, 121. 9.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 7 August 1941, AN 3W 78. 10.  “Enlèvement du polyptyque de ‘l’Agneau mystique’ à Pau par les Allemands,” n.d., AN 3W 78. 11.  Ibid.; telegram from the office of national education in Vichy to Molle, 2 August 1942, AN 3W 78; deposition of M. Molle during trial of Abel Bonnard, 1945, AN 3W 78; letter from Joseph Billiet to Jacques Jaujard, 28 August 1942, AN 3W 78. 12.  Report from Joseph Billiet to Jacques Jaujard, 28 August 1942, AN 3W 78; deposition by Georges Hilaire during the trial of Abel Bonnard, 11 March 1959, AN 3W 82. The French translation of Laval’s statement: “Ce n’est pas le moment de jouer les matamores.” 13.  Jäckel, France dans l’Europe de Hitler, 199. 14.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 144. 15.  Minutes from the curators committee meeting, 20 November 1942, AN 3W 78. 16.  Minutes from the curators committee meeting, 26 November 1942, AN 3W 78. 17.  Ibid. 18.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to Louis Hautecoeur, 8 December 1942, AN 3W 78. 19.  Statement by Bonnard cited in Valland, Le front de l’art, 128; deposition of Jacques Jaujard during trial of Abel Bonnard, 4 May 1959, 3W 82. 20.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 273. On the Ara Pacis, see letter from Jérôme Carco­ pino to Georges Huisman, 19 May 1939, AN 3W 122; “Protocole d’échange,” 19 May 1939, AN 3W 122. 21.  “Protocole d’échange,” 19 May 1939, AN 3W 122. 22.  Office internationale des musées, “Preliminary observations,” in Final Act of the International Conference on Excavations, 30 September 1937 (OIM translation). 23.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Abel Bonnard, 20 December 1943, AN F17 13368. 24.  Ibid. 25.  Georges Preuilly, “Les échanges artistiques franco-espagnols,” 2 August 1941, ­Comoedia, 1. 26.  Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, 128; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 206. 27.  Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 454–455. 28.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 130–131; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 296. 29.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 295–296; Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 455–456. 30.  Telegram from Abetz to Ribbentrop, 1 August 1941, reproduced in Valland, Le front de l’art, 250–251; see also Valland, Le front de l’art, 136.

346  Notes to Chapter 10

31.  Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 144; Valland, Le front de l’art, 137–138. 32.  “Note,” by Louis Hautecoeur (no recipient specified), 7 January 1943, AN 3W 78; Valland, Le front de l’art, 141. 33.  “Note,” by Louis Hautecoeur (no recipient specified), 7 January 1943, AN 3W 78. 34.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 142. 35.  Tieschowitz report, undated but most likely written around the same time as cover memo by Gerlach attached to it, dated 8 July 1943, AN AJ40 573. 36.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to Pierre Laval, 1 July 1943, AN 3W 78. Valland’s memoirs confirm Bonnard’s opposition to an exchange involving the antependium. See Valland, Le front de l’art, 141–144. 37.  Letter from Abel Bonnard to Pierre Laval, 1 July 1943, AN 3W 78. 38.  Report by Abel Bonnard, 29 December 1943, AN 3W 78; minutes from the curators committee meeting, 30 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 39.  Report by Bonnard, 29 December 1943, AN 3W 78; Valland, Le front de l’art, 143–144. 40.  Report by Abel Bonnard, 29 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 41.  According to Valland, Bonnard’s offer to present the antependium as a gift to Göring could have been a way to “deflect his [Göring’s] demand.” See Valland, Le front de l’art, 144. Minutes from the curators committee meeting, 30 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 42.  “Entrevue du ministre avec le consul général Gerlach et le docteur Bunyes [sic],” 26 January 1944, AN 3W 78; letter from Jacques Jaujard to Louis Hautecoeur, 25 January 1944, AN 3W 78. 43.  “Entrevue du ministre avec le consul général Gerlach et le docteur Bunyes [sic],” 26 January 1944, AN 3W 78; Letter from Bunjes to Bonnard, 26 January 1944, AN 3W 78; “Entretien avec le docteur Bunjes,” 27 January 1944, AN 3W 78. 44.  “Note pour M. le ministre, conversation avec le Dr. B.,” 9 February, AN 3W 78. 45.  “Visite de Monsieur Hautecoeur,” 25 January 1944, AN 3W 78; “Note dictée par M. le président Richard, 17 February 1944,” AN 3W 78; letter from Abel Bonnard to Doctor Bunjes, 25 March 1944, AN 3W 78. 46.  Report by Abel Bonnard, 29 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 47.  Deposition of Jacques Jaujard in trial of Abel Bonnard, 27 March 1945, 6 April 1945, AN 3W 78. 48.  Order from Abel Bonnard to Jacques Jaujard, 30 December 1943, AN 3W 78; minutes from the curators committee meeting, 30 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 49.  “Avis du Conservateur adjoint de la peinture et du vice president du Conseil technique des musées nationaux,” n.d., AN F17 13368; minutes from the curators committee meeting, 3 January 1944, AN 3W 78. 50.  Minutes from the curators committee meeting, 30 December 1943, AN 3W 78. 51.  Minutes from the curators committee meeting, 3 January 1944, AN 3W 78. 52.  Ibid. 53.  Ibid. 54.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 147–148.

Notes to Chapters 10 and 11  347

55.  See “Note pour M. le ministre, conversation avec le Dr. B.,” 9 February 1944, AN 3W 78. 56.  Göring quoted by Bunjes in “Entretien avec le docteur Bunjes,” 27 janvier 1944, AN 3W 78; on the recovery of the pieces, see Valland, Le front de l’art, 149–150. 57.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 14; Valland, Le front de l’art, 150–151. 58.  Rayssac, L’exode des musées, 377–378. 59.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 151. 60.  “Protocol,” 5 July 1944, AN AJ40 573. 61.  Deposition by Georges Hilaire, 11 March 1959, AN 3W 82. Bazin recalls that Wolff Metternich signed the order, but it was actually signed by his successor, Tieschowitz. See Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 107. 62.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 107–108. 63.  Valland, Le front de l’art, 152. 64.  See, for example, Valland, Le front de l’art, 88; Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 77. 65.  Bertrand Dorléac, for example, argues simply that Bonnard was “impressed by [Göring’s] arguments.” See L’art de la défaite, 41. 66.  Huyghe, Une vie pour l’art, 126–149. 67.  Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 325n41.

Chapter 11 Source for both chapter epigraphs is AMN R32 3(3). 1.  See my review of Vichy historiography in the Introduction. 2.  De Gaulle, Discours et messages, 440. 3.  Jackson, The Dark Years, 577–578. 4.  Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 288–291. 5.  See Matthew Affron, “Waldemar George: A Parisian Art Critic on Modernism and Fascism,” in Affron and Antliff, Fascist Visions, 171–195. 6.  See Waldemar George, “Un homme a sauvé les trésors de nos musées,” Résistance (15 September 1944): 1–2, in AMN 030 460, dossier Jacques Jaujard. 7.  See André Chamson, “Jacques Jaujard,” Musées et Collections Publiques 3 (1967): 152–153, in AMN 030 460, dossier Jacques Jaujard. 8.  See Mazauric, Le Louvre en voyage, which is dedicated to Jaujard; and from 1997, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, “Un très grand directeur: Jacques Jaujard,” in Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Pillages et restitutions, 23–29. 9.  Vildé was arrested on 26 March 1941 and executed at Mont-Valérien along with six other resisters on 23 February 1942. See Julien Blanc, “Le réseau du Musée de l’homme,” Esprit 261 (February 2000): 89–103; Blumenson, The Vildé Affair; Germaine Tillion, “Première résistance en zone occupée: Du côté du réseau ‘Musée de l’Homme-HauetVildé,’” originally published in the Revue d’Histoire de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale 30 (April 1958), reprinted in Esprit 261 (February 2000): 106–124. 10.  Aubrun, “L’action de Jacques Jaujard,” 120.

348  Notes to Chapter 11

11.  Ibid., 104–105. 12.  See Bertrand Dorléac’s interview of Cassou, 3 May 1983, in “Art, culture et société,” vol. 2, 425–430. 13.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 107–108, 123. 14.  Huyghe, Une vie pour l’art, 148–149. 15.  According to Bazin, Jaujard refused to recommend Huyghe for the Resistance Medal, as the latter had combined duties as depot director and Resistance member. See Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 121. 16.  See Carcopino’s trial dossier in AN 3W 121, 80–83; AN 3W 122, Le pilori, 9 April 1942; statement by the general prosecutor, 10 July 1947, AN 3W 122. On anti-Semitic legislation, Carcopino wrote the following: “The truth is that overall, the government to which I belonged sought to escape the brutal application of laws that the Nazis had imposed on the Marshal and, in my case, I fought as much as I could to deflect the blows.” Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 358. 17.  Corcy-Debray, “Le ministère Carcopino,” 301–302, 358. 18.  Notice of pension payment, 5 January 1950, BIF MS 6890; letter from Yvon Delbos to Louis Hautecoeur, 16 March 1950, BIF MS 6890. 19.  Letter from Louis Hautecoeur to Yvon Delbos, 11 March 1950, BIF MS 6890; Ballon, “History of Louis Hautecoeur,” in Pollock, Education of the Architect, 221. 20.  Hautecoeur, Les beaux-arts en France, 303. 21.  “Arrêt de condamnation,” trial of Abel Bonnard, 4 July 1945, AN 3W 82; Namer, “La politique artistique de Vichy,” 82. 22.  “Acte d’accusation,” trial of Abel Bonnard, n.d., AN 3W 77. 23.  Ibid. 24.  Deposition of Jacques Jaujard during the second trial of Abel Bonnard, 4 May 1959, AN 3W 82; deposition by Georges Hilaire during the second trial of Abel Bonnard, 11 March 1959, AN 3W 82. 25.  Deposition of Jacques Jaujard during the second trial of Abel Bonnard, 4 May 1959, AN 3W 82; deposition of Louis Hautecoeur during the second trial of Abel Bonnard, 8 June 1959, AN 3W 82. 26.  See “Acte d’accusation,” n.d., AN 3W 77. (Other documents in the series suggest a date around 6 June 1945.) 27.  See Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces tableaux? 34–35. 28.  Cited in Châtelain, Droit et administration des musées, 20. 29.  Ibid., 19–20; “Ordonnance n° 45-1546 du 13 juillet 1945 portant organisation provisoire des musées des beaux-arts,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 14 July 1945, 4342–4344. 30.  The 1945 validation also nullified the law of 21 January 1942, which had divided the archeological administration into districts. The exposé des motifs stated that this measure would be modified in a subsequent decree. See “Ordonnance n° 45-2092 du 13 septembre 1945 portant validation de l’acte dit loi du 27 septembre 1941 . . . ,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 14 September 1945, 5750.

Notes to Chapter 11  349

31.  On the 1992 export law, see Châtelain, Droit et administration des musées, 611–617; on protection of areas adjacent to historic monuments, see Poulain, “Un exemple de la continuité de la politique du patrimoine sous le régime de Vichy: La loi sur les abords des monuments historiques,” in Poirrier and Vadelorge, Pour une histoire des politiques du pa­trimoine, 335–349; on regulations concerning commemorative monuments, see “Décret du 16 janvier 1947 portant réglementation pour l’érection de monuments commémoratifs,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 18 January 1947, 702. 32.  Louis Hautecoeur wrote in his memoirs that he commissioned artists “to substitute mediocre works with ones that, we hope, will be better.” See Les beaux-arts en France, 315–316. 33.  “Décret du 16 janvier 1947 portant réglementation pour l’érection de monuments commémoratifs,” article seven, Journal Officiel de la République Française, 18 January 1947, 702. 34.  Memorandum from the interior ministry, Office of Political Affairs to prefects, 22  September 1951, AN F21 7079; memorandum from Jacques Jaujard to the interior ministry, Office of Political Affairs, 1 October 1951, AN F21 7079. 35.  For general histories of patrimonial policy, see Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident; Audrerie, La notion et la protection du patrimoine, 15–27; Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 13–69. 36.  Letter from Robert Rey to regional commissioners, 20 December 1944, AN F21 7071; letter from Robert Rey to Mlle Lenoir, 14 March 1945, AN F21 7075; letter from M. Montreux to prefect of the Basses Pyrénées, n.d., AN F12 7075. 37.  Maurice Agulhon, “La statuomanie et l’histoire,” 163–175. 38.  Letter from Jacques Jaujard to N. Nepveu-Degas, secrétaire général of the ­Comédie-Française, 8 November 1948, AN F21 7075; letter from Horn-Maval, secrétaire du Comité d’amis François Coppée, to Jacques Jaujard, 1 June 1959, AN F21 7075; Poisson, “Le sort des statues,” 266–267. 39.  Influential studies included Boime, The Academy and French Painting; and Mainardi, “Double Exhibition in Nineteenth-Century France,” 23–28; as well as Mainardi’s The End of the Salon. 40.  Malraux cited in Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Patrimoine, 63. 41.  See Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, particularly the introduction, “Histoire, mémoire, patrimoine,” 1–24. 42.  “La Sasson . . . quelques dates,” n.d., Musée d’Orsay documentation center, Falguière dossier. As for Chambéry’s two other dismantled statues, the city inaugurated a reconstructed Rousseau in 1955 and reinstalled the monument to the Maistre brothers, which had been found intact at the Etablissements Dumont-Girard in Lyon. 43.  These terms appear in a letter from René Huyghe to Jacques Jaujard, 4 July 1941, AN F21 4723. 44.  Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 156–157; on the sequestered collections, see Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 29. 45.  Note from Max Gonfreville to René Huyghe, 22 January 1945, AMN R32 3(3); note from René Huyghe to Georges Salles, 24 January 1945, AMN R32 3(3).

350  Notes to Chapter 11

46.  Letter from Georges Salles to Mme Prosper-Emile Weil, 16 November 1944, AMN R32 3(3). 47.  Note from Jacques Jaujard to Georges Salles, 27 November 1944, AMN R32 3(3); note from Max Gonfreville to René Huyghe, 22 January 1945, AMN R32 3(3). 48.  Note from René Huyghe to Georges Salles, 24 January 1945, AMN R32 3(3); letter from Georges Salles to president of the CRA, 16 February 1945, AMN R32 3(3); declaration from Schloss heirs, 25 June 1946, AMN R32 3(3); receipt of paintings signed by Raymond and Henry Schloss, 26 July 1946, AMN R32 3(3). 49.  Bazin, Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 97. 50.  Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss. Stated goals for the catalog appear on p. 10; statistics on recovered and nonrecovered pieces, pp. 8–9. An online version contains updated information on restitutions: www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/archives/dossiers/schloss­/ ­index.html. On sales to the Louvre, see the museum Atlas database at www.louvre.fr. The database contradicts Feliciano’s assertion that the Schloss family donated the piece to the museum. On the fate of this and other Schloss collection pieces, see Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 175–176. 51.  For Feliciano’s account, see The Lost Museum, 178–179; Marylynne Pitz, “Scandal at the Getty Has Far-Reaching Implications for Museums Acquiring New Works,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 April 2006, www.post-gazette.com; on the restitution, see online version of Hamon-Jugnet, Collection Schloss, https://pastel.diplomatie.gouv.fr/editorial/archives/­ dossiers/schloss/sommaire.html. 52.  Raphael Rubinstein, “Nazi Loot Finder Sues, Hals Buyer Found Guilty,” Art in America 89, no. 9 (September 2001): 35. 53.  Lynn Nicholas tells the story of the “Monuments Men” in The Rape of Europa, also told in a 2006 documentary of the same name, directed by Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen and produced by Actual Films. Robert Edsel honors the men in Rescuing Da Vinci, a collection of photographs documenting the recovery effort with a narrative written by Edsel. Rose Valland recounts the recovery of pillaged collections in the last two chapters of Le front de l’art. 54.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 37. 55.  The OBIP originally was created after the First World War to oversee German reparation payments. It held a similar mission after the Second World War, managing transfers of a wide range of goods from Germany, not only despoiled assets. See ibid., 33–34. 56.  Ibid., 33–38; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 413–414. 57.  Baron Elie de Rothschild, “Les collections parisiennes des Rothschild,” in Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Pillages et restitutions, 60–61. 58.  See “Jo et les souvenirs en héritage,” Libération, 18 April 2000. 59.  Rose Valland to Jacques Jaujard, 16 September 1941, AMN R32 2(4). 60.  Minutes from commission meeting of 21 December 1949, cited in Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 39–40. 61.  See Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces tableaux? 48. The authors estimate that it is impossible to determine the history of about onequarter, or roughly five hundred, of the objects.

Notes to Chapter 11  351

62.  See minutes from the meetings of the Commission de choix, sessions of 27 October, 17 November, 29 December 1949 and 29 May 1951, AMN R20 3(3); Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 40–42, 55–56, 97–100. 63.  Decree 49-1344, 30 September 1949, Journal Officiel de la République Française, 2 October 1949, 9815. 64.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 42–43. 65.  These archives came from the CRA, OBIP, and the restitution office of Baden Baden. See Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 59–61. 66.  Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces tableaux? 34–35. 67.  Cited in Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 127. 68.  See ibid., 128–144. 69.  Présidence du gouvernement provisoire de la République française, Direction générale des études et recherches, Section des études culturelles, extrait du Bulletin de renseignements, numéro 4, 16 January 1945, AMN R32 3(3). 70.  Bouchoux, Rose Valland, 114–116; Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 12; on Châtelain’s advice, see Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 441. 71.  Cited in Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 221. 72.  See Jackson, The Dark Years, 621–623. 73.  See Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 249–252. 74.  See Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 219–244; Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 10; on the restitution of twentieth-century MNRs, see the Musée national d’art moderne Web site dedicated to MNRs: www.cnac-gp.fr/musee/ mnr/index.htm. 75.  Terry Pristin, “Judge Dismisses Writer’s Suit over Payments,” New York Times, 10 March 2003, www.nytimes.com. 76.  Philippe Dagen and Hector Feliciano, “Les musées detiennent 1,955 oeuvres d’art volées aux juifs pendant l’Occupation,” Le Monde, 28 January 1997. 77.  Ibid. 78.  Letter from Alain Juppé to Jean Mattéoli, 5 February 1997, cited in Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général, 9. 79.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 100; on overall restitutions, see the MNR database at www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/mnr. Click “Consultation de la base,” and under “localisation” search “restitué.” 80.  Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général, 174; “Une fondation pour la mémoire,” Le Monde, 18 April 2000. See the foundation’s Web site at www.fondationshoah.org. 81.  Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général, 135. 82.  Ibid., 136–139; “Musées: Un tableau en demi-teinte,” Libération, 18 April 2000, 4. 83.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 41. 84.  Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, Rapport général, 79. 85.  Le Masne de Chermont and Schulmann, Le pillage de l’art en France, 28. 86.  Ibid., 38.

352  Notes to Chapter 11 and Conclusion

87.  Ibid. 88.  Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces tableaux? 20. 89.  See ibid., particularly on the Schloss collection, 107–113. 90.  Ibid., 21. 91.  Bernard Kouchner and Christine Albanel, preface in Le Masne de Chermont and Sigal-Klagsbald, A qui appartenaient ces tableaux? 92.  See the World Heritage Center Web site at whc.unesco.org. 93.  Kathyrn Westcott, “More Than a One-Hit Wonder?” BBC News Special Reports, 6 July 2007, newsvote.bbc.co.uk. 94.  See www.new7wonders.com. 95.  Ibid.

Conclusion 1.  Report from Pierre Verlet to Georges Salles, 4 March 1949, AMN R32 7(4). 2.  For tourism statistics, see the Web site of the French Finance Ministry, Division of Tourism, www.tourisme.gouv.fr. Click on “Statistiques et études économiques/­Chiffres _clés_du_tourisme.” 3.  See Chastel, “La notion de patrimoine,” in Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 2, 1453–1469; Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, 153–190. 4.  Chastel, “La notion de patrimoine,” 1454. 5.  Guéry, “The State: The Tool of the Common Good,” in Nora, Rethinking France, vol. 1, 46. 6.  France and the Federal Republic of Germany ratified the Convention in 1957 and 1967, respectively. The United States signed it in 1954, but the Senate only recently ratified it in 2008. See unesco.org for the text of the 1954 Hague Convention and a list of signatories; see also Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder, 167–190. 7.  Following the defeat of Saddam, the United Nations supervised an airlift of the art and antiquities back to Kuwait in late 1991. On the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 and the war in the former Yugoslavia, see Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder, 191–210. 8.  Some critics of the United States argue that members of the Bush administration could be tried in international courts for crimes against cultural property. See ibid., 241–259; see also Rothfield, The Rape of Mesopotamia. Andorra, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, along with the Philippines, signed the 1954 Convention but have not ratified it. See www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/400. 9.  See icom.museum/mission.html. 10.  Available at icom.museum/ethics.html. 11.  See Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder, 211–240. 12.  See Terezin Declaration, 30 June 2009, www.holocausteraassets.eu. 13.  Go to www.unesco.org and search “1970 Convention.” 14.  On modern Greek claims to dispersed heritage, see Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade, 243–245. 15.  Elisabetta Povoledo, “Getty Ex-Curator Testifies in Rome Antiquities Trial,”

Notes to Conclusion  353

New York Times, 21 March 2009, sec. C, 3; Elisabetta Povoledo, “Getty Agrees to Return 40 Antiquities to Italy,” New York Times, 2 August 2007, sec. E, 1. See also Watson and Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy, 80–99, 284–298. 16.  See “Sending Them Home: Are Museums Losing Their Grip?” Economist, 11 August 2007, www.economist.com; on NAGPRA, see Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Public Law 101-601, 101st Cong. (16 November 1990). 17.  Nathaniel Herzberg, “La France restitue les cinq fresques réclamés par l’Egypte,” Le Monde, 11 October 2009, sec. “Culture,” 21; Dave Itzkoff, “Egypt and the Louvre Resolve Differences,” New York Times, sec. C, 2. 18.  For the perspective of a museum director who defends the right of museums to hold antiquities claimed as cultural patrimony by other countries, see Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? 19.  Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade, 248. 20.  Poulot, Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, 189–190.

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Index

Abetz, Otto, 23, 47, 78, 83, 245, 246, 320n28; role in art looting, 40–41, 197, 200, 257 Académie française, 1, 34, 39, 267, 271 accommodation, 7, 12–13, 136–37 Action Française, 145, 155, 335n39 advertising, 61, 109, 113–15 Ahnenerbe, 121–23, 124, 125, 126, 257 Alsace, 18, 124, 147 Antependium of Basel, 235, 249, 250–53, 259, 271, 272, 346n41 Anti-Bolshevik Legion, 35, 315n47 anticommunism, 34, 35, 201; of Vichy regime, 25, 43, 44, 159, 228, 267, 268 anti-Semitism, 57, 169, 200–201; in postwar France, 13, 297–98; of Vichy regime, 3, 4, 7–8, 10, 12, 13, 25–26, 43–46, 60, 192, 196, 208–10, 215, 218, 226, 228, 234, 237, 263, 268, 270, 271, 273, 287, 289, 297, 340n55, 343n124, 348n16. See also Holocaust archeological excavations/artifacts, 6, 11, 27, 118–41, 243, 296, 302, 343n125; Carcopino and policy regarding, 31, 118, 119, 128, 133–35, 136, 137–38, 140; French archeologists, 120, 123–24, 125–26, 128, 129, 130–33, 134, 136, 137–39, 140; German archeologists in France, 120–26, 134, 135–37, 140; Hautecoeur and policy regarding, 33, 134, 135–36, 137, 140, 230; megaliths, 112, 124, 125; ownership of artifacts, 133, 134;

and Vichy ideology, 119–20, 126–28; after war, 274, 276 Architectural Services, 30, 33, 113 Ara pacis, 243 art exchanges, 232–33, 243–60; and Billiet, 251; and Bonnard, 250–52, 253, 254, 256, 259, 272–73, 346n41, 347n65; and Bunjes, 235, 247–49, 250, 251, 252–53, 254, 255–56, 260; and Carcopino, 243, 245, 246, 259; and curators committee, 95, 244, 246, 249–60, 250, 254–56, 259–60; and Darlan, 235, 245–46, 258; between France and Italy, 243, 245, 255; between France and Spain, 244–45, 251, 253; and Göring, 13, 235, 246–53, 254, 256, 258–60, 272–73, 346n41, 347n65; and Hautecoeur, 244, 245–46, 247–50, 251, 259; and Huyghe, 244, 254, 255, 259–60; and Jaujard, 234, 244, 246, 247–50, 252, 254, 255, 256, 259; and Laval, 36, 235, 246–47, 253, 258–59, 272; and the Louvre, 247–48, 251, 254–56, 258–60 art looting, 10, 21, 38, 39, 44, 68, 141, 190, 193– 215, 270, 296, 298, 300, 320n28, 350n53; and Alt Aussee salt mines, 282; and art exchanges, 246, 256, 259; and art market, 49, 228–29; from art storage sites, 40, 75, 79, 196, 203, 219, 220–21, 222, 237–43, 246, 247, 250, 257–58, 260, 266, 271; 369

370  Index

art looting (continued ) by ERR, 41, 200–202, 203–6, 214–15, 220, 223, 284, 285; by German embassy, 40–41, 197–98, 199–200, 202, 203–4, 246, 256; and Göring, 12–13, 40, 41, 83, 191–92, 195, 201, 201–2, 203, 218, 219, 220, 221–22, 223, 226–27, 236–37, 259, 343n120; Möbel-aktion/M-Aktion, 197; number of works looted, 207; protested by curators committee, 95, 241–42; from Rothschild collections, 41, 45, 191, 193, 196, 199–200, 203, 207, 214–15; from Schloss collection, 219–23, 280–81; vs. Vichy spoliation, 10, 192–93, 290. See also restitution of looted art Art Recovery Commission (Commission de récupération artistique, CRA), 280, 282, 333n55 art sequestration, 4, 10, 12, 49, 206, 210, 212–217, 218, 222, 223, 229, 266, 279, 284, 285, 290–292, 295, 297, 340n69, 340n44; of Rothschild collections, 212–217 art market, 49, 227–33, 234, 344n139; trafficking in stolen art, 301, 302 art storage sites, 77–86, 90, 212, 215, 268, 319n22; and Allied invasion, 82–83; German looting from, 40, 75, 79, 196, 203, 219, 220–21, 222, 237–43, 246, 247, 250, 257–58, 260, 266, 271; guards for, 78, 319n27; primary sites, 19, 305; selection of, 69–70, 76–77; transfers between, 81–84, 98, 320n43. See also evacuation of art from museums in 1939 Aubert, Marcel, 152, 217, 241, 251, 254, 284, 331n28 Aujourd’hui, 35, 272 Au Pilori, 169 Basel altar, 235, 249, 250–53, 259, 271, 272, 346n41 Bayeux tapestry, 79, 257–58, 260, 269, 273 Bazaine, Jean, 28, 57, 314n27 Bazin, Germain, 40, 77, 86, 198, 348n15; and Bayeux tapestry, 257–58, 269, 347n61; as depot director at Sourches, 83, 199, 203,

257–58, 347n61; and Schloss collection, 222, 223, 224, 269, 280; Souvenirs de l’exode du Louvre, 311n2, 320n38, 347nn61,62,64, 348n13 Beaux-Arts, 48, 89–90, 154 Behr, Kurt von, 204, 205, 220, 221, 339n48 Belgium, 273, 285; Cathedral of Saint Bavo, 237, 238. See also Mystic Lamb altarpiece Boigne, Benoît de, 173, 176, 177, 179, 180 Berlin, 23, 27; Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, 196, 238; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 203–4; Nationalgalerie, 195, 229, 253 Best, Werner, 136, 211 Bichelonne, Jean, 26, 159 Billiet, Joseph, 84, 86, 319n22; and art exchanges, 251; as communist, 100, 268; and museum reform law of 1941, 88, 91; and Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 239–40, 241; and provincial museums, 75–76, 77, 83, 88, 96 Bizardel, Yvon, 146, 329n3, 331n29 Bloch, Marc, 46, 203, 270 Bonnard, Abel: anticommunism of, 34, 35; anti-Semitism of, 60, 273, 298; and art exchanges, 250–52, 253, 254, 256, 259, 272–73, 346n41, 347n65; and art exports, 233; attitudes regarding collaboration, 33, 35, 36, 37, 47, 84, 157, 161, 189–90, 267, 271–73, 314n24, 346n41; and Basel altar, 235, 272; and Bayeux tapestry, 257, 273; and bronze statues, 157–58, 159–60, 161, 168, 169, 185, 189–90, 273; on cleanliness, 60; Les familiers, 34; In China, 34; as minister of education, 28, 31, 33–37, 47, 84, 157–58, 159–60, 168, 169, 185, 233, 240, 242, 250–52, 253, 254, 256, 257, 264–65, 266, 267, 271–73; and Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 242, 272; on racial purity, 59, 60; relationship with Hautecoeur, 36–37, 242, 271, 272; relationship with Laval, 28, 31; and Schloss collection, 220, 222, 224, 225, 226; “The Reign of Ugliness,” 59–60; after war, 36, 271–72 Bordeaux, 18, 20; Dupont et Duandeau in, 152; Linnean Society, 133; museum in, 96; stock exchange center in, 106

Index  371

Bormann, Martin, 194, 221–22, 223, 225, 342n99 Bouchard, Henri, 46, 152, 156, 331nn28,40 Boucher, François: Danae, 215; Diana Bathing, 245–46, 252, 256, 258, 260; Portrait of Madame Pompadour, 203 Bousquet, René, 286, 343n124 Bouthillier, Yves, 27–28, 48, 91, 93, 151, 296, 316n91 Brasillach, Robert, 25 Brauchitsch, Walther von, 78, 200 Breker, Arno, 11, 23, 35, 46–47, 63, 102 Brinon, Fernand de, 203, 210, 265 British Museum, 10; “Elgin marbles” at, 300 Brittany, 69, 82, 125, 135 bronze statues, destruction of, 9, 141, 145–64; in Chambéry, 11, 147, 164, 165–66, 173–80, 185–86, 187–88, 278, 349n42; German role in, 12, 54, 112, 145–46, 147–48, 159, 160–61, 166, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189–90, 329n3; in Nantes, 11, 147, 164, 165–66, 180–87, 188–89; number destroyed, 145, 158–59, 161–62, 166, 170, 329n1; in Paris, 145, 146–47, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165–72, 185–86, 187, 334nn1,2; postwar attitudes regarding, 145–46, 164, 172; public reaction to, 147, 153–58, 160, 161, 165, 166, 169, 172, 176, 177–78, 179–80, 186, 187, 190; replacements for, 112, 152, 158, 159–60, 168, 177, 178–79, 180, 182–83, 187, 188, 275, 276–77, 278, 329n8, 349nn32,42; of republican/leftist symbols, 149, 153, 154–55, 157–58, 161, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173–74, 175, 176, 177–78, 179, 180, 187, 188, 190, 333n67; selection process, 30, 146, 151–53, 159–60, 164, 165–69, 176–77, 181–85, 186, 187–89, 331n28; subjects of destroyed statues, 162–64, 165, 170–72, 333nn66– 68; Vichy policies regarding, 145–46, 148–51, 157, 160, 168, 169, 187, 190, 273, 276–77, 297, 329n6 Bruegel the Elder, Jan, 223; Enchanted Island, 224

Bunjes, Hermann, 235, 247–49, 250, 251, 252–53, 254, 255–56, 260 Burrin, Philippe: on accommodation, 7; France under the Germans, 7, 315n62, 332n50; on Vichy anticommunism, 25 Carcopino, Jérôme: and archeological policy, 31, 118, 119, 128, 133–35, 136, 137–38, 140; and art exchanges, 243, 245, 246, 259; and art export law, 229; and art exports, 31, 229, 230, 231–32; and bronze statues, 54, 150–51, 152, 156, 168, 186; as classicist, 29, 54, 56, 119, 150; and exclusionary laws, 46, 270, 348n16; and German art looting, 210; as minister of education, 11, 29, 30, 31, 33, 43, 45, 46, 47, 100, 119–20, 133–34, 135, 151, 168, 245, 264–65, 268, 271, 273, 296–97, 323n14; and museum reform law of 1941, 88, 92, 93, 94; policy regarding archaeological excavations, 31, 33; Souvenirs de sept ans, 270, 329n12; after war, 150–51, 269–70, 348n16 Carcopino Law, 31, 119–20, 128, 130, 133–34, 135–39 Cassou, Jean: dismissal of, 43, 44, 45, 267, 268, 331n28; Le pillage par les Allemands, 313n27; relationship with Hautecoeur, 45, 268, 316n78; relationship with Jaujard, 268; resistance activities, 267, 268; after war, 284 Cathala, Pierre, 225 CDJC. See Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 25, 33 Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC), 10, 11 Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), 134, 140 CGQJ. See Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat général aux questions juives) Chambéry: bronze statues destroyed in, 11, 147, 164, 165–66, 173–80, 185–86, 187–88, 278, 349n42 Chambon chateau, 219, 220–21, 222

372  Index

Chambord chateau, 19, 71, 81, 124, 199, 203, 250, 272 Chamson, André, 83, 217, 267 Choltitz, Dietrich von, 102, 258 classicism, 23, 47, 54–58, 63, 127, 154; basic tenets of, 32, 52, 56, 114; Carcopino as classicist, 29, 54, 56, 119, 150; Hautecoeur as classicist, 31–32, 54, 56, 108, 114, 150; during WWI, 54, 62 Cluny museum, 94, 244, 249, 250 CMMNF. See Commission for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals CNRS. See Centre national de la recherche scientifique Cocteau, Jean: on Breker, 46–47 Cognacq, Gabriel, 225, 254 Colombier, Pierre du, 28, 98–99 Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (CVIA), 43 Comités de défense paysanne (Peasant Defense Committees), 110, 324n28 Comités d’organisation (COs), 26, 43 Comité supérieur de séquestres et liquidations, 212 Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ)), 202, 208, 209–10, 223, 225, 227, 232; commissioner Darquier, 3, 30, 219, 220, 222, 226, 229, 341n91, 343n124; commissioner Vallat, 30, 203, 208, 210–11, 219, 292 Commission de récupération artistique (CRA), 280, 282, 333n55 Commission for the Mobilization of NonFerrous Metals (CMMNF), 30, 151, 153, 157, 158–59, 160, 163, 169, 333n61 Commission of Historic Monuments, 108, 130 Commissions régionales du patrimoine historique, archéologique, et ethnologique (COREPHAE), 276 Comoedia, 28, 46–47, 244 Conseil d’état (Council of State), 27, 91, 92–94, 100, 314n10 CRA. See Commission de récupération artistique

Cri du Peuple, Le, 60, 271–72 Croix de la Savoie, La, 149, 175 cultural property rights, 4, 12, 14 Czechoslovakia: national library, 203; Sudetenland, 63, 76, 104–5 Dalou, Jules, 146; Delacroix, 161, 189; Triumph of Silenius, 161; Triumph of the Republic, 167–68, 169, 172 Darlan, François, 22, 30, 93–94, 100, 336n42; and art exchanges, 235, 245–46, 258; assassination of, 265; and bronze statues, 151, 168, 187, 190; and German art looting, 210; and museum reform law of 1941, 87, 91–92 Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis: as commissioner of Jewish affairs, 3, 30, 219, 220, 222, 226, 229, 341n91, 343n124; relationship with Huyghe, 3; after war, 3, 311n4 David-Weill, David, 70, 71, 268, 297 David-Weill collection, 75, 196, 203, 207 De Gaulle, Charles, 6, 12, 265 Despiau, Charles, 46, 47, 54 Devisenschutz Kommando, 202–3 Division of Historic Landmarks, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 116–17, 133, 134, 181, 237, 257 Domaines. See Ministry of Finance Dorgères, Henri, 110, 324n28 Doriot, Jacques, 34, 60 Dutch and Flemish art, 1–2, 55, 191, 194, 195, 213, 218, 223–25, 228. See also Schloss collection Ecole de France, 44, 45, 46, 61, 62 Ecole nationale des beaux-arts, 31, 204 Ecole normale supérieure, 95, 112 Editions de minuit, 268 Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), 41, 200–202, 203–6, 214–15, 220, 223, 284, 285 “Elgin marbles,” 300, 352n14 Erhart, Gregor: Saint Mary Magdalene/Beautiful German Woman, 13, 248, 249, 251, 254–56, 258–59, 273

Index  373

evacuation of art from museums in 1939, 11, 37–39, 67–86, 124; and Jaujard, 37–38, 71, 75, 76, 83, 86, 198, 265, 268, 319n27; and museum reform law of 1941, 87; from national museums, 68, 69, 71–75; from provincial museums, 68, 69, 71, 75–77, 306–7. See also art storage sites exchange rate, 48, 148, 211, 228 Falguière, Alexandre: Savoyarde, La (“La Sasson”), 165, 173–74, 175, 176, 179, 180, 186, 188, 278 fascism, 26, 33, 34, 35, 55; in Italy, 44, 63, 107 Favier, Edmond, 219, 220, 221 FFI. See Forces françaises de l’intérieur folklore, 6, 8, 42 Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah, 289, 351n80 Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI), 39, 85, 269 Franco, Francisco, 36, 70, 244–45, 271 French cultural prestige, 24, 48, 55, 62, 298, 341n79; attitudes of Vichy officials regarding, 5, 6, 27–28, 29, 50, 51, 59, 86, 87, 99–100, 103, 117, 275–76; Paris as world’s cultural capital, 27, 51, 100 French national style: and Celtic heritage, 52, 53, 55, 56–57, 63, 317n2; and Latin heritage, 52, 53–58, 63, 317n4 French Revolution, 129, 156, 237, 264, 293, 330n13; annexation of Savoie during, 173–74, 278; and Louvre, 216, 292–93, 341n79; and the state, 14; Vichy attitudes regarding, 59–60, 149, 330n24. See also Savoyarde, La Gallia, 134 Gallo-Roman period, 53, 115, 126–28, 135, 138, 140 Garnier opera house, 23, 102, 105–6 George, Waldemar, 44, 67, 266, 315n56, 347n6 Gerbe, La, 271–72 Géricault, Théodore: The Raft of the Medusa, 73–74, 85, 305

German art dealers, 228–29, 232, 233, 286 German art policies: regarding art deemed degenerate, 22, 195, 204, 205–6, 207, 283, 339n49; repatriation of Germanic works of art, 4, 194, 195, 196 German cultural services, 39–41 German Military Command in France (MBF), 125, 136, 148, 200, 211, 231, 232 Germany: archeology in, 120–23, 124, 128; artists in, 46; censorship in, 22; Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI), 123, 126; Dresden museum, 246; exports of French art to, 228–33; Folkwang museum, 286; Institute of Intellectual Prehistory, 121; Jewish immigration from, 25; Kultur in, 53, 55, 127; Munich, 280–81; Neuschwanstein castle, 282; pact with Soviet Union, 67, 267; racial theories in, 120–23, 124. See also Berlin Gerum, Commissioner (police group 627), 197–98, 199–200 Ghent altarpiece. See Mystic Lamb altarpiece Giraudoux, Jean, 113, 318n21; anti-Semitism of, 58, 318n19; on Paris, 58; Pleins pouvoirs, 58, 113 GIRM. See Groupement d’importation et de répartition des métaux Goebbels, Joseph, 22, 78–79, 159, 195–96, 197, 320n28 Göring, Hermann, 194, 228, 241; and art exchanges, 13, 235, 246–53, 254, 256, 258–60, 272–73, 346n41, 347n65; and art looting, 12–13, 40, 41, 83, 191–92, 195, 201, 201–2, 203, 218, 219, 220, 221–22, 223, 226–27, 236–37, 259, 343n120; and de Sèze tapestries, 236–37, 258; policy regarding French church bells, 147–49; and Schloss collection, 219, 221–22, 223, 250, 343n120 Greece: antiquities policies in, 9–10, 134; and “Elgin marbles,” 300, 352n14 Grote-Hasenbalg, Werner, 232, 233, 286 Groupement d’importation et de répartition des métaux (GIRM), 30, 152, 153, 187 Haberstock, Karl, 228–29, 286

374  Index

Hague Convention of 1907, 39, 192, 194, 200, 201, 211 Hague Convention of 1954, 299, 352nn6,8 Hals, Frans, 1–2, 195, 218; Portrait of Pastor Adrianus Tegularius, 281 Hautecoeur, Louis: and administrative reorganization, 32, 33, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 98, 107; and advertising, 113, 114–15; anti-Semitism of, 45; and archeological policy, 33, 134, 135–36, 137, 140, 230; and architecture, 32, 50, 107; and art exchanges, 244, 245–46, 247–50, 251, 259; and art exports, 229–30, 233; as assistant curator at Louvre, 88; Les beaux-arts en France, 270, 349n32; and bronze statues, 54, 150–51, 152, 156, 157, 158, 160, 165, 166, 177, 178, 179–80, 186, 188, 331n40, 349n32; as classicist, 31–32, 54, 56, 108, 114, 150; on commemorative statues, 54, 58; Considérations sur l’art aujourd’hui, 32, 45; and cultural preservation, 33; as curator of Musée du Luxembourg, 31, 32; and de Sèze tapestries, 237, 271; and diffusion of art to provinces, 32–33; on evacuated works, 71; exclusionary laws enforced by, 45; on French beauty, 52, 58–59, 107, 117; at Musée Guimet of Asian art, 267; and museum reform law of 1941, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 98; and Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 270, 271; and protection of architecture, 107–8; and protection of historic and natural sites, 31, 33, 106, 117; and regulation of professional groups, 32, 33; relationship with Bonnard, 36–37, 242, 271, 272; relationship with Cassou, 45, 268, 316n78; relationship with Jaujard, 270–71; relationship with Laval, 237; and restoration of historic sites, 110–11; and right of first refusal (droit de préemption), 49, 211–12, 213, 222; as Secretary General of Fine Arts, 11, 30, 31–33, 51, 63, 84, 86, 93, 100, 109, 166, 240, 251, 264–65, 267, 273, 296–97; and statue destruction, 178, 179–80; and tourism sites, 109–10,

111, 117, 298; after war, 58, 150–51, 269, 270–71 Henraux, Albert, 282 Henri-Rivière, Georges, 42 Hilaire, Georges, 36–37, 99–100, 109, 240, 257, 258, 272 Himmler, Heinrich, 194, 221, 236; and ­Ahnenerbe, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 257; and Bayeux tapestry, 257, 260 historic sites, 6, 11, 48, 50, 53, 68, 97, 99, 101, 102–18, 252, 275, 296, 322n2; damage to, 103–4, 105, 115–17; and Hautecoeur, 31, 33, 106, 117; private ownership of, 108–9, 111; registered landmarks, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112–13, 114, 116; religious structures as, 108; restoration/reconstruction of, 103–4, 110–12, 117 Hitler, Adolf: attitudes regarding art, 23, 39, 40–41, 46, 63, 77–79, 102, 193–96, 197, 198–99, 200, 202, 206, 219, 222, 223, 224, 228, 229, 236, 237, 238, 248, 250, 260, 320n28, 343n120; attitudes regarding bureaucratic rivalry, 39, 197; attitudes regarding France, 22–23, 147–48, 159, 195–96, 197; attitudes regarding Greece and Rome, 123; attitudes regarding Rosenberg and Himmler, 123; and Compiègne railway car, 18; as failed artist, 23, 193–94; and Nazi-Soviet pact, 67; relationship with Bormann, 221–22, 342n99; relationship with Göring, 221–22, 343n120; and Schloss collection, 219, 222, 223, 224; trip to Paris, 23, 102; and Vichy regime, 21–23 Hofer, Walter Andreas, 250, 251 Holocaust, 8, 13, 122, 195, 263, 289, 300, 302; deportation of Jews from France, 26, 60, 159, 190, 226, 287, 314n18, 343n124 Huisman, Georges, 31, 43, 44, 69, 88 Huyghe, René: and art exchanges, 244, 254, 255, 259–60; attempts to acquire works from Jewish-owned collections, 1, 2, 3, 12, 50, 191, 193, 216–17, 218–19, 223–24, 225–26, 227, 234, 273, 291, 292; as director of paintings at Louvre, 1, 2,

Index  375

3, 12, 30, 36, 38–39, 50, 63, 83, 214, 227, 234, 254, 264–65, 269, 273, 284, 285, 291, 292; at Montal chateau, 39, 85, 260, 269; relationship with Darquier de Pellepoix, 3; relationship with Jaujard, 2–3, 12, 38, 39, 50, 191, 216–17, 222, 223, 224, 269, 348n15; relationship with Lefranc, 1, 225–26; resistance activities, 1, 3, 39, 269, 273, 320n50, 348n15; and Rothschild collections, 12, 50, 193, 216–17; and Schloss collection, 2, 3, 12, 191, 193, 218–19, 222, 223–24, 225–26, 269, 279–80, 292; Une vie pour l’art, 315n57, 341n72, 347n66; after war, 1, 226, 279–80, 284, 285 International Council of Museums (ICOM), 299–300 Inventaire général des richesses artistiques, 264, 276, 278, 298 Iraqi National Museum: looting of, 14, 299, 352n8 Italy, 229, 302; antiquities policies in, 9–10, 134, 135; art exchange with France, 243, 245, 255; fascism in, 44, 55, 63, 107; French immigrants from, 25; museum administration in, 99; Mussolini, 55, 173; and ownership cases involving United States, 301; Piedmont, 173; during WWI, 54; during WWII, 19, 173, 177, 186 Jankuhn, Herbert, 124–25 Jaujard, Jacques, 67, 87; and art exchanges, 234, 244, 246, 247–50, 252, 254, 255, 256, 259; attempts to acquire works from Jewish-owned collections, 2, 3, 12, 48–50, 193, 211, 216, 224, 227, 234, 273, 292; and Bayeux tapestry, 257–58, 269; as director of national museums, 2–3, 12, 30, 37–38, 63, 75, 77, 80, 84, 93, 94, 99–100, 210, 211, 234, 254, 264–65, 296–97; and evacuation of art from museums in 1939, 37–38, 71, 75, 76, 83, 86, 198, 265, 268, 319n27; and German art looting, 204–5, 266, 269; and museum reform law of 1941, 88, 91, 93, 94, 95, 99–100; and

Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 79, 239–40, 241, 270, 272; relationship with Göring, 13; relationship with Hautecoeur, 270–71; relationship with Huyghe, 2–3, 12, 38, 39, 50, 191, 216–17, 222, 223, 224, 269, 348n15; relationship with Valland, 204–5, 283; relations with Germans, 13, 77–78, 79, 84–85, 204–5, 211; resistance activities, 2, 3, 38, 210, 266, 267–69, 273; and right of first refusal (droit de préemption), 48–50, 212–13, 233–34, 283, 284; and Rothschild collections, 12, 193, 212–13, 216–17, 222; and Schloss collection, 3, 12, 191, 193, 222, 223, 224, 279, 292; and simulated donations from Jewish-owned collections, 198, 226; during Spanish Civil War, 38, 70, 71, 244; after war, 2–3, 266–67, 268–69, 275, 277, 283, 284, 285, 291, 292 Je Suis Partout, 25, 57 Jeu de Paume, 71, 94, 198, 211, 225, 266, 343n119; Göring at, 191–92; Room of Martyrs, 207, 283; Valland at, 30, 75, 198, 204–6, 207, 282, 283 Jewish-owned art collections: and art market, 49, 228–29; David-Weill collection, 75, 196, 203, 207; Kann collection, 75, 196, 207, 287; museum administration attempts to acquire works from, 1, 2, 3, 12, 49–50, 191, 193, 211, 214, 216–17, 218–19, 223–27, 234, 273, 290–92; museum administration evacuation and storage of, 68, 75, 79, 198–99, 215, 226, 266, 269, 279–81, 290–92; Rosenberg collection, 196, 205, 228, 287; Seligmann collection, 75, 196, 207; Vichy policies regarding, 3–4, 10, 12, 48–50, 193, 207, 208–27, 218, 222, 223–25, 233–34, 266, 279, 283–84, 290–92, 297, 317n97, 340n69; after war, 1, 4, 13, 193, 279–92; Wildenstein collection, 75, 191, 196, 199, 228. See also German art looting; restitution of looted art; Rothschild collections; Schloss collection Jewish Statute, 7, 26, 45, 208

376  Index

Jews: as art dealers, 44–45, 49, 228; as artists, 43–44, 45, 57; citizenship of, 12, 44–45, 48, 196, 202, 209, 215, 218, 228, 279, 283, 297; deportation from France, 26, 60, 159, 190, 226, 287, 314n18, 343n124; as gallery owners, 228; as immigrants to France, 25, 43–44, 45; property rights of, 4, 12, 44, 201, 222, 297, 302; as students, 46. See also anti-Semitism; Jewish-owned art collections Joan of Arc, 8, 77, 151, 158, 179, 182, 183–84, 185 Jonas, Edouard, 213, 217 Kossinna, Gustav, 120–21 Kuetgens, Dr. (Kunstschutz), 84–85, 320n46 Kümmel, Otto/Kümmel reports, 79, 196, 238 Künsberg, Eberhard Freiherr von, 197, 199, 200 Kunstschutz: and archeology, 125–26; attempts to protect art, 39–41, 78–79, 81, 82, 83–85, 200, 203, 204, 239, 240, 242, 257, 258, 320n28; Tieschowitz, 40, 41, 78, 83, 257, 258, 315n65, 347n61; Wolff Metternich, 39–40, 41, 78, 79, 83–84, 200, 203, 204, 239, 240, 257, 320n28, 347n61 Kuwaiti National Museum: Iraqi looting of, 299, 352n7 labor draft. See Service du travail obligatoire Lamblin, Léon, 152, 160, 185 Landowski, Paul, 146, 152, 331n28; The Son of Cain, 161 Lantier, Ramond, 124, 125–26, 135 La Rochelle, Pierre Drieu, 25, 314n24 Laval, Pierre, 34, 37, 234; and art exchanges, 36, 235, 246–47, 253, 258–59, 272; attitudes regarding Bolshevism, 159; attitudes regarding collaboration, 6, 24, 159, 235, 237, 240–41, 243, 246–47, 258, 345n12; and conscription of French workers, 24, 159, 161; and deportation of Jews, 26, 159; and de Sèze tapestries, 237, 243, 258; execution of, 265; as Head of Government, 21, 22, 26, 27, 30, 33,

51, 159; and Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 237, 240–41, 242–43, 247, 258, 270, 272; policies regarding art, 79; relationship with Bonnard, 28, 31; relationship with Hilaire, 37; relationship with Pétain, 22, 33, 159; and Schloss collection, 219, 221, 222; and STO, 24 League of Nations: General Assembly, 70, 133, 243; International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, 133, 139, 243; International Museum Office, 70–71 Lefranc, Jean-François, 229, 232; relationship with Huyghe, 1, 225–26; and Schloss collection, 1, 3, 30, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225–26, 227, 341n91, 343nn119,120 Lehideux, François, 149–50, 151, 156, 330n24 Linz museum project, 194–95, 222, 223, 224, 225, 229, 250, 343n119 Lohse, Bruno, 205, 220, 221, 223, 225, 343n119 Louvre, 14, 40, 195, 197, 211, 243, 268; and art exchanges, 13, 247–48, 251, 254–56, 258–60; and Bayeux tapestry, 257–58; Ecole du Louvre, 2–4, 31, 34, 38, 81, 94, 97, 204, 267; evacuation of art from, 37, 38, 68, 71, 72–75, 77, 81–82, 83, 84; and French Revolution, 216, 292–93, 341n79; Hautecoeur at, 88; Huyghe as director of paintings at, 1, 2, 3, 12, 30, 36, 38–39, 50, 63, 83, 191, 214, 216–17, 218–19, 222, 223–24, 234, 269, 279, 284, 291, 292; and Pétain, 20–21; and Schloss collection, 1–4, 12, 191, 193, 218–19, 222, 223–24, 225–26, 263, 269, 279–81, 350n50; after war, 193, 285, 301–2 Lyon, 83, 128, 157, 159, 160, 169; museum in, 89, 96, 97; Noël Dumond et Cie in, 152 Maillol, Aristide, 46, 47, 54, 56 Malraux, André, 6, 117, 264, 267, 275–76, 278, 297 Marianne: statues of, 153, 160, 162, 171 Marrus, Michael, 210; on Carcopino, 46; on Giraudoux, 58; Vichy France and the Jews, 314n18, 316n77, 339n52, 340nn54,61, 343n127, 349n44, 351n73

Index  377

Marseille, 83, 152, 159; museum in, 96, 98; Vieux Port, 113 Le Masne de Chermont, Isabelle: A qui appartenaient ces tableaux?, 343n126, 350n61, 352n88–91; Le pillage de l’art en France, 290–91, 315nn63,64, 337n5, 339nn38,41,42,50,51, 340n69, 341n72, 349n44, 350nn54–56,60, 351nn64,65,70,79,83,85,86 Master of the Holy Family: Presentation in the Temple, 13, 247, 249, 251, 254–56, 258–60, 273 Mattéoli Commission report, 214, 289–91, 292, 337n2; German looting vs. Vichy spoliation in, 10, 192–93, 290; Le Masne de Charmont and Schulmann’s Le pillage de l’art en France, 290–91, 315nn63,64, 337n5, 339nn38,41, 42,50,51, 340n69, 341n72, 349n44, 350nn54–56,60, 351nn64,65,70,79,83,85,86; omissions in, 218, 290–91, 340n69 Maurras, Charles, 25, 34, 42, 45, 145, 155, 182, 315n47 Mazauric, Lucie, 74, 81, 83, 214, 217, 244, 320n43; Le Louvre en voyage, 317n100, 319n14, 320n28, 341nn72,76,82, 347n8 MBF. See German Military Command in France Medicus, Franz Albrecht, 36; on German protection and preservation, 17 memory: collective vs. dominant, 8–9 MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section), 282, 350n53 Ministry of Culture, 38, 119–20, 267, 288, 292. See also Malraux, André Ministry of Defense, 68, 69, 74 Ministry of Education, 27, 30, 50–51, 60–61, 70, 82, 130, 131, 161, 274; and historic sites, 107, 111, 114; and museum reform, 88, 92, 93, 94, 97. See also Bonnard, Abel; Carcopino, Jérôme; Zay, Jean Ministry of Finance, 27–28, 229; Délégation générale à l’équipement national, 110–11; Direction générale de l’enregistrement des domaines et du timbre (Domaines),

209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 222, 283, 284, 341n76; and fine arts budget, 47–51, 49, 75, 80, 91, 99, 158, 213, 225, 316n92. See also Bouthillier, Yves Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 33, 37, 70, 280, 285, 292; Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP), 282, 284, 350n55 Ministry of Industrial Production, 26, 31, 110, 117, 187; and art exports, 229, 232; CMMNF, 151, 153, 157, 158–59, 160, 163, 169, 333n61; DIME, 151; metal recycling activities, 149–50, 151, 152–53, 157, 158–59, 160, 161, 163, 166, 169, 187, 333n61 Ministry of Justice, 27, 34, 284, 288 Ministry of the Interior, 26, 68, 69, 130, 136, 151, 152, 157, 275, 341n79; and Laval, 30, 37; and museum reform law of 1941, 91–92, 93–94 Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France. See Mattéoli Commission report MNRs (musées nationaux récupération), 284–85, 287, 288, 289–90, 291, 292, 297–98, 351n74 Möbius, Hans, 125–26, 232 Mona Lisa, 75, 81, 83, 85, 305 Montal chateau, 1, 3, 19, 39, 83, 85, 260, 269 Montauban, 19, 217, 245; Musée Ingres, 82, 83 Montpellier, 83, 89, 270; museum in, 96 Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA), 282, 350n53 Musée de l’homme, 267–68, 343n125, 347n9 Musée des antiquités nationales, 94, 124, 125 Musée des arts et traditions populaires, 42, 94 Musée national d’art modern (Paris), 27, 31, 43, 88, 94, 152, 167, 240, 241, 284, 290, 316n78, 331n28 musées nationaux recuperation. See MNRs museum reform law of 1941, 71, 82, 86, 87–101, 241, 274; and Billiet, 88, 91; and Carcopino, 88, 92, 93, 94; and Darlan, 87, 91–92; and Hautecoeur, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 98; and Jaujard, 88, 91, 93, 94, 95, 99–100

378  Index

museums: classified museums, 96, 97, 98, 100; controlled museums, 96, 97; departmental museums, 49, 69, 83, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95–98; evacuation from national museums, 68, 69, 71–75, 88; evacuation from provincial museums, 68, 69, 71, 75–77, 79–80, 88; municipal museums, 49, 69, 79–80, 83, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95–98; museums owned by city of Paris, 75, 88, 93; national museums, 87, 88–89, 91, 94–95, 100, 322n25; provincial museums, 49, 69, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 89–90, 91–92, 95–98, 99, 100, 306–7, 308–9. See also Jeu de Paume; Louvre Mystic Lamb altarpiece, 196, 237–43, 246, 247, 250, 260; Adoration of the Mystic Lamb panel, 79, 237; and Billiet, 239–40, 241; and Bonnard, 242, 272; and Hautecoeur, 270, 271; and Jaujard, 79, 239–40, 241, 270, 272; and Laval, 237, 240–41, 242–43, 247, 258, 270, 272 Nantes, 76, 115; bronze statues destroyed in, 11, 147, 164, 165–66, 180–87, 188–89; executions in, 180–81; museum in, 96; Le Phare de la Loire, 183; place Royale fountain, 182, 183–85, 186 National Museum Advisory Councils, 88–89, 92, 203, 244, 254, 255, 256, 282; Conseil administratif, 94–95, 274, 310; Conseil technique, 94–95, 225, 254, 255, 274, 310 National Museum Curators Committee, 30; German art looting protested by, 95, 241–42; role in art exchanges, 95, 244, 246, 249–60, 250, 254–56, 259–60 natural sites, protected, 106, 107, 108, 109–10, 113, 117, 276, 323n2 New7Wonders Foundation, 293–94 New York City, 27, 100, 230; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10, 27, 28, 282; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 27; Newhouse Galleries, 281 Normandy, 69, 82, 115; Allied landings, 85, 102, 217, 257; archeology in, 129–30; Saint-Lô, 115. See also Bayeux tapestry Notre Dame cathedral, 14, 20, 102

Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP), 282, 284, 350n55 Ory, Pascal, 7, 316n70; La belle illusion, 41–42, 315nn41,66; Les collaborateurs, 314n24, 315n47 Paris: Academy of Fine Arts, 41, 54, 61, 172, 267, 271; Arc de Triomphe, 106; and armistice of 1940, 11; bronze statues in, 145, 146–47, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165–72, 185–86, 187, 334nn1,2; Carnavalet museum, 167; Collège de France, 95, 111–12, 135; Commission of Old Paris, 167; Commune of 1871, 58, 127; Eiffel Tower, 23, 102; German Institute, 40; Giraudoux on, 58; Grand Palais, 56, 277; Henri IV (school), 34; Henri IV (statue), 106; Hitler’s trip to, 23, 102; Hôtel des Invalides, 23, 102, 107; Hôtel Drouot auction house, 228; Jewish artists in, 44; liberation of, 102, 258, 271; Louis Dreyfus bank, 222, 225; Louis-le-Grand, 34, 38; Louis XIII (statue), 106; Madeleine, 102; Montparnasse, 44; Musée d’Orsay, 277; Musée du Petit Palais, 167; museums owned by city of, 75, 88, 93; Notre Dame, 14, 20, 102; Odéon Square, 168, 172; opera house, 23, 102, 105–6; Palais-Royal, 93; place de la Nation, 167–68, 169, 171, 172; place de la Républic, 157, 158, 169, 171, 172; place de l’Observatoire, 172; Pont-Neuf, 167; Sacré Coeur, 23; Sainte Chapelle, 105; Saint Michel fountain, 172; Samaritaine Building, 62; Société de Récuperation Métallurgique, 152; Sorbonne, 38, 94; Trocadéro palace, 23; as world’s artistic capital, 27, 51, 100. See also Jeu de Paume; Louvre Parti populaire français (PPF), 34, 35, 230 patrimania, 234, 297; defined, 4 patrimoine national, le: use of phrase, 5–6, 14, 21 Paxton, Robert, 210, 263; on Carcopino, 46; on Giraudoux, 58; Vichy France, 7, 312n9,

Index  379

313n5, 316n90, 321n18, 323n16, 329n10, 332n51; Vichy France and the Jews, 314n18, 316n77, 339n53, 340nn54,61, 343n127, 351n73 Pétain, Philippe, 24, 34, 128, 292; and art exchanges, 244; attitudes regarding art, 62, 63, 295; attitudes regarding religion, 149; and bronze statues, 149, 150, 151, 157, 160, 169, 190; and Carcopino, 29, 31; and defeat of 1940, 18; exile of, 265; on French defeat, 32; on French national heritage, 29; as Head of State, 5, 20–21, 22, 27, 215, 296; on Hotz execution, 181; on moral decline, 32; and museum reform, 87, 91, 92, 93, 99, 100; relationship with Franco, 244–45; relationship with Laval, 22, 33, 159; and Schloss collection, 221; as traditionalist, 5, 11, 25 Petropoulos, Jonathan: Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 312n23, 315n58, 326nn6,10, 337nn6–8, 338nn10,11,14,20, 339n38, 342n98, 344n131, 344nn1,2, 345n20, 347nn57,65; and art exchanges, 243; on German art looting, 197; on Göring, 221; on Himmler, 121; The Faustian Bargain, 338n15 police group 627. See Gerum, Commissioner Popular Front, 33, 41–43, 314n27 Poulot, Dominique, 9, 302, 349n31; Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, 349nn35,41, 353n20 Presentation in the Temple, 13, 247, 249, 251, 254–56, 258–60, 273 Pucheu, Pierre, 26, 30, 93–94, 119, 136, 151, 330n24 purge courts, 265–66, 269 Rebatet, Lucien, 57, 63 Regnier, M. (head of CMMNF), 30, 151, 153, 157, 158–59, 160 regulation of cultural professions, 32, 33, 42–43, 107–8 Rembrandt van Rijn, 1–2, 50, 191, 195, 215, 216, 218, 223, 224, 229; Portrait of an Elderly Jew in a Fur Hat, 281

Resistance, 11, 213; Hotz assassination, 180–81, 336n42; Huyghe’s activities, 1, 3, 39, 269, 273, 320n50, 348n15; Jaujard’s activities, 2, 3, 38, 210, 266, 267–69, 273; maquis, 24, 85; Musée de l’homme network, 267–68, 347n9; Résistance, 267–68; resistance myth, 6–7, 190, 265; resister-collaborator relations, 1–4; and STO, 24; The Train, 205, 339n48 restitution of looted art, 1, 4, 13, 14, 49–50, 279–92, 302, 342n109; MFAA, 282, 350n53; MNRs, 284–85, 287, 288, 289–90, 291, 292, 297–98, 351n74; proof of ownership, 13, 282–85, 297; role of Valland in, 282, 286 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 197, 203, 235, 245–46, 258, 260 right of first refusal (droit de préemption), 279, 283–84, 297, 317n97; and Hautecoeur, 49, 211–12, 213, 222; and Jaujard, 48–50, 212–13, 233–34, 283, 284; and Schloss collection, 218, 223–25, 279; Valland on, 214 Rorimer, James, 282 Rosenberg, Alfred, 41, 122–23, 125, 126, 200–202, 203–4, 226–27 Rosenberg, Paul, 41, 196, 205, 228, 287 Rosenberg collection, 196, 205, 228, 287 Rothschild, Baron Elie de, 282, 288 Rothschild, Maurice, 199–200, 215, 216, 217, 222, 341n76 Rothschild, Robert, 215, 216, 217, 222 Rothschild collections, 75, 211, 282, 292; German looting of, 41, 45, 191, 193, 196, 199–200, 203, 207, 214–15; and Huyghe, 12, 50, 193, 216–17; and Jaujard, 12, 193, 212–13, 216–17, 222; after war, 282; family portraits, 206; sequestration of, 212–217 Rouen, 76, 106, 116; cathedral in, 115; museum in, 96; Palais de Justice, 115 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: statues of, 164, 168, 175, 176, 177, 180, 188, 349n42 Rousso, Henry, 3, 312n; on dominant memory, 9; The Vichy Syndrome, 6, 8, 311n4, 337n69, 343n124

380  Index

Salles, Georges, 40, 217, 291; as director of national museums, 263, 267, 295, 299; and Schloss collection, 263, 279, 280, 285 Savoyarde, La (“La Sasson”), 165, 173–74, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 186, 188, 278 Schleier, Rudolf, 225, 342n99 Schloss, Adolphe, 1–2, 213, 218 Schloss, Lucie, 218–19, 222 Schloss collection, 1–4, 10, 213, 218–27, 340n69, 341n84, 350n50; and Bazin, 222, 223, 224, 269, 280; and Bonnard, 220, 222, 224, 225, 226; German looting from, 219–23, 280–81; and Göring, 219, 221–22, 223, 250, 343n120; and Hitler, 219, 222, 223, 224; and Huyghe, 2, 3, 12, 191, 193, 218–19, 222, 223–24, 225–26, 269, 279–80, 292; and Jaujard, 3, 12, 191, 193, 222, 223, 224, 279, 292; and Laval, 219, 221, 222; and Lefranc, 1, 3, 30, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225–26, 227, 341n91, 343nn119,120; and Pétain, 221; and Salles, 263, 279, 280, 285; after war, 263, 279–81, 290, 342n109 Schulmann, Didier: Le Pillage de l’art en France, 290–91, 315nn63,64, 337n5, 339nn38,41,42,50,51, 340n69, 341n72, 349n44, 350nn54–56,60, 351nn64,65,70,74,79,83,85,86 Service de contrôl des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP), 208, 340n54 Service du travail obligatoire (STO), 78, 115, 146, 190, 268, 313n13, 319n27; and Laval, 24, 159, 161 sequestered art collections, 4, 10, 12, 49, 206, 210, 212–217, 218, 222, 223, 229, 266, 279, 284, 285, 290–292, 295, 297, 340n69, 340n44; Rothschild collections, 212–217 Seven Joys of the Virgin altarpiece: Presentation in the Temple panel, 13, 247, 249, 251, 254–56, 258–60, 273 Sèze, Viscount Louis-Marie and Viscountess Hermine de: tapestries owned by, 236–37, 240, 243, 258, 271, 345n5 Sievers, Wolfram, 122, 257 Sourches chateau, 19, 81, 305; and Bayeux tapestry, 79, 257–58, 260, 269, 273; Bazin

as depot director at, 83, 199, 203, 257–58, 347n61 Spain, 36, 128, 229, 230; art exchange with France, 244–45, 251, 253; Civil War, 38, 70–71, 244; Franco, 36, 70, 244–45, 271; Prado museum, 38, 244 Speer, Albert, 11, 23, 79, 102, 123, 197 SPF. See Société préhistorique française sports education, 43, 48, 51, 317n105 statues. See bronze statues, destruction of STO. See Service du travail obligatoire Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF): Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA), 282, 350n53 Terezin Declaration, 300, 352n12 Third Republic: archeology during, 130–33, 136, 139, 140; art exchanges during, 243; Popular Front government, 33, 41–43; la statuomanie (statuemania) during, 146, 153–55, 163–64, 172, 186, 187, 329n5; vs. Vichy regime, 5, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 41–43, 48, 50, 68, 86, 87, 88, 92–93, 97, 108–9, 111–12, 114, 128, 129, 133–34, 139, 140, 263–64, 296 Tieschowitz, Bernhard von, 40, 41, 78, 83, 257, 258, 315n65, 347n61 Tillion, Germaine, 267, 268, 347n9 tourism, 5, 18, 23, 102, 114, 212; attitudes of Vichy officials regarding, 28, 53, 59, 101, 103, 109–10, 111, 115, 117, 298 Treaty of Versailles, 196, 198, 237, 238 True, Marion, 301 UNESCO, 9, 294, 299, 318n9; Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, 300; World Heritage Center, 293, 352n92 United Kingdom and “Elgin marbles,” 300–301 United States: art ownership cases in, 301; and Hague Convention of 1954, 299,

Index  381

352nn6,8; and looting of Iraqi National Museum, 14, 299; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), 301 Utikal, Gerhard, 191, 200, 223 Valland, Rose, 256, 258, 343n119; on Bayeux tapestry, 258; Le Front de l’art, 311n2, 316n100, 319n11, 320nn28,41, 333n55, 338nn10,15, 339n48, 49, 341nn72,76,88,90, 342nn94,108,114, 345nn5,728, 346nn31,34,41, 347nn57,59,63,64, 350n53; at Jeu de Paume, 30, 75, 198, 204–6, 207, 282, 283; on the Kunstschutz, 81; and recovery effort, 282, 286; relationship with Jaujard, 204–5, 283; on right of first refusal, 214; and Room of Martyrs, 207, 283; on simulated donations, 198–99; on state protection of private Jewish collections, 75, 227 Vallat, Xavier, 30, 203, 208, 210–11, 219, 292 Vélodrôme d’hiver roundup, 287, 343n124 Venus de Milo, 72, 75, 305 Verdier, Paul, 111, 114–15 Verlet, Pierre, 284, 295–96 Versailles: Grand Trianon museum, 94; Jeu de Paume, 94; palace, 20–21, 71, 74, 94, 298; Petit Trianon museum, 94 Vichy, city of, 11, 20, 24 Vichy regime ideology: anticommunism, 25, 43, 44, 159, 228, 267, 268; as justification for policies, 5, 11, 14, 21, 25, 26–27, 31–32, 42, 43, 51, 52, 119–20, 126–28, 129, 136, 140, 146, 149, 151, 156–57, 159, 164, 177, 182, 190, 264, 296, 330n24; regionalism, 26, 42, 99, 119, 136, 140, 156–57; traditionalism, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25, 26–27, 29, 31–32, 33, 42, 43, 47, 52, 56, 120, 126–27, 136, 151, 164, 177, 182, 187–88, 264, 277, 296, 330n24 Vichy regime policies: as anti-Semitic, 3, 4, 7–8, 10, 12, 13, 25–26, 43–46, 60, 192, 196, 208–10, 215, 218, 226, 228, 234, 237, 263, 268, 270, 271, 273, 287, 289, 297, 340n55, 343n124, 348n16; regarding archeology,

31, 119–20, 130, 133–40, 274, 343n125, 348n30; regarding art exports, 229–33, 234, 274–75; regarding bronze statues, 145–46, 148–51, 157, 160, 168, 169, 187, 190, 276–77, 297, 329n6; Carcopino Law, 31, 119–20, 128, 130, 133–34, 135–39; cultural preservation policies, 4–6, 11–12, 14, 21, 27–28, 29, 31, 33, 36, 43, 48–51, 52–53, 58–62, 86, 100–101, 106, 107–18, 296–97, 298, 302; regarding economy, 26–27; enacted by executive decree, 11, 27, 91, 96, 136, 140, 150, 151, 256, 259, 296, 330n18; regarding Freemasons, 25–26, 213, 228, 270; regarding Jewish-owned art collections, 3–4, 10, 12, 48–50, 193, 207, 208–27, 218, 222, 223–25, 233–34, 266, 279, 283–84, 290–92, 297, 317n97, 340n69; National Aid (Secours national), 8, 49, 209–10, 211, 212, 233; National Revolution, 5, 24–28, 32, 110, 117, 118, 120, 129, 140, 296; vs. Popular Front policies, 41–43; vs. postwar policies, 4, 6–7, 11–12, 13, 26–27, 31, 33, 87, 100–101, 103, 109, 117, 140, 193, 233, 263–64, 274–78, 292, 296–98, 302, 325n53, 348n30; Service du travail obligatoire (STO), 24, 78, 115, 146, 159, 161, 190, 268, 313n13, 319n27; vs. Third Republic, 5, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 41–43, 48, 50, 68, 86, 87, 88, 92–93, 97, 108–9, 111–12, 114, 128, 129, 133–34, 139, 140, 263–64, 296. See also museum reform law of 1941 Voss, Hermann, 194, 225, 250 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, 300 Watteau, Antoine: Gersaint’s Shopsign, 246, 252, 253 Wildenstein, Georges, 228 Wildenstein collection, 75, 191, 196, 199 Wolff Metternich, Count Franz, 41, 257, 347n61; and Kunstschutz attempts to protect art works, 39–40, 78, 79, 83–84, 200, 203, 204, 239, 240 world heritage, 292–94

382  Index

World War I, 147, 154, 168, 209, 298–99, 350n55; armistice of November 1918, 18; and classicism, 54, 62; destruction of Reims cathedral during, 68, 103–4; legacy of, 67, 68, 110, 298–99; Treaty of Versailles, 196, 198, 237, 238 World War II: Allied landings in Normandy, 85, 102, 217, 257; Allied landings in North Africa, 82, 221; Franco-German armistice of June 1940, 11, 18–20, 31, 48, 128, 228;

French military defeat in 1940, 4, 5, 17–18, 27, 28, 32, 50, 89, 110, 124, 127, 145, 155, 296; French refugees, 17–18, 20, 81, 85; liberation of Paris, 102, 258, 271; Stalingrad, 159 youth programs, 42, 43, 48, 50–51, 179, 274, 317n105 Zay, Jean, 68–69, 104, 177, 243