Neuschwanstein's dark past
February 21, 2014
Splashed across postcards, travel guides and even Walt Disney products, "the castle of the fairy-tale king" lures more than a million visitors each year. Its instigator, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, was declared insane and later drowned a mysterious death in 1886. Weeks later, Neuschwanstein opened its doors to the public and remains a top tourist attraction in Germany today.
But the fairy-tale fortress has its own Nazi past, illuminated most recently in George Clooney's World War II drama, "The Monuments Men." The film follows an Allied special forces unit tasked with protecting and tracking down Europe's stolen treasures during the Second World War.
Eccentric King Ludwig II didn't construct the whimsical Neuschwanstein for royal purposes: He designed it as a hideaway from the public. In a perverse twist of the king's intentions, this is precisely what the Nazis did here with art plundered from their victims: hide it from the public.
Hitler's orders
"Search lodges, libraries and archives of the occupied territories for material valuable to Germany," Hitler ordered the Rosenberg taskforce - his exclusive art-looting team - in a 1940 transcript after German troops stormed neighboring France. Hitler's dream was to build a "Führer's Museum" in Linz, Austria, with the plundered treasures.
Between 1940 and 1945, Nazi officials funneled stolen valuables to various locations throughout Germany including monasteries, salt mines and castles.
"Neuschwanstein castle was chosen as headquarters of the 'Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg,' the German art-looting organization," said art historian Tanja Bernsau. Its location near the Austrian border, and far from Berlin or other likely Allied targets, made Neuschwanstein an ideal depot.
Although it was built to mirror a medieval structure, the architectural gem featured the latest technology of its time: central heating, flushing toilets and an electric bell system for summoning servants. The cornerstone stone was laid in 1868, but the castle remained unfinished, which meant ample space for storage.
Art espionage
Most of the looted property stored in Neuschwanstein stemmed from France, and it was the French connection that ultimately led the US army to the castle.
Before his death in 2006, Monuments Man and art historian S. Lane Faison, Jr. described the discovery in an interview for the Archives of American Art. The key, he said, was French curator Rose Valland.
"She pretended to be a [Nazi] collaborator," Faison said of Rose Valland, who worked at the Jeu de Paume Museum, one of the Nazis' central collection points before they shipped stolen wares to Germany. For four years, Valland secretly tracked where the art was being shipped.
Storming the hideout
Rose Valland's reports led the Allies to the Bavarian castle. When US troops descended upon Neuschwanstein in 1945, a vast collection of index cards, lists and slides were discovered, detailing about 21,000 stolen items. Among them was the Gent altarpiece from the Van Eyck brothers, the private jewelry and furniture collection of the Rothschild family, and the gold and silver works of David-Weill.
A current exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute's Archives of American Art highlights some of these World War II art rescue missions. "Monuments Men: On the Front Line to Save Europe's Art, 1942–1946," features black-and-white photographs of soldiers handling crates at a snow-covered Neuschwanstein.
"They would have preferred to leave the artworks in the castle to organize the restitution to France from there," art historian Tanja Bernsau said. "But as most of the contents in Neuschwanstein were stored uncrated and were valuable gold and silver works, they decided to relocate them for security reasons."
Rescue and restitution
Thus, the crates were relocated to US-directed Central Art Collecting Points, which were tasked with restitution, or tracking down the treasures' original owners.
"And that's where the huge task started," said Iris Lauterbach of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich. "The works of art had to be inventoried, photographed and restituted one by one. American and German art historians and secretaries worked together to restitute tens of thousands of pieces."
S. Lane Faison returned to Germany in 1951 to supervise the handover of US operations to the Germans and was struck by the enormity of the task.
"One of the saddest problems was that acres, I think you might say, of furniture just went on and on and on, piled up to the ceiling…and chairs, tables, household things, everything you could think of known to have come from Jewish sources," Faison said. "But what do you do? And if somebody lost six Louis XV chairs, which ones were they? And did we have them? There was no way - you can't identify such things."
Battle continues
Identification and art restitution work continues in Germany today. Recent discoveries of potentially stolen art continue to hit the headlines, and "The Monuments Men" film, recently premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, also sheds light on those responsible for preserving art in war. Nevertheless, Clooney's drama has its critics.
"I didn't like the film," Iris Lauterbach said. She appreciates the awareness the drama brings, but she questions whether a layperson can process the intricacies of the European war theater, the locations, the art involved. "The film pretends to be based on a true story, but it contains too many fictitious elements."
Those looking for the details in a tour of Neuschwanstein won't learn more either. Castle tours include includes King Lugwig II's lavish bedroom, an artificial dripstone cave and the modern-for-its-time kitchen. But there's no mention of the castle's role in Germany's dark chapter.
"We're not trying to hide that fact," said castle spokesperson Thomas Rainer. Management wants to confront the castle's role in Nazi history, he added. The director of the Bavarian Palace Museum department recently wrote an essay on the topic of art rescue sites during World War II.
"But we have more than a million visitors per year and very strict regular tours that last 30 minutes," Rainer said. "We focus on what we can during that time."