The Bernterode salt mine shaft, a suitable place for the Amber Room ?

Titel : Experiences of a Monuments Officer in Germany

Author(s): Walker Hancock

Source: College Art Journal, Vol. 5, No. 4 (May, 1946), pp. 271-311

The story of monument men Walker Hancok reads as the following.

THE PRUSSIAN CROWN JEWELS

One evening a young ordnance captain laid on the desk of the Army Chief of Staff a richly jewelled scepter and an equally richly jewelled orb. The story he told seemed too fantastic for belief, but there was the evidence, and I was sent to investigate and make a report. The site of the discovery was a salt mine at Bernterode in the northern reaches of the Thuringian Forest. Its depth was some eighteen hundred feet. For nine years it had been used as a munitions plant and storage depot, recently employing two thousand Italian, French, and Russian slave laborers. A camp of DPs, most of them formerly laborers in the mine, was on the premises. Seven American soldiers from an ordnance depot, inspecting the mine for ammunition, found some four hundred thousand tons of it in the twenty-three kilometers of corridors that spread away from the bottom of the elevator shaft. In the course of their exploration the men observed a masonry wall built into the side of the main corridor about a quarter of a mile from the shaft and not far from a large store of dynamite. Noticing that the mortar was still fresh, they made an opening, and, after tunnelling through masonry and rubble to a depth of nearly six feet, uncovered a frame latticed door padlocked on the opposite side. Breaking through this they entered a room divided by partitions into a series of bays, filled with paintings, boxes and tapestries and hung with brilliant banners. The contents were grouped around four caskets, one of which had been decorated with a wreath and red silk ribbons bearing the swastika and the name ADOLPH HITLER. Posting the other men as guard, Sergeant Traverse, who was in charge of the detail, returned at once to the command post of his company, some eighty miles away, and reported the find to his commanding officer. The following day the captain and the men made a cursory inspection of the cache. Among the contents which came to light were two crowns and two swords in finely wrought gold and silver scabbards as well as the scepter and orb which the captain brought as his evidence to headquarters. Crawling through the opening into the hidden room, I was at once forcibly struck with the realization that this was no ordinary depository of works of art. The place had the aspect of a shrine. The symmetry of the plan, a central passageway with three compartments on either side connecting two large end bays; the dramatic display of the splendid banners, hung in deep rows over the caskets and stacked with decorative effect in the corners; the presence of the caskets themselves; all suggested the setting for a modern pagan ritual. The pictures in the entrance bay, many of them though there were, seemed to have been brought in as an afterthought. The first two that I noticed were Cranach's Adam and Eve. I drew out a large canvas from the end of one of the stacks facing the wall. It was Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera. Hardly stopping to gasp, I turned to examine the caskets. In each of the three compartments on the right of the central passageway was a wooden coffin, placed parallel to the partitions. To the lid of each a label had been fastened with Scotch tape. Hastily scrawled in reddish crayon, these read, "Feldmarschall von Hindenburg," "Frau von Hindenburg," "Friedrich Wilhelm ler, der Soldaten König." Hitler's wreath was placed upon this casket-the Füher's tribute to the "Soldier King." A ribbon bearing the words "Die Kommandatur Potsdam" was placed by Frau von Hindenburg's coffin. In the last compartment on the left a great metal casket lay perpendicular to the partitions. It bore no decoration of any kind-merely the label "Friedrich der Grosse." Near this casket was a small metal box containing photographs in color, with copies in black and white, of portraits of military leaders from the "Soldier King" to Hitler. A label on the cover indicated that the key would be found at the War School at Potsdam. Our ordnance men had, however, wisely decided not to wait for the key. There were two hundred and twenty-five regimental banners dating from the early Prussian wars and including many of the First World War. Several of the older ones were tattered and mounted upon netting. All were unfurled, contributing to the goregous display. Their leather sheaths were stacked with a great pile of tapes-tries from the palace in Berlin. I next turned my attention to the three boxes in which the crowns and scepter had been found. The contents proved to be the regalia used in the coronation of Frederick William the First and Sophie Charlotte in 1713. The jewels had been removed from the crowns, according to the identifying label, "for honorable sale." There was the Great Seal in a silver and gold box, showing Frederick William enthroned; the huge plumed "Totenhelm," first used in the funeral of the Great Kurfürst in 1688; the sword given to the Kurfurst Albrecht Achilles by the Pope in 1460; as well as the Reich Sword, made for Prince Albrecht of Prussia in 1540. More than sixty steel ammunition boxes contained books and porcelain. The beautiful red leather volumes proved to be the complete library of Frederick the Great from his three palaces. The pictures, of which there were two hundred seventy-one in all, appeared to me mostly from palaces in Berlin and from Sanssouci at Potsdam. Among them was a great wealth of eighteenth century French painting: Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Boucher, Chardin-as well as a number of the best of Cranach and some later German masters. I asked some of the French laborers to tell me what they knew about the cache. They told me that German army officers had sent all civilians from the area about six weeks before. Working with great secrecy and using military personnel only, they had brought into the mine objects presumably of great value. A fortnight later the entrances of the cache were sealed. That was on the second of April. The shrine which was intended to preserve the most potent symbols of the German military tradition around which future generations might rally held its secret twenty-five days. That evening at army headquarters in Weimar, I made my report to the General, who ordered that all the contents of the depository should be evacuated forthwith. The coronation paraphernalia was to be brought at once to headquarters and everything else moved to a place of safety free from the hazards attendant upon the proximity of DPs and dynamite. Realizing what a task this would be, I telephoned to George for help. He came the long distance from Verdun, ready as always to do the most difficult work, and with his inexhaustible store of patience, skill and good humour. I borrowed his jeep to take the coronation treasure back to Weimar. The reflection that the Germans had made six ambush attacks just the week before in the forests through which I drove without guard was amusing in the light of the military pomp with which I was provided for the trip to Frankfort after the General had viewed the glittering trappings of royalty. General Hodges uttered some cautious words about the similarity of real jewels and imitations of paste, but I received immediate orders to deliver the objects to the Reichsbank vaults at Frankfort. The "route of march" was to be along the Reichsautobahn almost the whole way, a super highway, by this time entirely out of reach of the enemy and, so far as I could see, considerably safer than the Merritt Parkway. Not withstanding, my escort consisted of two motorcycles, three jeeps with light machine guns, two armored cars with anti-aircraft guns, and a weapons carrier with additional guards. Fifteen men formed the guard that conducted the precious little cargo to the safety of the bank vault. To aid in the work of evacuating the paintings and the celebrated remains two lieutenants were sent from headquarters. One of them became so fired with enthusiasm for packing and transporting works of art that from that time on he managed to keep his military duties strictly channelled in "fine arts work." Steve Kovalyak was of Slovakian parentage. He must have been a wrestler, for he looked and moved like a formidable one. He confessed to having been an instructor in a gymnasium. He seemed always to be in effervescent spirits. laughing, shouting some new joke or fresh discovery, and thriving on the presence of obstacles, which he invariably hurdled without the slightest show of effort. His knowledge of at least one Slavic dialect opened up worlds that the rest of us could never have entered, and his lack of knowledge of French and German somehow never prevented him from expressing any idea he chose in these languages. But Steve's greatest asset as a fine arts officer was his magnificent superiority to all the tangles of regulation and procedure that the army seems to put in the way of the accomplishment of any unusual task. Long and arduous experience as a combat officer in the infantry had taught him all the tricks of evading these without laying himself open to court martial, and his hardy insouciance carried him, seemingly unaware, over all the pitfalls, physical and administrative, that so concerned our immediate superiors. The men of the ordnance detail who had made the discovery also remained to help us, and were joined by a group of engineers. They were organized into two shifts working from eight o'clock in the morning until ten in the evening. Fourteen French laborers were engaged to help in moving the objects from the depository to the base of the elevator shaft. The fact that the only reward that they wished for their labors was the privilege of getting back into the subterranean passages of the mine made us particularly curiousa bout what they were doing during the long intervals when they disappeared from their duties. Packing materials were improvised from German military stores found in vast quantities on the premises. Gas-proof boots were cut into pads to tie between the paintings, and gas-proof mantles made ideal waterproof wrapping to protect them in the dripping shaft. The soldiers quickly learned the methods of packing, and worked in teams at the bottom of the mine. Each object was checked as it left the depository and again at the top of the shaft. I hardly know what we should have done without George's experienced guidance. I had never felt at a loss in handling works of art under any of the conditions known to us in civilian life. But in the presence of George's proficiency I always felt like a mere amateur. He mistrusted any short cuts while my major failing was a haunting impression that in these emergency operations the quickest way was bound to be the best. I remember the look of disapproval that he gave me once as I was coiling rope-with great speed and efficiency, It hought-by a kind of swinging motion as I had seen the Gloucester fishermen do. George's coils were deliberately fashioned around his left fore-arm, his left hand firmly grasping each uniformly measured loop as it was brought from the elbow. Steve at first chafed under the precisionist methods. "How long does he think I'm going to keep laying these ropes out in lengths of just twenty-three and one-half inches, all pointing just one degree east of north?" But Steve was either persuaded of the wisdom of the technique, or his admiration for George over-rode all minor considerations, for by the time we were ready to leave Bernterode, George had no more faithful disciple than Steve. The conditions under which we worked in the mine were far from agreeable. On more than one occasion the power failed and our lieutenants had to explore the nearby towns to find where the generators were, procure coal to keep them operating, and give orders to the burgomasters and factory officials involved. Once, caught below in the darkness during a hiatus that lasted several hours, I decided to expend my flashlight battery in order to write a letter rather than to endure the unbroken monotony. The Field Marshal's coffin served as a desk. Needless to say matches and cigarette lighters were not to be used in this explosive quarter. The Germans had threatened penalties of incredible severity for even carrying a match into the mine. The actual work of packing and hoisting consumed four days and ended on V-E Day. As the objects were brought to the surface they were stored in the large shed that housed the entrance to the shaft. This was, of course, kept constantly under guard. The caskets were the last to be hoisted. We arranged to leave Frederick the Great until the very end, as the great weight and size of his casket might have caused some trouble and we wanted to make sure of having the paintings and objects of more living interest safely out of the mine. His father and Frau von Hindenburg, being the lightest, were sent aloft first. I then rode up in the carriage with the Field Marshal. The six minutes spent alone in his company were particularly long ones. Then I waited at the surface entrance while Frederick the Great was loaded into the elevator down below. His casket weighed at least twelve hundred pounds, and if it had been one-half inch longer not even the engineers could have got it aboard. For more than an hour I waited while the men, eighteen hundred feet under the ground, struggled to squeeze the great weight into the carriage. Meanwhile a radio installed in the office alongside the shaft entrance poured forth patriotic speeches and music in celebration of the Victory in Europe. Finally the ready signal came and we started hoisting as slowly as the engines would turn. By one of the most whimsical of all coincidences ever arranged by the ironic Fates, the radio at this instant began playing the "Star Spangled Banner." And then, just as the casket of the greatest of the Prussian kings rose to the earth's surface, the tune changed to "God Save the King." Early the next morning our convoy of eight trucks and two jeeps without escort, started on its journey toward a place of safekeeping for the varied cargo. The caskets were put in the more appropriate shelter of a great thirteenth century castle. The works of art were entrusted to the skilled staff of one of Germany's few undamaged modern museums.

There are rumours and publications linking the Bernterode findings and facts to the Amber Room. However, the entire story remains mysterious.