THE “EXCHANGE” PROPOSAL that the Germans had put on the table at the end of the previous year went back and forth throughout 1943. The French dragged their feet about what might be acceptable in exchange; Bunjes, acting on Göring’s behalf, kept trying to press forward. He also repeatedly indicated that the Germans wished to arrange an exchange for the Basel Antependium but the French continued to counter that it was too valuable to exchange. As 1943 wound down, the war was looking grimmer for the Germans and Göring wanted closure. In early December, he requested another viewing of two items still in discussion for trade: the Belle Allemande and the Presentation in the Temple altarpiece panel. He also wanted to see the Basel altar.
In July 1943, Bonnard had ordered Jaujard to return the altar from Chambord to the Louvre for an anticipated viewing by Göring that ultimately did not take place. Several weeks after the September 1943 plane crash, Jaujard quietly sent the altar back to Chambord without notifying Bonnard. Was it to create distance between the altar and bombing danger, as he officially explained, or to get it further away from Göring? In December, when Göring requested the new viewing, Bonnard called the Louvre to advise museum officials of the visit. When he learned that Jaujard had sent the altar back to Chambord, his already simmering rage at Jaujard began to boil. Bonnard called Hautecoeur, Jaujard’s superior, and said he was going to fire Jaujard, but Hautecoeur calmed him down. The altar once again traveled back from the Loire to the Louvre.
The French and the Germans then began a tense, high-tempered debate over the arrangements for Göring’s viewing of the three pieces. First, they debated over the place. Initially it was to be the Musée de Cluny, then the Louvre. After the French believed the location issue had been resolved, Göring expressed concern for his personal security and demanded that the items be moved instead to his residence just across the Seine on the quai d’Orsay in the former French foreign ministry building. The French worried what might happen when the items left the safety of the French museums and whether the ministry building might be considered German territory. After they finally agreed to Göring’s stipulation, a new debate ensued as to whether French or German trucks would transport the items from the Louvre.
Finally, on December 11, the artworks were taken to the ministry building. The curators waited for two hours in an antechamber as Bonnard met with Göring and other German officials behind closed doors. Inside, Bonnard agreed to exchange the Belle Allemande and the Presentation in the Temple altarpiece panel, an arrangement that the curators had agreed to in principle. Some of them had done so for artistic reasons—pending appropriate items in return—since each item would complete an ensemble whose related works were already in Germany. Others may have hoped it would head off further German initiatives.
HERMANN GÖRING IN DRESS UNIFORM WITH JEWELED BATON (BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 146-1979-089-22/O.ANG.)
Inside the meeting room, Bonnard also told Göring that the Basel Antependium could not be exchanged because its value was too great. However, he suggested, Pétain could theoretically offer it to Göring as a gift. This was the last thing Göring wanted since it would remove the thin veneer of propriety from his scheme. The curators could hear his enraged shouting through the walls. Eventually, the doors flew open and Göring, in his white dress uniform and jewel-encrusted baton in hand, marched swiftly past the waiting curators without a glance at them. The other Germans followed, then finally Bonnard, who stopped and simply told the curators to pack up the three items and bring them back to the Louvre.
After Göring calmed down, he agreed to accept the other two pieces, but added a new stipulation: that several Louvre curators would personally bring the Belle Allemande and the altarpiece panel to Germany, where they could choose the objects they wished in exchange. This was not so much a gesture of generosity as it was a publicity stunt intended to suggest to the world that the French had freely agreed to the exchange, and thus avoid an international media storm like the one that had followed the theft of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The Germans, thinking somehow that it would encourage the curators, said they would travel in a private, armored rail car armed with an anti-aircraft gun and escorted by fighter planes.
Bonnard agreed to the bizarre arrangement, designating René Huyghe as the representative who would travel to Germany. When Huyghe found out, he was horrified. Not only did he want no part of such a trip, he suspected, like the other curators, that the works from which they would be allowed to “choose” would be from pillaged collections. Moreover, if the French could not identify any acceptable works to take in exchange, there was no guarantee the Nazis would allow the French-owned works back out of Germany.
HERMANN GÖRING WITH PHILIPPE PÉTAIN
During the tumult, Jaujard had been away on sick leave and his deputy Joseph Billiet had handled the situation. Billiet had let it be known to their superiors that any “exchange” would be illegal unless the Curators Committee met and approved it, which infuriated Bonnard, who wanted to placate the Germans. Bonnard forbade the committee to meet and told the curators they could not negotiate further with Bunjes. On the urgent request of the curators, Jaujard cut short his convalescence and returned on December 29, when he reiterated to Bonnard that it was illegal to go forward with an exchange without approval by the Curators Committee. “I’ll take you by the throat and make you pay personally,” Bonnard threatened, adding that he would smash any resistance.
Then suddenly, in an attempt to save face, Bonnard ordered the committee to meet. However, he said, they were to consider only two specific questions relating to transportation of the exchanged works to Germany. The committee met the following day in an emergency session. They agreed that the Bonnard–Göring arrangement smacked of relinquishment of the items, not a freely negotiated exchange. Then, instead of addressing Bonnard’s transportation questions, the committee voted that they would finalize their approval of the exchange only after approving the items to be offered by the Germans. They also agreed that neither the Belle Allemande nor the altarpiece panel could leave the Louvre until Jaujard negotiated with Bunjes as to the process for the exchange, clearly referring in part to Göring’s demand for the curators’ trip to Germany.
ABEL BONNARD (LEFT) IN WEIMAR, GERMANY 1941 (BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 183-B05235/HOFFMAN)
When Bonnard learned of the committee’s vote, he called Jaujard to his office and bellowed that he would not be blackmailed. “You’re a little despot,” he screamed at Jaujard. “I’ll break you and the gang of undisciplined functionaries that support you.” But having no choice, Bonnard allowed Jaujard and the curators to meet with Bunjes the following day to discuss the substance of the exchange proposal and the question of the curators traveling to Germany.
Jaujard began the meeting with Bunjes by commenting on a photograph on the wall of Bunjes’ predecessor, whom he knew had been sent to the Russian front after failing in negotiations with the French. What happened to him? Jaujard innocently asked. Jaujard listened with empathy to Bunjes’ explanation and then announced that the curators were ready to collectively resign over the exchange matter. Moreover, he said, the British would find out and would quickly use it for propaganda against Germany. The French wanted the Basel altar dropped from consideration, Jaujard said, and they did not want the curators to have to bring the other two works to Germany. Bunjes would utter no further word on either issue.
Bonnard ordered the Curators Committee to meet again on January 3 to address only the question of whether the two items would go to Germany or stay in Paris—with a Vichy official, not the Musées Nationaux—until the exchange was resolved. The committee again disregarded Bonnard’s order and instead voted that (1) negotiations for items to be received in exchange would continue; (2) the Belle Allemande and the altarpiece panel would be given to Bunjes for transport to Germany, thus negating a need for the curators to travel to Germany; (3) a list, newly provided by Germany, detailing artworks for the exchange would be brought immediately to Paris to be examined; (4) any negotiations must be ratified by the curators; and (5) if no agreement was finalized, the French works would be returned.
Bonnard, his authority once again undermined, was apoplectic. He again threatened to fire Jaujard and said he would put curator René Huyghe “below ground.” When Hautecoeur expressed support for the curators, Bonnard replied, “You always take the side of your former colleagues. If that’s the case, you’ll be the one to take the hit.” He would keep his promise.
Jaujard once again feared for both his job and his safety. He had discussed his concerns with his close friends, the Chamsons, who were fearful that if Jaujard were arrested, not only would the entire system’s artworks be at risk but the curators might also be taken into custody. Chamson arranged a contingency plan: if Jaujard or the Chamsons needed to flee, they would go to a remote Resistance safe house in the mountains, where an already-agreed password would give them access. However, the danger of Vichy action against them receded when Jaujard’s staff again threatened to resign en masse if he were dismissed. Bonnard was cornered. As much as he would have liked to fire them all, he knew he could not possibly replace all of them with qualified people or without disastrous publicity. But several months later, he would get rid of Hautecoeur.
The Belle Allemande and the altarpiece panel were tendered to the Germans on January 4, 1944, the official document removing them from the French collections signed by Bonnard. As the French had suspected, the two pieces did not go to any museum, but rather to Göring’s lavish Norse-style country palace, Carinhall, which already overflowed with art that he was proud to show to guests, receiving them while dressed as an Indian maharaja complete with turban, in Roman togas and in mock-medieval hunting costumes. Not surprisingly, the items that had been promised in exchange for the Belle Allemande and the panel did not arrive. Eventually, five other pieces appeared instead, one of which had been confiscated from French Jews and displayed in the Jeu de Paume, proving the French suspicions correct. Göring continued to press for the Basel altar, indicating that he would accept it as a gift in appreciation for German authorities having protected French monuments and artwork during and after the 1940 invasion, a particularly ironic claim given the large number of provincial museums that had been destroyed by the Germans in the spring of 1940.
In mid-1942, Hitler might well have felt that the complete domination of Europe was within reach. But much had changed by the end of 1943. Germany was slowly being pushed westward out of Russia and Italy had surrendered to the Allies, who were making progress against the German forces still fighting there. The Allies had developed increasingly effective countermeasures against the feared German U-boats and German air superiority in Europe was no longer assured. The Germans knew their chances of a wholesale victory were looking increasingly slim. Hitler had said years before that he would get the Louvre’s art upon his final victory. As 1943 drew to a close, the Germans once again began to stretch their tentacles towards the art, knowing that the opportunities to grab it were getting slimmer as well.
On January 4, 1944, the same day the Belle Allemande and the Presentation in the Temple altarpiece panel were handed over to Bunjes, Felix Kuetgens of the Kunstschutz met with a representative of Bonnard. Given current conditions, Kuetgens said, the Germans felt that the best way to protect the Louvre’s treasures was to return them all to Paris. By any measure, the suggestion was absurd, given the ongoing Allied bombing and road conditions. Its only result would be to gather the artworks in a single location almost across the street from the German military headquarters in Paris, where they could most easily and quickly seize them. Kuetgens went on, saying that since there were not enough trucks or fuel for such a measure, the move could be limited to some of the “masterpieces of universal value.” The German military, he said, would be happy to provide the trucks. They needed only Bonnard’s approval. The next day, his approval obtained, Kuetgens relayed the message to Jaujard. Some of the biggest dangers for the treasures of the Louvre lay just ahead.