Monuments Men leads to return of art won in WWII poker game in Germany

The family of a US soldier who won three paintings in a game of poker have returned them after watching The Monuments Men.

Matt Damon, left, and George Clooney in a scene from film The Monuments Men.

The family of a World War II tank commander who won three historic paintings in a game of poker have returned the stolen treasures after they watched the George Clooney movie The Monuments Men.

Two more paintings acquired by a librarian while serving with the US Army in Germany in late 1945 were also handed over during a ceremony yesterday at the State Department in Washington after the families contacted a US foundation that tracks down missing artwork.

“These paintings are just the tip of the iceberg of the hundreds of thousands of paintings and other cultural items still missing since World War II,” said Robert Edsel, the founder and chairman of the Monuments Men Foundation.

The foundation is named after a US task force of museum directors, curators and educators who protected cultural treasures from the destruction of World War II, an achievement memorialised in The Monuments Men last year.

Major William Oftebro of the 750th tank battalion obtained the three paintings while he was ­responsible for guarding a potassium mine near the city of Dessau in what is today the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Local museum officials had stored their collection underground to save it from Allied bombing raids.

According to the Monuments Men Foundation, Oftebro mailed the artworks by 17th-century Flemish painter Frans Francken III, 18th-century German artist Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich and his Austrian contemporary Franz de Paula Ferg back home, telling his family he had won them in a poker game. Last August, years after Oftebro’s death, his stepson, James Hetherington, contacted the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation after learning of its mission through the movie, which is based on one of Mr Edsel’s books.

Mr Edsel used the Hollywood fame to establish what he calls “America’s most wanted for culture,” a toll-free tip-off line for missing artworks from World War II which in many cases crossed the Atlantic illegally. “This has proved very successful,” he said.

The second discovery handed over yesterday, which involves a painting of Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter, and a painting of Charles I of England, was also made possible by the hotline.

According to the foundation, both paintings had been at Castle Friedrichshof just north of Frankfurt, which in April 1945 was confiscated by US forces and converted into an officer’s club.

They ended up in the hands of Margaret Reeb, a librarian for the US Special Services.

“We don’t know who she ­acquired them from or what she paid for them. But she ended up with them and brought them back to America, and they have been in a safety deposit box ever since,” said Reeb’s nephew Randy Holland, 70, who attended the State Department ceremony.

“When we discovered them after she passed away 10 years ago, we kept them in the safety deposit box because we didn’t know what to do with them either.”

Mr Holland’s younger brother Mike heard about the Monuments Men Foundation on the radio, and the family decided to ­return the paintings to the owner, a German count who now runs a five-star hotel on the lavish estate of his forefathers.

“We just thought it was the right thing to do,” said Randy Holland, a former tax collector from Montana. “Thou shalt not steal. When we found out that these things were stolen, you wouldn’t feel right keeping them, no matter how valuable they are.”

Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said that thanks to family and foundation efforts, “the US is now helping to right the errors of the past”.

German ambassador Peter Wittig told the families that “you can be assured that these works of art are coming home to a worthy setting”.

AFP