AFI Dallas Film Festival preview: The Rape of Europa

by Chad Jones

For anyone who knows their Greek mythology, the original tale of the Rape of Europa details how a sex-crazed Zeus transformed himself into a bull, kidnapped the princess Europa and hauled her away to Crete.

Over time, the tale was viewed as a symbolic oral history, and it eventually became the subject of oodles of classic paintings.

But more recently, in the 2006 documentary The Rape of Europa, director Bonni Cohen details Adolph Hitler's somewhat unknown but far-reaching war against European art.

The film, which draws upon Lynn Nicholas' award-winning 1994 book of the same name, shows how Hitler was able to loot and destroy thousands of artworks during his reign and how a handful of U.S. art historians (dubbed "Monuments Men") were deployed to Europe alongside Allied Forces in an attempt to preserve whatever priceless works they could from the massive destruction of WWII.

In the interview below, Directors Bonni Cohen and Richard Berge (who I'll refer to collectively as "Cohen/Berge" ) discuss the following:

1. What motivated her to make this documentary
2. Whether Hitler just couldn't handle being rejected
3. Whether it's possible for two countries to engage in full-scare war and yet respect each other's priceless monuments
4. Why there ought to be U.S. Monuments Men in today's excursions in the Middle East (there aren't).

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PEGNEWS: What motivated you to turn The Rape of Europa into a documentary?

Cohen/Berge : Nicole Newnham and I read the book by Lynn H. Nicholas, which was published in 1994, and I can safely say that her book was a landmark in the sense that for the first time the vast story of the fate of art in the Third Reich and World War II was brought together into one comprehensive history. Her work opened the door for all of the interest in art restitution that has been generated ever since. Everyone in the field credits her as the pioneer.

Lynn's stories in the book had such visual content. We could see how easily the stories could come to life on screen. Many of the eyewitnesses to this history were still alive and able to tell their stories.

Here you had the highest aspirations of our nature, in the form of art, under threat by the manifestations of the dark side of human nature: genocidal racism and catastrophic warfare on a scale never experienced. Art and war side by side. On top of that, the story was inherently visual—it’s about art after all.

PN: In The Rape of Europa , the fact that Hitler was rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna when he as 18-years old is cited as a possible motivation for his rage and racism. After all, it is said several Jews sat on the application board. While there are obviously many more important and more complicated factors, how do you think this discouragement can account for the hatred that fueled and embodied his career?

Cohen/Berge: Obviously, Hitler didn’t go straight from art school reject to raving, genocidal dictator. At most, I think, one can only assume that his grave disappointment fanned the flames of a racist ideology that was already present in some form. But once he got into power, he was able to indulge his early interest in art by dictating approved artistic styles and by collecting art on a historic scale.

PEGNEWS: Another surprising fact presented in the film is that Hitler actually drafted a hit-list of art works from various countries that he hoped to one day steal (Rembrandts, Rubbens, etc). Not only that, but the list actually predates his invasion of the countries whose art was listed. What is it that Hitler hoped to accomplish by plundering and destroying these artworks, and how does that fit into the ideology of his campaign as a whole?

Cohen/Berge: The hit list you mention was referred to as the Kummel Report, compiled by German art historians (arguably, the fathers of the discipline of modern art history) under the supervision of the then-director of the Berlin State Museums, Otto Kummel. The point was to secretly identify art works in the collections of other countries that were desirable to bring to Germany. The Nazis made some possibly legitimate justifications, like recovering certain art works that had been taken to France by Napoleon from Germany in the early 19th century.

But mostly they claimed rights to “Germanic” art works simply because they were created by German artists, like Durer or Breughel, whether or not those paintings had never been in a German collection. Kummel sent art historians as spies to European museums before the war to gather intelligence about what could be taken later. The point was to bring anything considered Germanic (but also other masterpieces, like those of the Italian Renaissance) to Germany to build the most important collection in the world.

(By the way, if you are interested in the complicity of the German art world in Nazi depredations, I recommend The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany, by Jonathan Petropoulos, an historian who appears in the film).

PEGNEWS: Do you know if there are any "Venus fixers" (art historians/preservationists) working with U.S. military forces in either Iraq or Afghanistan?

Cohen/Berge: My knowledge is limited with regard to the looting that occurred in Iraq in the early days of the invasion. But I do know that experts were convened to advise the Pentagon on what might be expected and how to respond.

Unfortunately, contrary to what happened during World War II when President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower on down the ranks responded to advice from cultural experts by creating the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the Allied Military Government, our invading forces in Iraq didn’t really act on the advice offered by this latest committee of experts.

We know now that the Baghdad Museum was looted of some 15,000 objects within the first days. Some of these objects are relics of ancient civilizations, including some of the oldest written languages we know of. Utterly irreplaceable.

Thankfully, many of the looted items have been recovered. A few days after the invasion, I got a phone call from one of the living Monuments Men from World War II, a lifelong art historian who seemed to be almost in tears.

“Why couldn’t they have called up some of us living MFAA vets for our advice!?" he asked. "We protected hundreds of museums from looting during World War II. It’s a rather simple thing to park a tank or two outside of these important cultural buildings.”

In response to questions about the looting, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld replied that “stuff happens.” Maybe there was something special about the so-called "Greatest Generation" because I can’t imagine Roosevelt or Eisenhower giving the same reply as Rumsfeld.

PEGNEWS: Do you think it is possible to engage in war and yet respect monuments so far as war allows ?

Cohen/Berge: Absolutely. If the history of the Monuments Men in the Second World War tells us anything, it is that the protection of art and monuments is possible. But we shouldn’t take the survival of art for granted. Leaders have to make the protection of art an expressed priority at the highest levels in order for a policy of protection to be initiated and to be effective.

PEGNEWS: So . . . what if Hitler had been accepted into the Academy in Vienna instead?

Cohen/Berge: Let’s let the audience speculate about that.

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