A comic strip by historian Emmanuelle Polak (Editions du Louvre), a successful podcast on France Culture, a play, a biography by Jennifer Lesieur, and since this Friday, April 12, the baptism of a terrace in front of the Game by Paume de Paris: the figure of Rose Valland, a resistance fighter who played a key role in the safeguarding and recovery of cultural property looted during the Occupation, has never been so popular.
Very recognized in the immediate post-war period, to the point of having been made an officer of the Legion of Honor, of obtaining the French Resistance medal or of being elevated to the rank of Commander of Arts and Letters, this woman discreet then ended up falling into relative oblivion, before arousing renewed interest around fifteen years ago.
Her story, which she told in 1961 in Le front de l’art (republished in 1997 and 2014) is indeed singular, if not edifying. His action made it possible to significantly advance the issue of restitution of works of art looted by the Nazis. “The bravery of Rose Valland, and her total commitment to protecting our cultural heritage in the face of great danger, commands, more than ever, our deep respect and admiration. This shadowy heroine is, for each of us, an example figure,” said Laurence Des Cars, president of the Louvre, just before the unveiling of the commemorative plaque by the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati.
From the summer of 1940, a vast operation began to confiscate the libraries and works of art of the enemies of the Reich, and more particularly of Jewish families, galleries and collectors. We need to find a place to store the flights which are massive. The Jeu de Paume and the Louvre will serve as warehouses and escrow. Rose Valland was then a conservation officer there, on a voluntary basis, and remained there throughout the Occupation. In the shadows, she observes the ballets of works (including the 200 collections belonging to Jewish collectors, such as the Rothschilds or David Weils), as well as the visits of Nazi dignitaries, starting with Hermann Goering.
In notebooks, and at the risk of her life, she draws up clandestine registers, as well as records of departures from the cash registers. Name of looted victims, number of works, destinations, name of agents responsible for transfers and transporters, marks on crates, numbers and dates of convoys, dimensions of works, she records everything… Her files are also detailed and precise possible. She goes so far as to decipher carbon papers thrown in the museum trash cans. In July 1943, Rose Valland attended, hidden, the so-called “degenerate” art burning, organized in front of the Jeu de Paume, and tried to take note of the masterpieces which went up in smoke. The new Rose Valland terrace is also located at the precise location where 600 paintings, including some by Picasso, Chagall and Otto Dix, were destroyed.
Spying on the conversations, she provides information to the resistance on the trains transporting the works, so that these convoys are spared. In the fall of 1944, it communicated to the Allies the names of the German and Austrian depots (Altaussee, Neuschwanstein, etc.) in order to prevent them from bombing them. At the time of the Liberation of Paris, she stood guard at the museum, and even had to convince some that she was not a collaborator.
In 1945, she was sent to the French army, to General Lattre de Tassigny, in Germany. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 works have been stolen, and are located in Germany and Austria, particularly in old salt mines. Its mission consists of carrying out investigations to identify looted paintings, tapestries or sculptures, and trying to bring them back to France. Using her notebooks, she works with those called the “Monuments men”, a body of soldiers dedicated to the “safeguarding of art, monuments and archives”, distributed throughout the armies. allies.
In 2014, a film by George Clooney told the epic tale of these commitments, and put Rose Valland in the guise of actress Cate Blanchett. Very fictionalized, the film highlights the passionate relationship between Valland and a men’s monument, while the curator did not hide her homosexuality and called herself “mademoiselle”. The actress Suzanne Flon, in John Frankenheimer’s film, The Train (1964), was much more likely.
In any case, 61,233 works will be found in Germany and Austria, and repatriated to France. Rose Valland will also bring back from Germany the precious catalog of Hermann Göring’s art collection, containing the list of 1,376 works that he purchased or looted between April 1931 and November 1943.
After eight years in Germany, the curator with round glasses and an unchanging bun will continue her task, this time in the restitution requests department. From 1945, thousands of dispossessed owners, mainly Jews, filed cases to try to recover their property.
We owe to Rose Valland, from 1947, a directory of looted property, which lists 2,300 files, with photos. It remains crucial, to this day, for identifying stolen works and enabling research. Through the work of the artistic recovery commission, and thanks to the lists skillfully edited by Valland, 45,441 properties were returned to their owners between 1945 and 1956, 13,000 will be sold and 2,000 deposited in national museums (the time to find out who they belong). The help of the woman nicknamed “Captain Fine Arts” made it possible to turn several pages of the black book of spoliations. Friday March 12, Éric de Rothschild, whose family was completely robbed during the Occupation, was there, grateful. “I would like to propose to the Tuileries to plant the variety of roses, called Rose Valland in homage to the resistance,” he said on the sidelines of the ceremony.
Rose Valland died at the age of 81, in a rest home in Ile de France. She is buried with her partner, the British Joyce Heer, in the family vault in her native village in Isère, Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs (38). It is in this same village that the association “The memory of Rose Valland”, run by Jacqueline Barthalay, also present on March 12, and Rose’s little cousin, Christine Vernay, watch over her posterity. As for the Louvre, it believes that the work started by Rose Valland is far from finished. In addition to the 2,000 works resulting from the “Artistic Recovery” which have been preserved there since the post-war, awaiting their owner, there are, “without doubt, many others which, resulting from Nazi spoliations but arrived in our collections later and through other channels, require to be identified in order to be returned” explained Laurence des Cars. By celebrating Rose Valland, “we want to reiterate how total our commitment is in this matter so that no stain remains in the national collections,” she concluded.