The Monuments Men Filming Locations: The places where the Nazis kept the looted art
Posted by Ra Moon
The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program was established by the Allied armies in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during World War II.
According to Wikipedia, about 400 service members and civilians worked with military forces to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage.
Also, they found and returned works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for protection.
According to Wikipedia, about 400 service members and civilians worked with military forces to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage.
Also, they found and returned works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for protection.
Directed by George Clooney and starring a distinguished troop of celebrities, the movie was filmed in the UK and Germany.
This production brings to the big screen the decisive moments when many of the major cultural and artistic artworks of our civilization were about to be lost forever.
We will visit the locations where The Monuments Men was filmed, and also we'll travel to some of the places that played an important role in this story, based on the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.
Where was The Monuments Men filmed?
The movie was based in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam (the same where Dark was filmed), and some outdoors were filmed in Berlin.
The scene pictured on top was recorded at Neue Wache in the Unter den Linden boulevard.
Image 20th Century Fox / Alex Jilitsky
The Astronomer by Vermeer (left) was one of the thousands of paintings recovered after the war.
On the other side, Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man is one of the masterpieces that were lost during the conflict.
A scene of the film shows the Raphael burning. Although this has been never confirmed, according to this source, the Polish government (the painting belonged to the collection of Czartoryski Museum of Krakow), stated in 2012 that the portrait was found in a bank vault in an 'undisclosed location'.
Writer Lynn H. Nicholas suggested in his book about Nazi plunder The Rape of Europa that if the painting were to reappear today, it would be worth more than 100 million US dollars (Wikipedia).
Image 20th Century Fox
Osterwieck is one of the most important locations, along with other cute German towns like Goslar (included in our list of 15 beautiful German cities that were not destroyed during WWII) or Halberstadt, which were used for outdoor scenes.
Image Stadtkatze
Also, the news about the discovery in 2012 of a flat in Munich filled with plundered paintings (not made public until November 2013), raised a lot of international interest in the story.
On the perfect timing for the release of the movie.
Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt. If the good guys were the Monuments Men, their counterpart on the Nazi side was the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce.
The ERR was an organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during the war, like the famous and still missing Amber Room from the Catherine Palace in Pushkin, Russia.
Image Jürgen Mangelsdorf
Salt mines and castles were used by the Nazis to stock the loot, but also to keep German art legitimately evacuated from museums for safekeeping.
One of the mines featured in the film is Altaussee, in Austria. This was one of the biggest repositories, containing artworks from all over Europe, that were intended for the projected Führermuseum in Linz.
Image Monuments Men Foundation
Merkers salt mine, in Thuringia, contained also gold and personal belongings from Nazi concentration camp victims.
Image Pilot Micha
American generals Patton and Eisenhower in Merkers (left). Monuments Men were present in very small numbers at the front lines.
There was no established precedent for what they confronted. They frequently entered liberated towns and cities ahead of ground troops, working quickly to assess the damage and make temporary repairs before moving on with Allied Armies as they conquered Nazi territory (Wikipedia).
Image National Archives / Monuments Men Foundation
An example of the good work of the Monuments Men, was the urgent building of a temporary roof and saving what could be saved of the Camposanto of Pisa, burned by an Allied bomb.
The old monumental cemetery was considered one of the most important and priceless artistic treasures in all of Italy.
Image Leo von Klenze, Der Camposanto in Pisa, 1858.
The romantic castle of Neuschwanstein was also used as a huge depot for items from Nazi plunder, especially from private collectors and Jews in France.
Image Sang Yun Lee
Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece is one of the representative artworks chosen in the film to show the fate of these wonders.
The fascinating story alone of this set of paintings could be used to make another film.
Image Hans Olofsson
Panels from Ghent Altarpiece in Altaussee. Without question, the allies made invaluable work thanks to Monuments Men.
However, we must also remember that both Americans and British bomb civilians and cities of great artistic value (Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo...) with a ferocity never witnessed before in the annals of war. They called it Terror Bombing.
Image Monuments Men Foundation
In the Battle of Monte Cassino (Italy) in 1944, an allied bombing almost totally destroyed the old abbey.
This time, the treasures held in the buildings were moved before the battle by German officers.
Image Monuments Men Foundation / Radomił Binek
The historical city of Milan also suffered extensive damage from Allied ruthless attacks.
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper was close to being destroyed in 1943 after Santa Maria Delle Grazie church was hit by the bombs.
Image Monuments Men Foundation
This picture from 1945 is from a church in Ellingen (Bavaria), that US forces used to store some Nazi-looted art.
Image by courtesy of National Archives
The RAF Station scenes were filmed at Duxford Imperial War Museum, near Cambridge (UK).
There are several interesting links in this post to keep on reading about these intriguing stories. We also recommend the 2006 book and documentary film The Rape of Europa.
Can you help to improve this article about the filming locations of The Monuments Men? To complete and correct this report, any feedback, info, or images that you may have are more than welcome, thank you!
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NOTICE: If you’re using this information on your website, please credit and link to this page as a source.
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Ra Moon
Atlas of Wonders is looking for wonderful Filming Locations all around the world. We are constantly updating and improving our posts with new details and images. Follow us here:
Great article, but I'd like to make a suggestion, if I may.
ReplyDeleteYou mention the terror bombing of civilian cities 'Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo', etc..
You do realize that terror bombing was first carried out on the British by the Nazis in their bombing campaign of London. Their Stuka bombers were even fitted with sirens so they'd emit a horrible scream when dive bombing.
You also realize that the Japanese bombed China relentlessly, and killed more civilians than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Yes, combined. This was prior to the US even entering the war.
So, please try to refrain from assigning blame for bombing cities and civilians to the Western Allied powers alone. The Axis powers, specifically Nazi Germany and Japan had actually been utilizing and perfecting this practice years earlier.
Terror bombing was by no means an American or British invention by any stretch of the imagination. As the technology increased and the allies benefited from this technology, so did their bombing accuracy and intensity. Thus, Dresden, Tokyo, etc. were bombed with an intensity never before seen. Believe me, if the Nazis or Japanese could have bombed London, Nanking like the Americans or British bombed their cities, they would have. We all know both the Nazis and Japanese were actively trying to develop heavy water (deuterium) atomic weapons before the Manhattan project was even started. It was only after the Nazis began this research that Albert Einstein warned the Americans that this (an atomic bomb) was a possibility and offered his help to build one before the Germans were able.
As an American historian with German and Japanese background, I never try to sugar coat what Germany and Japan had done or were trying to do, nor do I demonize the Americans and British for having developed what all sides were trying to achieve. The Allies only got there first.
Like I said, great article, and thanks for the images. You worked hard to put this article together. It would be a shame to have it dismissed by many for what might seem a political bias (which I believe was not your intention).
Good luck.
Cheers.
Thanks a lot for your brilliant comment, we really appreciate your interesting contribution and your kind words. Also we are sorry for the delay answering, when you wrote we were in Iran, where Internet is slow and heavily censored.
ReplyDeleteYour remarks give us the chance to highlight that our commentary was inspired by the watching of the third episode of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. We linked the caption to a video containing this episode, that unfortunately it's not available anymore.
Obviously we are not experts in this matter, and we have no dub that the brutal forces of The Axis were not Mother Teresa from Calcutta. However we find the point of view of these series refreshing, containing a necessary dose of critical spirit, and also maybe a provocative touch, that produced a five star comment like yours :]
What is your opinion about the approach to WWII in these series?
Hi Ra,
ReplyDeleteI was not impressed with Stones take on US history and I am not an American. I think he is too biased and has his own agenda being a Marxist. He made a lot of mistakes in his movie "JFK" also.
There is an excellent series on WW1 and WW2 on History channel.
Called World Wars. It shows all the WW2 leaders who were active in WW1. Very interesting connections that I did not know about.
Well worth watching if you can.
BTW I really like your blog: very interesting pieces and photography!!
Don't stop!
What kinda shocked me was the use of locations in Berlin to represent Paris.
ReplyDeleteThe building that's supposed to be rue de Nantes in Paris is actually on Augustrasse in Berlin; it's actually famous for housing Clärchens Ballhaus and doesn't look Parisian at all.
And if I'm not mistaken, the Neue Wache stands for the Jeu de paume.
Maybe seen from Hollywood European cities all look the same, but I found it strange.
Linz Austria, proposed location for the Fuhrer Museum, was bombed for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) to destroy the rail yards where the museum artifacts would have been delivered and
2) The Hermann Goering Steel works was located there as well and used Concentration Camp personnel to build German Armored Personnel carriers.
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