Marburg Central Collecting Point

[4] During their subsequent visit to the Hain mine in early April 1945, the two officers discovered in a separate and guarded room nearly 600 paintings, hundreds of sculptures and other objects that were already attacked by mold due to the prevailing high humidity.

For the inventory of the artworks, Hancock asked for assistance from Richard Hamann, who was both head of the Art history seminar and of the Foto Marburg Bildarchiv (picture archive) and willingly made his staff available.

It was Hamann who, together with the mayor of the time, Eugen Siebecke, and the university rector, Julius Ebbinghaus, advocated the organization of an exhibition with the Collecting Point objects to the military government.

Bleibaum had been active in securing buildings and evacuating valuable Hessian holdings during World War II and remained responsible for these areas on behalf of the Americans, for example, for the works of art he himself had stowed in the bunkers at Bad Wildungen.

For this reason, art protection representatives such as the Belgian Raymond M. Lemaire, the American Edith Standen and the French Rose Valland came to Marburg and sifted through the artworks for suspected looted objects.

A total of approximately 200 works, including the treasure from Metz Cathedral, arrived in Marburg from various depots and were returned to their original owners or taken to the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point for further examination.

It must be noted here, however, that due to a lack of personnel and time, no active provenance research could be conducted in Marburg, so that sometimes objects wrongfully acquired by museums or private individuals during Nazism remained undiscovered.

[8] After it became clear that the Marburg State Archives did not have the necessary capacity to store the shipments that were still expected, and that the separation of objects at various locations in Hesse (at the Collecting Points in Marburg and Wiesbaden, the Offenbach Archival Depot, and the Bad Wildungen depot) did not seem advisable for security and personnel reasons, the MFA&A officers responsible for Hesse decided to merge the art collecting points in Wiesbaden.

As a final measure, the four sarcophagi from the Bernterode depot were transferred to the St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg in the secret "Operation Bodysnatch," while the military standards went to America as political booty.