Home from the Salt Mines

The director of Munich's Alte Pinakothek, Dr. Ernst Buchner, was ready for World War II the day it came. Years before, he had sought out and established Alpine hideaways for his masterpieces. When war was declared on Sept. 3, 1939, Buchner closed the doors of the museum and got his master plan rolling to save one of the finest collections of paintings in the world, including 74 Rubenses, 10 Rembrandts, 26 Van Dycks, 15 Duerers, 10 Titians, 12 Tintorettos, 9 Veroneses, choice works by Giotto, Raphael. Botticelli, Goya, El Greco, Velasquez, Poussin. More than 1,000 paintings were packed for storage and loaded on trucks. The best were sent to the salt mines near Salzburg, Austria, where Buchner's careful investigation had found perfect temperature and humidity, and a bombproof mountain on top. Director Buchner's foresight paid off. The Alte Pinakothek was damaged by fire bombs in 1943, had its roof blown off in July, 1944 and, on Dec. 17, 1944, took three direct hits, was reduced to ruins.

In 1945 victorious U.S. troops found the art treasures in the Austrian salt mines and returned them to Munich. A few years later, more than 200 of the Alte Pinakothek's best paintings went on an extended European tour, to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels. Then 450 of its best works went on permanent exhibition in the Hitler-built Haus der Kunst, while the old building, its true home, was only a dismal rendezvous for petty gangsters and furtive lovers. When plans got underway to clean up the ruin and replace it with a technical university, a groundswell of impassioned opposition pushed the local Bavarian government to rebuild the Alte Pinakothek.

Last week, nearly 18 years after the museum's doors had been closed by war, they were at last reopened. In the rebuilt interior, only one item of decor was salvaged from the original structure: the gold-and-white great portal of the main Rubens room (see cut). A stream of proud Muenchners flooded every gallery in the building. They noted such improvements as the overhead skylights and lighting, and walls tapestried with ivory silk. Hanging against them with vibrant life were 800 paintings, the world-famous masterpieces back home again: Duerer's Four Apostles, Altdorfer's cosmic Battle of Alexander, Rubens' dramatic Battle of the Amazons, Rembrandt's eloquent Descent from the Cross, El Greco's ominous Despoiling of Christ, Boucher's luscious Girl Resting.

Bouncing about among the opening-day crowd was foresighted Ernst Buchner, now 55, who had led the fight to rebuild the museum, and is once again its director. Said he. with just a touch of a lump in his throat: "A mile stone in the history of art."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.