Roman bust bought at Texas store for $35 reveals lesser-known history of WWII looting

Bargain hunters at Goodwill stores are usually happy when they find brand-new shoes or a designer-label coat at half price, but art collector Laura Young got a bit more than that when the Roman bust she bought for $34.99 at a Goodwill store in Austin, Texas, turned out to be the real thing.

According to an interview in the Austin American-Statesmen, Young, who purchased the bust in 2018, quickly realized that the 23.5-kg, 48-cm. tall marble bust was old and began researching its origins.

She met with art historians from University of Texas at Austin, and consulted with experts at several auction houses including Jörg Deterling, a researcher consultant of Sotheby’s. He matched it to a 1931 photo of the bust in the German villa where it had been displayed in the atrium, and put her in touch with German authorities. They recognized it as having belonged to the collection of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and dated it to late first century BCE.

The villa had been located in the German town of Aschaffenburg and was a full-scaled model of a house from Pompeii which the king had built as a museum, called the Pompejanum.

According to Sotheby’s, Deterling has been “responsible for many returns, restitutions and repatriations over the years, but his name has never appeared anywhere in connection with them.”

During WWII, Aschaffenburg was targeted by allied bombers, and the Pompejanum villa was seriously damaged. According to the American-Statesman the bust was saved from destruction as it had been transferred to a storage facility just before the bombing.

The law firm which helped with the legal transfer of the bust said that most likely a returning soldier had either looted the bust himself or bought it from someone who had stolen it and brought the sculpture back to Texas. Its whereabouts remained unknown until it turned up at the Goodwill store.

In a photo shared on the San Antonio Art Museum’s Facebook page, the bust – which is in remarkably good condition – is seen strapped into Young’s car with a seatbelt, a yellow price tag still on its cheek.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused delays in the process of transferring the bust’s title and relocating it. The transfer to the Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes in Germany was finalized in 2021 with the help of the Aminddoleh & Associates law firm.

Last month, the bust was temporarily brought to the San Antonio Art Museum, where it will be on display until it is returned to Germany in 2023 by agreement with the administration.

While most World War II-era looted art focuses on thefts perpetrated by the Nazi party, which appropriated about 20% of all art in Europe at the time, allied soldiers during the war were also guilty of looting valuables ranging from household goods to rare paintings and antiquities, the law firm said in a press release.

Many of the art treasures and antiquities stolen by the Nazis belonged to Jews, including Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of

Adele Bloch-Bauer, known as the Woman in Gold. The press release noted that the gilded painting was seized by the Nazis after its Jewish owners were forced to flee Austria.

Along with other works from the Bloch-Bauer’s collection, the portrait wound up in the Austrian State Gallery, but the heirs to the estate fought to recover their family’s lost property, eventually winning their case and selling the painting in 2006 for $135 million.

“Looting is often a crime of opportunity, and soldiers on all sides of a conflict may take advantage of the situation by partaking in the appropriation of stolen valuables,” Aminddoleh & Associates said in the release.

“Allied soldiers during WWII were no exception,” it said. “Some of the goods pilfered by allied troops, like cigarettes and household goods, are relatively inexpensive or nearly worthless by today’s standards. But others – including paintings, rare coins, historic photos, musical instruments, and antiquities – possess great artistic and cultural value.

“Those valuables continue to be found to this day, sometimes in surprising locations. Some have been returned to the heirs of the original owners while others are involved in ongoing litigation.”

The press release gave as an example the theft of what is known as the Quelindburg Treasure by a member of the US Army. The collection of medieval religious objects included a jeweled 9th-century manuscript written entirely in gold known as the Samuhel Gospel. The soldier mailed the artifacts home to his family in Texas. Decades later, his heirs reached an agreement with Germany and returned the items in exchange for $2.75 million, the law firm said.

There are differences of opinion as to who the bust bought by Young depicts. The law firm press release says it depicts Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, the commander of the Roman forces occupying the German territory between the Rhine and Elbe Rivers. In 9 BCE, Drusus Germanicus reached the Elbe River, but was thrown from his horse and died 30 days later from the injuries he sustained.

However, the SAMA said it may portray a son of Pompey the Great (106–48 BCE), who was defeated in civil war by Julius Caesar.

“Some unusual details of the bust resemble other portraits of the famous general, including the curling lock of hair on his forehead, his furrowed brow, and the creases on his neck, but with the addition of the traditional beard of mourning worn by his sons after Pompey’s death,” the museum noted.

Listing its provenance, the law firm said the bust was acquired before 1833 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, an art lover and a patron of the arts who commissioned major museums and art projects throughout Bavaria and the rest of Germany so Munich could rival European art capitals, like Rome and Paris.

The bust was probably stolen in 1944 or 1945, they said, noting that other Pompejanum museum objects survived the allied bombing but were later looted.

“But nothing looted from the museum was ever sold by the museum or German government, and thus title to any looted property remained with the Bavarian State,” the law firm said.

“Under US common law principles, valid title to artwork cannot be transferred through looting. There must be a legitimate transaction for title to vest legally in a subsequent purchaser. This means that the Bavarian State continues to maintain a legal claim of ownership over objects that were taken from the Pompejanum.”

“It’s bittersweet. It would have been nice to keep him, but I’m glad that I was the one who found him,” Young said in the American-Statesman interview about the transfer of the Goodwill bust. “I’m glad that he didn’t end up in someone’s backyard.”

At a time when repatriation of cultural items and antiquities to their country of origin has come to the forefront, Bernd Schreiber, president of the Bavarian Administration of State Owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes said in a release they are “very pleased that a piece of Bavarian history that we thought was lost has reappeared and will soon be able to return to its rightful location.”