The Kroměříž Picture Gallery : The approach of protectorate monument care institutions during the Second World War
Abstract
For the Olomouc bishops' collection of paintings at the Kroměříž château, the end of the Second World War was fatal. According to tradition, the retreating German army removed selected works from the Kroměříž collections.
Like thousands of others art objects from occupied Europe they were supposedly placed in Hitler's planned grandiose museum in Linz. The transport was supposedly stopped in South Bohemia by the Russian army and sent back to Kroměříž.
On the basis of archive sources deposited in Kroměříž, Brno and Jindřichův Hradec, the article puts forward evidence which indicates that the above-described attempt never happened. On the contrary, during the Second World War, under the wellorganized German administration of the Brno heritage office, the collection received good care and protection.
Thanks to this, the most valuable paintings from the collection were moved in April 1945 to Jindřichův Hradec as the battlefront approached Kroměříž. It happened - exactly as in the cases of other collections in occupied Czechoslovakia - in order to provide better protection from bomb attacks and subsequent fires.
The transport of part of the collection and its deposition in the chapel of the Černín chateau is documented by the hand-over protocol. The first part of the article maps the approach of the Brno Heritage Office and its director Karel Kühn while organizing the security of the Kroměříž collections during the Second World War.
The second part focuses on the actual transport to South Bohemia and the correspondence involving the return of the art objects to Kroměříž after the end of the war.