The Princess Who Married a Monuments Man

A missing painting, a refugee princess, and a boy from Oklahoma — all the ingredients for a wartime love story

Four of the “Monuments Men” in 1945. Image by BM, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1940, one of the most valuable paintings in private possession was Hans Holbein’s Darmstadt Madonna, worth at least $1,000,000.¹ It belonged to a German prince, Ludwig of Hesse and by the Rhine.

When World War II broke out, Ludwig sent the painting to one of his estates in Silesia (modern-day Poland) for safekeeping. But when the Soviet Army marched on Berlin, they occupied Silesia along the way.

To keep the painting out of Soviet hands, a loyal retainer rescued it and drove west, narrowly escaping the bombing of Dresden along the way. After being shot at en route, he arrived in the city of Coburg, exhausted and afraid. He took the painting to a nearby fortress, Veste Coburg, and left it there.

The Darmstadt Madonna by Hans Holbein, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Once the fighting ended, Ludwig heard that Veste Coburg had been looted by Poles and bombed by Americans. He asked the American occupying forces to help him find the painting…and the rest of the $40 million art collection he’d sent east for safekeeping.²