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.