Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program
The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section Unit (MFAA) was a program established by the Allies in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during and after World War II. The group of about 400 service members and civilians worked with military forces to protect historic and cultural monuments from war damage, and as the conflict came to a close, to find and return works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for safekeeping. Spurred by the Roberts Commission, MFAA branches were established within the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of Allied armies.
The Ghent Altarpiece during recovery from the art depot in the Altaussee salt mine, 1945
Surviving members receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2015
Monuments Men Congressional Gold Medal, presented 9 June 2014.
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Nazi plunder was organized stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany.
German soldiers in front of Palazzo Venezia in Rome in 1944 with a painting taken from the Naples National Archaeological Museum, Carlo III di Borbone che visita il papa Benedetto XIV nella coffee-house del Quirinale a Roma by Giovanni Paolo Panini
Jean Metzinger, 1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas, 146 cm × 114 cm (57 in × 45 in), exhibited at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, acquired in 1916 by Georg Muche at the Galerie Der Sturm, confiscated by the Nazis c. 1936, displayed at the Degenerate Art show in Munich, and missing ever since
Albert Gleizes, 1912, Landschaft bei Paris, Paysage près de Paris, Paysage de Courbevoie, oil on canvas, 72.8 cm × 87.1 cm (28.7 in × 34.3 in), missing from Hannover since 1937
Albert Gleizes, 1911, Stilleben, Nature Morte, Der Sturm postcard, Sammlung Walden, Berlin. Collection Paul Citroen, sold 1928 to Kunstausstellung Der Sturm, requisition by the Nazis in 1937, and missing since