By IGGY FEDOROFF
The Cambria Lions Club has the good fortune to feature as speaker Jim Huchthausen, an historian, writer and retired professor who has traveled extensively telling the engaging story of his uncle Walter J. Huchthausen’s service as one of the Monuments Men of World War II. His fascinating presentation will follow the Lions Club of Cambria’s dinner on Tuesday, May 14, at the Joslyn Adult Recreation Center located at 950 Main Street.
By all accounts, Walter Johan Huchthausen was one of the most promising architects of his generation. Walter enrolled in the University of Minnesota, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1928. Later, he studied in Germany on a fellowship from Harvard, where he worked in German museums and absorbed the German language as if it were his first language. After graduating with a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard, he eventually joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota. In September 1942 Huchthausen left his position at the University to join the Army Air Force where, after recovering from injuries sustained in a V1 attack, he was assigned to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of Civil Affairs of the Western Allied Armies.
The Monuments Men and Women were a group of 348 men and women from 14 nations, most of whom volunteered for service in the newly created Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section. Many had expertise as museum directors, curators, art historians, artists, architects, librarians and educators. Only their job description was simple: to protect cultural treasures so far as the war allowed.
Captain Huchthausen was assigned the post of Monuments Officer for U.S. Ninth Army with Monuments Officer Lt. Sheldon W. Keck, a conservator from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, as his assistant. They spent January 1945 in Aachen, the first major German city captured by Western Allied forces. Upon the city’s liberation, the Monuments Men discovered a horde of altarpieces stored at the nearby Suermondt Museum. During the spring of 1945, Huchthausen and Keck made trips into the cities surrounding Aachen, and into the Netherlands, to inspect reports of looted works of art, assess damage to historic buildings, and note those monuments in need of repair. On one of these trips, Huchthausen and Keck accidentally ventured into unsecured territory and came under enemy gunfire. Huchthausen was killed immediately, but his slumping body shielded Keck and saved his life.
Dinner reservations may be made by contacting Iggy Fedoroff via e-mail: chezfed@att.net. The cost is $25 and it is not necessary to be a member of the Cambria Lions Club to attend. Social hour, and a time to meet the speaker, begins at 5:30 p.m. with dinner planned for 6:30 p.m.
