Growing up, Cathy Hinz and her siblings ran up and down the stairs at their Minneapolis home. They’d trail their hands along a memento hanging on the wall. The children’s father had brought the curious keepsake back from his service during World War II. It was a 16th-century tapestry that once belonged to Adolf Hitler.
High above the town of Berchtesgaden, Germany, sits Kehlsteinhaus, the Eagle’s Nest. The Nazi Party gave the mountain retreat to Hitler as a birthday present. The German leader used Eagle’s Nest for private meetings.
Just before Germany’s 1945 surrender, Allied forces rushed to raid Nazi strongholds. Hinz’s father, Paul Danahy, was a U.S. intelligence officer.
Danahy’s 101st Airborne Division arrived at Eagle’s Nest. The men interrogated German officers. Many soldiers took souvenirs from Kehlsteinhaus—books, food, flags, weapons, or chunks of the red marble fireplace. Danahy chose a large tapestry as his remembrance. It hung in his family’s stairwell for nearly 40 years.
When Danahy died in 1986, Hinz inherited the tapestry. Neither she nor her father knew its history. The beautiful keepsake once belonged to a Munich art gallery owned by a Jewish family.
Last year, Hinz donated the tapestry to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
As soon as they saw it, both museum president Gordon Mueller and board member Robert Edsel knew the tapestry should be returned. The only question was: to whom?
Edsel investigated the sale of the tapestry. His Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art continues the work of the Monuments Men. They were a group of art experts who protected cultural treasures during the war and returned works stolen by the Nazis.
The family of Konrad Bernheimer, a present-day Munich art dealer, owned the gallery that sold the tapestry for Eagle’s Nest in 1938.
Bernheimer examined the tapestry’s original invoice. He says the buyer paid full price—about 10,000 U.S. dollars at the time. That meant the purchase was likely lawful. “Not everything that was sold between 1933 and 1945 could be considered a false sale,” he explains.
Bernheimer didn’t claim the tapestry. So it belonged to the Bavarian State, an area in southeastern Germany. Bavaria is the legal heir to items once belonging to Hitler.
Bavarian National Museum accepted the tapestry in a return ceremony. Hinz was nostalgic about seeing the tapestry leave her home. But she says it feels right.
She explains, “My thought was, you know, it never was ours to begin with.”
