A book The Safekeepers: Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II by former Capt. Walter I. Farmer of the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, chronicles the recovery of and restitution of discovered hidden loot of the Nazi plunder, that were stolen from museums, private collections and libraries and individual Jewish emigrants and death camp prisoners[1].
The Allies created special commissions, such as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) organization to help protect famous European monuments from destruction, and after the war, to travel to territories previously occupied by the Germans to find Nazi art repositories. Wiesbaden Germany stored, identified, and restituted approximately 700,000 individual objects including paintings and sculptures[2]. The allies found these plundered artworks in over 1,050 repositories in Germany and Austria at the end of World War II.
In summer 1945, Capt. Walter Farmer became the collecting point's first director. The first shipment of artworks arriving at Wiesbaden included cases of antiquities, Egyptian art, Islamic artifacts, and paintings from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The collecting point also received materials from the Reichsbank and Nazi looted Polish liturgical collections. At its height, Wiesbaden stored, identified, and restituted approximately 700,000 individual objects including paintings and sculptures, mainly to keep in away from the Soviet Army and wartime reparations[3].
His superiors ordered that he send back to the U.S. 202 paintings in his custody, Capt. Farmer and 35 other that were in charge of the Wiesbaden collection point gathered to draw up what has become known as the Wiesbaden Manifesto on November 7, 1945, declaring "We wish to state that, from our own knowledge, no historical grievance will rankle so long or be the cause of so much justified bitterness as the removal for any reason of a part of the heritage of any nation even if that heritage may be interpreted as a prize of war." Among the co-signers was Lieutenant Charles Percy Parkhurst in the U.S. Navy[4].
After three years of debate, U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered that the paintings be returned to Germany in 1948.
In 1996, the German government honored Mr. Farmer with the crimson Commander's Cross of the Federal Order of Merit[5].
Mr. Farmer died 11 August 1997 at the age of 86 at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Margaret Farmer Planton[6].
Mr. Farmer was born in Alliance, Ohio, and received bachelor's degrees in mathematics and architecture from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He went on to be active also as a genealogist and was prominent in the museum field in Ohio and Texas.
His marriages to Josselyn Liszniewska and to Renate Hobirk ended in divorce.
In addition to his daughter, who lives in Chillicothe, Ohio, he is survived by two grandsons; a sister, Evelyn Krickbaum of Sidney, Ohio.