Real 'Monuments Man' defended art, liberty

Thanks to a new George Clooney movie, the world is learning about the men and women – like Walter Farmer – who helped save some of the world's great treasures during World War II

George Clooney could be talking about Walter I. Farmer.

In a commercial for his movie, "The Monuments Men," which opens Friday, Clooney describes the art lovers who went on the world's greatest treasure hunt near the end of World War II. Sent behind enemy lines to save hundreds of thousands of priceless works from destruction by Nazis, the Monuments Men were artists, art dealers and, Clooney says, "architects." Farmer studied to be an architect at Miami University, graduating in 1935. Then the Alliance, Ohio, native went to work in Cincinnati as an interior designer before turning into an order-defying, do-the-right-thing Monuments Man.

He joined the Monuments Men – officially know as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives branch of the armed forces – just after the war ended. Farmer became the director of an art warehouse, "a collecting point," in Army lingo, that was a partially bombed-out art museum in Wiesbaden, Germany.

At the risk of being court-martialed – in other countries he would have just been taken out and shot – he led a revolt of 32 Monument Men in late 1945. They disobeyed orders and protested sending 202 German-owned paintings to be displayed in America. Over time, their protests succeeded. All 202 works were eventually returned to Germany by 1949.

The story of the 202 does not appear in the film.

"That's because my father was part of the first post-war crop of Monuments Men," explained Farmer's daughter, Margaret Farmer Planton of Chillicothe. The former mayor of that Ohio city finished her father's memoir, "The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II," following his death in Cincinnati a month after his 86th birthday in 1997.

Thanks to the film and Robert M. Edsel's same-titled 2009 best-seller upon which Clooney's movie is based, the world is finally learning about the men and women – 338 art conservationists from 13 countries – who helped save some of the world's great treasures.

This tale is not new to Planton.

"I heard their stories at our house on Observatory Place while I was growing up in Hyde Park," she said. "My mother was his German assistant at the collecting point for the art. And then there were these wonderful boxes of photos that my dad brought home and that I enjoyed looking at."

One of her favorite photos features her father in uniform standing next to a famed 3,300-year-old limestone bust of Egypt's Queen Nefertiti.

As Allied bombers pummeled Berlin during WWII, Nazis moved the bust underground. Monuments Men found it in March 1945. The Egyptian queen met the American captain, Farmer, five months later. The war in Europe was over, and that's why the story about Nefertiti is not part of Clooney's movie.

"Robert Edsel is still writing the post-war part of the story," Planton said.

There's enough material for Clooney to do a sequel. "Base it on this," she suggested: "The war is over. We have all of this art. Now what?"

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