People don't normally associate the words soldier and scholar, but Robert Edsel, author of "The Monuments Men" and president of Monuments Men Foundation, is trying to change that.
Edsel spoke 4 p.m. Friday at the Jule Collins Smith Museum in a lecture sponsored the by the museum and the College of Architecture, Design and Construction.
The lecture focused on Edsel's book, his foundation and his efforts to inform the world of the Monuments Men, a group of United States soldiers sent to recover cultural artifacts destined for destruction in World War II.
"Most people don't know what happened to these works of art and know the extraordinary role the United States played in protecting these things for all these years and making sure they got back where they belong," Edsel said.
Edsel, a former nationally ranked tennis player with a successful career in gas and oil exploration, moved with his family to Europe in 1996.
At this time, curiosity over the fate of Europe's culture and art during World War II led Edsel to the Monuments Men.
The primary task of these scholar soldiers, which were mostly middle-aged artists, architects, curators, historians, educators and museum directors, was to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis.
In addition, the Monuments Men salvaged millions of cultural items including paintings, stained glass, sculptures, buildings, church bells, Torah scrolls, books and documents.
Ultimately, these soldiers returned more than 5 million stolen works which were favored treasures among Hitler's forces.
"It was the first time in history that the conquering army said to the world: To the victors did not belong the spoils. These things will be returned to the country from which they were taken."
According to Edsel, this group of no more than 350 soldiers has received little recognition for their work.
"It's long since time that we give them their proper recognition and call them Monuments Men," he said.
Capt. Robert Posey, a 1926 Auburn graduate in architecture, served as a Monuments officer after arriving in Normandy. He landed there shortly after D-Day as a member of Patton's Third Army.
Posey traveled throughout northern Europe applying his architectural expertise as a Monuments Man.
Along with his partner, Posey saved culturally significant buildings, historic monuments and contacted art officials.
Perhaps Posey's greatest contribution to the Monuments Men's efforts was his discovery of the 2-mile-deep salt mine at Altaussee, Austria.
Hidden in the mine were the Van Eyck brothers' "Ghent Altarpiece," Michelangelo's "Bruges Madonna," Vermeer's "The Astronomer" and thousands of other works of art.
Auburn resident Elaine Randolph said she was glad she attended the lecture.
She said her husband, a Vietnam veteran, was the one who originally expressed an interest in attending.
Randolph said she was unaware of Posey's involvement in the war, but was proud to learn about an Auburn graduate's connection.
She said her favorite part of the lecture was the story about a French woman who worked with the Monuments Men to save paintings from being burned.
Jones Fowler, art history graduate at the University of Alabama, said "The Monuments Men" particularly appealed to him because it married two of his interests: art and World War II.
Fowler said he knew he had to make the trip down to Auburn to attend Edsel's lecture after receiving the book six months ago as a gift from his aunt and uncle.
Fowler said the visuals from the lecture and getting Edsel to sign his book made the trip worthwhile.
"Some of the pictures are just mind-blowing, like the archival pictures of rooms and caverns as big as this (the museum) just with stacked burlap sacks wrapped around framed masterpieces," Fowler said.
According to Fowler, approximately half of the masterpieces found in "Gardner's Art Through the Ages," a well-known art history textbook, came up in Edsel's book as being stolen.
One of those pieces, a painting by Manet, was featured in Edsel's presentation as recovered by the Monuments Men.
"It's just amazing to go all the way through school and study all this stuff," Fowler said. "You memorize who painted it, what the meaning of it was, a little bit about the style, but then you come back and learn, oh yeah, it was stolen."
Edsel created the Monuments Men Foundation to honor the scholar soldiers and to encourage people to return artifacts from the war that are still missing, which he estimates are in the millions, to their rightful owners.
In addition, Edsel said he hopes this awareness will prompt new government policies on the handling of cultural artifacts in current war efforts.
"Their legacy is rich and filled with incredible examples of how to protect cultural treasures from armed conflict, but their legacy has been all but lost," Edsel said.
"We as a nation have paid a high price for not having preserved and utilized that legacy."
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