25 Facts About Rose Valland

Rose Antonia Maria Valland was a French art curator, member of the French Resistance, captain in the French military, and one of the most decorated women in French history.

Rose Valland secretly recorded details of the Nazi plundering of National French and private Jewish-owned art from France; and, working with the French Resistance, she saved thousands of works of art.

Rose Valland graduated in 1918, with the plan of becoming an art teacher.

Rose Valland studied art at the Ecole nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon, graduating in 1922.

Rose Valland then topped the competitive exam for art teacher training and underwent two years of training at the in Paris, graduating in 1925.

Rose Valland graduated in 1933 with a special diploma from the Ecole du Louvre, and engaged in graduate studies at the College de France.

In 1932, Rose Valland became a volunteer assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum.

In 1941, during World War II, Rose Valland was put in paid service and became the overseer of the Jeu de Paume Museum at the time of the German occupation of France.

Rose Valland kept secret from the Germans the fact that she understood German.

Rose Valland regularly informed Jacques Jaujard, the Director of the Musees Nationaux, about the status of Nazi art looting.

The museum was visited by high-ranking Nazi officials, and Rose Valland was there when Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring came on 3 May 1941 to personally select some of the stolen paintings for his own private collection.

On 1 August 1944, a few weeks before the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, Rose Valland learned that Heinrich Baron von Behr, the head of the ERR in France, was planning to remove to Germany as much artwork as he could, including many of the modern paintings which they had hitherto neglected.

Rose Valland learned that the trucks which had collected the artworks were heading to the Aubervilliers train station on the outskirts of Paris.

Rose Valland was released once her conduct had been vouched for.

The information Rose Valland was able to supply led to the discovery of multiple repositories of looted art in Southern Germany, most prominently at Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, where more than twenty thousand works of art and cultural objects were found.

Rose Valland oversaw the return of 1,400 crates of artwork from Neuschwanstein Castle direct to the Jeu de Paume.

Rose Valland served in Germany for eight years, initially as a member of the "Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art" where she was the French government's liaison of the occupation zone in Germany.

Rose Valland was a witness at the Nuremberg trials in February 1946 where she confronted Hermann Goering about the artworks he had stolen.

In 1946 Rose Valland was put in charge of the Fine Arts activities for the French Oversight Board where she assisted in the recovery of numerous paintings, sculptures, precious coins, and tapestries belonging to France.

Rose Valland retired in 1968 but continued to work on restitution matters for the French archives.

Rose Valland died in 1980 and was buried in her hometown of Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs.

The College Rose Valland, located at 1 rue Pierre de Coubertin in her home town, is named in her honor.

The Association de la Memoire de Rose Valland, which was established to honor her memory, is based on Place Rose Valland in her hometown.

In 2009 Valland was one of the main subjects of Robert M Edsel's book The Monuments Men, which would later serve as the basis of the 2014 film of the same name.

Rose Valland was an inspiration for the character of Claire Simone, portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the George Clooney-directed film The Monuments Men, released in February 2014.