Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Even the artists went to war.<\/p>\n
Some of Philadelphia\u2019s soldiers and civilians \u2014 like local legend Walker Kirtland Hancock \u2014 headed for World War II\u2019s battlefields to save art. <\/p>\n
Hancock was part of the \u201cMonuments Men,\u201d about 345 men and women who were sent overseas to try to pry Europe\u2019s cultural treasures from the grip of the Gestapo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really prepared,\u201d Hancock told the Daily News in 1991<\/a>. \u201cI knew where I was going and what I was looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n Hancock, who would become one of the United States\u2019 most distinguished sculptors<\/a>, attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and taught there from 1929 to 1967.<\/p>\n He enlisted in the Army in his mid-40s during the war and was trained as a medic, but later transferred to the Army\u2019s Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives outfit. <\/p>\n The unit\u2019s monumental task: reclaim art the Germans had stolen and then hidden throughout the countryside in caves, on trains, in castles, and in hospitals. <\/p>\n Some of Hancock\u2019s most significant discoveries were found 1,800 feet deep in a salt mine in Bernterode, Germany.<\/p>\n The first painting he rescued was a work by Jean-Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for Cythera, what he described as \u201cone of the greatest paintings\u201d the artist ever completed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe surprise was so enormous to see a very famous old friend like that standing on the ground without any frame on it,\u201d he told the Daily News<\/a>.<\/p>\n The mine was also filled with other treasures: the great seal of Prussia; an emperor\u2019s scepter; the art collection of Frederick the Great, which was considered to be the best collection of French paintings in the world; and palatial libraries.<\/p>\n Their efforts to reclaim precious pieces of human achievement were documented in a 2009 best-selling book. In 2014, their tale was given the \u201cbased on a true story\u201d treatment and made into a star-studded motion picture dubbed The Monuments Men, featuring names like George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, and John Goodman.<\/p>\n Today, Hancock\u2019s public works can be found all over the country, and locally, his most notable work sits at the east end of 30th Street Station.<\/p>\n The 39-foot-tall<\/a>, 10\u00bd-ton Statue to War Dead depicts an angel holding a dying soldier. It commemorates in bronze the 1,307 employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad who died during World War II. Gen. Omar N. Bradley<\/a> was on hand to help dedicate the artwork on Aug. 10, 1952.<\/p>\n