in various bank vaults underneath Bremen. In 1943, as bombing intensified, Bremen's mayor decreed that the museum's collections be moved to safety outside the city. The collection was divided up between four castles in Germany. A set of 50 paintings, 1715 drawings and 3000 prints were moved to Schloss Karnzow, the hunting lodge of Count von Königsmarck, near the small town of Kyritz north of Berlin in the Province of Brandenburg. Karnzow Castle and Victor Baldin, 1945 After Germany's defeat, Brandenburg and specifically the area around Karnzow Castle was occupied by the Red Army. On 29 May 1945 soldiers and officers of the 38th Field Engineers' Brigade billeted at the Castle began looting it. Victor Baldin, an Army captain and combat engineer, found opened boxes in the cellar, saw documents trampled on the floor, and observed soldiers lighting their way by using burning papers. Baldin, an art restorer before the war, recognized these as drawings by the great masters. Baldin intervened and sealed the cellar. Scrutinizing the treasures lying about, he found works by Corot, Delacroix, Degas, Dürer, Van Dyke, Van Gogh, Goya, Manet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rodin, Rubens, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Titian. Baldin became determined to save what he could. He later said "I started in on the beautiful things, then I saw it was all beautiful." He took drawings away from soldiers by force, by deception and in exchange for personal items. In one case, it took him three days to obtain a drawing of Christ's head by Albrecht Dürer from another officer. Baldin managed to coax the officer into exchanging it for his chrome boots. Of the thousands of works stored in the cellar, Baldin managed to save just 362 drawings and two paintings. Among them was the only known pen and ink study by van Gogh of his famous 1889 painting, The Starry Night. As the Soviet Army withdrew, the cellars were left open and what little remained of the collection was lost to local looters and the weather. Baldin's actions and motives are still debated today. He did indeed cut the drawings from their mounts, put them into a suitcase, carried them to the Soviet Union, and hid them in his apartment. However, while at the castle, Baldin also wrote down descriptions of every work he saw, copied the German signatures and labels, and later carefully documented their provenance. He also begged for an official military transport