He said that General Arnold had come to see the exhibition the day after that. We asked if he had let him in. Well, what did we think? But he had turned down a three-star general who had come along after hearing that General Arnold had been admitted. The general, he said, was hopping mad.
The major’s most interesting experience in connection with the collection was his visit with Frau Göring. He heard that some of the best pictures were in her possession, so he took a run down to Zell am See where she was staying in a Schloss belonging to a South American. He found the castle; he found Emmy; and he found the pictures. There were indeed some of the best pictures—fifteen priceless gems of the fifteenth century Flemish school, from the celebrated Renders collection of Brussels. Göring had bought the entire collection of about thirty paintings. We knew that M. Renders was already pressing for the return of his treasures, claiming that he had been forced to sell them to the Reichsmarschall. But that was another story.
Frau Göring wept bitterly when the major took the pictures, protesting that they were her personal property and not that of her husband. On the same visit he had recovered another painting in the collection. Frau Göring’s nurse handed over a canvas measuring about thirty inches square. She said Göring had given it to her the last time she saw him. As he placed the package in her hands he had said, “Guard this carefully. It is of great value. If you should ever be in need, you can sell it, and you will not want for anything the rest of your life.” The package contained Göring’s Vermeer.
Major Anderson stayed for lunch. As we walked back from the mess, a command car pulled up in front of the rest house. Bancel La Farge and a man in civilian clothes climbed out. I hadn’t seen Bancel for two months. He was a major now. The civilian with him was an old friend of mine, John Walker, Chief Curator of the National Gallery at Washington and a special adviser to the Roberts Commission. John had flown over to make a brief inspection tour of MFA&A activities. Bancel was serving as his guide. They were on their way to Salzburg and Alt Aussee.
Major Anderson proposed a trip to the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountain hide-out, suggesting that the visitors could look at the Göring pictures that evening. Lamont and I said we had work to do, but we were easily talked out of that.
You could see the Eagle’s Nest from the rest house. It was perched on top of the highest peak of the great mountain range which rose sharply from the pine forests across the valley. We crossed to the western side and began a steep ascent. About a thousand feet above the floor of the valley we came to Obersalzberg, once a select community of houses belonging to the most exalted members of the Nazi hierarchy. In addition to the Berghof, Hitler’s massive chalet, it included a luxurious hotel—the Platter Hof—SS barracks, and week-end “cottages” for Göring and Martin Bormann. The British bombed Obersalzberg in April 1945. The place was now in ruins. The Berghof was still standing but gutted by fire and stripped of all removable ornamentation by souvenir hunters.
We continued up the winding road carved from the solid rock, through three tunnels, at length emerging onto a terraced turnaround, around, five thousand feet above Berchtesgaden. The major told us that the road had been built by slave labor. Three thousand men had worked on it for almost three years.
Portrait of a Young Girl by Chardin (left) and Young Girl with Chinese Figure by Fragonard (right) were acquired by Göring from the confiscated Rothschild Collection of Paris. The paintings have been returned to France.
