Focus | WORLD WAR II

Monday, July 8, 2013 News 3
Orange County Register
1
Focus | WORLD WAR II
CLEANING THE NAZI HOUSE
Germany seeks owners of reams of relics, many looted by Hitler’s right-hand man.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Goering’s trains, which covered 4,305 square feet, were
housed for a while in the attic of his estate at Carinhall.
B y C AT H E R I N E H I C K L E Y
BLOOMBERG | FROM BERLIN
T
he miniature, half-timbered houses are crafted by hand
and decorated with wreaths. Tiny figures lean out the
windows, among them a man in uniform with a swastika armband giving a “Heil Hitler” salute.
One shoebox-size building has a row of shops; another is
lined with balconies and flower boxes. They may have been
part of a model railway set owned by Hermann Goering,
Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man and commander-in-chief of
the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s air force. He owned two
train sets covering 4,305 square feet at his sprawling country estate.
“We can date these houses from between 1933 and 1945,”
said Frank Beseke, a legal specialist working for the German government. “We have
a lot of other things that belonged to Goering, which
suggests these may well
Nearly seven decades
have come from Carinhall,
after World War II, German
too,” he said, referring to
authorities still are trying
the
Reichsmarschall’s
to find the rightful owners
country estate north of Berof thousands of items
lin.
stolen by the Nazis.
Today, the items sit on a
They’ve had limited
success, and now come the shelf in a government depot
difficult cases.
in the German capital,
where Angelika Enderlein,
a government art historian,
40 miles
is researching ownership of
a trove of unclaimed paintings, sculptures and other
GERMA N Y
items.
Some were plundered
20
from Jewish families; some
Szczecin
belonged to Nazi leaders.
Carinhall
Thousands of treasures
were discovered in mines,
caves, palaces and depots
Joachimsthal
and assembled at a collectPOLAND
11
ing point in Munich by the
24
U.S. and British Monu10
ments, Fine Arts and ArBerlin
chives unit.
12
“It would have been helpful if the Allies had given us
The Register
more information,” Enderlein said.
A morphine addict who kept pet lions, jangled emeralds
like small change in his pockets and built a huge stash of
stolen art, Goering also loved toys.
Photos show him displaying his train sets to houseguests, including Hitler and Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy, in the attic and basement of Carinhall.
FILE PHOTO: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A U.S. soldier studies a sample of Hermann Goering’s looted art May 29, 1 945, less than a month after his arrest.
HERMANN GOERING’S MILITARY CAREER
WHY IT MATTERS
HOME DESTROYED AMID SOVIET ADVANCE
After moving his collection to Bavaria, Goering ordered
Carinhall to be dynamited to prevent it falling into Soviet
hands. The fate of his model trains is unknown, Enderlein
said.
The tasks of the intriguingly named Federal Office for
Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues include
handling claims for compensation and restitution from victims of Nazi theft, and for those expropriated by the communist East German regime.
The office also inherited about 2,300 unclaimed paintings, graphics, sculptures and artifacts, along with 10,000
coins and books from Allied depots at the conclusion of
World War II.
Goering was the highest-ranking Nazi official tried at the Nuremberg tribunal in 1 946. As Hitler’s No. 2 man,
Goering was the one who gave orders for a “total solution” to the “Jewish question.” He was convicted and
sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by cyanide in his cell on the eve of his execution.
A timeline of his career:
Born: Jan. 1 2, 1 893, in Marienbad, Germany
Died: Oct. 1 5, 1 946, in Nuremberg, Germany
1 9 1 5-1 8: Highly decorated fighter pilot during World War I
1 922: Meets Adolf Hitler at Nazi party rally and subsequently joins
1 923: Wounded while marching with Hitler during Beer Hall Putsch
1 923-27: In exile; returns to Germany after general amnesty declared
1 928: Becomes one of 1 1 Nazis in Reichstag (parliament)
1 930: Chosen by Hitler to lead Nazi delegation
1 932: Becomes president of Reichstag as Nazis assume control
1 933: Receives cabinet post after Hitler is appointed German
chancellor; announces formation of Gestapo
1 934: Designated by secret decree as successor to Hitler if he dies or
can’t carry out duties
1 935: Becomes commander of Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force
1 937-41: Overseer of German economy
1 94 1: Authorizes “final solution”; blamed – and replaced – by Hitler for
air force setbacks
April 23, 1 945: With Hitler cut off by advancing Soviets in Berlin,
requests authorization to take over his duties; Hitler denounces him as
traitor, strips him of all titles and orders his arrest
May 7, 1 945: Germany surrenders; arrested near Salzburg, Austria
SOURCE: UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
FILE: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Successes often are the result of serendipity.
A 1 6th-century walnut table was restituted
in 2009 to the heirs of a Jewish
telephone maker after a researcher
spotted it in a 1 943 auction catalog.
Enderlein said the provenance of about 1,900 works of
art has been investigated. Forty-one have been restituted to heirs. Most of the rest are on loan to German museums and are searchable online.
“Now at the end, we are left with the difficult cases,”
Enderlein said. “In the case of coins, medallions and
books, we are not hopeful.”
Some other items will remain unclaimed. Two sideboards at the back of the depot belonged to the Reichskanzlei in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Hitler’s second seat
of government, Enderlein said.
Piles of carpets include one that belonged to Goering.
Enderlein said he ordered it from a Berlin company that
imported from Persia, so it’s unlikely to be looted.
“We offer a lot of things on loan to museums, but because of the size of them, the museums can’t store the big
carpets,” Enderlein said. “We may end up having to sell
some of these items, but only if the provenance is completely cleared up.”
GUARDING AGAINST SYMPATHIZERS
The office also needs to be wary of collectors with Nazi
sympathies who would value the items as relics of the regime.
“In the case of a carpet with Nazi symbols on it, then of
course we wouldn’t sell it,” she said. “We had one like that:
It went to the German Historical Museum in Berlin.”
A bronze copy of the Uffizi Gallery’s Medici Venus
adorns the foyer of the Federal Office. This one has an unhealthy greenish tinge, due to its watery history.
It stood in the ceremonial hall of Goering’s Carinhall estate. Beseke speculates that Goering ran out of space when
moving his art collection, so Venus was dumped into the
Gross Doelln lake to safeguard her from Soviet troops.
East German authorities left her undisturbed. She was
hauled to the surface in 1990, 45 years after her disappearance. She has been restored and given a limestone pedestal.
“We left the green patina to recall her underwater past,”
Beseke said.
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