The Rape of Europa (8 page)

After Goering had received a few unsuitable birthday presents, which his dealers had had to sell, even this aspect of his life was systematized. Hofer would leave a list of desired objects, at different price levels, with prominent dealers such as Walter Bornheim of Munich.
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All the prospective donor had to do was send a check to an “Art Fund” which Goering had set up especially for this purpose. One who did this on a truly princely
scale was Philip Reemtsma, who controlled Germany’s cigarette production. His donations came to some million marks a year, possibly in gratitude for Goering’s pardoning of major tax liabilities he had incurred before 1933. The carefully kept records of donors list many others of all varieties from the city fathers of Cologne to Prince Bismarck, who gave Frau Goering “a single decorated goblet.”
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By early 1938 Goering’s collections had far surpassed those of his Führer, but this was soon to change.

The interior of Carinhall: a few of Goering’s choice acquisitions

In the early hours of Saturday, March 12, 1938, German troops crossed the Austrian border, followed later that afternoon by Hitler himself, who was received with wild rejoicing all along his route. For the Führer, overcome with emotion, it was the fulfillment of one of his fondest dreams: the union of his native land, corrupted by the decadence of the Hapsburg monarchy and its dangerous flirtations with the Slavic civilization to the east, with the soon-to-be pure German Reich which he now ruled. This triumph was also the culmination of several years of mostly subversive political and diplomatic effort which had reached a frantic pitch in February 1938.

As Hitler responded to the enveloping crowds in Linz, his childhood home, he was met by his handpicked successor to the Austrian Chancellery, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Then and there, to the Austrian’s surprise,
Hitler insisted on preparing the legal documents which would transform the Austrian nation into an integral part of the Reich, henceforth to be referred to as the Ostmark. The next day, forced to linger in Linz by the embarrassing breakdown of large numbers of German tanks and trucks which had completely blocked the roads to Vienna (indeed, the British ambassador to Berlin described the whole invasion as “a slovenly performance”
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), Hitler made the best of things by laying a wreath on his parents’ nearby grave and meeting with the director of the Linz Provincial Museum to discuss plans for rebuilding the town, which, along with Munich, Nuremberg, and Berlin, was to become one of Germany’s “ceremonial cities.”
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It was not until Monday, March 14, that an irritated Hitler was able to make his triumphal entry into Vienna, the armored vehicles in the parade having been rushed to the city on railroad flatcars.

It was not a happy day for everyone. In the middle of the night of March 11—12, Heinrich Himmler and his SS staff had flown to Vienna to supervise “security” arrangements. The borders were sealed.
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Using intelligence carefully gathered in the previous months, plus Austria’s own files on political undesirables, the SS imprisoned thousands, first at Dachau and later at a new camp at Mauthausen. The Austrian Nazis, catapulted into power, now revealed a degree of vicious anti-Semitism which surprised even the Germans. Historian William Shirer, in Vienna for CBS, described the scene:

On the streets today gangs of Jews, with jeering storm troopers standing over them, and taunting crowds around them, on their knees scrubbing the Schuschnigg signs off the sidewalks. Many Jews killing themselves. All sorts of Nazi sadism, and from the Austrians it surprises me. Jewish men
and
women made to clean latrines….
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Along with humiliations of this nature came the blatant looting of Jewish personal property from shops and houses. This too went far beyond anything which had thus far taken place in Germany. The magnificent collections of Vienna’s prominent families were among the first to go. Baron Louis de Rothschild was forcibly returned to his Vienna residence from the airport as he tried to leave on March 12, and jailed later in the day. His arrest was unusual: the first SS officers sent for him were told that the Baron was at table, and were asked to make a later appointment. They obeyed.
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A few hours after his incarceration, his cell is said to have been supplied by his valet with all the comforts of the Rothschild home, from tapestries to orchids. But the Nazis were deadly serious. The collections of Baron Louis’s brother Alphonse, who had left the country only days before, were immediately confiscated, as were the paintings and library of
Baron Gutmann, the Bloch-Bauer porcelains, the Haas, Kornfeld, Trosch, Goldman, and Bondy collections, and many more. Shirer, trying to get to his own apartment near the Rothschild palace, saw the first things being taken away:

We almost collided with some SS officers who were carting up silver and other loot from the basement. One had a gold framed picture under his arm. One was the commandant. His arms were loaded with silver knives and forks, but he was not embarrassed.
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Less prominent families fared no better. Those who had managed to flee before the borders closed left houses full of possessions behind, which were quickly stripped by SS troops or the neighbors. Those who remained were soon required to register their property with the Gestapo, thus providing excellent inventories for future confiscation. No one could be trusted. Dealers, conservators, and friends suddenly revealed a new allegiance. Customs and shipping agents broke open packed cases and removed valuable items. It was Goering who had personally ordered the sealing of the borders. Although it was avowed Nazi policy to encourage Jewish departures, the demand for funds under Goering’s Four-Year Economic Plan was too great to allow their considerable assets to slip away.

In the next year and a half, before the outbreak of war, more than eighty thousand Jews would be allowed to leave Austria, but only by buying their way out. Exit visas could be obtained by surrendering one’s possessions to the Office of Jewish Emigration, organized under the aegis of Karl Adolf Eichmann. Strict application of all the German racial laws and increasing imprisonments encouraged participation in this program. The expropriation of Jewish property was made even more torturous by requiring reams of paperwork, multiple notarizations, and visits to different agencies. The American Consul General in Vienna observed in July:

There is a curious respect for legalistic formalities. The signature of the person despoiled is always obtained, even if the person in question has to be sent to Dachau in order to break down his resistance. The individual, moreover, must go through an endless series of transactions in order to liquidate his property and possessions, and proceed abroad penniless. He is not permitted to simplify matters by making everything over en bloc to the state.
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By the fall of 1938 Eichmann’s office was requiring the completion of three hundred dossiers daily, a nearly impossible demand given the shocking reluctance of other countries to issue entrance visas.

The liquidation of the Rothschild properties was particularly protracted.
Because of the multinational character of their holdings, it took a year of negotiations to satisfy the Nazi mania for the “legal,” during which time Baron Louis remained in prison. In the eyes of the Reich Finance Ministry, the art collections were inextricably bound up with the rest. When at last the final signatures were affixed and Baron Louis was released, the Ministry initiated proceedings to sell off the works of art at auction in order to satisfy tax claims.
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In the meantime, thousands of German officials and entrepreneurs poured into Austria to take over government posts and dispossessed businesses and to celebrate the Anschluss with sprees in the restaurants and shops of Vienna. Albert Speer, repelled by the frenzy, limited himself “to buying a Borsalino.”
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The influx left no doubt as to who would really be in charge in Austria. It was an unpleasant revelation to Chancellor Seyss-Inquart and his newly appointed State Secretary for the Arts, Dr. Kajetan Mühlmann, a sometime Goering confidant, both of whom had been intimately involved at the highest levels in the traitorous negotiations which had brought down the Schuschnigg government. Over their heads Hitler immediately installed a German “Reichskommissar,” Joseph Buerckel, thereby rendering the Seyss-Inquart administration virtually powerless.

Delicious pastries and Borsalinos were not all some Party members wanted from Austria. The mayor of Nuremberg had a much bigger dream: the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. The thirty-two spectacular objects, which included Charlemagne’s bejeweled prayer book, several sceptres, orbs, swords, reliquaries, jewel-encrusted gloves, and other coronation arcana, had been kept in Nuremberg for some four hundred years before they were taken to Vienna in 1794 to save them from the French. There they had remained, enshrined at the Hofburg, since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

As early as 1933 Mayor Liebl had plaintively revealed his desires in a speech welcoming Hitler to his city. For the 1934 Party congress the mayor had reproductions brought to Nuremberg, after a vain attempt to borrow the real things. Immediately after the Anschluss the curators of the Germanisches Museum prepared a report enumerating which items had been “plundered” over the years, and which, in particular, had been removed from Nuremberg in 1794. And by June 1938 Liebl had written to the Reichschancellery saying that it was the “Führer’s wish” to have the regalia at the next Party congress on September 6, and that arrangements for its transfer should begin immediately. The city of Nuremberg paid for a heavily guarded special train and gourmet meals for the escort. Liebl must have been disappointed that Hitler had decided only the week before not to take part in the acceptance ceremony. Alas, the mayor’s long-hoped-for moment
of glory had coincided with some of history’s most dramatic weeks: Hitler’s takeover of the Sudetenland, and the Munich Conference.
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Meanwhile, the confiscated collections were being stacked up at the Hofburg and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Seyss-Inquart urged Hitler to distribute them quickly, as the accumulation of such valuables was inciting “various desires.”
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The attraction of this treasure trove was tremendous. According to several sources, “a consortium of three Jews” representing Lord Duveen, possibly sent at the behest of the exiles themselves, had contacted Mühlmann in the summer of 1938 and offered £1 million for the Alphonse Rothschild and Gutmann collections. Others were also interested, so much so that the new director of the Kunsthistorisches could not be sure if it was “a competition between Duveen, Fischer of Lucerne and German dealers, or an alliance between them.”
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These overtures were rejected by Goering, who was negotiating the takeover of the Rothschild industries, and who had his own eye on the works of art. In early 1939 Karl Haberstock too appeared in Vienna claiming to be Hitler’s “commissioner for Jewish collections.” Mühlmann, closer to Goering than to Hitler, and hoping to keep the collections under his own control, “showed him the door” and told Martin Bormann that he and all the staff involved in cataloguing the confiscated works would resign if Haberstock were given control. Bormann replied that the Führer would come to Vienna and see the collections for himself before deciding their fate. In the meantime, Mühlmann was to draw up a plan for dividing them; when Hitler viewed the repositories in June 1939 Mühlmann presented a plan which would keep the whole lot in Austria. A short time later he was fired for being too pro-Austrian. Quite another fate awaited the now “ownerless” objects.
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Hitler by now had his own dream. For years he had done little sketches for new buildings for the town of Linz. His visit there en route to Vienna had confirmed his determination to turn the city into a “German Budapest,” and much had happened since then to focus his vague ideas. In May 1938 he visited Mussolini in Rome, one of his first forays outside the Germanic world. The artistic and architectural glories of the Eternal City made Berlin seem inadequate to the Führer, though he must have felt some satisfaction at the thought that his architects were already at work on plans which would transform Berlin into a city of such monumentality that it might eventually eclipse the Italian capital.