Art Of The Day Weekly
#416 - from 4 February 2016 to 10 February 2016
Göring, the master looter
Hermann Göring (1893-1946) was a brilliant aviator during World War I and he became one of Hitler’s closest lieutenants. As head of the Luftwaffe, and the authorizing officer of the four-year plan, he loved pomp and honours. He accumulated a phenomenal wealth, built himself a sumptuous house in the country, Carinhall, which he furnished with the most beautiful European works of art. He did this sometimes by purchasing the goods, now and then by exchanging, and most of the time by confiscating large Jewish collections. Once Germany had occupied France he was an attentive visitor of the Jeu de paume where the most beautiful trophies were presented to him, like in a gallery. An extraordinary document summarises the bulimia of the obese potentate, the hand written catalogue in which all 1 376 works of his collection were recorded. Among them we read some 50 Cranach, 40 Van Goyen, 30 Boucher, as well as works by Botticelli, Georges de la Tour, Courbet, Renoir or Picasso. Rose Valland (1898-1980), one of the heroines of the movie Monuments Men and the deputy curator at the Jeu de paume found this catalogue and her precise repertoires allowed for many stolen works to be found. Her work was sitting patiently in the boxes of the Diplomatic Archives at La Courneuve. It has finally been published in a truly scientific way. The photographs that accompanied the notes have been restored and are reproduced. We would love to know what happened to the works – whether they were returned to their owner, lost, waiting – but that would have demanded much more research and pagination. In the case of number 13 for example, the Judgement of Pâris by Cranach the Elder, confiscated in 1936 in exchange for the right to emigrate to Switzerland, was it ever returned in 1954 to its owner, Robert van Hirsch, who donated it to the Kunstmuseum in Basel in 1977. Each painting could push the reader to carry out his or her own investigation.
• Le catalogue Goering (in French) by the Archives diplomatiques and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Flammarion, 2015, 608 p., €29.
