Hermann Göring

In 1933, Hitler first appointed Hermann Göring as Chancellor of Germany, then as Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), while being the director of the Four-Year-Plan, and as a short-lived successor to Adolf Hitler in the last months of WWII. Following one of Göring’s orders, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Security Police, coordinated many aspects of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Göring, an avid art collector himself, may have attempted to acquire the Schloss Collection in 1941. In matters related to the collection, Göring relied on the expertise of Bruno Lohse, the ERR’s Deputy Director in Paris and Göring’s personal representative at the Jeu de Paume. The plans to confiscate and disassemble the famed collection of Old Master paintings reached such a level of entanglement that, by spring 1943, Vichy France and the Nazi regime were on a potential collision course over who would control the fate of the Schloss paintings. When Hitler realized that he had been outmaneuvered by the French by allowing the Louvre leadership to exercise a right of first refusal on the collection (known as pre-emption), negotiations between the Nazis and Vichy France shifted quickly to a discussion of terms over the sale of the remainder of the Schloss Collection to the Sonderauftrag Linz once Pierre Laval had agreed to accommodate Hitler and his deputy, Martin Bormann who supervised the Nazi acquisition strategy over the Schloss Collection. Hermann Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi official prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity (including acts of plunder) at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg. On 30 September 1946, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On the eve of his scheduled execution, he committed suicide in his prison cell. Literature: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Hermann Göring.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hermann-goering. Accessed on 3 May 2021.

Wistrich, Robert. Who’s Who in Nazi Germany. Taylor & Francis, 2013, pp. 81-83.

Alford, Kenneth D._Hermann Goring and the Nazi Art Collection. The Looting of Europe’s Art Treasures and Their Dispersal After World War II. _McFarland, 2014, pp. 58-59.

Yeide, Nancy H.Edsel, Robert. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice. The Hermann Goering Collection. Laurel Publishing, 2009.

Haase, Günther. Die Kunstsammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring, eine Dokumentation. Quintessenz Verlag, 2000.   Database of the German Historical Museum: „Die Kunstsammlung Hermann Göring“ (Herman Göring’s Art Collection) https://www.dhm.de/sammlung/forschung/provenienzforschung/datenbanken/. Accessed on 3 May 2021. 

M1782 – OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit Reports, 1945-46. Consolidated Interrogation Reports (CIR). Report Nr. 2 - The Goering Collection [online at: https://www.fold3.com/image/231998973]