Austria. Both his sisters had now married Austrians Olga had
wed Dr. Friedrich Rigele and Paula had chosen Dr. Franz Ulrich
Hueber, lawyers of Saalfelden and Salzburg, respectively. Dr.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the mild-mannered Viennese Nazi who
would briefly succeed Schuschnigg as chancellor, later
confirmed that it was through Göring’s two married sisters that
the leading Austrian Nazis established links with him. It was
Rigele who brought art dealer Dr. Kajetan Mühlmann to see
Göring on the Obersalzberg at the time of the July agree-
ment; a jovial, thin-faced man with a habit of rubbing his hands
together, Mühlmann subsequently acted as a courier for the
Austrian Nazis, visiting Göring at his mountain villa, or at
Carinhall and the Air Ministry. Göring’s younger brother Al-
bert was also in Austria, working for the Tobis-Sascha Film
Company. When the company asked Albert to persuade his big
brother in Berlin to increase film imports from Austria,
Hermann agreed on condition that Albert introduce him
unofficially to the Austrian deputy foreign minister, Dr. Guido
Schmidt. Schmidt was a thirty-six-year-old Viennese, fervently
and energetically patriotic. Meeting Göring for the first time on
November , , he tried to be firm, but it was not easy.
“So long as I have any say in it,” he warned, “there will not
be the slightest deviation in Austria’s independence.” Göring
merely beamed, and Schmidt, relaxing, told colleagues back in
Vienna that the German general had displayed a kind of Aus-
trian Gemütlichkeit “At least it was possible to talk with him,”
he said.
Recognizing Göring’s pivotal position in the Nazi hierarchy, on
January , , Guido Schmidt took up his pen and initiated a
year-long correspondence with him by formally inviting him to
hunt in Austria. Göring replied with immediate flattery. (“You