called disarmingly in . “[I] always took enough money along
on the train I had a private train I would give an order to
the Reichsbank and they would get the money. I had to okay the
order myself.” One day he intended to bequeath the collection
to the German people, or so he assured Hitler. In any case, no
enemy captor could take away from him the blissful hours that
he had spent creating it, and we shall see Hermann Göring ob-
sessed with expanding his art collection even at moments of his
country’s most desperate military crises.
He had begun his “shopping expeditions” in Amsterdam
in the summer of . His personal agent in this Dutch city of
canals was Alois Miedl, a thirty-seven year old Bavarian mer-
chant whom the Görings had known for many years. Olga had
often stayed with the Miedls in Munich or Amsterdam. It did
not bother Hermann that Miedl’s wife, Fodora, was a Jew. In
it was Miedl who had introduced him to the extraordinary
Goudstikker transaction by which the Reichsmarschall would
acquire a fortune in paintings at little ultimate expense. Goud-
stikker, a wealthy Dutch Jew, had owned a moated castle,
Nyrenrode, and an art dealership valued at six million guilders.
His collection included thirteen hundred modern artworks and
Old Masters, including works by Paul Gauguin, Cranach, and
Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti).
Some months before Hitler attacked Holland in May ,
Goudstikker transferred everything to a dummy corporation,
verbally gave power of attorney to a non-Jewish friend, and fled.
However, Goudstikker’s friend died. Then Goudstikker’s ship
was torpedoed and he drowned. Then the Dutch banks fore-
closed. Goudstikker’s widow, a former Austrian chanteuse living
in New York, asked an Amsterdam attorney to wind up the es-
tate. Given the war circumstances, the appraisers now valued it
at only . million guilders. When Miedl brought it to the atten-