comparison). “They told me,” recalled the pained Hermann
Göring, “that there was a second painting that the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam had acquired. So I thought that mine must be
genuine. You say it isn’t? I regard it as genuine,” he stoutly per-
sisted, even when told the embarrassing truth. “It would be a
colossal fraud otherwise, because I paid most of all for that one!”
The Americans, relishing his discomfiture, revealed to him now
that that forger was one of Hofer’s friends. “They set you up,”
the Americans told him, then congratulated him ironically on
the fact that there were only two such fakes in his collection
the “Vermeer” and a “Rembrandt.” “That was a Hofer too,”
sighed Göring. “And I paid a very stiff price for the Rembrandt,
and in Swiss francs too.” “Yes,” he added, becoming visibly pen-
sive. “I gave Hofer pretty much plein pouvoir.” He added, “I
think my own experience shows that you’ve got to be damned
careful when you associate with art dealers. They’re in a class by
themselves I noticed that myself toward the end.”
As works of art were acquired by the Reichsmarschall, pur-
chased, borrowed, loaned out, traded, transferred to air-raid
shelters, and finally shipped across Europe before advancing en-
emy armies, Fräulein Limberger’s cataloguing task became
hopelessly entangled. Ultimately her inventories grew to be so
voluminous that she compiled lists of them, and these alone
would fill several pages at the time that the Americans took
charge of them in . In their final interrogations, conducted
when Göring had not long to live, they tried to get him to reveal
where he had buried some of the missing objects, including the
bronze replicas of well-known statues, the marble sculptures,
and the priceless Venus of Praxiteles.
Göring teased his interrogators, revealing only that a Major
Frankenberg had been in charge of burying his heavier treasures
at Carinhall. “By the way,” he remarked, “we interred some