The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [37]
In April 1935, when Goering married an actress named Emmy Sonneman, the tribute system was on full display. The wedding hoopla would have suited a coronation. Goering and Emmy drove to the church in an open car festooned with narcissus and tulips. Thirty thousand troops lined the streets of Berlin. To ensure that the music would be satisfactory, Goering had dragooned singers and musicians from the opera. After the ceremony, two hundred planes roared overhead in a salute to the newlyweds.
“Gentlemen,” Goering announced at the wedding celebration, “I have invited you to come here in order that I may show you the gifts my people have given me.” The presents filled “two enormous rooms,” Emmy reported excitedly. “The King of Bulgaria, for instance, sent to Hermann his country’s highest decoration and to me a splendid sapphire bracelet. Hamburg had presented me with a sailing boat with silver sails which I had always admired on school visits to the City Hall.”
Then came war, and with it the assurance that now the “gifts” would pour in not just from Germany and a royal house hold or two but from all Europe. And so they did, year after year, and every gift scrupulously noted. The donor list included a host of smaller names and such corporate giants as Lufthansa and I.G. Farben. The gifts were lavish: a Van Dyck, from the city of Berlin; a 2,400-piece ser vice of Sèvres china; a hunting lodge taken from France and destined for one of Goering’s country estates.
Other collectors have shared Goering’s passion for acquiring new possessions. Few have matched his resources, for no mere private fortune could provide opportunities like those that came with the control of a gangster state. Goering was Hitler’s officially designated successor, and also, at one time or another, minister of the interior for Prussia, Germany’s largest province; head of the Gestapo; commander in chief of the Luftwaffe; and Reich Marshal. Each post brought immense power and the chance to steal either outright or by intimidation. Goering gleefully exploited his good furtune.
Perhaps Goering’s most directly lucrative post was chief of Germany’s Four-Year Plan, a role he took on in September 1936. In effect, the job was economic czar—Goering’s mission was to ensure that, in four years’ time, German industry would be ready for war. The focus was on stockpiling vital materials—steel, oil, rubber—but art was never far from Goering’s mind. As keeper of the nation’s checkbook, he had a free hand to buy art as he chose. “I was the last court of appeal,” he explained after his capture. “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.”
GOERING’S SWAGGER, HIS medals, his bombast, even his ever-swelling belly, somehow convinced the masses that he was a hero they could take to their hearts. Throughout Germany crowds of supporters called out to their “Hermann” at speeches and rallies and shouted, “Heil der Dicke! Heil der Dicke!” (“Hail to the Fat One!”). “The people want to love,” Goering boasted, “and the Fuehrer was often too far from the broad masses. Then they clung to me.” Even Goering’s vanity seemed more an endearing foible than a damning flaw. One nightclub comic in Berlin could count on big laughs from a joke about how Goering had made himself a set of rubber medals that he could wear in the bathtub.
Goering had a knack for playing to an audience, whether it was a crowd of thousands or a single listener. “He can turn on a smile and turn it off like a faucet, almost