Priscilla (42 page)

The story is well-known. Miedl told a self-serving version to Theodore Rousseau in Madrid. ‘One night,' wrote Rousseau, ‘a man who he knew was in the Resistance came to him and said “Mr Miedl, I know you buy paintings for the Reichsmarschall and I have a picture for you. But I will sell it to you only on one condition. And that is that you don't inquire where it came from. Because it belongs to an old Dutch family who want to give the money to the Resistance.”' The anonymous elderly widow wished to sell for the astronomical sum of two million Dutch florins. Miedl had Hoffmann staying at the time. ‘Miedl took the painting up to Hoffmann, who said, “Why it's a Vermeer! I want it for the Führer.”'

Rousseau warned that Miedl would ‘never tell a complete story unless under proper control'. What Miedl omitted to say was that he had all but
agreed to let Hoffmann offer the painting to Hitler when Hofer stepped in, with a cold reminder to Miedl of his obligation to allow Göring first refusal. Miedl could not afford to antagonise Göring and in September 1943 he brought the Vermeer, nailed in the bottom of a case, to Berlin. Göring inspected it in the vault of the I. E. Meyer Bank and scooped it back to Karinhall, at last offering 1.65 million Dutch guilders – then the highest price paid for a single object of art.

The bogus heart of the Nazi regime was nowhere better on display than in this Vermeer – the showpiece in the grand gallery at Karinhall. An Allied officer who inspected the painting after its capture, Lieutenant Craig Smith, was among the first to express doubts. ‘One morning as we unloaded a truck from Berchstesgaden in the bright sun, we came to Göring's Vermeer. It looked untrustworthy to all who were unsupervising the loading.' This was hardly surprising in view of the fact that the artist had used a cobalt pigment not invented till the nineteenth century and, for the craquelure, a substance like Bakelite. Interviewed in his Madrid hotel room about the Vermeer's provenance, Alois Miedl said that he had bought it off a Dutchman, and gave his name. Three weeks later, a morphine-addicted forger called Van Meegeren was arrested in Amsterdam, confessing all. Asked where he had got the Vermeer from, he said: ‘I did it; I painted it.'

But what of the authentic masterpieces? Göring boasted that his collection was ‘the most valuable art collection in the world'. When the tally was made, hundreds of Old Masters were still missing. A report in 2000 computed at $30 billion the value of unaccounted stolen art. Where did it all go? The answer was contained in the Allied Intelligence report that I had read in Kew. ‘There is a great body of evidence to show that men like Göring and Ribbentrop have taken steps to transfer some of the most important items in their collection to neutral countries. Switzerland and Spain in particular, though the Argentine has been mentioned.'

The Nazis took care to not to leave behind any traces. The only tangible evidence of art-smuggling from Holland was Miedl's personal consignment of twenty-two paintings held by the Spanish authorities. But SIS sources in
Madrid discovered that this accounted for only a small fraction of the original cargo; furthermore, Miedl had already transported the bulk of it into Spain on 5 July. Packed in the dozen pine crates marked in big brown letters ‘FRAGIL' had been 200 canvases that belonged to Göring, plus 4.2 million pesetas in bonds. ‘It was suggested that Miedl was acting under orders from Göring to sell the paintings and keep the proceeds for him.' This was why Miedl and his luggage had been fast-tracked through Paris.

On 26 October 1944, two months after he was arrested with Graebener at the Spanish border and released without charge, Miedl reappeared in Madrid, staying at the Ritz. Snippets of information reached London. He had seen a representative of the Prado who might be interested in buying a Goya for two million pesetas. He planned to auction the remaining 199 canvases, which were, by his account, extraordinary – works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Cranach, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Titian and El Greco. ‘Miedl had distributed a catalogue of them. He had boasted of his connection with Göring and of the commission he would receive upon the sale of the paintings; German circles in Madrid believed his boasting to be justified.'

The sale never took place. A furious German air attaché alerted Göring to Miedl's undesirable publicity, and on Göring's instructions took the paintings into care. Rumour was that the air attaché gained permission to conceal them in the embassy of Germany's ally Japan, from where they vanished. There is no record to this day of their fate.

Miedl was not located by the Allied Intelligence services for another four months. At 6.30 p.m. on 12 April 1945, he opened his door in Madrid's Hotel Capital to someone he had been told was interested in buying his twenty-two pictures. The young man who stood there was an American Naval Intelligence officer. Lieutenant Rousseau ‘at once informed Miedl of the situation'.

A communiqué to the American Embassy in Madrid hoped that ‘we may be able to list him as a War Criminal or at any rate as a near War Criminal.' But Miedl was never extradited, and continued to live in Madrid with Dorie. Placed on the Allied Expulsion list of Germans to be repatriated from Spain, Göring's great friend and banker knew how to defend himself and his fortune.
He spent time in Switzerland and South America and died on 4 January 1990 aged eighty-six.

‘Miedl has up till now only told part of the story.' Not once in all their ‘brandy-laced' discussions did Miedl disclose to Rousseau what was inside the box that he and Otto Graebener had crossed the border to collect; what paintings, what diamonds, what gold and securities. But Allied Intelligence believed that Miedl and Priscilla's lover were ‘connected with a scheme to finance the future operations of German subversive organisations or to find a safe haven for Göring's fortune'. One source speculated that Göring had dipped deep into funds connected with the Four Year Plan, and these may have been in the box, and that Miedl's intention was to ‘start a bank or some other kind of business organisation' – and to launder looted art into cash ‘to finance the Nazi's Abwehr espionage ring'.

Rousseau was driven to speculate what had happened to the box. Argentina was a likely destination. Miedl had used a firm in Irun, Baquera Kutsche y Martin SA., which shipped to the River Plate. In Buenos Aires, a German banker sold pictures on Miedl's account. It is easy to imagine the contents dispersing south to hang on remote walls in the dust bowl of Rio Pico, or north to Cordoba where another of Göring's friends, Friedrich Mendl, owned a castle.

All these improbable elements combined in the Occupation. When Louis Malle consulted an historian of the period before making
Lacombe, Lucien
, he was advised that he could put anything he wanted in the film ‘
because everything happened'
.

29.
GRAEBENER

‘In my thoughts I took you so many times in my arms – oh Darling Pris. Whenever I can do anything for you just let me know. You are still a little baby and I must take care of you . . .'

Otto Graebener was not so high in the Nazi pecking order as Alois Miedl or Hermann Brandl, but his connection with the German administration in Paris was influential enough to secure Priscilla's release from her SS cell in Rue des Saussaies and to protect her until the Liberation.

Graebener was forty. A friend in the Abwehr described him as ‘about 1.60m tall, medium build, light red hair, left eye brown, right eye green, round face, pink complexion, married, one daughter'. Priscilla was twenty-seven when they met.

He was the son of a well-heeled German family who owned food stores in Karlsruhe. His English was fluent, the product of two years at an exclusive boarding school in Zuoz, ‘the Swiss Eton', modelled along English lines, where he learned to play fives and cricket, and was a member of a dining club, the ‘Heidelberger Kreis', which held annual asparagus dinners. The motto of the Lyceum Alpinum was ‘Mens sana in corpore sano'. Over a lunch facing Lake Geneva, the oldest alumnus told me: ‘We didn't have a song.'

Graebener was one of those who came behind the Panzers, hastening to Paris after the German Occupation to buy up food for the Reich. He acted as a top purchasing agent for Bureau Otto, taking Robert Doynel's milk and grain to Germany after first transporting it to Spain to be dehydrated in a factory that he part-owned in Navarre. His filing card in the Paris police archives notes that he was a member of the Cercle Européen and an ‘important industrialist involved in the manufacture of concentrated food products – powdered cream, soup cubes, flour'. He had offices in Karlsruhe, Hamburg, San Sebastian, Lisbon, Paris, and an apartment at 3 Avenue Bosquet. A one-paragraph report on him by Allied Intelligence mentioned simply the date of his arrest with Miedl, and confirmed his cover: ‘In business with Trebijano Company in Spain. Had an Abwehr Ausweiss to get him out of fighting forces. Miedl says he is anti-Nazi.'

He had powerful links with the Abwehr, though. One of these was an Abwehr art trafficker, Wilhem Mohnen, whose chief activity was to buy paintings on behalf of Göring and Hitler's principal scouts in the Paris art market. Mohnen regularly met up with Graebener at the Hôtel Lutétia, where he boasted of having an ‘unlimited amount of foreign funds at his disposal'.

Which begs the obvious question: was Otto Graebener's snout in the same trough? Zoë Temblaire had visited Otto's apartment with Priscilla and observed the canvases on the walls. ‘He told Zoë he dealt in pictures,' wrote Gillian. ‘He certainly did! All the loot went back to Göring & Co.'

‘Please wire collect immediately whereabouts of goods.' The depth of Graebener's involvement in Nazi art-trafficking is suggested by this frantic message made to his office in San Sebastian in January 1945 – six months after he had organised the passage of Göring's crates into Spain. Graebener was in no position to reply, still under interrogation in Paris. But it hints to why he might have become such a close associate of Göring's banker Alois Miedl – and why the Free French lieutenant at Hendaye told Miedl that ‘he would not expose so much as his little finger' for Otto Graebener.

All this allowed Priscilla to have the lifestyle she led with Otto.

‘We were so sweet together and Pris is carved very deeply in my heart.' Their affair began in the summer of 1943 and continued into the following year. Emile Cornet was conveniently imprisoned in Fresnes. Graebener's wife had returned to Karlsruhe with their six-year-old daughter. Priscilla and Graebener were free to ride bicycles into town and take lunch with Zoë. With Graebener's car and Ausweiss, they went further afield than Priscilla's conditions would have permitted. ‘I love to see you on the bike or swimming or guiding the car from Dijon to Paris.'

The precise development of their relationship remains unclear. Graebener complained that Priscilla was always surrounded by too many friends, and yet he introduced her to his. A man called Johnny (Jean Duval?). ‘Just think of it, our old good friend Johnny is dead. While driving his car, very lately, in 1945, he had an accident and was instantly killed. I know you liked him so much.
We
, you and I, lost a really good friend.' Another man called Wolff (Marcell Wolff, picture dealer in Spain, close contact of Miedl and Hofer?): ‘Once he told me you are a remarkable young lady – and he was right.'

Did Otto escort Priscilla to auctions at the Hôtel Drouot in Rue Rossini, or to Serge Lifar's ballet evenings, or to dinner with Alois Miedl – when Miedl came to Paris in April 1944 to arrange his Spanish visa? Compared to Priscilla's other love affairs, we have very few documents from Otto Graebener: a letter, three photographs (even though Germans were forbidden to give girls their photos), but nothing more. Most of my information comes from Gillian's interview with Zoë Temblaire.

According to Zoë, Otto often invited Priscilla to Maxim's in Rue Royale, the preferred dining place of the Nazi elite, where one had to book a week ahead and meals cost 1,000 francs. I imagine Graebener transferring Priscilla from one arm to another so that he can give the Heil Hitler salute. I see men coming in, shaking hands with him, greeting Priscilla who sits there in the navy dress that he has bought her – feeling what? Shame, fear, sickness? Or does part of her enjoy the frisson of being saluted? I see women at other tables, the clandestine bend of their necks, their glances of envy or commiseration. Or do they avert their eyes, like women meeting in a brothel? I see her trying not to look around, concentrating on the caviar brought back from Russia. I wonder if she recognises from a snow-covered courtyard in Besançon the tall black man in an apple green turban who brings Priscilla her coffee. And if so, what does she say?

The whole nation was up to it, if you believed one of France's most famous journalists, the anti-semitic writer Robert Brasillach. ‘Whatever their outlook, during these years the French have all more or less been to bed with Germany.' And the memory of it remained sweet, he added. That was in February 1944. One year later Brasillach was executed as a collaborator. After the war, it became necessary to play down any connection with the Germans to save your skin.