More Loot

There was to have been a huge Goring Museum. There was to have been a huge Hitler Museum. Together, they were to house the cream of Europe's art. Last week the U.S. Seventh Army's Lieut. James J. Rorimer (curator-on-leave of Medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum) found himself sitting on one of the most mountainous heaps of stolen masterpieces known to history. Part of the intended contents of the two projected Nazi museums, the loot was stored in Neuschwanstein Castle, an elaborate retreat built by mad King Ludwig in the wooded hills of southern Bavaria.

Lieut. Rorimer had opened only a few of the several thousand cases. But he had an inventory, "a complete history of all the art here, looted, indexed and photographed by this gang." He also had proof that the Nazis had planned to comb the Continent with German thoroughness, lift every art treasure valuable enough for them to want. Sample evidence, from a letter written by Goering: "I consider bringing examples of French culture to Germany of the greatest importance, and you may count on the Luftwaffe to help you. . . ."

The Neuschwanstein catalogs listed 21,000 items, including choice canvases by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Fragonard, Boucher, Veronese; boxes of exquisite Renaissance jewelry, fine Tanagra figurines, antique carved ivory clocks, rich tapestries. Because files of orderly records and correspondence were captured intact at Neuschwanstein, the castle's contents may well be the most important cache of looted art yet to come to light in Europe.

Other discoveries of the week: P: A whopping collection of uncatalogued art objects--in a sealed mine near Alt-Aussee, high in the Austrian Alps. This "lode" is reported to include works from Monte Cassino, Rothschild collections from Paris and Vienna, the famed Ghent altarpiece by the Brothers Van Eyck, and a part of Goring's treasures. (Deep in the mine are Hitler's own library and personal correspondence.)

P:Seventy-two cases of art stolen from France and from Russia--in the former Carthusian Monastery at Buxheim. P: Some 300 cases of miscellaneous loot--in another old stronghold of Ludwig II of Bavaria on the island of Herren.

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