History lesson
Sir: Having written a doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Nazi leaders' art col- lecting, I was especially interested in God-
'I see Brigadier "Ronnie" Njukwo's died.' frey Barker's article (The Russo-German art pact', 11 July). While Mr Barker's jour- nalism may be first-rate (his account of the current German-Russian negotiations seems on target), his history is not. To begin with, Goring did not possess 400 paintings at the war's end but 1,375 (along with 250 sculptures) — at least according to the OSS reports written at the time. To say that GOring's collection 'surpassed even that which Hitler was amassing' is also grossly inaccurate, as the inventOry of the Rihrermuseum in 1945 extended to 6,755 paintings, of which 5,350 were classified as Old Masters. Goring was born in 1893: handing over his collection to the state on his 60th birthday would have put the date at 12 January, 1953 (not in 1957). The Red Army did not level Karinhall, GOring's estate: Goring had Wehrmacht engineers perform the task as he fled to the southern part of the Reich. Louis de Rothschild was Austrian — and himself kept imprisoned in the Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel Metropol in Vienna until he bartered his property for his release after eight months of incarceration: what he had to do with 'Poland's finest private art collection' is a mystery to me. While I have few problems with the thrust of Mr Barker's piece, I would hope for better attention to histori- cal accuracy.
Jonathan Petropoul
Lecturer on History & iterature, Harvard University, 14 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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