Hitler's Horses: The Incredible True Story of the Detective Who Infiltrated the Nazi Underworld by Arthur Brand

Author:Arthur Brand [Brand, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473575103
Google: 82qzDwAAQBAJ
Published: 2021-02-04T10:13:23.668047+00:00

13

Nörvenich Castle

On the train from Munich to Cologne, on the way to visit Joe Nassenstein, I read up on this grand master and his order. The Alexander Order for Art and Science turned out to be named after Alexander the Great. I could find only sketchy information about it online. The order’s aims could have come straight from the mouth of a Miss Universe contestant: respect, help, human rights, etc. A website that seemed to be linked to the order stated: ‘At the end of the twentieth century, the Alexander Order appeared in the public eye from a fog of secrecy.’

The list of members was striking, including Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia (1892–1980), daughter of the last German emperor, and Wernher von Braun (1912– 1977), the German aerospace engineer who helped develop and design Adolf Hitler’s V-2 rockets and, after the war, the American space programme. Whether these individuals had indeed belonged to the then-secret order was impossible to establish, given that they were now dead. Also listed as a member was Erica Pappritz (1893–1972), deputy chief of protocol under Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany. The website stated that Pappritz’s name had been mentioned in an embarrassing affair. Not long before, Der Spiegel had reported in 2012 that an Aubusson tapestry (Lake Inlet with Waterfowl) from Hermann Göring’s art collection – and therefore probably stolen from Jewish owners – hung in the guest quarters where visiting heads of state were accommodated by the German government. The revelation had caused a big scandal. According to an article on the website, Erica Pappritz had been displaying the tapestry in the guesthouse since around 1950. In Pappritz’s defence, the author of the article claimed it wasn’t only West Germany that had been guilty of art theft. Then came a striking sentence: ‘Even as the GDR fell apart, German artworks were being flogged off to dealers from barracks used by the Russians …’ Those were the author’s actual words.

How did the writer know this? This method, as used in the case of Thorak’s horses, the two statues by Arno Breker and the two nudes by Fritz Klimsch, was not public knowledge. Only a handful of people were in the know.

Excitedly, I searched for more information about Grand Master Nassenstein’s Alexander Order. The famous English actor Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) was also said to have secretly belonged to the order. Ustinov’s father was a German journalist and diplomat who’d worked as a spy for MI5 during the Second World War. The list of alleged members could have come straight from a book by Dan Brown. I got the strong impression that the order didn’t amount to much, and that prominent people had membership forced upon them without being able to say no. Like Crown Prince Felipe of Spain, photos of whom I found having a certificate of ‘honorary membership’ thrust into his hands in 1991. And yet there was something odd about this order. Joe Nassenstein was very likely the grand master mentioned in the police investigation headed by René Allonge.

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