Cardiff's Nazi Link.

Early last year (2014), I caught the end of a story on a BBC Wales News segment. News I never watch with any interest as not a lot happens in Wales. It's either rugby related or one of the Royals has gone to another obscure and unpronounceable village to feign an interest in the worlds largest Welsh cake.

Out of nowhere, I heard the words Hermann Goering and Cardiff. In the same sentence.

Goering, Hitler's Deputy and head of the Luftwaffe. He liked art. He had an impressive private collection. He took interest in a 16th Century Welsh Noblewoman, Catrin of Berain. The portrait was hung for centuries in family homes in North Wales but made it's way to Berlin and Goering in 1940.

In 1938, the owners decided to sell the painting and contacted a dealer in London. Somewhere along the line, it was offered to the National Museum of Wales but that transaction failed to happen. The London dealer had connections with the art market in Amsterdam and the painting was eventually bought by Walter Andreas Hofer, the advisor on art to Hermann Goering.

The painting became part of Hermann Goering's private collection.

Eventually, the art was rescued by a team which protect cultural treasures from damage during the war. A film called 'Monuments Men' (2014) was based on these guys.

The painting eventually found it's way into the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. I went to visit it.

The painting is so unassuming and there was no indication to its link with Goering and the Nazi party which is not surprising.