Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

General Kurt Daluege was hanged by the Czechs in Prague in October 1946.

Lina Heydrich died on 14 August 1985. She always defended her husband’s name.

The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt remained in the possession of the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna until 2006, when an Austrian court determined that it and three other pictures were the rightful property of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer’s niece, Maria Altmann, to whom he had left them in his will, following his impoverished death in Zurich in November 1945. Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was one of four paintings sold at Christie’s, New York, in November 2006. It fetched eighty-eight million dollars and may be viewed today at the Neue Galerie in New York City.

The author visited the house at Panenske-Brezany in February 2011. It is closed to the public, however, and mostly derelict. Under the old communist government of Czechoslovakia, the house was a secret weapons research facility.

According to a Prague newspaper in March 2011, Heider Heydrich, aged seventy-six, Heydrich’s surviving son, offered to ‘find finances’ for the restoration of the house at PanenskeBrezany. The story caused a furore in the Czech Republic. It is, however, the author’s opinion that the son is not the father and that this once beautiful house is worthy of restoration. I imagine he would like to find the grave of his elder brother.