Beauty and the Beast?

The beauty in the photos to the left was Austrian born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. American movie goers of the 1940’s and 1950’s knew her better as Hedy Lamar. The man in the right photo is her first husband, Austrian Fritz Mandl. He was a very successful arms dealer and once he gave Hedy to Hitler for a night, presumably to make sure he got arms contracts from the Reich. She quickly emigrated to the USA prior to the war and helped the American war effort with some very important inventions.

When the war ended and the greater Reich was in ruins, Mandl went to the Argentine and, like the other well placed Germans, met with Perón and got the contracts to provide weapons to the Argentine military. He accumulated such an incredible fortune that he palatial homes all over South America but probably none so magnificent as ‘El Castillo’ in La Falda. Today this operates as a very expensive hotel.

Another of his mansions, now a hotel seen above, is equally as nice, but smaller and less expensive…………although not by much.

This was a time and an era of great opulence.

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