by Mary M. Lane
Even if one does believe that Hildebrand Gurlitt was genuinely trying to save artworks from Hitler’s regime and forced into working for Hitler because he was a quarter Jewish, an idea that Marianne Rosenberg dubs “bullshit,” it is obvious that after the war, when the artworks were no longer in danger, he lied repeatedly about the content of his collection—to the Monuments Men, to the new German government, and to Jewish European families hoping to locate their lost treasures.
As I have learned more details of Cornelius Gurlitt’s private life, also speaking with those who knew him personally, I have come to believe that it is highly likely that Cornelius was deeply traumatized psychologically by his wartime experience as a child. Does that excuse his complicity with his father in holding onto and hiding Nazi-looted works and initially declaring that he would refuse to return even those that the Nazis had looted from Holocaust victims? I personally believe that it does not, but I have sympathy for those who feel otherwise because none of us can truly know the extent of his trauma, and now we never will.
When I asked Marianne Rosenberg her views on the nature of evil, she answered with one of her characteristically concise and confident quips: “I don’t know how one splits evil into ‘more or less evil.’ I don’t think it matters at the end of the day.” What matters, continued Rosenberg, is, “Did they learn anything and are they applying any lessons that they might or might not have learned? Are they applying those lessons to therefore educate the public about what happened?”
After leaving the exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, I traveled back to Prenzlauer Berg to process the exhibition at Weinberg, my favorite café-cum-bar in the neighborhood. I had first arrived in Germany in 2009 to finish my undergraduate studies. Working as a journalist at the Associated Press, then at the Wall Street Journal, and later for the New York Times, I had pushed back consistently against the stereotype I often faced outside Germany of the nation as still being full of boorish Nazis or vile anti-Semites. It is not, and often I had felt, even as a proud Virginian and American, more patriotic about Germany than Germans themselves.
Yet I had to face the reality that the answer to Rosenberg’s query of whether Germany really had learned from the Gurlitt scandal and taken sufficient steps to prevent “future Gurlitts” was a resounding “no.”
Until that occurs—until Hitler’s Last Hostages are acknowledged, freed, and returned—the moral stain from the 1930s and 1940s remains in Germany.
Mary M. Lane
September 2019
Max Beckmann’s vibrant and diverse 1934 watercolor Zandvoort Beach Café was acquired by Hildebrand Gurlitt during World War II under unclear circumstances. The Nazis confiscated hundreds of Beckmann’s works.
Hildebrand Gurlitt acquired Otto Dix’s 1923 lithograph of a sex worker, Leonie, in 1941 after the Nazis confiscated it from a small museum.
Postwar, Hildebrand Gurlitt never returned Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1908 Love Scene, confiscated by Nazis from a small art club in Jena.
Hildebrand Gurlitt admired Emil Nolde’s bold brushstrokes and earthy pigments. He acquired The Dancer (1913) under unclear circumstances. The Nazis labeled Nolde, a Hitler supporter, as degenerate.
Hildebrand Gurlitt preferred acquiring easily transportable works on paper that the Nazis confiscated, including Otto Dix’s 1924 war scene Horse Cadaver. He destroyed documents revealing from whom they had been taken.
A young Hildebrand Gurlitt with his older sister, Cornelia, in an undated photograph. Cornelia, a budding artist, committed suicide in 1919.
Hildebrand Gurlitt posing during World War I with his father, Cornelius, and sister, Cornelia.
After Käthe Kollwitz’s son died during World War I, she created this Lamentation for the Dead. Hildebrand Gurlitt acquired it after the Nazis confiscated it. The Nazis ruined Kollwitz’s career.
Käthe Kollwitz, a master draftswoman, crafted this self-portrait in 1924. It is unclear how and when the Gurlitts acquired it.
Hildebrand Gurlitt routinely acquired artworks confiscated from vulnerable art clubs and collectors by Nazis—including Otto Dix’s 1924 Corpse in Barbed Wire.
Hildebrand Gurlitt feigned friendships with artists whose confiscated artwork he secretly held, including Max Beckmann, who created 1920’s Old Woman with Cloche Hat.
George Grosz pilloried religious and governmental corruption via widely published artworks, including his 1928 work Bow to the Authorities.
Even the Quakers in America supported George Grosz’s antiwar artworks, including Keep Your Mouth Shut and Do Your Duty from 1927.
George Grosz’s 1926 masterpiece painting The Pillars of Society warns against corrupt generals, judges, journalists, and politicians, including Nazis.
Artist and political activist George Grosz (1893–1959) with his faithful Scottish Terrier in 1928.
The Degenerate Art Exhibition opened on 19 July 1937 in Munich to excoriate confiscated art and artists loathed by the Nazis. The show’s targets included Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and Emil Nolde.
Nordic Artist and anti-Semitic sympathizer Emil Nolde (1867–1956), in a circa 1920 portrait.
Emil Nolde’s attempts to ingratiate himself with Hitler backfired. They confiscated his artworks, including The Life of Christ.
Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and their entourage at the House of German Art on 18 July 1937. The building housed artworks that promoted Aryan racial purity, motherhood, and war.
Hildebrand Gurlitt’s stately home in Dresden, where he conducted many art deals. The RAF bombed it, when empty, in February 1945.
Christopher Marinello, lawyer for the Rosenbergs, with Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Fan, looted by the Nazis in France, found in the Gurlitt trove, and restituted to the Rosenbergs.
The Toren family sells Max Liebermann’s Two Riders on the Beach at Sotheby’s London for $2.95 million, restituted from Hildebrand Gurlitt’s trove.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Do thy best and leave the rest.”
—Favorite saying of my maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Wetmore MacPherson Coblentz
On 21 May 2014, I received an email from Lauren Sharp, introducing herself as a literary agent at Kuhn Projects (now Aevitas Creative Management). Lauren had read my Page One articles on Hildebrand and Cornelius Gurlitt for the Wall Street Journal. For the past five years, Lauren has championed my writing and career, steadfastly supporting me.
My publishers and editors at PublicAffairs, Clive Priddle and Athena Bryan, have deftly shaped my writing while maintaining the integrity of my drafts. They also share my sense of humor, making the completion of a book about such a serious subject a tad less trying. Brooke Parsons, Miguel Cervantes, and Charles Conyers ensured that readers learned of the book and understood its message.
Pete Garceau transformed my suggestions for an aesthetically compelling book cover that would also be respectful of Adolf Hitler’s victims and transformed them into what readers see today. Project Editor Melissa Veronesi and copyeditor Jen Kelland guided this manuscript to its ultimate phase: being a “real book.”
Immensely worse than my literary tribulations was living through World War II and experiencing the pain Hitler inflicted. Marty Grosz, David Toren, Peter Toren, and Marianne Rosenberg were generous with their time and memories. Marianne’s lawyer, Christopher Marinello, also has been an invaluable, witty resource.
I wrote this book without the aid of any researchers; I am indebted to the following librarians and libraries for accessing primary sources on my behalf: Elizabeth Teaff at Washington & Lee University’s Leyburn Library, Dan at the University of Bristol Library, Kevin Wilks and Bethany Bates at the Center for Research Libraries, Heidi Madden at Duke University’s Perkins Library, Jessica Murphy at the Harvard Medical School Library, Will Gregg at Harvard’s Houghton Library, Mary Ann Linahan and Leah Adler at Yeschiva University, Lauren Paustian and Ginger Barna at the Leo Baeck Institute, Robert Kusmer at the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library,
David Oester at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Confidential American, Austrian, Israeli, German, and Swiss sources provided me with crucial information; I thank them for trusting me.
In Berlin, Jan, Benedict, Sean, and Shane have read drafts, encouraged me, and added their expertise on German history.
Phyllis gifted me my first diary and kindled in seven-year-old Mary the love for writing.
In London, Anne and Terence generously hosted me when I researched there.
In my personal life, my parents have advised academically on numerous drafts. Barbara J. and Al have added their fresh insight, particularly for the Prologue and Epilogue. Barbara J. has spent several years helping me successfully stay (mostly) sane. My friends since childhood, Rachel, Ashley, and Elizabeth, have cheered me on in my journalistic and literary aspirations. Ashley’s parents have provided extensive support.
My husband, David, and our German Shepherds and Scottish Terrier—Stella, Blake, and Jex MacFarlane—have provided immeasurable love and encouragement, as have David’s parents. David has read multiple drafts of this book and prudently suggested that books on Nazis be banned from the bedroom nightstand.
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Credit: Shane Thomas McMillan
Mary M. Lane (b. 1987) is a nonfiction writer and journalist specializing in Western art, Western European history, and anti-Semitism. Lane received one of five Fulbright Journalism Scholarships at twenty-two years old, gained international recognition as the chief European art reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and published numerous exclusive Page One articles on the art trove of Hildebrand Gurlitt. Since leaving the Journal, Lane has been a European art contributor for the New York Times. She splits her time between Western Europe and Washington, DC. She can be found on Twitter @MaryLaneWSJ.
TIMELINE
Entries in bold type are significant world historical events.
Entries in italic type are significant art historical events.
Entries in regular type are significant personal events.
1867 —
Emperor Franz Joseph gives Jewish Viennese citizens equal rights
20 April 1889 —
Adolf Hitler is born
26 July 1893 —
George Grosz is born
15 September 1895 —
Hildebrand Gurlitt is born
29 October 1897 —
Joseph Goebbels is born
1901 —
Max Liebermann (b. 1847) paints Two Riders on the Beach
3 January 1903 —
Alois Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s father, dies of pulmonary bleeding
21 December 1907 —
Adolf Hitler’s mother, Klara Hitler, dies of cancer
Autumn 1909 —
George Grosz matriculates into the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts
28 June 1914 —
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, are assassinated in Sarajevo
1 August 1914 —
Germany declares war on Serbia
November 1914 —
George Grosz and Adolf Hitler enlist in the German Army
9 November 1918 —
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates
11 November 1918 —
The Great War ends
28 June 1919 —
Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles on the anniversary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination
1921 —
Henri Matisse (b. 1869) paints Woman with a Fan
8 / 9 November 1923 —
Adolf Hitler’s failed Munich Putsch occurs
1 April 1925 —
Hildebrand Gurlitt becomes director of the König Albert Museum in Zwickau
12 July 1925 —
Joseph Goebbels first meets Adolf Hitler
December 1928 —
A Berlin court fines Grosz for slandering Jesus Christ, arguing they represent him on earth
28 December 1932 —
Cornelius Gurlitt is born
12 January 1933 —
George and Eva Grosz flee to New York, and their two sons follow soon thereafter
30 January 1933 —
Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor
27 February 1933 —
Marinus van der Lubbe sets fire to the Reichstag
15 October 1933 —
Adolf Hitler lays the cornerstone of the House of German Art
18 July 1937 —
The Great German Art Exhibition opens in Munich
19 July 1937 —
The Degenerate Art Exhibition opens in Munich
12 March 1938 —
Germany annexes Austria
9 / 10 November 1938 —
The Night of Broken Glass, or Reichskristallnacht, occurs
Late June 1939 —
Adolf Hitler initiates the Führermuseum Project
30 June 1939 —
A major auction of Nazi-confiscated art is held by Galerie Fischer in Switzerland
August 1939 —
David Toren (born Klaus Tarnowski in 1925) takes one of the last Kindertransport trips to Sweden
Autumn 1939 —
Adolf Hitler implements Action T-4, his “pilot program” for the Final Solution, focusing on non-Jewish mental patients and disabled children
1 September 1939 —
Germany invades Poland
14 June 1940 —
Germany occupies Paris unopposed
Summer 1941 —
Jewish-Frenchman Paul Rosenberg (b. 1881) escapes to New York from France
September 1941 —
Nazis raid Paul Rosenberg’s French bank vault, stealing Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Fan and over 100 other artworks
7 December 1941 —
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
20 January 1942 —
At the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials plan Germany’s extermination of Jewish Europeans
Early 1943 —
Hitler appoints Hermann Voss the Führermusem director; Voss quickly hires Hildebrand Gurlitt
25 August 1944 —
US troops liberate Paris
13 / 14 February 1945 —
The RAF bombs Dresden
30 April 1945 —
Adolf Hitler commits suicide
8 May 1945 —
Victory in Europe Day (VE Day)
Late 1950 —
The Monuments Men close their years-long investigation into Hildebrand Gurlitt
9 November 1956 —
Hildebrand Gurlitt dies
Spring 1959 —
George and Eva Grosz move back to Berlin
5 / 6 July 1959 —
George Grosz dies
August 1961 —
Construction of the Berlin Wall begins
9 November 1989 —
The Berlin Wall falls
3 December 1998 —
Germany signs the Washington Principles
11 September 2001 —
Family documents helping to prove that David Toren is an heir to Max Liebermann’s Two Riders on the Beach are destroyed in the Twin Towers
22 September 2010 —
Cornelius Gurlitt is detained by customs officials on a train from Zurich to Munich
28 February 2012 —
German police and tax authorities raid Cornelius Gurlitt’s apartment in Munich
November 2013 —
The story of the Gurlitt trove breaks to the public
6 May 2014 —
Cornelius Gurlitt dies of heart failure
May 2015 —
Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Fan is restituted to Paul Rosenberg’s heirs
24 June 2015 —
David Toren sells Two Riders on the Beach at Sotheby’s for $2.95 million, five times the low estimate
BIBLIOGRAPHY<
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BOOKS
Ades, Dawn, Emily Butler, and Daniel F. Herrmann, eds. Hannah Höch. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2014.
Arndt, Karl, and Peter-Klaus Schuster, eds. Die “Kunststadt” München 1937: Nationalsozialismus und “Entartete Kunst.” Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1998.