My great-aunt Baroness Toinon von Essen, Berlin, 1918.
As for Eugen’s sons, they were a source of both pride and frustration. After sickly Walther’s early death, Herbert became the heir apparent. He took a degree in international economics at the University of Berlin and then started his climb up the Dresdner hierarchy—first as manager, then assistant director of the bank’s London branch, later as member of the Dresdner board and also director of the offshoot Deutsche-Orient Bank. Although dismissed by some as a “pale shadow” of his father, Herbert was a gifted banker who established close relations with other international business and financial leaders. He was also a consummate socialite, forging links with members of the royal court, including Crown Prince Wilhelm, the Kaiser’s eldest son, with whom he shared a passion for golf.
Herbert fell in love with the beautiful Daisy von Frankenberg und Ludwigsdorf, a member of an aristocratic Catholic family. While Eugen liked Daisy, he opposed the marriage on the grounds that it was just as easy to marry a rich girl as a poor one. Nevertheless, Herbert loved Daisy passionately, and the wedding went on.
Kurt, meanwhile, always something of a rebel, turned his back on a career at the Dresdner, studying instead literature and theater at university. He was a talented singer, making his amateur debut as a tenor at the Teatro Carignano in Turin. Unfortunately, in 1912, no doubt with Eugen’s grudging financial backing, Kurt wrote, produced, and starred in a play in Hamburg that was widely panned. He married Vera Herzfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish commodities magnate, which at least helped fulfill Eugen’s requirement that brides come with the necessary wherewithal. But to Eugen’s annoyance, Kurt became deeply involved in liberal politics.
Another son, Max, also preferred the arts to business. As close to openly gay as one could be in those days, Max studied art at the famous Dresden Academy and was a talented painter and pianist. He devoted his time between the salons of Berlin and Rome.
Then there was the youngest, Friedrich, “Fritz,” the baby—my grandfather. Fritz was born in 1886, surrounded from birth by fabulous wealth and privilege. The youngest child, he was relentlessly coddled, babied, and fussed over by his older sisters and his remarkably indulgent father. A photo of the seven children, taken when Fritz was about three, shows all five boys dressed in sailor suits—the standard outfit for boys of upper-class families of the day—with Fritz in the middle, being held protectively in the arms of his fourteen-year-old sister, Toinon. Little Fritz, staring directly at the camera, seems quite comfortable being the center of attention.
By all accounts, Fritz was an intelligent, lively boy with a quick wit and subtle sense of humor that followed him into manhood. In the few photographs I have of him, including one by the American avant-garde photographer Man Ray, there is always a hint of a wry smile. Although he was handsome, Fritz was not physically imposing. Slightly shorter than average, and plagued from his earliest days with flat feet, he gamely tried but did not excel amid the “physical culture” craze then sweeping Germany. Still, he had definite leadership qualities—people simply liked him—and a self-assurance often lacking in the youngest sons of powerful men. He held his father in awe but wasn’t close to his mother, a remote woman who left when he was just fifteen.
One wonders what Fritz made of his family’s place in the world. Through a child’s eyes, the wealth—the servants, the carriages, the opulent home—would have been unexceptional, the natural order of things. But the family’s religious and cultural status would have been a bit more complicated and confusing. Just twelve when the family converted, Fritz obviously had no say in the matter. Father’s word was final.
Unlike his Jewish friends and cousins, Fritz never studied Hebrew, never had a bar mitzvah. And unlike his Gentile friends, he never attended church on Sunday, never went to Bible class, never took communion. He was different from most of the other boys. Although thoroughly assimilated and at least four generations removed from the Bohemian ghetto, I am sure, on many levels, Fritz still felt his Jewish heritage, but he never identified as Jewish, even though his Jewishness was never far away.
At the Royal Wilhelm Gymnasium, where wealthy Berliners, both Christian and Jewish, sent their sons, one of his classmates was Kurt Hahn, the famous educator. Other alumni included Walther Rathenau, the future Jewish-German foreign minister.
Like all the Gutmann children, Fritz grew up with a keen knowledge of and appreciation for the arts. Given Eugen’s passion for the subject, and the magnificent artworks that filled almost every wall and cabinet at 10 Rauchstrasse, he could hardly have avoided it. Fritz also, as I would later discover, had some talent as a painter—this no doubt from Sophie’s side—and was something of a poet. His interests lay in the appreciation of the arts, their history and philosophy, and, above all, aesthetics. Later he would wistfully say that he might have been happiest as a theater director or an art dealer. Perhaps things would have turned out very differently if Fritz had followed his own dreams and not those of his father.
Eugen, disappointed that Kurt and Max had not gone into the family business, and perhaps seeing Fritz as something of a last chance, was eager for his youngest son to join the Dresdner Bank. Years of tutoring and family holidays all over Europe had given Fritz a cosmopolitan outlook and an impressive command of languages: German, French, English, Italian, and even some Dutch. After graduating from the Royal Wilhelm Gymnasium, Fritz skipped university and, at the young age of eighteen, went straight into banking at the Dresdner. Fortunately, he had, if not a love for the world of finance, most certainly an aptitude for it.
When Fritz joined the bank in 1904, the family interconnections were complicated and endless. Herbert, Fritz’s brother, and Max, Eugen’s brother, were board directors, as were Fritz’s brother-in-law (Hans Schuster-Burckhardt, Toinon’s husband) and Waldemar Mueller (a brother-in-law of Eugen’s brother Alfred). Additionally, Eugen’s first cousin Felix Gutmann was the first director of the Berlin branch of the bank. The Dresdner remained very much a family business, and as chairman of the board, Eugen was the Dresdner’s guiding force.
I imagine that having all those family members already deeply ensconced in the Dresdner hierarchy must have seemed a bit claustrophobic for Fritz, just as it had been for Eugen many decades earlier at the Bankhaus Bernhard Gutmann in Dresden. But if filial duty denied him a career in the theater or art world, he hoped at least for some degree of autonomy within the family business. In 1910, after a few years at the bank headquarters in Berlin, Fritz was considered sufficiently prepared to be sent to Paris as a member of the board of the Banque J. Allard & Cie., in which the Dresdner had a controlling interest.
But unlike Eugen, who had lived in an era and in a country that, though flawed, had allowed him to flourish and prosper, Fritz was entering an era of upheaval and great uncertainty.
CHAPTER 3
FRITZ AND LOUISE: MARRIAGE, WAR, AND A NEW LIFE
Fritz Gutmann and Louise von Landau, Baden Baden, 1913.
One can imagine what it was like to be a handsome, wealthy, well-connected—and single—young man in the Paris and London of the day. In Paris, Fritz took a bright apartment near the rue de Monceau, close to the fabulous mansions of the great Jewish banking families—the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Camondos, and others—most of whom had business connections, and in some cases distant familial ties, to the Dresdner and the Gutmanns. Fritz was soon quite at home. His duties at J. Allard & Cie. not being particularly onerous, he had plenty of time for a succession of lavish dinners, balls, and dances. The lure of the Parisian art world would also create a lifelong attraction.
My grandfather’s favorite activity was to wander down the boulevard Malesherbes to the Madeleine and from there to the Ritz in the place Vendôme. The bar at the Ritz became Fritz’s “other office” (oddly, years later he would still be using Ritz stationery for private memos). From there he would venture out into the endlessly enticing world of Paris’s art emporiums.
Almost next do
or to the Ritz was the Seligmann brothers’ celebrated gallery at number 23 place Vendôme. When Jacques Seligmann invited my grandfather to the newly converted Palais de Sagan, the guests were stunned by the array of masterpieces. Here, perhaps for the first time, Fritz found himself rubbing shoulders with his father’s exalted world. Other art mavens included Edmond de Rothschild, and from across the Atlantic Eugen’s old friend John Pierpont Morgan.
However, across the square at 8 place Vendôme, in an upstairs gallery at the beautiful old Hôtel Delpech de Chaunot, Fritz discovered the Renaissance sanctuary founded by Count Trotti. In his art gallery Trotti had assembled a veritable cornucopia of ancient artifacts from his native Ferrara, from Tuscany, and all of northern Italy. In retrospect, this was another clear confirmation of the Gutmann family’s passion for all things Italian. Fritz made a mental note that when he had a home of his own (and walls to cover), this would be one of his first destinations. Apart from Fritz’s already deep connection to the beauty of the Renaissance, he was also drawn to the charms of l’impressionnisme, a quintessentially Parisian sensation, and in particular the works of Edgar Degas.
Fritz did return to Paris many times, but obviously he could not have foreseen the consequence, decades later, of events that would take place at number 16 place Vendôme.
• • •
In 1912, at age twenty-six, Fritz was named assistant director at the London branch of the Dresdner on Old Broad Street (just behind the Bank of England), a post held earlier by his brother Herbert. After La Belle Époque of Paris (much like the Gilded Age in New York), London might have seemed more than a bit dull. But for a lover of theater, London outshone even Paris. I can imagine young Fritz in spats, top hat, and tails, catching one of the last hansom cabs from his bachelor flat in Mayfair to see Johnston Forbes-Robertson—said by many to be the greatest Hamlet of all time—perform at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, or to catch the beautiful Anna Pavlova in her Saison Russe ballet at the new Palace Theatre.
As in Paris, Fritz’s family and business connections in England offered a ready-made entrée into London society. His brother Herbert, one of the most gregarious of men, seemed to have befriended almost everybody who was anybody during his time in London. Fritz simply borrowed Herbert’s calling card. It was all quite exciting and glamorous—lunches at Claridge’s, balls at the Savoy, motoring weekends in the country, cross-Channel trips to Paris.
Hans Schuster, his brother-in-law, introduced Fritz to his longtime friend H. H. Asquith, Britain’s Liberal Prime Minister and noted bon vivant. Asquith was something of a Germanophile, although this would cause him trouble later. When Toinon and Hans were in England, Fritz was often invited to play bridge with them at the Asquiths’ country retreat in Berkshire. Fritz was also a frequent guest at the German Embassy at Carlton House Terrace, one of London society’s most sought-after spots, where the new German ambassador and his beautiful wife hosted a breathtakingly ambitious series of balls and receptions. Fritz was beginning to develop a taste for this glamorous world.
During the summer of 1913, Fritz took a break from his hectic social life to catch some alpine air at a beautiful new hotel, the Suvretta House. The hotel had just opened its doors to universal acclaim the previous Christmas. Here, overlooking Lake St. Moritz in Switzerland, he found Louise von Landau. It was the first time Louise had been able to convince her mother, Thekla, to take a trip out of Germany since Louise’s father had died.
Fritz and Louise had met before, but only briefly, at a party given by Gutmann relatives, the Arnholds, at their villa on the shores of Lake Wannsee, just outside Berlin. On that occasion Louise had, somewhat intimidatingly, been surrounded by more than a few competing suitors. Now in St. Moritz she was surrounded by only the majestic Engadine mountains, and my grandfather no longer felt any reticence. Fritz and Louise were clearly smitten by each other. Within a month he was writing to his father asking his consent for marriage.
LOUISE VON LANDAU
The Baroness Louise von Landau was the granddaughter of Jacob von Landau, whose family was originally from Breslau in Silesia, then part of Prussia, but now part of Poland. As a young man, Jacob had tried his luck running a tobacco factory, even horse-trading, before turning to banking. In 1852 he founded the Bankhaus Jacob Landau, first in Breslau and later in Berlin. The bank specialized in mining and metallurgy projects as well as loaning money to leading members of the nobility. In spite of coming from a long line of rabbis, Jacob deftly adapted to the life of an important behind-the-scenes player in the emerging economy.
One story, given credence by some scholars, has it that during the Franco-Prussian War, Jacob induced “mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria into agreeing to integrate Bavaria into the new German empire—without which history might have been very different. For his services Jacob was granted a hereditary title of nobility by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
By the time Jacob died in 1882, the Bankhaus Jacob Landau was one of the largest private banks in Germany and was instrumental in the founding of the Berlin Edison Company (later the electric giant AEG), which brought electric lighting and tramways to Berlin and throughout Germany. Always a pioneer, Jacob was one of the first to get a telephone—his number was Berlin 14.
During this period, the social transformation of the emerging Jewish bourgeoisie was equally dramatic. As an example, in 1883 one of Jacob’s daughters, Margarete von Landau, married Heinrich von Poschinger, a Catholic aristocrat. Poschinger was, among other things, Bismarck’s biographer, and through his connections at court Margarete caught the eye of the future Kaiser. Not only would she become the Crown Prince Frederick’s diarist, but later biographer and confidante to the short-lived second Kaiser.
Two of Jacob’s sons, Hugo and Eugen, followed their father into the world of finance. But Jacob’s eldest son and my great-grandfather, Wilhelm von Landau, had other interests. After graduating from the University of Berlin with a doctorate of philosophy, and armed with his share of the family’s significant fortune, Wilhelm set out in 1870 on a life of world travel and study in archaeology, ethnology, and botany. He participated in, and helped finance, excavations at the ancient cities of Troy and Hattusa, the Bronze Age capital of the Hittites, both in present-day Turkey. Another excavation site was at the Temple of Eshmun (a Phoenician god), in what is now Lebanon.
Wilhelm became perhaps the world’s leading expert on the ancient Phoenician alphabet. He wrote sixteen books, which were published in several languages, including English. These included the dauntingly titled Travels in Asia, Australia and America, Comprising the Period Between 1879 and 1887, which was packed full with a seemingly endless stream of soporifically dull facts and statistics, such as the exact length of the bridge between Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska: 2,750 feet. Somehow Wilhelm still managed to convey a sense of joyful curiosity about the world’s wonders, large and small.
The only photograph I found of great-grandfather Wilhelm shows a thin, hawk-faced man with a Vandyke beard, puffing on a cigar and dressed somewhat eccentrically in a well-worn suit and homburg. His eyes seemed fixed on some distant horizon. Amid all of his writings and travels, at the somewhat advanced age of forty-two, Wilhelm found time to get married to his cousin, Thekla, a woman thirteen years his junior. Eventually, in 1892, they had a daughter, Louise—my grandmother.
Louise grew up surrounded by wealth and privilege in a social atmosphere filled with many of the leading lights of Berlin society. The von Landaus lived in a large villa on the Lützowufer, near the Gutmanns in the Tiergarten district.
In addition to her private tutoring in languages and music, Louise was enrolled at a young age in an exclusive private school. One of Louise’s childhood classmates was Walter Benjamin, who would later become a preeminent German philosopher, literary critic, and essayist. In one of his most famous works, Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood around 1900), Benjamin recalled his infatuation with the young “Louise von Landau . . . a little girl of the nobility [
whose] name soon had me under its spell.”
By the time Louise was presented to Berlin society, she had developed into a strikingly beautiful young woman—vivacious, intelligent, an accomplished pianist and keen sportswoman. She was one of the most sought-after young debutantes of the day, Jewish or otherwise.
Fritz’s father would remark later that after Wilhelm’s death in 1908, Louise was, while still relatively wealthy, not fabulously rich because her father had spent much of his share of the family fortune on too many excavations in ancient, dusty places. Meanwhile, around this time, Louise’s uncle Eugen von Landau and his adopted sons (the Sobernheim brothers) were busy laying the foundations of the Commerzbank—a future rival of the Dresdner’s.
The Gutmanns and the von Landaus moved in the same social circles. At the end of 1912, when Fritz returned to Berlin from London for a family visit, Louise was now twenty and in full bloom. At the Arnholds’, over the holidays, Fritz had tried to get close to her, but another suitor, Paul Wallich, always seemed to be in the way. To make matters worse, Paul was the son of Hermann Wallich, Eugen’s archrival at the Deutsche Bank. Fritz kept his cool; always a careful planner, he would bide his time. He knew he would catch Louise alone soon enough. Then the following summer, as luck would have it, St. Moritz offered the perfect opportunity.
Although this was still an era when letters were lovingly kept and filed away in precise bundles wrapped with ribbons inside precious chests, not a single piece of correspondence between Fritz and Louise survived the conflagration that was to come. I can’t help but imagine those letters, written carefully in an elegant hand, being tossed brutishly on some burning pyre. The madness of the mid-twentieth century destroyed not only millions of lives but millions upon millions of memories—gone, vanished, never to be recovered. Without those letters I struggle to know my grandparents.
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