Meanwhile, the bulk of the Gutmann silver collection, which had been sent to Munich, was found near Lake Starnberg. Böhler’s business partner, Hans Sauermann, had hidden it all, including the Reinhold Clock and the Orpheus Clock, in the cellar of his home. An October 1945 report on the find by a US army lieutenant urged that “this property should be placed under [military] control immediately as an attempt was to be made to loot this property”—a warning that, as we’ll see, came a little bit too late.
Eventually, many pieces from the Fritz and Eugen Gutmann collections would be found by the Monuments Men, and not just paintings and silver works but even fragile, little Meissen teacups. A large amount of Gutmann Meissen porcelain and antique French furniture was found in the cellars of Mad Ludwig’s castle Neuschwanstein, perched on a rugged hill in the Bavarian Alps. Much of the French Rothschild collection was also there, in conveniently marked crates. Still more Gutmann antiques were found in the enormous Baroque monastery of St. Florian, in Upper Austria.
Those and the tens of thousands of other artworks recovered by the Allies were initially sent to various “collecting points,” the largest being the Munich Central Collecting Point, housed in the former Nazi Party headquarters. They would be cataloged and their owners identified, if possible. (Identification proved in many cases to be easy, since the Nazis kept meticulous records of their thefts—perhaps because, as we have seen, they did not regard them as thefts at all.) Ultimately the Monuments Men would process as many as 5 million cultural artifacts through the collecting points.
However, for logistical reasons, the Allies had decided that instead of returning stolen artworks directly to individual owners (many of whom had perished in the war), they would instead be returned to the governments of the countries from which they had been taken. Sadly the Monuments Men unit was disbanded in June 1946. No doubt it was assumed the new governments, in the former occupied territories, would work as tirelessly to ensure that the stolen art was returned to its legitimate owners. That was unfortunately an extremely optimistic assumption.
Tens of thousands of pieces of looted art recovered by Allied armies were turned over to the Dutch Stichting Nederlandsch Kunstbezit (Dutch Art Collections Foundation, or SNK), including most of the recovered pieces identified as coming from the Gutmann collection. The SNK did not, however, go out of its way to track down and notify the owners of the returned artworks—or more likely, in the case of stolen Jewish-owned art, their surviving heirs. Instead, the owners or heirs had to file official claims with the SNK, specifically stating what pieces had been taken from their families and requesting their return.
That may sound simple enough, but it was not, particularly with paintings. One could not simply request the return of, for example, a “Tavern scene by Van Ostade” or a “Seascape by Van de Velde” and expect the SNK to hand it over. Dozens of paintings could fit those general descriptions. Instead, claimants had to describe their stolen painting in detail, including if possible the canvas measurements—an important identifying point in paintings—and provide documentation of prior ownership.
Under ordinary circumstances that might have been reasonable. But how could a claimant provide documentation of ownership when, often, those documents had been dispersed, destroyed, or taken by the very people who stole the painting in the first place? Even when those documents still existed, claimants often could not access them because the captured Nazi records of looted artworks had been classified and sealed by the Allied armies, as had the Allies’ own records of recovered looted art—and they would remain classified for decades. It was a perfect example of what would later be known as a “catch-22.”
• • •
In Amsterdam, Bernard and Lili tried their utmost to comply with the new rules and regulations. They compiled list after list, initially from memory, of as many, as possible, of the paintings and other artworks that had disappeared from Bosbeek. Delving into art catalogs, exhibition catalogs, and auction catalogs, they did their best to document the painting and silver collection. They sought the testimony of eminent art historians, such as Bernard Berenson and Max Friedländer. Eventually they filed hundreds and hundreds of claims with the Dutch government.
Meanwhile, thanks to the painstaking work of the Monuments officers, many of these works were now in the possession of the SNK in Amsterdam. We now know that over nine hundred pieces from both the Fritz Gutmann and Eugen Gutmann collections were turned over to the Dutch authorities from the Munich Collecting Point alone, mostly in 1946. Among these artworks were the paintings by Hans Memling, Hans Holbein, and Samson and the Lion by Lucas Cranach, as well as over two hundred pieces from the Gutmann silver collection found near Lake Starnberg. Bernard and Lili formally requested the artworks’ return.
But there was another catch. If the Nazis had simply confiscated all of Fritz’s artworks outright, it might, ironically, have been easier to secure their return. Instead, as we have seen, the Nazis had disguised their art thefts with a cloak of legality and bogus money transfers. Under Dutch law, ownership of any artworks, or other property, sold by Dutch citizens to the Nazis during the occupation was technically transferred to the Dutch government, on the grounds that the Dutch government-in-exile had declared such sales illegal during the war. After the war Nazi dealers, such as Haberstock, obstinately claimed their transactions had been legitimate, blithely ignoring the severe circumstances Jewish collectors suffered. But even more startling was that postwar Dutch officials seemed to agree with this revisionist Nazi scenario. Technically only involuntary sales were eligible for restitution under the new 1945 rules, and the Dutch authorities were insisting that Fritz Gutmann had willingly sold his artworks to the Nazis and had been paid for the sale—this despite the fact that the money “paid” to Fritz by Haberstock, Böhler, and other Nazis had been deposited in Nazi-controlled accounts. Meanwhile, the little money that had actually been paid into the Gutmann Trust account (the only account left open by the Germans) was withdrawn by a Nazi-appointed Treuhänder (trustee) named R. Leuchtmann, on August 18, 1944, just as the German army was retreating before the advancing Allies.
The SNK was adamant that only artworks that had not been involved in any “sale” would be returned. Bernard and Lili felt they had no alternative: they would have to take the Stichting Nederlandsch Kunstbezit to court.
Fortunately, at the same time, Rose Valland had been busy reclaiming several other pieces from the Gutmann collection. The confiscations by the ERR had been classified as outright theft, so the bureaucrats had no gray area to hide behind. Bernard went back to Paris eager, this time, to meet the heroine of the Resistance he had heard so much about. Instead he was greeted by a hard-smoking, drab, bespectacled woman, almost fifty, in a frumpy uniform. Although a little taken aback, he was grateful for the opportunity to thank Captain Valland personally. The first two paintings to come back were the Luca Signorelli and the little Barbault (originally thought to be by Goya). Thanks to Valland’s indefatigable efforts in Germany, Bernard and Lili welcomed the first successful recovery of any of Fritz’s artworks.
Rose Valland, later, also recovered one of the Van Goyen landscapes and five magnificent Louis XV armchairs. Unfortunately, because the Van Goyen had been part of the first “sale” to Haberstock, Valland felt obliged to send it to Holland and let the Dutch government sort out the legalities.
Then in October 1947 there was actually some progress on the legal front. The Dutch government had finally declared my father the official heir to Fritz’s estate. However, the ownership of the Bosbeek property was still in question. Its legal ownership had been seized by the Nazis in August 1942, while Fritz and Louise were still living there, and assigned to the Nazis’ “Dutch property management office.” Later, while Fritz and Louise were imprisoned in Theresienstadt, it had been “sold” to the German National Socialist Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), a Nazi “social welfare” organization.
By mid-1948 the authorities conceded that they might be prepared to voi
d the Nazi sale of Bosbeek. Bernard was ecstatic for just a brief moment before the other shoe inevitably fell. There was of course a catch. If the state restored the Gutmann family’s title retroactively back to 1942, then the Gutmann family would concurrently be liable for all back taxes and unpaid mortgages. Bernard’s heart sank. What choice did he have? After talking it through with the family lawyer, he decided they had to go back to court.
Meanwhile, as the proceedings were getting under way, at the beginning of 1948 the Dutch authorities finally removed all the Nazi children from Bosbeek. That same month I was born.
Then there was more good news. Among the papers that were turned over from what remained of Fritz’s last business, Firma F. B. Gutmann, was a storage receipt. Apparently at least one of Fritz’s former employees had remained loyal. Bernard was profoundly moved when he entered Fritz’s previously undiscovered Amsterdam Storage facility (belonging to the De Gruyter’s Shipping Co.) only to find over a hundred pieces originally from Bosbeek and Fritz’s office on the Herengracht. Among this unexpected windfall were six minor (but beautiful) paintings, a mahogany dining table with armchairs, Persian rugs, Japanese porcelain, and a complete silver service. (My father happily brought many of these things back to London. I remember fondly, as a child, the lovely Dutch seascape hanging in the hall near the entrance to my bedroom.)
Other documents (from Firma F. B. Gutmann) listed stocks in England and the United States that the Nazi trustee had not been able to touch. Bernard was relieved to find some real liquid assets. The family’s tireless lawyer, Albert Gomperts, who had also fled to London during the war, had not been paid in over a year. Also poor Uncle Max had been sending urgent cables from Italy hoping for some funds—the wonderful stamp collection had run out a long time ago. Bernard cabled him finally saying if he could come to Holland, there would be something for him.
Max had been effectively stateless since before the war, when his German citizenship (like that of so many others) had been canceled. When he received my father’s cable in early 1948, Max was in a quandary—his papers were still not fully in order. He decided the safest plan would be to fly to Belgium and then slip across the Dutch border. On December 6 he boarded a Douglas C-47 in Milan bound for Brussels. The small plane crashed during takeoff in a dense fog, killing all aboard. Bernard had been waiting for him in Amsterdam when he got the news; both he and Lili were devastated. Just a few weeks earlier, another uncle, Luca Orsini, had also died after a long illness.
Not until 1950 did the Dutch authorities officially determine what should have been obvious: that the seizure and sale of the Bosbeek estate had been forced by the Nazis, and therefore illegal, and that Bernard and Lili were the rightful heirs. Sadly, there was no legal way to avoid the unconscionable penalties that came attached with this modicum of justice. The title to the estate came burdened with much dubious debt, such as wartime tax bills and mortgages, along with various liens and other legal encumbrances. Bernard, with Gomperts Sr. and Jr., had argued quite reasonably, but vainly, that when a sale has taken place (albeit in wartime), then all previous liens must be settled at the same time. Furthermore they reasoned, at least on moral grounds, that Dutch Jewish citizens who had been barred, by the state, from working or accessing their assets should not be liable for any wartime dues, especially to the state. Not surprisingly the Ministry of Justice did not see things so clearly.
This new Kafkaesque ruling ensured that my family would only own Bosbeek, once again, for a regrettably short time. At the end of 1950 Bosbeek had to be sold to the sitting tenant. The new owners, the Catholic Congregation of the Sisters of Providence, turned the manor house into an insane asylum and later a retirement home for elderly nuns.
Meanwhile, the courts had now also confirmed Bernard as executor of the Gutmann Family Trust. This ruling had taken until almost five years after the end of the war. Again this seemed more like a Pyrrhic victory. During all this time the 220 pieces from the Eugen Gutmann silver collection, so carefully recovered by the Monuments officers at the end of 1945, had been languishing in a Dutch government warehouse. Since their arrival in Amsterdam in August 1946, the SNK had been biding their time. Then only months before my father was granted control of the Gutmann Family Trust, the SNK decided to release the family treasures to a court-appointed trustee. This so-called trustee quickly sold between sixty and seventy pieces from the collection before my father was able to get rid of him. On paper the functionary was merely paying expenses, his no doubt, but others also dating back to the Nazi occupation.
What followed was perhaps even sadder. The remaining 150 pieces of silver had triggered a backstabbing battle among Eugen’s qualifying heirs. Suddenly my father found himself at odds with his own cousins. It was one thing to fight against a callous bureaucracy or an avaricious museum, but Bernard had no stomach for fighting against what little was left of his own family. Reluctantly he yielded to his cousins. The remaining undivided artworks from the Eugen Gutmann collection were sent to New York in the early 1950s. There they would be sold, piece by piece, by a well-known antiques dealer who specialized in Fabergé eggs. To say the results were disappointing doesn’t begin to describe my father’s and my aunt’s reactions. The famous Jamnitzer Becher or goblet, which had made some of the worst Nazis salivate, had been valued, despite depressed 1945 values, at fifty thousand Reichsmarks, or at least $20,000, at the end of the war. When it was finally sold in New York, ten years later, the family received exactly $5,273.78. The superb little statue entitled A Flagellator of Christ, made by Alessandro Algardi around 1630, was sold for the astonishing price of $78.95 (after commission). Originally thought to be by the great Bernini, the silver statue now stands proudly on display in the National Gallery in Washington.
The meager proceeds were then divided among Eugen Gutmann’s feuding heirs—including Bernard and Lili, their two aunts, and Uncle Herbert’s children. Divided so many ways, the sums were derisively inconsequential. Bernard sank into a deep gloom as he reflected on the enormous lengths to which his father had gone to protect the Silbersammlung Gutmann. If only poor Fritz had a grave, he would surely be turning in it.
After another two years, Bernard’s next battle with the Dutch State came to a conclusion. The court ruled, in 1952, that even though the purchase agreements for Fritz’s “sales” to Böhler and Haberstock had not been concluded under direct coercion, they had still been concluded “under the influence of . . . exceptional circumstances” and were therefore eligible for “restitution.”
Yet again there was a twist. The heirs were allocated the right to restitution on condition that the sales prices “received” during the war be handed over to the state. In a nutshell, if Bernard and Lili wanted their family heritage returned, they would have to buy it back from the Dutch government.
It is more than merely astonishing. The facts were plain: Bosbeek had been stripped bare, the bank accounts had been emptied, and then Fritz and Louise had been murdered.
Even though Fritz’s sale of the artworks to the Nazis had been made under obvious duress, and even though neither Fritz nor his estate ultimately benefited from money the Nazis supposedly “paid” for the artworks, Dutch officials insisted that Bernard and Lili “repay” the government money that they had never received. Furthermore, the Dutch government insisted on “repayment” even though it had never expended any of its own money for these artworks.
Bernard and Lili were not the only heirs of Dutch Holocaust victims to be treated this way. Throughout the postwar years the Dutch government, as well as other Western European governments, displayed a fundamental disregard for the special circumstances in which Jews found themselves during the German occupation. In the name of democracy, the new Dutch State claimed it could not make special laws just for Jews. As a result it made no distinction between a Dutch citizen’s sale of property to the Germans and a Dutch Jewish citizen’s coerced sale during the occupation. Jews knew that if they refused to sell their property (at hugely disc
ounted prices), it would be taken anyway. Like Fritz, they sold their possessions not for gain, but out of desperation.
Following the court ruling it took the Ministry of Finance another year to assemble the artworks from the Fritz Gutmann collection and price them for sale. Ultimately the ministry only offered my father and aunt about five hundred out of the seven hundred or so pieces the Monuments Men had returned to Amsterdam, although my father was not aware of the discrepancy. So, at the beginning of 1954, after years of negotiation and litigation, Bernard and Lili raised what capital they could to buy back as much of Fritz’s collection as was being offered. This amounted to sixteen major paintings, including the Memling, the Isenbrandt, the Holbein, the Cranach Samson and the Lion, one Guardi, and the Fra Bartolommeo, along with nearly 170 antiques and artifacts.
But as with the Bosbeek estate, now that Bernard and Lili owned the art pieces, they could not afford to keep most of them. My father was able to bring home, among others, several pieces of Chinese porcelain, some silver, and the pair of Hubert Robert Roman fantasy paintings, which I remember so vividly in our house in Shepherd Market. Meanwhile, Lili took back to Italy a portrait by Gainsborough, three bronzes, and a Franz von Lenbach family portrait that the Dutch authorities decided not to charge us for. The rest was put on the art market in Amsterdam to pay the legal bills. Unfortunately, in a deeply depressed art market, the results were not impressive. For example, the Hans Memling Madonna with Child, a work that might today be worth a million dollars or more, went for around $4,000—even though, ten years before, Haberstock had offered it to Hitler for over one hundred thousand Reichsmarks (or $40,000).
Unbeknown to Bernard and Lili, the SNK kept countless pieces from Fritz’s art collection, along with some of the silver collection that belonged to Fritz personally, without bothering to tell them that it had them. The Dutch government had, in effect, stolen the artworks that had been stolen by the Nazis. That secret would remain uncovered for the next forty years.
The Orpheus Clock Page 19