Nick never did get to see our Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap, which had been secured somewhere in Sotheby’s Manhattan vaults. Fortunately, today Botticelli’s Young Man is now beautifully restored and on view at the Denver Art Museum.
• • •
We had now found and settled, for better or for worse, three paintings from our family’s shattered collection. The effort to reclaim these works was not only an attempt to recover a vestige of our rich family heritage, but also our way of proving that, despite the Nazis’ having so nearly destroyed our history, they had ultimately failed.
Meanwhile, the way the art world conducted its business was being shaken to its foundations. Many said that my family was a catalyst, if not a leader, in creating an awareness about Holocaust-looted art in American museums, and beyond. By the spring of 1998 the scale of the problem was becoming apparent when another notable case hit the headlines. Our friends the Paul Rosenberg family had just discovered that their looted Odalisque, by Henri Matisse, had been in the Seattle Art Museum since the early 1990s.
At the end of 1998 our case about the Degas helped prompt a conference, convened by the State Department, which would involve forty-four nations. Nick and I were invited to attend the “Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets,” or so we thought. At the last minute it must have been decided having actual claimants present might be too disruptive. The politicians felt safer, no doubt, confining the event to diplomats only. Nevertheless I was invited to speak on a panel at the National Archives, not far from the State Department. I found myself at loggerheads with a charming, but intractable, director of the New York Museum of Modern Art over the concept of “statute of limitations”; the room seemed to be on my side, and the press was digesting every word. The next day I gave a more personal interview about our quest at CNN’s Washington headquarters, which was followed by a luncheon hosted by the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. Everybody involved was excited about what we sensed were historical developments.
The State Department conference ultimately adopted standards for resolving issues of Nazi-confiscated art that became known as the Washington Principles. The first principle was “art that had been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted should be identified”—as obvious as this sounded, it was an important first step. Then the conference urged that these findings should be publicized. Another important recommendation was the establishment of a centralized registry that would (attempt to) link all databases of Holocaust-era lost art. The conferees also made a point of encouraging alternative strategies for resolving disputes and avoiding litigation.
The basis for the Washington Principles was a set of guidelines that had been established earlier in 1998 by the Association of Art Museum Directors at a meeting hosted by one of the more progressive museums, the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Just a few years later, this museum invited Nick to give a talk on the Jan van Goyen that had been looted from our family for Adolf Hitler’s museum and later recovered in the mines at Altaussee by none other than Lieutenant Commander George Stout of the Monuments Men, who back in civilian life after the war became director of the Worcester Art Museum. The leader of the Monuments Men had returned the painting to Paris, where Rose Valland had returned it to my family. The sale in the 1950s to the Worcester, via an art dealer, had been totally legitimate, much to the museum’s relief. And to the museum’s credit, they had contacted my family even before they knew the Van Goyen’s full history.
In June 1999 the Seattle Art Museum settled the first lawsuit over Holocaust-related art against a museum in the United States when they returned the exotic Odalisque by Matisse to the Paul Rosenberg family.
The Washington Principles would not only set new guidelines for US museums and institutions, but perhaps more important they would bring about the creation of “restitution committees” in Austria, France, and the Netherlands.
Even the two great tradition-bound auction houses began to thaw. Apparently while our Renoir debacle was still under way in 1997, Sotheby’s discreetly introduced an in-house restitution department headed by a specialist in art law, Lucian Simmons. Lucian has since become a worthy colleague. Then a few years later Monica Dugot became director of restitution for Christie’s. I was heartened by the choice; Monica had been a crucial support for my Swiss bank claims while she had been deputy director of the New York State Banking Department’s Holocaust Claims Processing Office.
After half a century of business as usual, the art world was finally coming to terms with history.
CHAPTER 12
RETURN TO HOLLAND
Lili finds her mother’s old Duchesse chair.
Celebrations all across the Netherlands followed the engagement, in 2001, of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander to his Argentinean fiancée. The Governor of Utrecht was getting ready to greet the royal couple in the Paushuize, which had been built in sixteenth century for the only Dutch pope. Standing proudly, surrounded by fine examples of the provincial art collection, he was fielding questions from the national and local press. Out of the blue the reporter from VPRO asked, “Do you know who that painting used to belong to?”
Shuchen Tan, a veteran video reporter, thrust her microphone at the dumbfounded official. The Governor looked at the painting behind him, hoping for clues, and stuttered something about its belonging to the state.
Shuchen persevered. “How did the state get it? And who did it belong to before?”
The Governor admitted he had no idea.
“The previous owner was murdered in Auschwitz,” the reporter clarified.
The Governor began to panic. “I hope you are not recording this.”
“Of course I am,” she replied.
Later when the Governor had grasped the implications of the situation, he declared that he did not want any tainted art in his government buildings. He thought an official inquiry should be initiated. The charming painting in question was Ducks at a Pond by a talented, but little-known, early-nineteenth-century artist named Angela Schuszler. It was one of a pair, the other simply called Chickens, and both had lived happily upstairs at Bosbeek, in the hallway on the way to the bedrooms—that was, until February 11, 1942, when Julius Böhler had included the two paintings as Item 37 in his first comprehensive inventory of Fritz and Louise’s house.
In July of that same year, Böhler and Haberstock sold the pair, along with a huge amount of my grandparents’ antique furniture, to Dr. Heinrich Glasmeier, director general of the Third Reich Radio Corporation, who was decorating his new offices at the time. Apparently he had a huge budget and was buying looted artworks from at least three countries, much to Böhler and Haberstock’s delight and profit. Glasmeier had just taken over the enormous Baroque monastery of St. Florian, not far from Hitler’s hometown of Linz, to create the “Great German and European Radio.” At the instigation of his boss, Joseph Goebbels, the Gestapo had expelled the monks from the monastery in 1941. For the next few years Glasmeier lived in the lap of luxury, and then in 1945, just weeks after hosting a huge gala for the Führer’s birthday, he fled before the advancing US army and disappeared, never to be seen again.
The two Schuszler paintings, among others, and large amounts of Fritz’s furniture and antiques, were eventually returned to the Netherlands in early 1947. However, not until 1954 did the Dutch authorities offer the two paintings to my father and aunt—and then only at a price. Sadly Bernard and Lili had already spent every last penny at their disposal to buy back as much as they could from the Netherlands government. As a result the Ducks and the Chickens were absorbed into the Dutch National Collection, along with many Gutmann antiques and works of art. Some of these works the authorities never even bothered to offer.
• • •
The postwar governments of countries once occupied by the Germans were afraid that once restitution started, there would be no end. My father, like so many survivors, was officially shunned after the war because the authorities knew if they
followed the problem to its ultimate conclusion, almost the entire population would be involved. Not only had many art dealers, curators, and directors of major Dutch museums actively collaborated with the Germans, but virtually the entire population of the Netherlands, just like that of Germany, had been complicit in the systematic robbing of the Jews. From my grandfather’s Botticelli and Hispano-Suiza sedan down to the brooms and brushes in the kitchen—Jewish clothes, books, furniture, apartments, jewelry, shops, cars, businesses, bicycles, everything, including the pots and pans, had been divided among a willing population. By allowing entire countries to be accessories to the greatest crime in history, the Nazis knew that everybody would also have to be part of the greatest cover-up.
It would take five decades before the Dutch government would finally admit that its postwar treatment of Jewish survivors was, in the words of one official, “extremely cold and unjust.” Even this reluctant concession had only come about as the result of enormous international pressure.
From my family’s perspective, it all began around the end of 1996. Our researcher, Helen Hofhuis, had just discovered the original Dutch customs receipt for the Renoir. During her research, she kept coming across references to the Collectie (Collection) Gutmann. At first she thought it was a historical reference; only gradually did she realize the collection in question referred to the present day.
When we asked Lili, she exclaimed, “Yes, yes! They [the Dutch] probably have hundreds of our things!” Nick tried to narrow it down a bit, so he asked Helen to start looking for one of the more recognizable works in Holland. The Portrait of a Man by Jakob Elsner seemed a good place to start. Originally attributed simply to a Nuremberg master and dated around 1490, it was exactly what Lili was referring to when she talked about all the “ugly old men” in Fritz’s Renaissance portrait gallery. It was also exactly the kind of painting the top Nazis had been looking for.
When the Monuments Men found the portrait in the mines of Altaussee in May 1945, they gave it the identifying marks Hitler nr. 1623 (referring to the inventory of the Führermuseum). After being processed through the Munich Collecting Point, the Elsner was sent back to Amsterdam at the end of April 1946. As with the pair of Schuszler paintings, it would then take almost nine years before the SNK (Netherlands Art Property Foundation) would offer the portrait back to my family. As usual, the catch was that my father and aunt would have to pay the Dutch State fourteen thousand Dutch guilders, and Bernard and Lili had already exhausted their limited budget. As I would discover years later, the SNK had been somewhat disingenuous in their offer. In 1948 they had already placed the Jakob Elsner on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, in Enschede.
In the late 1990s it was still not clear with whom in the Netherlands we might lodge a claim or even an inquiry; the only possibility was to petition the Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science. That no works of art lost during the German occupation had been returned since the 1950s did not bode well for any such new claim. Meanwhile, thanks to a class-action suit, supported by the World Jewish Congress, against the Swiss banks, attitudes were changing. Following pressure from Israel Singer and Elan Steinberg (Secretary General and Chief Executive, respectively, of the WJC), the Dutch agreed to initiate serious discussions concerning World War II assets. After a breakthrough vote in the parliament in The Hague, in October 1997 a special committee was established to investigate art confiscated during the German occupation.
The head of the special committee was Rudi Ekkart, a respected art historian, and in April 1998 he issued his initial recommendations. One of the major results was the establishment of the Herkomst Gezocht (Origins Unknown) agency. Its assignment was to investigate who originally owned the works currently in the Dutch Art Property Collection (NK). Technically the NK consisted of thousands of artworks recovered from Germany after World War II and still in the custody of the Dutch State. It was not long before Origins Unknown’s Evelien Campfens would alert Helen to the discovery of a lovely Meissen teacup, a tiny step in the right direction. Soon their initial report included a couple of paintings, several pieces of Chinese porcelain, and a set of Meissen plates from our collection. When the agency’s following report came out in October 1999, even more pieces from Fritz and Louise’s home were listed—all still in the “custody” of the Dutch State.
Nick and I were growing impatient. As each month went by and the inventory from our family’s collection grew longer and longer, we seemed no nearer to a resolution. At the end of 1999 we filed an official claim with the help and encouragement of Anne Webber, who had decided to make Holocaust restitution her life’s work after directing the documentary Making a Killing.
Origins Unknown was now also featuring countless artworks that had belonged before the war to others, including the Koenigs, Lanz, Mannheimer, and Goudstikker families. The Goudstikker collection was another case in point. Jacques Goudstikker had fled the Nazi occupation with little except his famous Black Book, which was the inventory of his gallery. When his surviving wife, Desi, returned to the Netherlands after the war, the Dutch State offered back only some of the Goudstikker paintings, and then only on condition the poor widow compensate the government.
Nick had several meetings with Christine Koenigs and Marei von Saher, heiress to the Goudstikker estate, trying to plot a common strategy. They decided to get in touch with the World Jewish Congress, which was more than receptive. The WJC was fresh from its success in forcing the Swiss banks to establish a fund (ultimately $1.25 billion) to compensate families, such as the Gutmanns, for the loss of so-called dormant accounts during the Holocaust era. Israel Singer called the Netherlands’ Prime Minister, Wim Kok. The Prime Minister was not only extremely stubborn, but, like so many of his predecessors, seemed to have a blind spot about what had happened during and after the war. In a notorious example of how far Wim Kok was missing the point, he actually went on Israeli radio and asserted, “The Dutch have never been responsible for the misbehavior of the Germans in the Netherlands during the war.” I think the images left by Anne Frank’s diary of good Dutch folk trying to hide poor Jews had become widely accepted. In reality, about a third of all the Jews hiding in the Netherlands were betrayed to the Germans—not to mention the twenty-five thousand or so Dutchmen who volunteered for the Waffen-SS.
Moreover, the current issue was what the Dutch had done after the war. Eventually the Prime Minister conceded, “The restitution of legal rights in the impoverished postwar Netherlands was basically correct from a legal and formal point of view, but at the same time . . . reports identify and criticize a number of shortcomings: the length of the process, the cumbersome and inflexible procedures, and above all the chill reception and lack of understanding that awaited those returning from the camps.” The Dutch authorities, despite some reactionary elements, were finally coming to grips with their behavior at the end of the Holocaust era. The more progressive felt an outright apology to the Jewish people was long overdue.
History was on our side, for once, when Rudi Ekkart issued his recommendations in April 2001. “The Committee recommends that sales of works of art by Jewish private persons in the Netherlands from 10 May 1940 onwards be treated as forced sales.” And: “The Committee recommends that a work of art be restituted if the title thereto has been proved with a high degree of probability.”
Nick and I were elated, but Lili, with her long years of dealing with the Dutch, soon brought us back to earth. Her cynicism proved justified as we watched Ekkart’s recommendations get kicked around like a political football for half a year. I was also bothered by the sanctimonious tone of the Dutch authorities, as if they might be doing us a favor. They were attempting to gain the moral high ground by claiming everything they had done had been entirely lawful (not unlike the Germans after the war).
• • •
Meanwhile, Shuchen Tan flew out to Los Angeles to continue her report of the Gutmann saga. Nick shared rather indignantly that the Dutch authorities were still holding o
n to (among other things) our grandmother’s dinner service—quite possibly the one used for Lili’s very last dinner with her parents. The press was on our side, again, but what about the politicians? Finally parliament was swayed, and on November 16 (my mother’s birthday) the Ekkart Committee was officially given some teeth. Evelien Campfens and Origins Unknown could finally do their work.
At the end of March 2002, almost fifty-seven years after the liberation of the Netherlands, the new committee authorized its first restitution. It was for just one painting, by the sixteenth-century Flemish artist Joachim Beuckelaer, and it was to be returned to the heirs of the Berl family, originally from Vienna. On the same day the committee advised the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science to return approximately 255 artworks and antiques to the heirs of Fritz Gutmann.
In April we received the confirmation from the ministry in The Hague. We could hardly believe it. Secretary of State Rick van der Ploeg had authorized the return of all 255 pieces claimed. This time elation was in order. Nick, Lili, and I were all frantically calling each other. Nick and I were also e-mailing each other constantly, but communications with our dear aunt remained more old-fashioned—by telephone or by mail. She could still hammer out a good letter on her faithful typewriter.
We agreed to meet in Amsterdam in September; meanwhile there was much to organize. The Dutch also had a lot to take care of. The most important thing, now that they had agreed to give back everything (from this claim at least), was to actually find all the artworks and antiques—no small feat as it turned out. Some of our antiques were already in the repository at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) in Rijswijk, just outside The Hague. The ICN, as we learned, administered a collection of over one hundred thousand pieces, half of which were in their enormous facility; the rest were scattered throughout various Dutch museums, government ministries, and even foreign embassies. The Gutmann Collectie was similarly dispersed.
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