The Orpheus Clock

by Simon Goodman

  On August 10, the inmates were transferred to Nuremberg. The trials would begin three months later. Most of those mentioned above would be sentenced to death.

  However, Karl Brandt was singled out for special treatment. Along with some of the other most notorious “medical” practitioners, Dr. Brandt became the primary defendant in what was known as the Doctors’ Trial. Officially it was entitled United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al. During the exhaustive preparations for trial, the prosecutors took time out to question the accused about his art collection. Most of it, he claimed, he had stored in the bunker under the Reich’s Chancellery. He mentioned Karl Haberstock a few times during the deposition, but he only mentioned the Stuck painting once, and then he was rather evasive. The American interrogators assumed that if any of Brandt’s artworks had survived the battle for the bunker, after Hitler’s suicide, then the victorious Soviet troops would have carried them away. However, Brandt seemed to imply that a Dr. and Frau Schönemann might have managed to smuggle some pieces to Munich, in the American zone.

  Earlier, in the waning days of the Third Reich, Brandt had also sneaked his wife, Anni, and young Karl-Adolf behind American lines, in the state of Thuringia, and from there to safety. In doing so, Brandt had almost got himself killed. When Hitler learned that his once-trusted aide had lost faith in the war effort, he accused him of high treason. Brandt was arrested by his own SS and sentenced to death. However, in the chaos of the final days of the war, the sentence was never carried out.

  Now Karl Brandt stood accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. To be specific: performing medical experiments on prisoners of war and civilians, in the course of which Brandt, and the other defendants, committed murder, torture, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. He was also accused of planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians. The trial lasted over eight months, at the end of which SS-Gruppenführer Prof. Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s Reichskommissar for Medical and Health Care, was found guilty and sentenced to death.

  At the scaffold, Brandt refused the peace and absolution proffered by a nearby priest. Instead he accused the United States and Britain of hypocrisy. “Justice has never been here. What dictates is power. And this power wants victims . . . . I am such a victim.” He was hanged on June 2, 1948, at the Landsberg Prison, between Munich and Augsburg. The Stars and Stripes newspaper reported the next day that the convicted had “paid an eye for 10,000 eyes, a tooth for 10,000 teeth. In a chilling rain they died unfrightened.”

  • • •

  By the winter of 2008 I had become rather dispirited. I had studied and studied everything I could about Stuck’s femmes fatales and their lascivious snakes. For the life of me, I could not deduce which one Fritz might have owned. Lili had, not surprisingly, pointed out the obvious: they all looked the same to her. She did, amazingly, remember the approximate size. Apparently it had to be one of the smaller versions. Also I could eliminate those in the series that had solid provenances dating back from well before the war. Working from the Franz von Stuck catalogue raisonné, I was able to whittle down my list to just four or five Sins or Sensualities. I had sent a slew of e-mails and letters requesting better provenance histories, including several to Germany. Interestingly, two of the most famous in the series Sin or Die Sünde had the least solid provenances and were now in the National Gallery in Berlin and the Franz von Stuck Museum in Munich. The Berlin painting had appeared on the Berlin art market in 1940 and then, from what I could tell, was found languishing in a German government warehouse in Berlin after the war. Subsequently it had been donated in the 1960s to the Nationalgalerie. The Villa Stuck version, in Munich, had been donated to the newly refurbished Stuck Museum in 1965 by a benefactor. Where it had been before that was unclear.

  I decided nobody would get back to me until after the New Year, so I put myself to bed feeling the flu coming on. But then in the last mail just before Christmas came a heavy package for which I had been waiting over a year. May dropped it at the foot of the bed. Inside I discovered a hefty tome dedicated to none other than Fritz’s nemesis—Karl Haberstock. It was entitled (translating from the German) Controversial Art Dealer and Patron of the Arts. I was a little stunned by the choice of words. I even checked my German dictionary to make sure controversial was really the word the authors intended. The book had been commissioned in 2000 by the city of Augsburg, Haberstock’s hometown. An American historian had voiced various misgivings about the Karl and Magdalene Haberstock Bequest, which the city of Augsburg had gratefully received in the 1980s. From what I could tell, the collection consisted of artworks Haberstock had not been forced to return after the war. The introductory essays certainly covered much of Haberstock’s Nazi-era activities, albeit in a strangely neutral, if not obsequious, tone.

  The first illustration in the catalog was of a bronze bust of Augsburg’s honored son and citizen. Not until the end of 1999 was the actual bust of Haberstock removed from the entrance to the Schaezlerpalais, which, to this day, still houses the Haberstock bequest. Just a few miles away you can still stroll along Karl-Haberstock-Street if you so wish.

  In the catalog, first came the glossy color photos of paintings formerly belonging to Jewish collectors such as Édouard Jonas of Paris, Otto Weissenberger of Dresden, and even our very distant cousins the Gutmanns of Vienna. Then came the antiques, furniture, and china Frau Haberstock had so generously donated. Glancing at these I felt a certain shiver. Maybe it was the flu, but among the china I felt convinced I was looking at my grandmother’s coffee cups. I wondered whether it was possible to inherit memory. The china, clearly, would need a lot more research. I forced myself to press on. Besides, the next section was indeed remarkable. It documented Haberstock’s purchase and sale ledgers from 1933 until the end of 1944. I quickly found all the forced sales Fritz had been subjected to. The editor, Horst Kessler, had done an outstanding job. Then in the sales section for November 1942 I found—“To Professor Dr. Karl Brandt, Berlin—Franz von Stuck Die Sünde.” And finally at the end of the book—they had saved the best until last—was a photo archive of almost all the paintings and sculptures that Haberstock had acquired or sold during the Nazi era. On page 308 was what I had been looking for. They were only tiny photos, but at last I knew what our Franz von Stuck Die Sünde looked like.

  From Karl Haberstock’s wartime photo file.

  The next step was relatively easy. When I had first started looking for this painting, I had made copies of all the relevant pages from the Stuck catalogue raisonné, which I’d found in the Getty Research Institute library, concerning the Sins and Sensualities most likely to be ours. There, in my files, was what I needed; I just hadn’t known it before. Catalog number 58/149 matched perfectly Haberstock’s tiny wartime photo. It was entitled Die Sinnlichkeit, or The Sensuality, after all, and dated around 1891.

  The Franz von Stuck catalogue raisonné had been published in 1973 and listed, where possible, the most up-to-date owners. It appeared Fritz’s lost painting had been acquired by the Piccadilly Gallery of London in 1970. I was stunned. When I used to live in London, I had walked past the gallery many times. It had been just around the corner from my mother’s old office.

  Furiously, I began searching for somebody to contact at the Piccadilly Gallery. However, to my dismay, I discovered that the gallery had closed just the year before, in 2007. To make matters worse, Godfrey Pilkington, the owner and the man who had apparently found the painting in Munich, had just died in August of that year. But all was not lost. I was able to get a message through to Pilkington’s surviving partner. Eventually a kindly English lady wrote back to me, a little confused, saying that she thought the painting I was inquiring about might have gone to Poland. However, by this time I knew better.

  The original Piccadilly Gallery catalog, which I had recently unearthed, entitled Franz von Stuck, 1863–1928 and compiled by Pilkington, had included a striking color photo of our Sensuality. Erich Lessing’s iconic photo of Sensua
lity had since become a popular poster. Next I found the image reproduced in a book called Femme Fatale: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women. In the acknowledgments, toward the back of the book, was what I had been looking for for nearly two years—the actual name of the current owner and his location.

  For legal reasons I cannot reveal the name of the collector. However, his location was the most startling thing. He was here, in Los Angeles, and the painting, remarkably, was less than two miles from my house.

  Throughout January I worked with our lawyer, Tom Kline, on our initial claim. I was rather anxious as the collector was a lawyer of some renown. We requested a verification of the painting’s provenance as the first step toward establishing the rightful ownership. The response we got was fairly friendly, but also rather vague. The collector, not surprisingly, was quite shocked by the possibility his Sensuality could be Nazi loot. Eventually he seemed to suggest some kind of settlement might be appropriate. I responded that any settlement would most likely involve compromise, which I believed detracted from the main issue. The Haberstock documentation I had found made it quite clear our Stuck had been lost during the Holocaust. Our case was extremely strong. The point was, we wanted the painting back.

  The collector, we discovered, had not paid for the painting. He had received it as a gift about thirty-five years before. Then, when we learned he was Jewish, our hopes increased that he might be prepared to do the right thing. However, as we pressed our claim, the collector decided to seek the counsel of Randy Schoenberg, an expert lawyer in restitution matters. Randy had hit the headlines just a few years before with the spectacular restitution of the famous Gustav Klimt paintings from Austria. I had always considered Randy as something of an ally. If he were to become opposing counsel, this would put us all in a rather awkward situation.

  The lawyers inevitably talked about statutes of limitation. The collector, meanwhile, began wondering whether our painting and his painting were even the same. The confusion with the title changing from Sin to Sensuality had apparently left significant doubts. Then to complicate matters he wanted to involve his insurance company. The idea that any insurance might indemnify somebody for being in possession of Nazi loot seemed to me far-fetched. Fortunately, around this time, Randy took the collector to the Getty Research Institute library to check all the Franz von Stuck catalogs. One catalog, which I had also recently come across, they both found particularly convincing. In 1903, the Galerie Henneberg had exhibited in Munich a Franz von Stuck they called Die Sünde, or The Sin; however, the illustration matched exactly the painting in the collector’s home, now called Die Sinnlichkeit, or The Sensuality. This seemed to settle the problems with the painting’s title.

  Nobody could find any fault with our claim. Perhaps the real issue was emotional. Just as my family had formed a deep bond with the art Fritz and Eugen had lovingly collected, we were now faced with an obviously decent man who had also developed a strong connection with the painting that had hung in his living room for thirty-five years. So, despite there being no specific objection to our demand, they continued to ask for more information. I did my best to fill in any blanks in the painting’s history.

  Regrettably the legal back-and-forth continued for another three months with no tangible results. Nick and I felt we had to change the dynamic. Left with few alternatives, we decided to file a legal complaint as a precursor to an actual trial. As it turned out, the mere mention of issuing a complaint was all that had been needed to break the deadlock. The collector said he was considering a voluntary return of the Von Stuck to our family. At last we had the breakthrough I had hoped for. To complicate matters, though, the collector also wanted to buy the Sinnlichkeit from us, whereas my family, simply, wanted the painting returned. This development would inevitably result in the collector holding on to the painting while I arranged for an expert appraisal. In early May 2009, James Hastie, Christie’s vice president of nineteenth-century painting, arrived in Los Angeles for a few days.

  After months of awkward communications, we were all finally to meet at the collector’s Tudor-revival home, just a few canyons over from mine. It was quite a crowd: the tall collector and his elegant wife, my brother and me, Randy Schoenberg, a colleague of Tom Kline’s representing my family, and at least two other people, possibly from the collector’s insurance company. James Hastie arrived for the appraisal.

  Randy and our host were most welcoming. The collector, in his deep, gruff voice, directed us to the Franz von Stuck, apparently waiting for our inspection. The tension of the last few months seemed to slip away. For Nick and me it was a strange and emotional event. With a sense of awe we connected for the first time with the Sinnlichkeit, which had been lost for nearly seventy years. Yet we also experienced an unusual sense of familiarity. This was, after all, the painting our grandfather had collected, and it used to live in the same house our father grew up in. Then, as I touched the frame, a shiver went through me as I thought of all those other people who had also admired this unusual work.

  As much as I had studied the Sinnlichkeit over the previous years, there was no substitute for experiencing the actual painting. The collector and I shared a moment as we marveled over the glowing gold backdrop. The snake’s eyes and fangs were truly menacing and in stark contrast to the inscrutable acquiescence of the woman. The overall effect was oddly hypnotic, and the collector frankly admitted he had been under her spell for some time now.

  We parted on friendly terms, and I agreed we would talk more as soon as the Christie’s evaluations were ready. While we waited, I sent the collector a copy of the English documentary about my family’s quest, Making a Killing. The film would have a dramatic effect on him. He later shared how the image of my grandmother Louise, and the fate that befell her, made a haunting impression. The painting, which he had loved for all these past years, suddenly came with a terrible history.

  When the estimates for Sensuality finally came in, the collector decided we should deal with each other directly. I liked that we were developing an understanding. It seemed appropriate that we should settle this in a gentlemanly manner, without the other lawyers. Besides, Randy preferred to take a backseat. At the end of July I invited the collector over to my house for coffee. I welcomed the opportunity to show him some of my grandparents’ treasures from Holland that I had been fortunate enough to keep. The Kangxi porcelain figures of the Immortals watched over us from above the fireplace. The discussion was extremely pleasant but eventually it came down to numbers. The number being offered us was fair, but just not what I thought the ultimate value might be. Moreover, numbers aside, it didn’t feel right to say good-bye to the Sensuality so soon after I had found it. Nevertheless we were obliged to think it over. I promised to call my aunt in Florence and then get back to him, once we had made up our minds.

  However, before I could formulate our response to the collector, a dramatic development occurred. While I had been pressing Christie’s for the estimate, James Hastie had asked the Villa Stuck Museum in Munich for their opinion. Now, finally, we had their opinion, and it wasn’t very good. They claimed there were problems not only with the style and the paint, but also with the signature and the frame. At first I was taken aback; then it occurred to me the Villa must have overlooked the strange history of the painting and how it had been handled since 1940. James Hastie and I agreed that significant mitigating circumstances went a long way toward addressing the museum’s misgivings. However, Christie’s felt it had to put its appraisal on hold until we could present the Villa Stuck with our evidence and arguments.

  Despite this setback, I couldn’t help feeling there was a silver lining here. I called the collector to tell him about the German experts’ opinion and that, at least for the moment, we could not count on Christie’s (or anybody’s) evaluation of the painting. The collector thanked me for my honesty and then explained that, under the circumstances, he wasn’t prepared to write a six-figure check. I sympathized and then pressed my demand. The only equita
ble solution was the return of our painting.

  The collector seemed to go through much soul-searching. I think the image of my grandmother continued to haunt him. It had also become harder and harder for him to disassociate the painting, which he had once loved, from the specters of Karl Brandt and Adolf Hitler. In contrast he began to focus on his young son, who was just beginning preparations for his bar mitzvah. It must have seemed like an opportune time to show his son what a true mitzvah was.

  After much deliberation it was agreed. The transfer documents were drawn up. The collector was relinquishing all ownership of the painting. The only proviso was that I give him thirty days’ advance notice if I chose to sell Sensuality.

  On a sunny day in mid-September, I drove the mile along Sunset Boulevard to the canyon that led to the collector’s home. On my arrival, the collector and his son, who was the same age as my son, James, greeted me warmly. Then just the two of us sat down to go over the written agreement. All seemed to be in order and we both signed.

  What followed was one of the most remarkable moments I had experienced on this extraordinary journey since my father’s boxes arrived fifteen years earlier. The collector got up and walked over to the wall of his living room to unhook Sensuality. He asked me to help him, and together we walked the painting out of his house. With great care, he helped me load the Franz von Stuck into the trunk of my old Jag. Almost tearfully, we shook hands and said good-bye.

  As I drove off down the hill, a wave of emotions and thoughts began to overwhelm me: gratitude, vindication, faith in humanity, justice . . . I started talking to Fritz and Louise and Bernard as if they were in the car with me. When I got home, it was a poignant moment, indeed, as we hung the long-lost painting in our living room. I put it near a Louis XV console and a Louis XVI barometer, also originally from Bosbeek, which I had recovered just a few years before. May and I mused over the incongruity of this lascivious lady and her snake becoming the object of a mitzvah. James was speechless. May invited a photographer friend over to commemorate the event. She must have taken at least a hundred photos.