On the other hand, Karl Haberstock was, correctly, described in the Monuments officers’ daily reports of May 18, 1945, as “the most notorious art collector in Europe. He was Hitler’s private art collector and for years drained France, Holland, Belgium, and even Switzerland and Italy of art treasures by unlawful, ruthless and even brutal methods. His name is infamous among all honest collectors in Europe. Mr. Haberstock was unable to furnish an inventory of his art collection at the castle.”
By the late summer of 1945, Karl Haberstock was officially under arrest. He was moved to Austria, where he found himself in a cell with his old cohorts Bruno Lohse and Walter Andreas Hofer. Appropriately, the Art Looting Intelligence Unit of the OSS had chosen Bad Aussee in Austria as the place to imprison Haberstock. It was just a mile down the mountain from the salt mines at Altaussee, where Hitler’s erstwhile Linz Collection had been hidden. For thirty-six days Haberstock was interrogated by the ALIU.
In contrast to his usual cutthroat tactics and bossy demeanor, Haberstock now attempted to present himself more contritely. Hoping to ingratiate himself with his interrogators, he even suggested he could help at the Collecting Point in Munich. Famous for his lack of scruples, Haberstock was now spilling the beans on his onetime Nazi bosses. Then stretching his interrogators’ credulity, the longtime Nazi Party member and vociferous anti-Semite claimed to have helped Jewish “colleagues” escape. He did, however, secure the release of noted art historian Max Friedländer from arrest in the Netherlands, but only because Haberstock needed Friedländer’s advice on acquisitions for Göring and the Führer. Haberstock, although the most important dealer of Nazi Germany, was really of peasant stock and had only a limited education. He certainly had no formal art degree; in fact, he held those with such training in contempt.
At Bad Aussee, Haberstock chronicled his dealings with the Führermuseum, giving Lieutenant Commander Theodore Rousseau full details, including those concerning several of Fritz’s paintings. My grandfather’s agents, he claimed, had never delivered the Baldung Grien, and spluttering in his usual manner, he insisted he had no knowledge of its whereabouts.
Haberstock was next moved to Nuremberg, where he gave testimony against many of the other figures involved in Nazi art looting, including Field Marshal Göring. In an interview with Benjamin Ferencz, the chief prosecutor at the trials, Haberstock lightheartedly bragged how he would “purchase” priceless paintings in Paris. The payments would be by check payable to the Banque de France, but then, through a sleight of hand, the Reich Ministry would add the same amount to the French war debt. Thus the price of the paintings would miraculously be amortized by the war debt; the check would be canceled, and Haberstock would have completed yet another “legal” transaction.
After that, Haberstock was briefly interned in the Hersbruck Camp for war criminals, before being released, only to be arrested again in the summer of 1947. Following a successful appeal, he voluntarily enrolled in a denazification program. Here again Haberstock was not merely being altruistic; he knew full well that if officially certified as having been cleansed of his Nazi past, he would be allowed to deal in art again. He now claimed he was not the main supplier for the Führermuseum. Instead he shifted the blame onto his old competitor Hildebrand Gurlitt. But Gurlitt had already been declared a free man, so technically nobody was to blame.
The looting of all the possessions of the Jews, especially their money and their art, was intrinsically linked to their annihilation. This was barely understood in the years immediately after the war. Accordingly, art looting was considered a bloodless crime.
Like so many others, Haberstock convinced local authorities that he had only been a Nazi “fellow traveler,” and he was soon rehabilitated. Emboldened, he even asked for the return of about fifty paintings from the Munich Collecting Point. Haberstock then went so far as to accuse US personnel of stealing several of his books. I wondered if that included the books he had stolen from my grandfather.
By 1950, Karl Haberstock was back in business dealing in art from his Munich apartment, overlooking the Englischer Garten. In the same building was his old cellmate, Walter Andreas Hofer. Visitors started referring to the building, a little tongue in cheek, as the Braunes Haus, after the Nazi Party headquarters that had been destroyed at the end of the war. Meanwhile, just down the road from the original Braunes Haus, on the Briennerstrasse, the third generation of the Böhler family was enjoying uninterrupted business at the Julius Böhler Gallery.
• • •
Back in Paris, in the years after the war, Bernard and Lili had elicited the help of the indomitable Rose Valland to track down our elusive Baldung Grien. Bernard also reported the loss to Interpol, while inquiries were sent to everybody who had been associated with the portrait. Mme. Wacker-Bondy insisted that the Baldung had been handed over with the other paintings to Haberstock’s agent Hugo Engel, or to his son Herbert Engel. Not long after, Hugo Engel had fled Paris for Switzerland. However, Herbert Engel had continued dealing with the Germans until the Allied liberation of Paris, when he also fled to Switzerland. The Engels fell into that unfortunate category of Jewish art dealers who had cooperated with the Nazis throughout the occupation, presumably to gain protection. But from the safety of Switzerland, Herbert Engel continued to offer his services to Haberstock. Not surprisingly, neither Engel senior nor junior responded to Rose Valland’s demand for information. Meanwhile, Paul Graupe, who had by then relocated from Switzerland to New York and was back in the art world, asserted that Haberstock must still be responsible. Graupe’s son, now called Tommy Grange, insisted Engel was in charge of shipping the Baldung to Berlin, but he didn’t clarify which Engel.
Next my father’s American lawyer was able to track down Graupe’s partner, Arthur Goldschmidt, who had also survived the war and, after a spell in Havana, was now also dealing art in New York. Unfortunately, Goldschmidt’s responses to our questions only seemed to complicate things further. He maintained that the last he knew was that a certain Mr. Meyer from 10 rue Antoine de la Forge, Paris 17e, was going to deliver the paintings, including the Baldung, to Karl Haberstock. I discovered that 10 rue Antoine de la Forge was an apartment building where Edith Piaf, no less, was living at the time. And that Mr. Meyer was in fact August Liebmann Mayer, a well-known art expert, who had fled Munich soon after the Nazis came to power. He had survived in Paris, at least for a while, by making himself useful to the likes of Bruno Lohse, Hans Wendland, and Karl Haberstock. Eventually the ERR confiscated whatever paintings Mayer had in his possession. However, I was not able to find any record of our Baldung Grien in the ERR records. Alas, the clues about Mayer had led to another dead end. The unfortunate and penniless art expert would not be able to answer any of Valland’s questions. Mayer had been arrested, I discovered, with several other Jews, while trying to seek the safety of Monaco. After a spell in the Drancy Internment Camp, August Mayer had been transported to Auschwitz in March 1944, where he was murdered on arrival.
Somebody was lying, but who? Rose Valland saw no alternative but to demand, if not the return of the Baldung, at least compensation from the new West German government. The diplomatic back-and-forth between the French and German authorities would last for years. Meanwhile, Bernard contacted the now-aging art historian Max Friedländer, who before the war had known Fritz’s collection well. Friedländer, who was the great authority on the Northern Renaissance, had survived the war, fairly comfortably, and was still living in Amsterdam. He replied that he had not seen the portrait since before the war, but that he would keep a lookout for it. Bernard never heard from him again, and then in 1958 Friedländer died. Meanwhile, a now elderly and fading Haberstock—he had lost all his teeth, apparently—continued to deny any responsibility. By 1956 Karl Haberstock, my grandfather’s nemesis, was dead also.
During this period Aunt Lili caught wind of some rumors that the painting had resurfaced on the art market. Several names were bandied about, but nothing of substance ever emerged. Ultimately, and
despite Rose Valland’s earnest efforts, the West Germans successfully rejected all claims concerning the Hans Baldung Grien. The case had dragged on, amazingly, for fifteen years. Not until November 1960 did a reluctant Rose Valland officially give up her search for the painting.
• • •
Bernard and Lili, of course, had never given up, and I think I carried a good share of that determination with me that day, in July 2009, when I pulled the Gert von der Osten book off the shelf of the Getty library. Finally there were some answers to the Baldung enigma.
The Osten catalogue raisonné documented that in 1924 Fritz Gutmann bought the Baldung from Alfred Strölin, a famous publisher in Lausanne, Switzerland. Fritz is listed as the only owner of the painting from 1924 until after the war. There was no mention of Paul Graupe, Arthur Goldschmidt, or Karl Haberstock. The next entry and the most revealing, however cryptic, stated that the painting was in the hands of a “London dealer” between 1948 and 1950. By this time I had my suspicions, just as Lili had over fifty years before, but there was nothing I could prove and certainly nothing I could put in writing. According to Osten, the Baldung then made it across the Atlantic, where it appeared, in 1953, in the possession of the dealers Rosenberg and Stiebel of New York. Shortly after that, the painting was acquired by a certain Rudolf Heinemann, who ultimately gifted the Hans Baldung Grien in 1959 to the then Rutgers University Art Gallery, now called the Zimmerli Art Museum.
It did not take me long to remember who Rudolf Heinemann was. He was the same German art historian who had cataloged Heinrich Thyssen’s painting collection at the Villa Favorita, in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1941. Among those paintings were at least two that Thyssen had bought from my grandfather in the early thirties, including the beautiful Ercole de’ Roberti called The Argonauts Leaving Colchis. In the Villa Favorita as well were several silver-gilt cups and objets d’art from the Eugen Gutmann collection that Heinemann had also helped catalog; so it stood to reason he was perfectly familiar with the Gutmann collection. My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered that Heinemann had collaborated with Max Friedländer in 1949 on another Thyssen catalog. Friedländer was the same art historian who had written a glowing review of the Portrait of a Young Man just a year before Fritz had bought it. My father had, no doubt, thought it perfectly reasonable to seek help from such an expert considering his familiarity with the painting.
While the French and West German governments were still actively looking for our Baldung Grien, Rudolf Heinemann had discreetly donated the portrait to the low-profile Rutgers University Art Gallery. It seemed an unusual choice, especially as Heinemann, who was an enormously fat man and walked with two canes, had never had any children, let alone one that attended Rutgers. No doubt the Munich transplant, who now lived in New York, must have received a reasonable tax deduction. Though, I imagine, the greatest benefit to the distinguished art dealer, assuming he had deduced most of the sordid story, was knowing he was no longer responsible for the painting that had even eluded Hitler.
In hindsight, I suppose my father was naive in his hope that Friedländer might divulge some crucial information. As a matter of principle, almost no art scholar will ever divulge the whereabouts of a “private collection”—apparently even a Jewish art scholar, and apparently even after the Holocaust. Heinemann, on the other hand, before he could consider doing the right thing, would have had to admit, first, that he had done the wrong thing.
• • •
I arrived at the New Brunswick train station in New Jersey on a chilly October morning in 2009. The Rutgers campus lay before me, but signs to the Zimmerli Museum were few and far between. Eventually I found the museum more by instinct. The registrar came out to greet me before I was introduced to Suzanne Delehanty, the elegant new director. My reception was pleasantly deferential and they listened intently as I outlined the bizarre story of the painting. While we continued the discourse over a working lunch off campus, orders were given to pull the Hans Baldung Grien portrait out of storage. On our return, a solicitous Delehanty directed me to a large and virtually barren room and suggested I might like to spend some time alone with the portrait. To my consternation, the painting was lying on one side on the ground, leaning against the wall, and protected by a mover’s blanket. I’d forgotten it was Columbus Day, and apparently no staff were on hand to find an easel. I crossed the empty room to greet Baldung’s Young Man. He looked remarkably fresh and rosy cheeked, with his hat still at a rakish angle, especially when I noticed, above the artist’s monogram, the date he was created: 1509. The Young Man was exactly five hundred years old.
I could only marvel at the power of art to survive, as I touched, tentatively, the ancient frame. Although closer inspection showed a fair amount of damage to the paintwork of the sitter’s black coat, the colors had, fortunately, remained as vibrant as they must have been in Baldung’s lifetime, especially the green background for which the artist had been famous, and from which he derived his moniker “Grien.” The intricate black-on-white lacing of the Young Man’s snug-fitting jacket was a particular visual delight. It was a rare privilege to commune so privately with such a striking work of art. It was also, most movingly, an opportunity to bond with the grandfather I never knew, at least through the things he treasured.
I joined the others with a renewed sense of family pride. Before leaving them with my carefully researched portfolio, I thanked Suzanne Delehanty and all at the Zimmerli for their graciousness and consideration. They promised to get back to me as soon as they had time to translate and evaluate the many documents I had uncovered. Ultimately, the board of trustees of Rutgers University would have to make the final decision.
Several months passed without any significant progress. I feared that what had begun as such a promising case was inexorably turning into another protracted affair. The legal department at Rutgers had, for the first time most likely, just been thrust into the dark world of art looting and Holocaust restitution. It was clearly going to take some time before they emerged into the light again. By the end of March 2010, I decided we could all use a little bit of help.
The Holocaust Claims Processing Office, a division of the New York Banking Department, had been established in 1997 to help, free of charge, with recovering lost assets from Swiss bank accounts. Most recently, they had been helping me track down a painting by Hercules Seghers, a Dutch artist who had a great influence on Rembrandt. So when Rebecca Friedman, one of their investigative attorneys, offered to help, I was more than receptive. Soon Rebecca established a relationship with Rutgers’s counsel, and progress slowly returned. The university was eager to establish a value for the Baldung. I tried to point out that, high or low, the value should not affect my family’s rightful ownership. Not surprisingly, though, if the Zimmerli was going to do the right thing, as they kept reassuring me, they clearly wanted to know what they would be giving up. By the end of April they let it be known that they had found no documentation whatsoever that would indicate our claim was not legitimate. The next step for the university was to decide whether they wanted to keep the painting and, if so, how much they might be prepared to compensate my family for it. However, Rutgers’s counsel warned that, given that they were a public university, the process could be slow.
• • •
Meanwhile, the Dutch were still dragging out my claim for a fifteenth-century Pietà sculpture, along with a dozen antiques from the Gutmann collection, that had been in the system for about five years.
US soldiers removing the Pietà from Göring’s train outside Berchtesgaden, in 1945.
The Pietà was one of the pieces I had found in the Dutch archives, euphemistically filed under the heading “Origins Unknown.” Leafing through page after page of supposedly “ownerless” artworks, I had eventually come across this tragic image. As soon as I saw their photo of the sculpture, I knew I had seen it somewhere else. Then it came to me. An almost identical image was in the back of one of the portfolios that Nick had been given in Paris
in 1996 by the successors of Rose Valland at the French Foreign Ministry. These portfolios consisted of all the documentation that they could find concerning the portion of the Gutmann collection that had been in Paris at the beginning of the war. Ultimately American soldiers had found the Pietà in a freight car outside Berchtesgaden in 1945. (German soldiers had not had time to salt away all of Hermann Göring’s loot before the arrival of the US army.) In March 1947, the Pietà had been returned to the Netherlands on the same train as the three marvelous silver-gilt works that had been in the Rijksmuseum and finally returned to us in 2002. While the Dutch and French restitution authorities argued over whether it was even the same statue, I felt I needed a break.
Two months earlier I’d learned that I required a serious medical procedure. I elected to undergo surgery and, all things being well, recuperate in Italy. The operation was a success, and May, my children, and my friends had helped me find great courage. My recovery on the tranquil shores of Lake Garda provided a welcome and long-overdue opportunity to reflect on the remarkable events of the last few years. From there we traveled down to Florence to visit my dear aunt. We drove out to the country, to a favorite restaurant of hers overlooking the beautiful Medici villa at Artimino. There was so much to tell her. Apart from the Baldung, the Franz von Stuck, the Pietà, and the antiques in Holland, I was also on the trail of our paintings by Hercules Seghers and Biagio d’Antonio, as well as one of the Jacob de Wits and three, no less, by Francesco Guardi. The third Guardi she was having trouble remembering. She marveled at what we had been able to trace, possessions that she thought had been lost forever. I attempted to explain the modern resources at my fingertips: the Getty Research Institute and the US war archives, which I could now access from my computer at home. But every mention of the Internet she would try to brush away with a dismissive sweep of her hand. “Basta! You and your Internet.” Then when I tried to describe searching for her grandfather Eugen Gutmann in Google Books, she laughed derisively. “Google came up with twelve thousand five hundred possibilities!” I persisted. The results were substantial: largely thanks to the digital revolution, I was finally piecing together the lost fragments of our family puzzle.
The Orpheus Clock Page 29