The Lady in Gold

by Anne-marie O'connor

The public wrangle seemed a strange fate for a work of art so intimate. The portrait of Adele is not a field of lilies or a starry night. Here, in her naked eyes, lies a story that is more diary than novel. A painting comes from a time and place. Those who have heard the story of the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer can never again see her as a “lady in gold.” Frozen in Vienna’s golden moment, Adele achieved her dream of immortality, far more than she ever could have imagined.

  And that is the power of art.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply indebted to Maria Altmann, who graciously re-created people and events in the lost world of Vienna in conversations that began in 2001. Maria opened a trove of letters, photos, opera programs, and even notes she scribbled to herself on scraps of paper while under Nazi house arrest. I regret that Maria did not live to see this book. She died, surrounded by her family, in February 2011. I owe much to Maria’s niece, Dr. Nelly Auersperg. Nelly shared her father’s poignant journal and memoir, and her own harrowing memories. These two courageous women truly belong to the greatest generation.

  I was aided by Maria’s contemporaries, who helped re-create the Austria of yesterday: Dr. Anthony Felsovanyi; the late Hans Mühlbacher; Dr. Emile Zuckerkandl, the former president of the Linus Pauling Institute; Maria’s sister-in-law Thea Bentley; Nelly’s cousin Rudy Gelse; and the centenarian Dr. David Lehr.

  I am grateful to Randol Schoenberg for encouraging me to write a book on his remarkable case and for sharing relevant source material and expertise. The distinguished journalist Hubertus Czernin generously shared contacts and advice in the final days of his life.

  In Vienna, the historian Elisabeth Penz was an invaluable researcher. Gustav Klimt’s remarkable grandson Gustav Zimmermann generously opened letters from Klimt to his grandmother Mizzi Zimmermann, and recounted her bittersweet stories of their relationship. Daniela Skrein and her mother, Marianne Kirstein-Jacobs, graciously shared the tragic memoir of Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt. Stanislaus Bachofen-Echt provided wartime accounts drawn partly from family journals. Alexander Rinesch kindly copied the memoir by his father, Gustav Rinesch, of the prewar belle époque of the Bloch-Bauer clan, and his struggle to save them. Dr. Gottfried Toman, the senior legal counsel for Austria in the case, was a professional and helpful source for the government point of view. At the Belvedere museum, Monika Mayer provided valuable historical documents. Klimt expert Alice Strobl shared her voluminous Klimt research and recollections of the art world of Nazi Vienna. At the National Library in Vienna, Brigitte Mersich located Bloch-Bauer family letters. Dr. Brigitte Wallinger-Schorn, of the National Socialism history project at the University of Salzburg, clarified such cultural details as the Nazi position on Bambi. Information and documents regarding postwar legal conditions were provided by Ingo Zechner, then head of the IKG, Vienna’s Holocaust Victims’ Information and Support Center; Professor Brigitte Bailer, of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance; and Dr. Robert Holzbauer, director of provenance at the Leopold Museum.

  I benefited from the work of provenance experts Sophie Lillie and Ruth Pleyer, and many others: the Austrian arbitrator Andreas Noedl; Stefan Gulner, Randol’s Vienna partner; researcher Ilse Kopke; poet Franz Josef Czernin; psychiatrist Rüdiger Opelt; John Sailer, owner of the Galerie Ulysses; Otto Kapfinger; Christian Witt-Döring, curator of decorative arts at the Neue Galerie in New York; Sylvie Liska, the president of Friends of the Vienna Secession; Pritzker-winning architect Hans Hollein; Gerhard Botz; and Elisabeth Sturm-Bednarczyk, of the Vienna art firm C. Bednarczyk.

  Dr. Salomon Grimberg—the early proponent of the theory that Adele and Klimt had a love affair—shared stories and photos from his years as a confidant of Maria’s sister, Luise.

  Amy Schmidt, staff archivist at the National Archives, provided wartime records from the Berlin Archives. Neda Salem of the Mark Twain Papers and Project at the University of California at Berkeley shared the writer’s Vienna notebooks. I am grateful to Alice Short for publishing the Klimt story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine in 2001 and to Times researcher Robin Mayper for her work on this book. I thank my colleagues: Dean Baquet, Rick Meyer, John Montorio, Lennie LaGuire, Leo Wolinsky, Tim Rutten, and Steve Padilla. At Knopf, my editor, Victoria Wilson, lent wisdom, guidance, and erudition. Carmen Johnson fielded vital details. Fabled Knopf editor Ash Green offered enthusiasm and encouragement. I thank my agent, Steve Wasserman, for finding such a wonderful home for the book.

  Peter Altmann, Maria’s son, found the love-letter exchange between Maria and Fritz; his brother, Charles Altmann, lent invaluable support. Nelly’s children, Maria Harris and Eddie Auersperg, provided emotional context. Their cousin Michael Bentley shared a draft of a family memoir. The late Cecil Altmann shared memories of the formidable Bernhard Altmann. Nelly’s husband, John Auersperg, shared letters and papers. Tom Trudeau combed Maria Altmann’s photo archives. Jeremy Bigwood mined the National Archives. Mexico City–based art historian Esther Janowitz, Chilean journalist Pia Diaz Parada, Marlies Abreu, Ursula Mayer, Elisabeth Penz, and Jakob Veit provided excellent translations. Araceli Garcia, Esteban Juarez, and Gabriela Martinez provided logistical support.

  I would also like to thank Gerhard Botz, professor of Austrian history at the University of Salzburg; Oliver Rathkolb, professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna; Greg Bradsher, director of the Holocaust-era Assets Records Project of the National Archives and Records Administration; Peter Prokop of the photo archives of the Austrian National Library; Doris Schneider-Wagenbichler, a researcher at the National Library; Stephan Koja and Alfred Weidinger, Klimt experts at the Austrian Gallery; Agnes Husslein, director of the Austrian Gallery; Georg Lechner, its curator of the Baroque; and its spokeswoman, Lena Maurer. Also Thomas Geldmacher, a former Belvedere provenance expert; Professor Franz Gschwandtner of the Theresianische Akademie Wien; Günter J. Bischof of the Center Austria at the University of New Orleans; and special thanks to Lynn Nicholas, author of The Rape of Europa, for early advice.

  Finally, I would like to thank my husband, William Booth, for reading drafts of the book and offering advice, support, and hours of delightful conversation.

  Notes

  ADELE’S VIENNA: Poems and Privilege

  1 SO WHEN THE CURTAINS OPENED: William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 44.

  2 “THE PRINCIPAL NOURISHMENT”: Ilsa Barea, Vienna (New York: Knopf, 1967), p. 27.

  3 “THE SACRED CITY OF MUSICIANS”: Ibid., p. 33.

  4 HIGHEST SUICIDE RATE IN EUROPE: George E. Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success, 1880–1980s (Cambridge, MA: Abt Books, 1988), p. 21.

  5 THE HALLOWED HOUSE OF HABSBURG: Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (New York: Penguin, 1996), p. 3.

  6 GUSTAV MAHLER—WHO CONVERTED TO CATHOLICISM: Michael P. Steinberg, Austria as Theater and Ideology: The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 170.

  7 “AFRICAN AND HOT-BLOODED”: Johnston, Austrian Mind, p. 128.

  8 “GAY APOCALYPSE”: Ibid., p. 402.

  9 “DO YOU RECOGNIZE ME?”: Prolog zum Hochzeitsfeste von Thedy Bauer mit Dr. Gustav Bloch am 22. Marz 1898 verfaßt von Eugene und gesprochen von Adele Bauer (Wien) 1898; courtesy of Nelly Auersperg (also in the holdings of the Austrian National Library). Subsequent quotations from the poem are from this source.

  THE KING

  1 “WHIPPED CREAM PLAYED A MAJOR ROLE”: Stephan Koja, ed., Gustav Klimt: Landscapes (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2006), p. 124.

  2 KLIMT’S FRIENDS CALLED HIM KÖNIG: Emil Pirchan, Gustav Klimt: Ein Künstler aus Wien (Vienna: Wallishauser, 1942), p. 35; Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898–1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, and Their Contemporaries (London: Phaidon, 1994), p. 224.

  3 “PRINCE OF PAINTERS”: Sophie Lillie, “Hans Makart Malerfurst,” Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens (Vienna: Czernin, 20
03), p. 143.

  4 RAVAGED BY SYPHILIS: Martin Pippal, A Short History of Art in Vienna (Munich: Beck, 2001), p. 156.

  5 THEY REDISCOVERED A NEGLECTED PORTRAIT: Ted Byfield, The Renaissance: God in Man (A.D. 1300 to 1500), vol. 8 of The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years (Edmonton: The Society to Explore and Record Christian History, 2010), p. 236.

  6 “THE EROTIC NEURASTHENIA”: Susana Partsch, Gustav Klimt: Painter of Women (Munich: Prestel, 1999), p. 14.

  7 SIGMUND FREUD SIFTED THROUGH: Lynn Gamwell and Richard Wells, eds., Sigmund Freud and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities (Binghamton and London: State University of New York and the Freud Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1989).

  EMANCIPATED IMMIGRANTS

  1 THE AURIGNACIANS: David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 329.

  2 THE WARRIOR EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS: Nicholas Parsons, Vienna: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 94–99.

  3 THE DISCOVERY OF A GOLDEN SCROLL: University of Vienna press release, Mar. 13, 2008, on the discovery of the scroll at a burial site in the Austrian town of Halbturn.

  4 JEWISH ARISTOCRAT FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: Hilda Spiel, Vienna’s Golden Autumn: From the Watershed Year 1866 to Hitler’s Anschluss, 1938 (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), pp. 39–41. Also, for Vienna in 1814, see David King, Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), pp. 206–7.

  5 A SALACIOUS MOUNTAIN COURTSHIP DANCE: Barea, Vienna, p. 21.

  6 WHEN THE EARLIEST REFORMS: William O. McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 86. See also p. 96: “They succeeded . . . because as well-connected, modernist members of the Jewish community, they acted in the most ‘Viennese’ manner of which they were capable . . . The Jewish emancipation of 1848 was achieved at Vienna because leading figures of the Jewish community were indigenized . . . The Vienna Jews adopted a ‘Viennese’ style of behavior because they had to.”

  7 “BLOOD-RED FEZZES”; “TINY BONFIRES LIT BY ISLAM”: Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002), p. 192.

  8 “IF YOU WANT PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR”: For details, see Roland Hill, A Time Out of Joint: A Journey from Nazi German to Post-war Britain (London: Tauris, 2007), p. 43.

  9 HONORING THEM WITH ARISTOCRATIC TITLES: Frank Whitford, Klimt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), p. 29.

  10 BETWEEN 1860 AND 1900, THE JEWISH POPULATION: Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews, p. 35.

  11 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, WHOSE FAMILY HAD CONVERTED: Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 208.

  12 “WHOEVER WISHED TO PUT THROUGH”: Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 22.

  13 “INTELLECTUAL CEMENT”: Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 42.

  14 “MATZOH ISLAND”: Harriet Pass Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 1918–1938 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 13.

  15 GEORG VON SCHÖNERER, AN ANTI-SEMITIC POLITICIAN: Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendor (New York: Penguin, 1980), pp. 73–74.

  16 “I DECIDE WHO IS A JEW”: Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 195.

  THE WOUNDED CREATOR

  1 KLIMT’S VIENNESE MOTHER, ANNA: Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, p. 13.

  2 “THERE WASN’T EVEN ANY BREAD”: Whitford, Klimt, p. 24.

  3 “RELIGIOUS MADNESS”: Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, p. 44.

  4 AN IMPORTANT MENTOR, PROFESSOR FERDINAND LAUFBERGER: Gilles Neret and Charity Scott-Stokes, Gustav Klimt: 1862–1918 (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 9.

  5 “HE WAS NOT NATURALLY”: Alfred Weidinger, Gustav Klimt (Munich: Prestel, 2007), p. 211.

  6 “GUSTL, WHY DON’T YOU KNOW HOW”: Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, p. 19.

  7 “WHAT SEDUCERS YOU ARE!” Ibid., p. 25.

  8 SERENA PULITZER: Tobias Natter and Gerbert Frodl, Klimt’s Women (Vienna: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, 2000), p. 90.

  9 WHEN THE OMISSION WAS NOTICED: Morton, A Nervous Splendor, p. 169.

  10 BUT AS SOMEONE WOULD REMARK: Ibid.

  11 IN A DAZE OF ASTONISHMENT AND RELIEF: Ibid., p. 168.

  12 “IS IT WE WHO ARE STUPID”: Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, p. 24.

  13 “PUT THEIR FATE”: Gustav Klimt, letter to Mizzi Zimmermann. Courtesy of Gustav Zimmermann.

  ARRANGED MARRIAGE

  1 “AS IF THEY WERE SLIGHTLY TIPSY”: Zweig, World of Yesterday, p. 69.

  2 “LACED INTO A WASP’S SHAPE”: Ibid., p. 64.

  3 THE BAUERS LIVED IN AN APARTMENT: Sophie Lillie and Georg Gaugusch, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (New York: Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, 2007), p. 20.

  4 OWNED BY HERMINE WITTGENSTEIN: Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 172.

  5 “YOU DON’T HAVE TO BECOME AN ART EXPERT”: Adele Bloch-Bauer, letter to her nephew Robert for his eighteenth birthday, ca. Aug. 1921.

  6 “YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP”: Adele Bloch-Bauer, letter, ca. Aug. 1921.

  7 “TODAY, I TRIED TO REACH YOU”: Moritz Bauer letter, July 1901, Historical Association of Deutsche Bank, Bank and History Historical Review, Mar. 2007, no. 13, p. 1.

  8 JEWISH MODERNIZERS: Austrian National Library, Hof- und Staats-handbuch der össterreichisch-ungarischen Monarche; also Vienna State Archive, List of Orders.

  9 GUSTAV BLOCH, AN ATTORNEY: Gustav Rinesch, 191-page unpublished memoir, written after World War II. Courtesy of Alexander Rinesch, private archive.

  10 “IN ORDER TO PROTECT YOUNG GIRLS”: Zweig, World of Yesterday, p. 68.

  11 “AND WHEN IT IS TIME”: Brigitte Hamann, The Reluctant Empress (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 370.

  12 “HOW CAN YOU KILL”: Ibid.

  13 “HAND-IN-HAND TO THE ALTAR”: Family poem, probably by Julius Bauer, Auersperg Family Archive.

  THE SECESSION

  1 “ART OF THE SOUL”: Christian Brandstätter, ed., Vienna 1900: Art, Life and Culture (New York: Vendome Press, 2006), p. 91.

  2 “DICTATORSHIP OF EXHIBITIONS”: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 145.

  3 “PAINTINGS THAT GO WITH THE FURNITURE”: Siegfried Matt and Werner Michael Schwarz, Felix Salten: Schriftsteller—Journalist—Exilant (Vienna: Holzhausen Verlag, 2006), p. 82.

  4 “BUSINESS OR ART”: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 147.

  5 “LET THE ARTIST SHOW HIS WORLD”: Brandstätter, Vienna 1900, p. 111.

  6 AS THE NOTORIETY GREW: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 149.

  7 “HOW SURPRISED THE GENERAL PUBLIC WAS”: Whitford, Klimt, p. 19.

  8 “IF YOU CANNOT PLEASE ALL”: Maria Constantino, Gustav Klimt (London: PRC Publishing, 2001), p. 10.

  9 “TRUTH IS FIRE”: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 148.

  KLIMT THE SEDUCER

  1 “HIDEOUS FIANCÉ”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 116.

  2 “AT LEAST THREE AFFAIRS”: Anthony Beaumont, ed., Alma Mahler Werfel Diaries (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), p. 120.

  3 “SHEER PHYSICAL EXCITEMENT”: Ibid., p. 124.

  4 “HE WOULD HAVE LOST CONTROL”: Ibid., p. 141.

  5 “MY HEART MISSED A BEAT”: Ibid., p. 144.

  6 “AND BEFORE I REALIZED IT”: Ibid., p. 124.

  7 “WE WERE BOTH TERRIBLY AGITATED”: Ibid., p. 125.

  8 “WITH SUCH FORCE”: Ibid., p. 139.

  9 “ANIMAL LUST”: Ibid., p. 140.

  10 HER STEPFATHER WAS A STERN, LOW-PAID OFFICER: Gustav Zimmermann, interviews, Vienna, Nov. 1, 2006.

  11 KLIMT OPENED THE GARDEN DOOR: Weidinger,
Gustav Klimt, p. 213.

  12 A WEALTHY KLIMT PATRON: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 88.

  13 KLIMT ASKED HER TO MODEL NUDE: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 213.

  14 KLIMT WANGLED MIZZI A ROLE: Gustav Zimmermann, interviews.

  15 “THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PAINTING”: Christian Nebehay, Gustav Klimt: From Drawing to Painting (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), pp. 46–47.

  16 “IS IT POSSIBLE”: Gustav Klimt, letter to Mizzi Zimmermann, undated. Courtesy Gustav Zimmermann.

  17 MIZZI TOOK KLIMT’S ADVICE: Gustav Zimmermann, interview, Vienna, May 2007.

  AN INNOCENT ABROAD

  1 FREUD DONNED LEDERHOSEN: Beller, Vienna and the Jews, p. 179.

  2 “THE MELANCHOLY OF THE SYNAGOGUE”: Ibid.

  3 THE VIENNESE FIAKERLIED: Ibid., p. 180.

  4 “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BRAIN”: Carl Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest: Mark Twain in Vienna (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 164.

  5 THE VIENNA LITERATI INVITED TWAIN: Ibid., p. 43.

  6 THEN TWAIN STOOD UP: Ibid., p. 44.

  7 “THWARTED MY DESIRE”: Ibid., p. 315.

  8 “SO THAT WHEN YOU NEED IT FOR PRAYER”: Ibid.

  9 TWAIN BEGAN HIS VIENNA SOJOURN: Ibid., p. 170.

  10 “THE UNAVOIDABLE MARK TWAIN”: Ibid., p. 174.

  11 “THE JEW IS NOT A BURDEN”: Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews,” written Jul. 1898, published in Harper’s Monthly Sept. 1899.

  12 “OUR OLD FRIEND MARK TWAIN”: Jerome Loving, Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), p. 385.

  13 FREUD CONFESSED TO SKIPPING: Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest, p. 136.

  14 HISTORIANS BELIEVE FREUD WAS ALSO INFLUENCED: Ibid., p. 161.

  15 “THE JEWS HAVE THUS EVER BEEN”: Twain, “Concerning the Jews.”

  16 “WILL IT EVER COME”: Ibid.

  17 “LONG LIVE LUEGER!”: Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest, p. 65.

  18 “TALLOW-CHANDLER”: Mark Twain, Vienna Notebook, Nov. 3, 1897, p. 44. Courtesy the Mark Twain Project, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.