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The Lady in Gold

Page 37

by Anne-marie O'connor


  19 “INVENTED A NEW NAME TONIGHT”: Ibid., p. 47. This notebook is filled with humorous jibes at anti-Semites.

  20 “UGLY AS A RUSSIAN JEW”: Alma Mahler and E. B. Ashton, And the Bridge Is Love (London: Hutchinson, 1959), p. 38.

  21 “INNOCENT WILD AMERICANS”: Twain, Vienna Notebook, no. 40, Feb. 14, 1898, p. 10.

  22 “THE JEW MARK TWAIN”: Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest, p. 166.

  23 “IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT”: Ibid., p. 28.

  24 IT TOOK SIX WEEKS: Alessandra Comini, Gustav Klimt (New York: George Braziller, 1975), p. 13.

  25 “ISOLATION CELL”: Ibid.

  “I WANT TO GET OUT”

  1 “PETIT-BOURGEOIS”: Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt, Memoir, dated April 1939. Courtesy of Marianne Kirstein-Jacobs and Daniela Skrein.

  2 “IF ONLY PEOPLE WOULD ANALYZE LESS”: Ibid.

  3 ONE OF THE OLDEST UNIVERSITIES: The University of Prague, opened in 1348, was the first in central Europe.

  4 “LIKED IT THIS WAY”: Bachofen-Echt, Memoir.

  5 THE SUICIDE, IN JANUARY 1899, OF CROWN PRINCE RUDOLF: Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs, p. 283.

  6 “A DULL, SPINELESS MASS”: Koja, Klimt: Landscapes, p. 151.

  7 “PORTRAYED IN A PUZZLING PAINTING”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 215.

  8 “WHO IS REALLY INTERESTED”: Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, no. 36 (Mar. 1900), quoted in Nebehay, Gustav Klimt, p. 69.

  9 “HE MUST ALLEGORIZE HER”: Ibid.

  10 “NOT ONLY PROVOKED A FIERCE DEBATE”: Bachofen-Echt, Memoir.

  11 “YOU MUST NOT BECOME”: Ibid.

  12 “WHILE THE WAR OF THE PENS”: Ibid.

  13 “HERR KLIMT INITIATES FRAU LEDERER”: Agatha Schwartz, Gender and Modernity in Central Europe: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Its Legacy (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010), p. 132.

  14 “THIS RAPPORT BETWEEN MODERN ART AND IDLE-RICH JEWRY”: Ibid.

  15 “I WOULD PREFER TO BYPASS”: Nebehay, Gustav Klimt, p. 70.

  16 “HIDEOUS!”: Ibid., p. 106.

  17 “HIS EYES WERE SHINING”: Ibid.

  18 “FEELING OF A TEMPLE”: Koja, Klimt: Landscapes, p. 150.

  19 KLIMT’S KISS TO THE WHOLE WORLD: Carl E. Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 258.

  20 “INTO THE IDEAL REALM”: Ibid.

  21 “SLIM AND LOVELY”: Berta Szeps, My Life and History (New York: Knopf, 1939), p. 181.

  22 “I HAVE NEVER BEFORE EXPERIENCED”: Ibid.

  23 “ORGIES OF THE NUDE,” “OBSCENE ART,” “PAINTED PORNOGRAPHY,” “PATHOLOGICAL FANTASIES”: Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, p. 57.

  24 “AMONG THE MOST EXTREME EXAMPLES”: Gerbert Frodl, Secession, Gustav Klimt, Beethovenfries (Vienna: Secession, 2002), pp. 14, 15.

  25 “ALL POSSIBLE MEASURES”: Ibid.

  26 “THOSE OF US WHO ARE MODERN”: Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, Nov. 21, 1903, quoted in Nebehay, Gustav Klimt, p. 75.

  27 WHY SUCH “HATRED”?: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 215.

  28 AGAINST KLIMT: Frodl, Secession, p. 14.

  29 “ONE CAN TELL KLIMT IS A VIENNESE”: Colin Bailey and John Collins, Modernism in the Making (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with National Gallery of Canada, 2001), p. 42.

  30 “FORGET THE CENSORSHIP”: Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna, p. 266.

  31 “GUSTAV IS FOLLOWING”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 208.

  32 PEOPLE SAID THAT UNDERNEATH: Whitford, Gustav Klimt, p. 19.

  33 HE TOOK HOME PHILOSOPHY: Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna, p. 267.

  34 “UNDOUBTEDLY ONLY OF AESTHETIC INTEREST”: Rainer Metzger, Gustav Klimt: Drawings and Watercolors (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), p. 46.

  35 “A NASTY THING”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 206.

  36 “A GUY CAN HIDE A BELLY”: Bachofen-Echt, Memoir.

  ADELE’S “BOHEMIAN HOME”

  1 “DREADED DRAMATIC CRITIC”: New Music Review and Church Music Review 13 (1906): 12.

  2 ONE VICTIM WAS: Jacques Kornberg, Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 169–70.

  3 “AS TRULY AS AN ITCHING OF THE HEAD”: Wilma Abeles Iggers, Karl Kraus: A Viennese Critic of the Twentieth Century (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), p. 43.

  4 “I AM SURE YOU THOUGHT”: Adele Bauer, letter to Julius Bauer, Aug. 22, 1903, in the holdings of the Austrian National Library.

  5 “IT WAS SOMETIMES NOT ‘SAFE’ ”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 212.

  6 “THE MOST SWEET-SCENTED POETRY”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 98.

  7 “THE STILL HALF-CLOSED BUD”: Ibid.

  8 “BEAUTIFUL JEWISH JOURDAME”: Brandstätter, Vienna 1900, p. 30.

  THE EMPRESS

  1 “SURPASSING IN INTELLIGENCE”: Helen Gardner, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective (Australia; Florence, KY: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2010), p. 240.

  2 THEODORA HAD ALREADY BEEN: James Allen and Stewart Evans, The Empress Theodora, Partner of Justinian (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 114.

  3 “NEITHER DID ANYTHING”: Richard Atwater, The Sacred History of Procopius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 47.

  4 “MOSAICS OF UNBELIEVABLE SPLENDOR”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 115.

  “DEGENERATE WOMEN”

  1 “YOU CANNOT RECEIVE KNOWLEDGE”: Letter from Adele Bloch-Bauer to her nephew Robert Bentley (then Bloch-Bauer), ca. Aug. 1921. Translated by Barbara Zaisl Schoenberg.

  2 “BY A SMALL GROUP OF MODERNS”; “GREAT MAN”; “THE TRUTH OF HIS OWN SOUL”: Szeps, My Life, p. 179.

  3 “AS AN ANATOMIST”: Ibid., p. 166.

  4 SHE WAS ORDERED TO SIT: Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews, p. 20.

  5 EMIL HAD TO CALL SECURITY: Szeps, My Life, p. 167.

  6 EMIL MADE FRÄULEIN BIEN: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 228.

  7 “THE MOST MARVELOUS AND WITTY WOMAN”: Szeps, My Life, p. 163.

  8 “A HUSBAND AND WIFE”: Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 82.

  9 “CULTURAL CHATTERBOX”: Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: The Post-War Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 115.

  10 “DEGENERATE WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION FIT”: Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 82.

  11 “THE SEXUAL IMPULSE DESTROYS”: Otto Weininger, Sex and Character (New York: Howard Fertig, 2003), p. 249.

  12 “NOT ONLY OF THE LOGICAL RULES”: Ibid., p. 195.

  13 “THERE IS NO FEMALE GENIUS”: Ibid., p. 131.

  14 “THE DEGENERATES BABBLE”: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, p. 83.

  EYES WIDE SHUT

  1 “IN HIS JUDITH”: Partsch, Gustav Klimt: Painter of Women, p. 81.

  2 “I BECOME THE PERSON”: Arthur Schnitzler, The Seduction Comedy, in Three Late Plays, trans. G. J. Weinberger (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1992), p. 128.

  3 “DID I EVER HAVE TO BEG?”: Ibid.

  4 “MY HOUSE STANDS ALONE”: Ibid.

  5 “THE POLICE WILL COME”: Ibid., p. 138.

  6 “JUST AS CORREGIO PAINTED”: Ibid.

  7 “DON’T REFUSE ME”: Ibid., p. 136.

  8 “TO EMBRACE HIM OR KILL HIM?” Ibid., p. 209.

  9 “ALIVE WITH THE LAMENTATION”: Ibid.

  10 “SMOTHERED IN FLOWERS”: Ibid., pp. 209–10.

  11 “AND THEN I EXPERIENCED IT”: Ibid., p. 209.

  12 AN EROTIC KLIMT DRAWING: Klimt, Standing Nude, copy provided by Salomon Grimberg from the 1973 Klimt show at the Piccadilly Gallery in London.

  THE OUTSIDER

  1 HIS SURNAME WAS CHOSEN: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, pp. 43–44.

  2 IN LINZ, HITLER STUDIED: Ibid., p. 15.

  3 “THE LIMITS OF MY LANGUAGE”: J. Mark Lazenby, The Early Wittgenstein on Religion (London: Continuum, 2006), p. 47.

 
4 “FOR HOURS AND HOURS”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2003), p. 30.

  5 “CHILD’S PLAY”: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, p. 32.

  6 “I WAS SO CONVINCED”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 30.

  7 “FOR THE FIRST TIME”: Ibid., p. 31.

  8 AS HE BECAME AN INCREASINGLY DOWN-AND-OUT ARTIST: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, p. 159.

  9 LUEGER RAILED AGAINST: Robert A. Michael, A Concise History of American Anti-Semitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. 112.

  10 “JEWISH YOUTH IS REPRESENTED EVERYWHERE”: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, p. 80.

  11 “NOTHING BUT CRIPPLED DAUBING”: Ibid.

  12 “ART REVIEWS IN WHICH ONE JEW SCRIBBLED”: Ibid., p. 81.

  13 “THIS RACE SIMPLY HAS A TENDENCY”: Ibid.

  14 “ODOUR OF THOSE PEOPLE”: Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 63.

  15 “THE HOUR OF FREEDOM”: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, p. 129.

  16 “TURNED INTO THE GREATEST BLESSING”: Ibid., p. 135.

  17 “DEPRIVED OF THE RIGHT”: Ibid., p. 404.

  THE PAINTED MOSAIC

  1 IT MADE ADELE, AT TWENTY-SIX: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 115.

  2 “THE EXPRESSION ‘VAMP’ ”: Szeps, My Life, p. 180.

  3 “A RAPTUROUS FEELING”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 285.

  4 “PAINTED MOSAIC”: Ludwig Hevesi, “Gustav Klimt und die Malmosaik,” printed in Kunstchronik, 1906–1907, no. 33 (Sept. 27).

  5 “SECOND SOCIETY”: Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna, p. 45 (“that ‘second society,’ sometimes called ‘the mezzanine,’ where the bourgeois on the way up met the aristocrats willing to accommodate new forms of social and economic power”).

  6 “THEY HAVE A GREAT LONGING”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 63.

  7 “WHETHER HER NAME IS HYGIEIA OR JUDITH”: Spiel, Vienna’s Golden Autumn, p. 68.

  8 “LA BELLE JUIVE”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, pp. 68, 69.

  9 “THE NEW VIENNESE WOMAN”: Metzger, Gustav Klimt: Drawings and Watercolors, p. 239.

  10 AS WAS DONE IN RELIGIOUS ART: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 153.

  KLIMT’S WOMEN

  1 “THE YOUNG NO LONGER”: Neret and Scott-Stokes, Gustav Klimt, p. 65.

  2 “MUCH TOO MUCH”: Alessandra Comini, In Passionate Pursuit: A Memoir (New York: George Braziller, 2004), p. 29.

  3 “RESULTS GOOD”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 227.

  4 “A VERY BEAUTIFUL EXISTENCE”: Postcard to Emilie Flöge, Sept. 27, 1911, quoted in Hubertus Czernin, Die Falschung, der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 1999), p. 65.

  5 “A MIXTURE OF RAIN AND SUN”: Postcard to Emilie Flöge, Sept. 28, 1911, quoted ibid.

  6 “ARRIVED WELL”: Postcard to Emilie Flöge, Nov. 15, 1912, quoted ibid.

  7 “AN ALMOST PATHOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY”: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 37.

  8 “I AM LESS INTERESTED”: Whitford, Klimt, p. 18.

  9 “LITTLE PLEASURE FOR WORK”: Koja, Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, p. 142.

  10 “I’LL PAINT MY GIRL”: Bachofen-Echt, Memoir.

  11 “SLAVING AWAY”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 225.

  12 “WORK PROCEEDING SLOWLY”: Ibid., p. 227.

  13 “ARTISTICALLY SUPER ROTTEN”: Ibid.

  14 “REALLY GETTING ON MY NERVES”: Ibid.

  15 “WEARINESS AND SUFFERING”: Ibid.

  16 “I DID NOT KNOW”: Ibid., p. 210.

  17 “WHY IS KLIMT”: Ibid., p. 227.

  18 “A. BAUER”: Renée Price, ed., Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections (New York: Neue Galerie/Prestel, 2007), p. 217.

  19 “ART HAS LOST SOMETHING”: Weidinger, Gustav Klimt, p. 227.

  20 “HE DIED OF SYPHILIS”: Ibid., p. 210.

  21 “TO THINE OWN SELF”: Datebook of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Auersperg family archives.

  22 “I WAS PARALYZED”: Bachofen-Echt, Memoir.

  23 “HE HAS ENTERED INTO THE CENTRE”: Natter and Frodl, Klimt’s Women, p. 56.

  “HUGS FROM YOUR BUDDHA”

  1 SHE TOLD PEOPLE SHE WAS A SOCIALIST: Jonathan Petropolous, “Report of Professor Jonathan Petropolous, Claremont McKenna College,” July 14, 2005, http://www.adele.at/Report_Prof_Jonathan_Petropou/Petropoulos.pdf, p. 2.

  2 “A SPECULATOR, AN EXPLOITER”: Mahler and Ashton, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 30.

  3 “IF FATE HAS GIVEN ME FRIENDS”: Letter from Adele to her nephew Robert Bentley for his eighteenth birthday, ca. Aug. 1921.

  4 “I THINK THAT IN MEMORY”: Adele Bloch-Bauer, letter to Franz Martin Haberditzl, Nov. 9, 1919. Courtesy of Gottfried Toman.

  5 LIKE MANY VENERABLE VIENNESE INSTITUTIONS: Stephen Brook, Vanished Empire: Vienna, Budapest, Prague (New York: William Morrow, 1990), p. 1.

  6 “I ASK MY HUSBAND AFTER HIS DEATH”: District Court, Vienna Inner City Court Section II, Jan. 31, 1925.

  7 “GOETHE WRITES IN TORQUATO TASSO”: Adele Bloch-Bauer to her nephew Robert Bentley, ca. Aug. 1921.

  8 THE “TENDER” AND THE “SENSUAL”: Peter Gay, Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815–1914 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), p. 59.

  THE GOOD SPIRIT

  1 “BEWARE OF CRITICIZING”: Adele Bloch-Bauer to her nephew Robert Bentley, ca. Aug. 1921.

  2 WITH REGARDS TO OTHERS”: Ibid.

  3 “I’M STILL DAZED”: Letter from Alma Mahler to Alban Berg, quoted in Martina Steiger, “Immer wieder werden mich Thatige Geister verlocken”: Alma Mahler-Werfels Briefe an Alban Berg und seine Frau (Vienna: Siefert, 2008), p. 126.

  DEGENERATE ART

  1 “CULTURED AND EDUCATED”: Gloria Sultano and Patrick Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka: Kunst und Politik, 1937–1950 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), p. 53.

  2 BY THEN HE HAD SERVED: Czernin, Die Falschung, p. 23.

  3 “WELCOMED ANYTHING NEW”: Ibid., p. 49.

  4 “THE OLD MOSES OF REMBRANDT”: Sultano and Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka, p. 123.

  5 “VERY DIFFERENTLY FROM HOW”: Ibid.

  6 “HE FOUND IT VERY TRUE”: Ibid.

  7 “OUR UNCLE FERDINAND”: Ibid., p. 51.

  8 THE SHOW’S NOTORIETY: Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 55–56.

  9 “PERVERSE JEWISH SPIRIT”: Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), p. 123.

  10 KOKOSCHKA WAS ALREADY THREATENING: Klaus Albrecht Schroeder, Johann Winkler, and Christopher Asandorf, Oskar Kokoschka, part 2 (Munich: Prestel, 1991), p. 223.

  11 ERNST ASKED FERDINAND: Sultano and Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka, p. 68.

  “YOU ARE PEACE”

  1 “YOU ARE PEACE”: Friedrich Rückert, “Du bist die Ruh,” translation by Maria Altmann.

  2 “I’D LIKE TO GO”: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006.

  3 MEPHISTO WAS BASED: Maya Roth, International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformations in the Theater of Timberlake Wertenbaker (Brussels: Lang, 2008), p. 94. For the lingering impact of the explosive novel Mephisto, see Dieter Sevin, Die Resonanz des Exils: gelungene und misslungene Rezeption deutschsprachiger Exilautoren (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), p. 203.

  4 “I WOULDN’T GET MY HOPES UP”: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006.

  5 “HE’S A HOMOSEXUAL”: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006. On Aslan’s sexual orientation, see Lucian O. Meysels, Die Welt der Lotte Tobisch (Vienna and Klosterneuburg: Edition Va Bene, 2002), p. 30, and Reinhold Nagele, Gemälde, Galerie der Stuttgart (Stuttgart: K. Theiss, 1984), p. 114.

  UNREQUITED LOVE

  1 MARIA, TWENTY-ONE, WAS DEEPLY LOVESICK: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006.

  2 THERESE BLOCH-BAUER WAS A STOLIDLY CONVENTIONAL: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006.

  3 THE ONLY THING WORSE: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2006.

  4 NEVER MIND THAT IN HER OFFICIAL WEDDING PHOTO: This photo is in the family archive of Nelly Auersperg.

  5 IN MARIA’S EYES: Maria Al
tmann, interviews, 2001.

  6 ASIDE FROM WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2001.

  7 AS EVERYONE KNEW: Maria Altmann, Cecile Altmann, interviews, 2001.

  8 HE HAD AMASSED: Petropolous, “Report of Professor Jonathan Petropoulos.”

  9 HE LOCKED HEDY: Stephen Michael Shearer, Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), p. 45.

  10 MANDL FORCED HEDY: Ibid., p. 41; Hedy Lamarr, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman (New York: Bartholomew House, 1966), p. 21.

  MARIA VIKTORIA

  1 HER MIDDLE NAME REPRESENTED: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2001–2008.

  2 THERESE, FORTY-TWO, INITIALLY MISINTERPRETED: Maria Altmann, interviews, 2001. A later poem by Julius Bauer jokingly characterizes Maria as an “unwelcome belated addition to the house.”

  3 SHE AND GUSTAV COLLECTED “FANTASY WATCHES”: Elisabeth Sturm-Bednarczyck, Phantasie-Uhren [Fantasy Watches]: Kostbarkeiten des Kunsthandwerks aus der Sammlung Therese Bloch-Bauer (Vienna: Christian Brandstätter Verlag, 2002), p. 8.

  4 VIENNA WAS IN THRALL TO: Ibid.

  5 “A CRAZE FOR TOTALLY MEANINGLESS ARTICLES”: Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, p. 97.

  6 “THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS”: Thomas L. Johnson and Eberhard Michael Iba, Germanic Fairy Tale Landscape: The Storied World of the Brothers Grimm (Gottingen: Klartext GmbH, 2006), p. 21. The book’s version of the tale was told by Maria Altmann.

  7 FREUD BELIEVED FAIRY TALES: Elrud Ibsch, Dick Schram, and Gerard Steen, The Psychology and Sociology of Literature: In Honor of Elrud Ibsch (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2001), p. 187.

  8 HE THOUGHT THAT: Herman Westerink, A Dark Trace: Sigmund Freud on the Sense of Guilt (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2009), p. 165.

  9 “FINALLY, HE’S WRITTEN SOMETHING”: Maria Altmann, interviews, June 2007.

  10 JOSEPHINE MUTZENBACHER: Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, pp. 76–77, states authoritatively that Salten authored this “pornographic bestseller”; this was a widespread view.

  11 “THE OLD SWINE DO YOU INJUSTICE”: Maria Altmann, interviews, Sept. 2001.

  12 SHE ENROLLED MARIA: Maria Altmann, interviews. See also Gustav Rinesch’s unpublished 191-page memoir, which was written after the war.

  MARIA AND LUISE

  1 MEALS WERE SERVED AT PRECISE HOURS: Thea Bentley, interviews, Aug. 2006.

 

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