by Susan Ronald
—JOSEPH GOEBBELS, 1918
In the chaos of 1919, Hildebrand’s pipe dream of a change to politics and economics was set aside when he returned to Frankfurt and art-history studies. Precisely what prompted his latest change of heart is unclear. Still, it is easy to imagine that his father had much to do with his ultimate decision. When any child who has been through traumatic experiences speaks to a broken and loved parent, there is an irresistible force that makes following in the parent’s footsteps compelling. For a young man like Hildebrand, it offered him a level of security and comfort that he had thought was lost forever.
He was made for better things. He could have written the words of his exact middle-class contemporary, the diarist, writer, and philosopher Ernst Jünger:
Surely this day that God has given
Was meant for better uses than to kill.
Jünger was a boy of nineteen when he wrote that. It was before he’d become consumed by ruthlessness and bloodlust, killer of twenty men and proud wearer of the medal commonly called the Blue Max. Two years later, when he commanded a Storm Battalion, Jünger’s transformation into a killing machine was complete. “The turmoil of our feelings was called forth by rage, alcohol and thirst for blood.… The overpowering desire to kill gave me wings.”1
What made Jünger go down a different path from Gurlitt? Like many who joined the Freikorps in the aftermath of the Great War, Jünger had been an active member in one of the labyrinthine arms of the German Youth Movement. Despite the disparate aims of these groups, which have been lumped together by history as a single youth movement, the best example remains the Wandervögel (literally, “the wandering birds”), to which Jünger belonged.
It stressed physical fitness and shaking off the false shackles of society through outdoor activities like rambling and hiking. The familiar image of the blond, Nordic, suntanned, and healthy young men in his Lederhosen (leather shorts) singing songs around the campfire, feeling the mystic forces deep within the forest, listening to their own perceived völkisch souls, harked back to Nietzsche and the poet Stefan George.2
Looking forward, many of those who were part of the Wandervögel would not only join the ranks of the Freikorps but also become stalwarts of Hitler’s Brownshirts—storm troopers in the Sturmabteilung (SA). These were the hard core of men who truly believed in the “stab in the back” (Dolchstoss) that brought about Versailles.
Conversely, Hildebrand, like many young men who had tried unsuccessfully to make sense of the war, fell into the category of those who suffered from an intellectual if not ideological unrest. He was unconcerned with physical fitness, though he loved the countryside. He was twenty-three, yet, owing to the war, was stalled at the dreaming and planning stages of his life—and disgruntled that he was not yet living it. His mood swings were rapid, verbally violent, alternating frequently between depression and attempts to hide his deep-seated resentment that the past four years had robbed him of his life for a lie.3
Nevertheless, in May of 1919 the portrait Hildebrand paints of his parents has an overarching temperate tone: “The parents are getting old and it has been hard for father that they [the university] want him to retire suddenly, his eyes bother him when he’s working and they are hurting.… Still, he is working on his university book and is as busy as ever. Mother is doing better than before; she now has less to do and on the whole has become relaxed about a lot of things.”4
* * *
Cornelia hadn’t been in touch with Hildebrand since January, though she’d written to her father that she was painting again and was pleased with her work.5 Apparently she had decided to follow her lover Paul Fechter back to Berlin. The thought of separation from Fechter was evidently too great for Cornelia to bear, no matter the consequences. Fechter was, after all, married and had children. Given his position of some prominence as an art critic for a major newspaper, there was no possibility of their being together without creating a scandal. In an age where mistresses’ and unwed mothers’ acceptance in society was virtually unknown, Cornelia was heading toward an impasse. Even worse, Fechter worked at the same newspaper as her father’s friend the art aficionado Georg Voss.6
Cornelia’s dilemma was not yet comparable to that of her good friend Lotte Wahle, who had given birth to a son by her artist lover Conrad Felixmüller the previous December.7 Unexpectedly, according to the family letters, Cornelia decided to move temporarily into the Berlin home of their older cousin Wolfgang, now aged thirty. Interestingly, Wolfgang was still running his father’s gallery and art publishing house on Potsdamer Strasse 113—with his own peculiar touch of larceny, unknown to Cornelius.8
Soon the situation imploded. Cornelia let her brothers know that she was unhappy in Berlin; that she hungered once more for the happier days in Vilna among her comrades of the nursing corps. Then, without any reason, her innate sense for high dramatics returned with a vengeance, when she wrote to her brothers, “you are all in league as my enemies!”9
The catalyst for this outburst was Cornelia’s avowal to her father sometime between February and May that she was pregnant. Cornelius, still smarting from the defeat of Germany and the lies he’d believed, was as supportive as he could be, but inevitably his letter reflected his own pain. Had her words to him, “You have taught us to be silent about whatever is happening in the heart,” been indelibly etched in his mind? Had he understood that she was talking about herself? Had he been unable to cope when he asked her to consider others, if only briefly? Cornelia replied, “What we were painting, thinking, feeling [before the war] was anarchism in which we believed deeply and religiously—but when we see it in its political guise then we hate it, too.”10
When Hildebrand heard of Cornelia’s tantrum, he immediately dashed off his own missive to Wilibald. “I don’t think that you can do a lot for her … and I do not believe that she will come to you, because she is too ashamed. I often asked her previously to come here, away from mad Berlin, but she does not respond.”11
Somehow Cornelia held on for three months longer. Perhaps she hoped that Fechter would leave his wife and children for her, or maybe she thought she could raise the child at her parents’ home, much as Lotte Wahle had been obliged to do with her son. Did her brothers insist that she give the child up for adoption? Or worse still, that she attempt a dangerous and illegal abortion? Whatever was going through her mind, Cornelia was finally consumed by her despair and committed suicide on August 5, 1919.
* * *
She named Hildebrand as her executor. He was given the grim task of putting together her artwork, letters, and personal belongings and shipping them back to Dresden. Among the letters were some from Paul Fechter, which were returned to him with silent dignity.12 The only surviving comment from Fechter about Cornelia concerned her artistic output, which he described as possessing a “strong and crushing, ingenious ability, making her one of those rising artists of the expressionist generation.” Her art, he felt, was best placed in the East, where she “drew more and more of the beggarly side of Vilna with her quill pen or lithographs … she was influenced by Chagall’s work—so personal and individual, that a new and other world stands before one. A harsher world than Chagall’s … abrasively drawn.”13 Fechter otherwise publicly ignored the tragedy for which he stood partly responsible.
With Cornelia’s suicide having come so close on the heels of the war, the January German Revolution, and the humiliation at Versailles, it is impossible to judge the family’s overwhelming sense of loss, or how it further affected their lives in the years to come. Marie and Cornelius Gurlitt remained inconsolable throughout the rest of the summer and autumn, and as the evenings drew in, they both fell silent, keeping their thoughts private.14
Hildebrand seemed to blot it out, concentrating on his studies—that is, until his November 1, 1919 letter congratulating Wilibald on his successes. “I have not really dared to tackle Eitl’s pictures, letters etc. I cannot do it yet. I first have to be freer and have a greater distance. Have to ab
le to forget her death and be able to remember just her and not her dying.”15
Yet actions speak louder than words. Hildebrand began to take a great interest in the artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose later works bore an uncanny resemblance to Cornelia’s style. Kollwitz documented the lives of the downtrodden in society, portraying searing accounts of the horrors of war through everyday occurrences such as a mother cradling her dead child or a starving mother holding out her hand with her emaciated children clinging to her skirts. Grieving parents, widows, unwitting volunteers for the army, anger and angst flowed from her pallete, pen, and pencil after the Great War, urging the German people to look back at what had happened, to stop it from happening again.16
* * *
In September 1919, Hildebrand was in Munich, making the rounds of its art galleries prior to the beginning of the university term in October.17 Adolf Hitler, too, had returned to the city. Shortly before the May liberation from the communists, he claimed that he fended off “three scoundrels” with his “leveled carbine” just as they were about to arrest him.18
The “liberation” of Munich from the clutches of the Left was a bloody affair. City health officials were in a quandary as to how to handle the vast quantity of rotting corpses cluttering its streets and parks. Outbreaks of disease were feared until the Freikorps came up with what would later become a familiar Nazi solution: they dug shallow trenches and lobbed the decaying corpses into a mass unmarked grave.19 Not only were there skirmishes and summary executions, but there was also summary justice, in people’s courts—run by the Freikorps—where anyone who dared to speak out was convicted and herded into makeshift prisons. Munich, in the autumn of 1919, was ruled by the Freikorps despite the putative reinstatement of a civilian government under its minister-president, Adolf Hoffmann.20 Hildebrand would have witnessed the brutality firsthand.
Trained during a weeklong course by the commander of “the von Möhl Command,” Hitler became one of the paid nationalist agitators within the army to counter militants from the Left.21 His first assignment was to go to a meeting of the German Workers’ Party and report back as to what its leader, Gottfried Feder, said.
Hitler obeyed, and made his way to the down-at-heel Alte Rosenbad tavern in the Herrenstrasse. There, an awestruck Hitler received his first lesson in loan capital and the movements on the international stock exchange. Feder’s speech established the speculative and economic character of the stock markets and loan capital with ruthless brutality, making the quest for interest on money abundantly clear to Hitler. “His arguments were so sound in all fundamental questions that their critics from the start questioned the theoretical correctness … what in the eyes of others was a weakness … in my eyes constituted their strength,” Hitler interpreted.22
What Feder really said was that capital speculated through the world’s stock exchanges was at the root of Germany’s economic woes. The need to make capital pay dividends or interest was evil. In a move that would be appreciated today, Feder had even founded an organization called the German Fighting League for the Breaking of Interest Slavery. Hitler saw a simple message that would speak volumes to the masses and the “essential premises for the foundation of a new party” and “sensed a powerful slogan for this coming struggle.”23
Anton Drexler, a nearsighted and unimpressive-looking locksmith, made the initial offer to Hitler to join, based on his impassioned riposte to a man Hitler called “the professor”—who was critical of Feder’s economics and thought that Bavaria should break away from the rest of Germany.* The party’s chairman, the journalist Karl Harrer of the Müncher-Augsburger Abendzeitung, thought Hitler could make a useful contribution, if for no other purpose than to rabble-rouse. The party secretary, Michael Lotter, a locomotive engineer and good friend of Drexler’s, agreed.
Despite some initial reticence, Hitler became the seventh member of the committee of the German Workers’ Party.24 He knew his regiment’s former clerk, Rudolf Hess, from the war. Fellow bohemian and drunk Dietrich Eckart, twenty-one years Hitler’s senior, was a clever journalist and a poor dramatist. He was thought by many to be the spiritual father of national socialism. Feder was of course the economist of the group. Yet the real powerhouse of the party was Captain Ernst Röhm, an adjutant to Freikorps commander Ritter von Epp, commander of the infantry stationed in Bavaria.25
Röhm was a ruthless soldier, who had grafted his way up to his exalted position from a working-class background. Like Hitler, he viewed the Weimar government as “November criminals” and remained vehemently opposed to it. With the bridge of his nose shot away, his scarred face, and his pig-eyed gaze, meeting Röhm was an unforgettable event. His stocky build and bull neck made him a man not to cross at any price. It was Röhm’s task to build the party’s membership by bringing ex-servicemen and Freikorps volunteers to their meetings. In Hitler he recognized a budding talent for trouble and a gift for soliloquy. Röhm would be the catalyst for Hitler’s rise to power.
* * *
Of course, Hildebrand Gurlitt was utterly unaware of Adolf Hitler or his little-known German Workers’ Party, or how Hitler would change his life and the lives of others. While Eckart was regaling his beer-hall friends in Schwabing, Hildebrand traveled back to Dresden, where he was coerced by his father into studying baroque sculpture. This was a “new plan” by Cornelius, Hildebrand wrote to Wilibald on October 15 with an almost audible sigh. As the days drew on, he feared there would be “cold and darkness” ahead—but claimed he remained “hopeful and cheerful.”26
Still, self-doubt and stress began to take their toll. He did not return to Frankfurt at the beginning of term in October, remaining ensconced at his parents’ home in Dresden. Wilibald evidently berated him again for being lazy by his failure to write, and also for what he saw as his younger brother’s overpowering urge to be fed, clothed, and cosseted rather than face the world.
Hildebrand replied that he was annoyed at his father “tearing open any letter without being mindful of the addressee” and that he’d been to see their regimental clerk, who advised him that Wilibald should put in for an army pension, given that he’d been shot in the leg in September 1914. Hildebrand wrote apologetically two weeks later that “the burden of memories and distant future dreams are a bit of a strong burden for me.… I fill my day with work and living with our parents.”27
At the end of November, Hildebrand was more honest with himself and his brother, but still mitigated his dark thoughts with contrary statements. “Our parents only see worry in me, and sometimes I plug into that. I’m so afraid in this house … but the sun is still shining.”28 Somehow, he needed to find the courage to take control again. His Christmas letter to Wilibald shows the potency of his mental and emotional struggles—many of which were common to the entire “lost” generation who fought in the Great War:
Five years ago I was in the field and stood guard in the first ditch on Christmas Eve and was nearly shot. And then we were relieved and it was very somber in the narrow trenches.
Four years ago I was at home and Eitl was in the field.
Three years ago I was with Hanns … in France. I was with the company of soldiers. I had a little cottage … and I took the morning off with my car, and had a fun and wild ride on the hard frozen road. Then there was a company feast in a large stable. The men [sang]. There were lights, and it was warm and happy.…
Two years ago I was at Eitl in Antokol in her little room. There was a lot of snow and everything was quiet.
A year ago I was in Vilna during the revolution. The electricity company went on strike, the shops and taverns were closed, and I was one of only a few administrative officers there.… I was there with a Jewish lad.… On Christmas Eve there was a big masked ball—Poles, Germans, Russians, Jews, all celebrated together.… The town was dead and dark on Christmas Eve. We stood at the window and saw the lights burning in the tree of a rich man’s home. We were invited to eat at some kind strangers’.
Today I am at home.
/> What will next year bring? Maybe we can be together all the time. Perhaps one way is for me to find myself, and our parents no longer worry for me.29
* * *
Despite his melancholia, Hildebrand was back at university by January 2, 1920. His letter to his parents is nearly breathless with enthusiasm about the philosophy of art—not to be confused, his professor advised, with aesthetics. “Kandinsky is all aesthetics—all color and ornament.” His professor Ernst Troeltsch was an influential figure in German Protestant thought before the war, espousing the thesis that “disenchantment with the world” posed a threat to Christianity. Troeltsch’s philosophy of religion and how it touched on art fascinated Hildebrand. Earlier in the day, he continued writing in his letter, Wiesbach’s lecture on rococo art described the Louvre and the hôtels particuliers (private mansions) in Paris. Hildebrand finished the tour of his lecture circuit with the comment that “the son of Gurlitt” just gave a superior smile.30
Hildebrand also mentioned a friend of his called David, a trained bookbinder, whom he accompanied to the unemployment office. His aunt Else had met David, and thought he was “very nice.” Despite the fact that he was “healthy, fresh and willing” and did everything he was told with a friendly manner, David could not find work. He was only nineteen. “No one thinks he’s a Jew,” Gurlitt wrote, “he has gray eyes and brown hair, and is even very pretty.… Although a Jew, he is a decent sort.”31
Hildebrand Gurlitt was using the commonly accepted language of the day regarding Jews, especially in Berlin. The Ostwanderer, or eastern migrants, had flocked to the city as a direct result of the failed Freikorps adventure to recapture the Baltic states before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, in June 1919. He had no inkling that soon his Jewish grandmother would be his own undoing.
9
WEIMAR TREMBLES
The newspapers report only ugly things, sometimes it gets me terribly sad that everything has degenerated so much that today I am very uneasy about all “the awfulness.”