Eugen maintained an enormous fortune in relatively inflation-proof real estate, foreign currencies, and securities—as well as the famous silver collection. In his waning years, he gave considerable thought to how to pass that fortune along. Ultimately Eugen decided that rather than dividing it equally among his six children—great fortunes divided tend to be frittered away piecemeal—he would create a family trust to be nurtured and grown, presumably in perpetuity, for the benefit of not only his children, but subsequent generations as well. Suspicious as ever of decisions by committee, he also had to decide which of his sons would administer his financial legacy. (I suppose given the mores of the era, his daughters were not even considered.) Max or Kurt, of course, simply wouldn’t do—which left Herbert or Fritz.
Max, a lovable and popular fellow but certainly no businessman, continued to devote his time to the music salons of Rome and Berlin. Included among his many well-known friends were Winifred and Siegfried Wagner, the son of the legendary composer, and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, sister of the famous philosopher. All of this was more than a bit curious given that Winifred Wagner was a well-known anti-Semite and a close personal friend of the leader of the Munich putsch, Adolf Hitler. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was also a noted anti-Semite, whose late husband had been an early advocate of “pure Aryanism” in Germany. Ironically, anti-Semites in Germany commonly spouted the most vicious diatribes against Jews in general while assuring their actual Jewish friends and associates, “Of course, we don’t mean you!” Perhaps an equally insidious and fatal corollary was a tendency among some German Jews, particularly the wealthy and well connected, to respond to such anti-Semitism by deluding themselves with the assertion “Of course, they don’t mean us!”
Max even numbered among his many acquaintances the Vatican’s ambassador to Berlin, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII. The future pope was an inveterate socialite who would host numerous parties at his Tiergarten home. On more than one occasion Max, a frequent guest, would play the piano, flawlessly it was said. The future pope’s favorite piece was the “Death of Isolde” (sometimes known as the “End of the World”) from Wagner’s famous opera Tristan and Isolde. This connection to the Vatican, and his sister Lili’s closeness to other members of the Italian nobility, would later prove crucial when Max found himself on the run in Italy.
Kurt Gutmann, although charming and affable, was also not an inspired businessman. After the war, Kurt served as an assistant to family friend Walther Rathenau when he became Germany’s first Jewish foreign minister. Rathenau’s subsequent assassination in Berlin in 1922 by right-wing thugs was a terrible blow for Kurt. Disillusioned, Kurt and his wife, Vera Herzfeld-Gutmann, turned to the film business, of all things. Vera’s father, a Berlin entrepreneur and notorious wheeler-dealer, had become known as the Potash King for his near-monopolization of that vital fertilizer. Hugo Herzfeld’s spectacular success brought with it the inevitable accusations of “Jewish conspiracy.” When Herzfeld died suddenly in 1922 of a heart attack, the Berlin stock market nearly collapsed. Vera and Kurt quickly sold a large share of his holdings and invested, instead, in Universum Film AG (UFA), the famous studio that was home to such stars as Marlene Dietrich, Henny Porten, and actor-directors Fritz Lang and Kurt Gerron. Lang was director of the expressionist masterpiece Metropolis, the most expensive silent movie ever made—which may help explain why the film company was nearly bankrupt by 1927 and the stockholders, including Kurt and Vera, were deeply in the red. Evidently, Kurt was not the sort to whom a family fortune could reasonably be entrusted.
Herbert, as the eldest son, might have seemed an obvious choice as executor of the Gutmann estate. After all, he had been successful as director of the Deutsche-Orient Bank, which, after the disruption of the war, had been able to reopen its branches in the Middle East in 1923. He was a powerful player in the Dresdner hierarchy, and he was a director on the boards of three dozen major German companies. Yet, for all his accomplishments, Herbert was also something of a risk-taker, a man who enjoyed the fast life. Eugen had sometimes shared such traits, but he knew they did not lend themselves to the careful preservation of a family fortune.
Stable and cautious in money matters, Fritz was also the family diplomat. As he neared forty, it was decided that he would become executor of Eugen’s estate and director of the Gutmann Family Trust. Incorporated in Amsterdam, the trust developed into a multimillion-dollar financial concern. Fritz also became caretaker of the famous “silver collection,” which still included such priceless pieces as the Lencker ewer, Abraham Drentwett’s three exceptional globes, in silver and vermeil, supported by Saturn, Atlas, and Hercules, and the enigmatic Orpheus Clock. My grandfather could not have known it then, but those responsibilities would eventually cause Fritz, his children, and even my generation no end of conflict and grief.
Sadly, in 1925 while in Munich, Eugen died of congestive heart failure and general decline at the age of eighty-five. Remembered and honored as one of the great financial figures of his time, his obituary appeared in newspapers from London to New York to Hong Kong. A thousand people attended his funeral in Berlin. The rather large new family tomb, designed by the noted architect Franz Seeck, in the Urnenfriedhof, survives to this day.
Whenever I’m in Berlin, I make it a point to stop by this cemetery and spend a few moments with my great-grandfather and hope his soul is at peace. As I stand in the shade of the linden and oak trees, I’m always struck by how, as with the Jewish cemetery in Dresden, the Gutmann family tomb somehow escaped both desecration by the Nazis and destruction from bombing during World War II. I can only wish, ironically, that the living had been as fortunate as the dead.
After his father’s death, Fritz began clearing up the matters of the estate. Eugen’s country retreat, Schloss Zeesen, was leased to Ernst Goldschmidt, another banker and family friend. Meanwhile, perhaps because of Fritz’s Dutch connections, the grand Gutmann villa on the Rauchstrasse was sold to the Dutch government, which used it as their embassy until World War II.
Like so many other beautiful homes in the Tiergarten, the Gutmann villa was later blown to flinders by Allied bombs and probably some Soviet artillery. The castle at Zeesen was taken over by a Nazi actor. It survived the war, but was neglected afterward by the East German government; the last I heard it was a boarded-up, empty shell.
As for the silver collection, a few of the lesser pieces were sold off, but the more valuable and exquisite Renaissance and Mannerist silver pieces—which also included the fierce Silver Cat by Hans Utten, the exotic Jamnitzer beaker, and hundreds of other objects—were kept intact as undivided property, owned equally by Eugen’s children. Fritz moved the collection to Holland, where he had built a special walk-in safe hidden behind the men’s smoking room in his home. It would remain there, safe for the time being.
• • •
Perhaps expectedly, as a wealthy man with a growing family, Fritz by 1924 had found the town house on the Koningslaan in Amsterdam, while absolutely delightful and convenient for his work in the city, not quite adequate for the family’s lifestyle anymore.
His search for a new home led him to a once-grand, but somewhat neglected, manor house twenty miles outside the city.
The estate of Bosbeek is situated in bucolic parkland by Heemstede, near Haarlem and due west of Amsterdam. Bosbeek in English means Forest Brook. Originally it was a seventeenth-century country retreat built for a wealthy Amsterdam merchant seeking refuge from the dreaded “canal fever” that festered in summer along the old canals of Amsterdam. In 1736 the estate was purchased by the mayor of Amsterdam, who commissioned Jacob de Wit, the famous Dutch painter, to completely renovate the manor house. By the late eighteenth century, when Bosbeek was sold to the Hope banking family (of Hope Diamond fame), it had become one of the most sought-after properties in the region. Adrian Elias Hope, who was something of a hoarder, packed the manor house with magnificent Italian Renaissance art treasures before going incurabl
y insane and being confined in a straitjacket. Poor Adrian Hope was locked in a small upstairs bedroom of his grand house, where he died in 1834.
In more recent times, the estate’s thirty-room manor house has had a more checkered history. When I first visited as a small boy, the house was being used as a nursing home. Elderly people in hospital gowns shuffled around the once-beautiful grounds. The elegant ornamental ponds were surrounded by wheelchairs. But in the 1920s and ’30s, Bosbeek was where Fritz and Louise found a life of almost golden happiness in that all-too-brief time between the twin catastrophes of both World Wars.
The salon at Bosbeek, with the Jacob de Wit grisaille over the door, 1928.
Fritz and Louise made Huize Bosbeek and its ten acres of woodland, lawns, and surrounding gardens bloom again. Lovingly, they remodeled the main house, taking great pains to restore the original De Wit artworks. Two centuries of grime were removed from the magnificent painted ceiling of the grand salon. The huge ceiling oil canvas, entitled Bacchus and Ceres in the Clouds, depicted the Roman god of wine airborne with the goddess of fertility, surrounded by winged putti flying about. Among other distinctive touches brought back to their original splendor was the gilt-framed De Wit grisaille called Autumn (a large trompe l’oeil painting resembling a grayscale sculpture), which was placed over the doorway to the stateroom. Fritz and Louise reoriented the interior to look outward to the reflecting pools and newly lush gardens.
In addition to the grand salon were a large formal dining room, a library, and a drawing room for Louise. Behind the gentlemen’s smoking room, which was decorated in red velvet, was the custom-built strong room. Fritz placed Eugen’s treasures here. Rarely, he would allow the glittering marvels to be viewed by friends or art scholars and, on the most special occasions, by the next generation of Gutmann children. Bernard and Lili’s favorite was the Golden Ostrich automaton, which would flap its wings on the hour while, at its feet, a little, gilded monkey beat a drum.
Fritz and Louise’s dressing rooms were on the second floor, along with the children’s rooms. The butler, cook, governess, and maids—seven in all—were quartered in the spacious attic. The house was decorated in the classic style with Louis XV tables and sofas, gilded-framed mirrors, seventeenth-century Savonnerie carpets, and Aubusson tapestries. The cabinets were filled with eighteenth-century Meissen and Chinese porcelain vases.
Fritz also added a service building near the estate entrance to house the groundsmen and two chauffeurs with, what would become, a small fleet of luxury cars. My grandfather’s favorite car was a 1925 Isotta Fraschini coupe, at the time one of the fastest cars in the world. It had a guaranteed top speed of ninety-three miles per hour. Perhaps the grandest automobile was a 1928 Hispano-Suiza Berline de Voyage touring car. Meanwhile, Louise cut a dashing figure in a 1927 LaSalle convertible. Perhaps curiously, Louise seemed to enjoy the cars most. Fritz, always dignified and perhaps a little staid, was usually driven to and from the bank by the chauffeur, whereas the vivacious and daring Louise would sometimes hop into a convertible and drive alone, at breakneck speed, her scarf flying in the wind, into the city or even on long road trips to Paris or Baden-Baden.
Louise in the 1927 LaSalle convertible.
Fritz and Louise together traveled extensively throughout Europe. During a 1926 visit to Paris, they posed, fashionably, for portraits by Man Ray in his Montparnasse studio. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, the avant-garde artist had also become one of the preeminent portrait photographers of the day.
Fritz’s portrait shows him in quarter profile, clean-shaven, his dark, glossy hair combed straight back—perhaps not so staid after all. Nearing forty, he had not yet grown stout, but his face is not quite as lean as it once was. As always, there is that suggestion of a smile. Louise is also looking away from the camera, slim and elegant in an ivory crepe-de-chine dress, with pearl earrings and a single-strand pearl necklace. Her dark hair is cut short in the bobbed fashion of the twenties. At thirty-four she is strikingly beautiful. In another portrait by Man Ray, which I cherish to this day, she is wearing an ankle-length fur coat while nonchalantly smoking a long cigarette. Fritz and Louise were a glamorous couple, leading a glamorous and exciting life. Yet despite the obvious temptations, they remained a loving couple, in marked contrast to Eugen and Sophie’s tempestuous relationship.
For young Bernard and Lili, life at Bosbeek had an almost magical quality. The well-manicured, but still rural qualities of the estate provided endless places to play. A photo survives of Bernard and Lili lolling about in the grass with their beloved Scottish terriers. At one point at least ten white Westies wandered about the estate. Lili and Bernard were provided with material luxuries that other children could only dream of. For their birthdays, they each received from a family friend a 1928 Baby Bugatti. These were perfect half-scale, electric-powered versions of Ettore Bugatti’s famous Type 35 racing car—an extravagant gift perhaps, given that only some five hundred Baby Bugattis were ever produced.
Bernard with Fritz in Amsterdam, 1923.
Lili in Amsterdam, 1923.
Bernard and Lili at Bosbeek with some of the West Highland terriers.
Lili with Baby Bugatti, around 1928.
In the evening, the guests for dinner would consist of a not-too-surprisingly well-heeled crowd. On a given night the diners might include Wilhelm and Margarethe von Humboldt, the famous conductor Erich Kleiber, some of the Bentincks, the sculptor Georg Kolbe, Fritz’s niece Marion von Goldschmidt-Rothschild and her husband, Albert, and on occasion Heinrich Thyssen, a member of the German industrialist family and an avid art collector. The Gutmanns loved fine cuisine, and their chef served the most refined French dishes. However, Fritz cherished one prosaic hangover from his otherwise not-so-happy stay in Britain: he loved kippers. Once a month he had a box of kippers flown in by an airmail carrier. A Berlin society column got hold of this information and decided to paint Fritz as the epitome of self-indulgence—fair comment, perhaps, if it were not for the underlying anti-Semitism.
Fritz and Louise entertained in a style that would also delight any child. Lili remembered that for her tenth birthday her parents hired an entire circus troupe—clowns, lion tamers, trapeze artists, and all—to perform for several hundred guests under a big top on the Bosbeek grounds. When the famous German rider Carl von Langen and his horse, Draufgänger (Daredevil), won gold medals in dressage at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Fritz and Louise invited von Langen and the entire German equestrian team, including Draufgänger, to Bosbeek to be feted at a gala celebration ball.
There were, however, certain expectations. The children were rigorously schooled in the arts, history, science, and languages. By the time Bernard went to boarding school at the exclusive Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz in Switzerland, and Lili went to finishing school in Florence, they were already fluent in French, English, Italian, and, of course, German and Dutch.
As children of the twentieth century, unlike their nineteenth-century counterparts, Bernard and Lili were allowed at a certain age to dine with their parents and their guests. It went without saying that the children exhibited the proper manners and were suitably dressed, as their parents always were. My father never saw his father sit down to dinner in anything less than either an impeccably tailored three-piece suit, the pocket handkerchief arranged just so, or more usually a dinner jacket and, for formal occasions, tails.
Although children were still expected to be seen rather than heard, Lili and Bernard thrived with the erudite and stimulating dinner conversation of a constant stream of friends and visitors from around the world. Lili would later describe it as “a very international life.”
From the moment they arrived in Holland, Fritz and Louise quickly developed close friendships with other socially prominent couples. Fritz’s business partner, Ernst Proehl, and his wife, Ilse, were good friends, as were Franz Koenigs and his wife, Countess Anna von Kalckreuth. Koenigs was another German-born banker, cofounder of the Rhodius-Koenigs bank in Amsterdam
, and his wife was the daughter of the famous painter. The Koenigs lived with their five children in a grand villa by the Florapark in Haarlem, not far from Bosbeek. An older couple from Amsterdam, Dr. Otto Lanz and his wife, Anna, were also dear friends. Otto was a wealthy and highly respected Swiss-born surgeon, known equally for his medical innovations and his magnificent collection of Italian Renaissance art. Another friend was a young Dutch Jewish art dealer, Jacques Goudstikker, whose gallery was conveniently located next door to the Proehl & Gutmann offices on the Herengracht. Goudstikker was a collector in his own right and widely known as Holland’s most important dealer of old masters.
The flamboyant and controversial Fritz Mannheimer was another friend. It was he who gave little Lili and Bernard the Baby Bugattis. The German Jewish banker was director of the Amsterdam branch of the powerful Mendelssohn & Co. private bank. He was also a key player in Germany’s postwar economic reconstruction.
Mannheimer was known for his ostentatious lifestyle and flashy, rather un-banker-like manner. He draped himself in jewelry and infamously installed a solid-gold bathtub in his palatial Amsterdam home for one of his many mistresses. Also known and widely mocked for his excessive corpulence, when Mannheimer did finally marry at age forty-nine, at a ceremony attended by dignitaries from throughout Europe, his best man was Paul Reynaud, the future Prime Minister of France.
It was a shock to all when Mannheimer collapsed while waddling down the aisle. After he was revived with two injections to his heart, the wedding took place. Just two months later, he died under somewhat suspicious circumstances, leaving behind his monumental art collection.
The Orpheus Clock Page 8
