Alois Miedl (despite his Jewish wife) had quickly become a major player in the Nazi plunder of the Dutch art market. Through a series of sham transactions, Miedl conveniently assumed control of the Goudstikker estate. Having fled the Nazis, the late Jacques Goudstikker had technically abandoned his collection. Miedl wasted no time in selling much of it to Göring at a substantial profit. Miedl even took over poor Goudstikker’s home and, of course, the famed art gallery on the Herengracht, right next door to Fritz’s former offices. From there Miedl continued to supply the Nazis with artworks from various collectors, many of them Jewish, who, as Miedl invariably pointed out, had little choice in the matter.
Then there was Karl Haberstock, described by one postwar journalist as “arguably the single most prodigious art plunderer in the history of human civilization.” Born in 1878, the son of a farmer, Haberstock—gruff, bewhiskered, and forever clearing his throat—never completely shed his rural image. He had begun his career selling china. Pompous and overbearing, Haberstock was a shameless opportunist who quickly jumped on the Nazi bandwagon, joining the party in 1933. He later sold Hitler his first important artwork, Paris Bordone’s rather voluptuous sixteenth-century Venus and Amor, which hung in the salon of Hitler’s country home in Berchtesgaden. Boasting both a ferocious anti-Semitism and a hatred for “modern” art, Haberstock was a relentless campaigner for the purging of “degenerate” art in Germany—while at the same time appreciating its commercial possibilities. As a member of the Nazis’ 1937 Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art, he was charged with selling on the international market the modern works culled from German museums. In this way Haberstock obtained much-needed foreign currency for the Nazis and no small profit for himself. Later, as the leading agent of the Special Linz Commission, Haberstock would make a fortune trading not only in Nazi-approved artworks, but also in the denigrated works of Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, and Cézanne that were looted in France, Holland, and other conquered countries.
Mühlmann, Plietzsch, Miedl, Hofer, Böhler, and Haberstock—all names that I had found so eerily sinister when I first saw them in my father’s papers. The more I learned about them, the more sinister they became.
One curious aspect of this gang of thieves (and scores of others like them) was that in their minds they were not thieves at all. The Nazis insisted on wrapping even their most despicable acts, all the way down to mass murder, in a strange patina of legality. This policy clearly carried over to their acquisition of art in the occupied territories. In the Nazi view, it was all quite legal to confiscate or force the sale of artworks from terrified Jews, provided the “seller” signed the necessary paperwork in triplicate. That the purchase of such artworks was negotiated, in effect, at gunpoint did not, in the Nazi view, make the resulting deals any less legitimate. Even Reichsmarschall Göring, the most prolific looter of all, insisted to the end of his days that all of his art acquisitions were obtained “legally,” all properly bought and paid for from their owners. It was said that, while awaiting trial at Nuremberg, Göring cheerfully shrugged off accusations that he was complicit in the murders of 6 million people, yet grew truly indignant when he was accused of being an art thief.
In March 1941, the German art dealer Karl Haberstock, armed with special authorization documents from both Hitler’s Special Linz Commission and from Göring, showed up at Bosbeek’s door. Through his extensive sources—the art world was as infested with spies and informers as the military and diplomatic worlds—Haberstock was already familiar with the extent of Fritz’s collection. He was even aware that, before the war, Fritz had sent some of his best paintings to the Paul Graupe gallery in Paris for safekeeping. However, since the collapse of France in 1940, the Germans had begun, almost immediately, to seize, catalog, and haul away artworks by the thousands from Paris. Haberstock, who had a reputation as a hard bargainer even in normal circumstances, presented Fritz with an offer that was a nonnegotiable demand: Sell me the paintings I want, at my price, or they will be confiscated as “enemy property” (by the German authorities in Paris) and you’ll wind up with nothing. On the other hand, if you cooperate, perhaps something can be arranged to help you and your wife get out of the country. It was the Nazi way of doing business.
Having no alternative, Fritz signed documents authorizing Haberstock to take possession of eight of his paintings from the Paris warehouse. The eight old masters (all by German or Flemish artists, who appealed to the Nazi taste) consisted of portraits by Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Burgkmair, and Jakob Elsner, along with Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Samson and the Lion, an altarpiece fragment of a Madonna by Hans Holbein, Madonnas by Adriaen Isenbrandt and Hans Memling, and a landscape by Van Goyen. For good measure, Haberstock walked away with a very different painting that caught his eye, which was still hanging on the wall in Bosbeek. It was The Sin by the Symbolist Franz von Stuck, and Haberstock had a particular high-level Nazi buyer in mind for this piece.
At the last minute, Haberstock added to his list two magnificently carved Renaissance shields and a beautiful Chinese carpet, which he had been standing on.
Fritz was sent a payment for 122,000 Dutch guilders to the Rotterdamsch Bank Vereeniging N.V. of Amsterdam. This was the equivalent of $75,000 for all eight of the old masters and four other works of art. The account was placed in receivership by a Nazi-appointed trustee. Ultimately, Fritz got nothing except empty promises.
Haberstock, however, was far from finished. In February 1942, he returned to Bosbeek accompanied by Julius Böhler, agent to both Hitler and Göring. Böhler, in contrast to Haberstock’s bluster, appeared calm and scholarly. Behind the thinning hair and professorial beard a cruel cunning was at play. Haberstock and Böhler didn’t just want some of the artworks and antiques that still remained in Bosbeek. They wanted all of them.
As Fritz stood helplessly by—and, I imagine, as Louise sat weeping in her dressing room—Haberstock and Böhler stomped imperiously through every single room in the house like a pair of jackbooted thugs. Starting with the front hall, then the main hall, slowly and meticulously scouring every inch, they finally finished in the breakfast room with the huge red carpet. In total they compiled an exhaustive list of more than two hundred valuable works of art, all to be taken away. The paintings included a Biagio d’Antonio, a Fra Bartolommeo, two François Bouchers, a Francesco Guardi, an Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, two Hubert Roberts, and many more important pieces. Among the antiques were Aubusson tapestries, Louis XV and XVI furniture, Meissen porcelain, gilded mirrors, Ming and Qing Chinese vases, bronze sculptures, and so much more. All of it was to be loaded up and driven by truck to Germany.
In return for this huge haul, Böhler and Haberstock transferred—unbelievably, through the now Aryanized Dresdner Bank—the meager sum of 150,000 Dutch guilders, less than $100,000. This time the money went straight to the Deutsche Revisions und Treuhand AG in The Hague (the German Audit and Trustee Company—a notorious Nazi money-laundering facility).
A month later Böhler and Haberstock were back again. This time their purpose was twofold. They had received strict instructions from Göring to secure the Gutmann silver collection, one way or the other. Their secondary purpose was more of a mopping-up operation—they were to inventory the remnants of the estate. After all, the remaining household furniture, china, and silverware were all of the utmost quality. The Nazi dealers, graciously they thought, would allow those items to remain in Bosbeek as long as the residents did. The ominous implication was that Böhler and Haberstock knew, only too well, that Fritz and Louise were not going to be staying much longer.
Once again, Fritz was forced to sign a receipt for the “sale” of the remains of his collection and household goods, even though, by now, it was quite clear he would never actually receive a cent. However, concerning the Gutmann silver collection (still belonging to all of Eugen’s children), there was one stumbling block. Playing the Nazis’ own legalistic game, Fritz stubbornly refused to sign over ownership of the “Crown Jewels”
of the Gutmann family. Earlier that year, Fritz had transferred legal title for the family trust (which administered the silver collection) to his brother-in-law the Italian senator Luca Orsini. Fritz insisted that he alone could not sell the silver collection.
It seems astonishing, even mad, that at a time when the Nazis were systematically murdering millions, the representatives of Nazism’s top warlords would be deterred for even a moment by a mere legalism, especially one wielded by an otherwise powerless man. No doubt the Germans did not wish to have a diplomatic incident with their Italian allies—so, for the moment, they were deterred.
However, Böhler took physical control of the Gutmann silver collection and shipped it, for “safekeeping,” to his Munich warehouse. This included the Jamnitzer Becher, Bernini’s A Flagellator of Christ, the Ostrich automaton, and both the Reinhold Clock and the Orpheus Clock. In Munich they would sit until further notice, with the actual ownership of the collection to be settled later.
By the spring of 1942, Fritz and Louise had more than enough reason to despair. The Koenigs girls found Fritz, forlorn, sitting on a bench in his garden, with the yellow star on his suit. The last of the Jewish families in Heemstede had been evacuated to the ghetto in Amsterdam. Fritz and Louise were on their own, isolated at Bosbeek. They were now dependent on the furtive assistance of a few remaining friends. Their once-beautiful home had been stripped of its glory, and Fritz’s treasured art collection had been reduced to a series of faded spots on the walls.
They no longer had even a faint belief that their forced cooperation with the Nazi art thieves would afford them any protection. Nothing was left to bargain with, nothing was left to steal. Next, the title to the estate itself was taken from Fritz and Louise by Nazi decree, like all other Jewish-owned real estate in Holland. On April 12 Bosbeek was officially transferred to the Niederländische Grundstückverwaltung (Netherlands Property Management Office). This puppet organization’s various functions included overseeing property “abandoned” by Jews, who had fled or “disappeared.” Fritz feared that he and Louise might soon be among those who “disappeared.”
“A new calamity is threatening us: the possession and expropriation of our house,” Fritz despairingly wrote in a letter smuggled to daughter Lili. “Where we shall go from here, only the gods know! The sword of Damocles is hanging again above our heads!”
For Fritz and Louise, one final source of hope and a potential path to safety remained. Ironically enough, that path led to Fascist Italy.
Fritz on the grounds of Bosbeek, winter 1939.
The Gutmann family had maintained close ties to Italy, and members of the Italian aristocracy, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Eugen had been a founding member and director of the Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan and later was an honorary consul of the Italian government in Berlin. Fritz’s sister Toinon had lived in Rome since the death in 1923 of her husband, Baron Hans von Essen, the former Swedish ambassador in Berlin. Her daughter, Jacobea, was married to the Italian diplomat Baron Giuseppe Sapuppo. Fritz’s other sister, Lili, was married to Luca Orsini Baroni, who, after leaving his post as ambassador in Berlin in August 1932, had been nominated to the Italian Senate by the Italian King. Orsini had extensive ties with the Fascist government and with the Vatican. Fritz’s daughter Lili was married to Franco Bosi, now an officer in the Italian army, whose family was from the Tuscan landed gentry. Fritz’s brother Max, who had played piano so beautifully for Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli before he became Pope Pius XII, was acquainted with a number of important figures within the Vatican. Even Fritz’s mother had Italian ties: after she divorced Eugen, she married again and became Countess Sciamplicotti. Meanwhile, Fritz numbered among his prewar connections Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italy’s foreign minister.
None of Fritz’s family members in Italy were under any illusions about the dangers he and Louise faced under German occupation; almost from the moment the Germans invaded Holland, they had desperately tried to use their connections to get Fritz and Louise safely out of Holland.
Italy had a somewhat odd relationship with its German ally. Despite Italy’s membership in the Axis alliance with Germany, Mussolini had initially sat out the conflict with France and England, not declaring war until just before France capitulated in June 1940. Afterward, Mussolini embarked on some rather inept military campaigns in North Africa and Greece, which ended with German troops having to come to the Italians’ rescue. Although Hitler had long admired Mussolini, other top Nazis soon came to regard their Italian counterparts with ill-concealed contempt.
The Italians, meanwhile, had never embraced Fascist totalitarianism with the same unquestioning gusto as the Germans. Despite the Italian anti-Jewish laws of 1938, which were only halfheartedly enforced, the Italians seemed baffled and dismayed by the Germans’ rabid persecution and murder of Jews in Germany and the German-occupied territories. In fact, the Italian government went to great lengths to rescue and return to Italy those Italian Jews who found themselves under German control in occupied Europe. While Fritz and Louise were not Italian citizens, their many family connections in Italy made them pretty close to it. So when the two Lilis (Fritz’s sister and daughter) and their relatives asked for help in getting Fritz and Louise safe passage from Holland to Italy, members of the Italian government promised to do what they could. Officials in the Vatican also agreed to help.
The Italians were very junior partners to the Germans, and thus while they could ask, they could not demand. The Vatican, meanwhile, maintained an uneasy relationship with the Nazis and Hitler, who had been angered by the pope’s protest of their treatment of Catholics—and to a lesser extent, their treatment of the Jews—in Germany and elsewhere. Its influence, too, was somewhat limited.
Still, a number of Italian and Vatican officials took up the case. On orders from Count Ciano, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Dino Alfieri, gently informed the German foreign office and the office of Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart in Holland that the safety and security of the Gutmanns was of some importance to the Italian government. An Italian attaché in The Hague, Franco Pietrabissa, was also helpful, personally keeping Fritz and Louise informed of the efforts on their behalf and forwarding occasional messages and letters from Fritz to his daughter Lili in Italy. Pietrabissa even managed, at some personal and professional risk, to smuggle out of Holland, by diplomatic pouch, some of Louise’s jewelry. The diplomat was able to deposit the jewels in a bank in Switzerland, later giving Lili the key.
At the Vatican’s direction the papal nuncio in Berlin, Monsignor Orsenigo, also took an interest in the Gutmann case. Unfortunately, his zeal may have been somewhat tempered by his being, as one historian put it, “a pro-German, pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic fascist.”
As the letters and diplomatic cables flew, by mid-1942 it seemed as if the Italian diplomatic efforts were paying off. In June of that year, Ambassador Alfieri in Berlin received the following message, a copy of which was later sent to Lili:
“Following your letter of 31.3.42, I notify you that no measures have been carried out against the Jew Gutmann, a Dutch citizen, who resides in Heemstede near The Hague . . . . According to your wishes, I have ordered my office at The Hague to leave Gutmann in his house and to exempt him and his wife from any kind of security police measures.”
The letter was signed “H. Himmler.”
It is more than a bit chilling to realize that Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo, architect of the murder of millions, had taken a personal interest in my grandfather and grandmother. Equally chilling to me—and no doubt even more so to Fritz—was the vagueness of Himmler’s assurances. What would happen if Fritz and Louise were to set foot outside the Bosbeek estate? Certainly the letter offered no protection against the Nazi art vultures circling around them—by that time most of the more valuable Gutmann possessions had already been taken. However, it did allow Fritz and Louise to remain at Bosbeek while other far less fortunate Dutch Jews wer
e being forcibly herded into the Amsterdam “ghetto,” and then into the Westerbork concentration camp. Ironically, the ghetto, or Jewish quarter, was where Jewish refugees had sought refuge from the Spanish Inquisition, at the end of the fifteenth century.
The Himmler letter mentioned, crucially, not one word about the crux of the Italian officials’ requests on the Gutmanns’ behalf—that is, that they would be allowed to leave Holland and come to Italy. The Italian ambassador in Berlin, Dino Alfieri, seemed to share that concern. In response to an inquiry about the Gutmann case from the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Alfieri wrote, “The case mentioned in your Excellency’s letter has become the object of my lively interest in the past few months, and in spite of all the difficulties I’ve had to overcome, I have managed to receive a written guarantee by the German Chief of Police, Mr. Himmler, that the relatives of his Excellency, Senator Orsini Baroni, residing in Holland, will not be bothered. A little while ago I had the opportunity to inform His Excellency, the Nuncio in Berlin, Monsignor Orsenigo, of the above mentioned. He was interested in the fate of his Excellency Orsini’s relatives. But even though we have a written guarantee (from an official of high position) it is not certain that all doubt concerning the fate of the family of the relatives of the Senator Orsini has been diffused.”
The ambassador’s suspicions were well-founded. Despite Himmler’s assurances that Fritz and Louise were protected, the Nazis had other plans.
• • •
In the early-afternoon hours of May 26, 1943, a black Mercedes touring car sped up the long, elm-shaded driveway of the Bosbeek estate and screeched to a halt in front of the manor house. A young man in an SS uniform got out of the car and strode briskly up the steps, where he knocked, not gently, on the front door.
The Orpheus Clock Page 13
