The Orpheus Clock

by Simon Goodman

  The producers of 60 Minutes decided that the Getty Villa in Malibu would serve as a dramatic setting for the segment. They chose to film the interview in a room with a charming still-life painting by Jean-Étienne Liotard, titled The Tea Set. By coincidence, this painting had once also belonged to my grandfather and had been stolen from the Gutmann possessions in Paris. Unlike the Degas, though, it had become part of Hitler’s Linz collection. After the war, it had been recovered by the US army from Hitler’s secret storage, deep in the salt mines of Altaussee in Austria. Following its restitution, my father and aunt had sold this particular Liotard in Switzerland—reluctantly, but at least legally. After that The Tea Set had passed, ironically, through the hands of Theodor Fischer before being acquired by the Getty in the 1980s.

  The Tea Set was a much-studied eighteenth-century oddity with its teacups and china in uncustomary disarray. My brother and I, along with the 60 Minutes producers, agreed it was a fitting metaphor for the family’s scattered collection.

  CBS decided to entitle the segment “The Search.” The little Degas pastel over monotype, now known as Landscape with Smokestacks, was about to become famous. Nick and I also had to become accustomed, rather quickly, to the sudden media attention.

  When we arrived at the Getty, our hosts unveiled for us, with great pride, their latest acquisition: a beautiful still life by another famous Impressionist, Paul Cézanne. Then, as the CBS cameras followed us around, we walked through the splendid Roman garden of the Getty Villa. Morley Safer encouraged us to describe what life had been like for our family before the Nazi cataclysm. He likened the Gutmanns to Jewish grandees. I tried to emphasize the contrast between the world into which my father had been born and his drastically diminished circumstances at the time of his passing. The segment continued with Nick and me sitting in a grand room surrounded by Louis XV furniture with the Liotard behind us. Next Safer asked me, “Why do you want it [the Degas] back?”

  I nearly stuttered, realizing it wasn’t a rhetorical question. There was so much to say. “It’s about honor,” I began. “So much was lost . . . . We can’t bring back the dead . . . . This is all that’s left.”

  We were fighting for our birthright and for justice finally, but Safer realized many would not be sympathetic. Skillfully he induced my brother and me to argue our case. “The Search” aired on January 19, 1997, then twice more after that. It would win an Emmy for 60 Minutes and CBS.

  Many other journalists would ask the almost identical question. Another persistent query was “Why now?” Patiently, I would point out that we were only doing what we were doing because very little had been settled after the war. Inwardly I wanted to scream, “If your grandparents had been murdered and all their possessions stolen—what would you do?” Finally I hit on a simple phrase that explained so much: “It’s unfinished business.” The British documentary Making a Killing would open with me quoting that phrase as the camera surveyed the courthouse where the landmark case for the Degas landscape was destined to reach its climax.

  Perhaps we were lucky to be consumed by the media during all this time. Since we had filed suit against Daniel Searle, the legal process had barely ground forward. Searle’s team, headed by Howard Trienens, seemed content to drag out the “discovery” process as long as possible. The longer it took, the greater the expenses for my family. Even the judge seemed frustrated by the lack of progress. He actually ordered a conference between my brother, me, Aunt Lili, and Daniel Searle. Alas, nothing substantial came of it. Searle’s position had become increasingly narrow and unyielding. Egged on by his legal team, Searle completely disregarded the realities of the Holocaust era. Anne Webber, in her powerful film about the Gutmann saga, Making a Killing, pointed out, “There’s no allowance being made for the unique circumstances of these thefts.”

  During a TV interview, obviously inflamed, Searle went so far as to call my family’s claim “extortion.” No doubt the buttoned-down industrialist’s image had been somewhat tarnished by all the bad press. To make things worse, Mrs. Searle had, apparently, become the subject of gossip at their country club. One Chicago newspaper even ran an editorial with the headline “Shame, Shame, Shame.” The article continued, “Shame on Daniel Searle.”

  Ironically, just a year before and immediately after we filed suit, Daniel Searle had personally called Nick. He introduced himself bluntly: “I’m the guy you’re trying to sue.” To Nick’s astonishment, Searle then made an offer of $150,000. Obviously he thought we could be induced to go away. Nick politely pointed out that if the painting had been worth $850,000 in 1987, then $150,000 in 1996 could hardly be considered a reasonable offer. Still my family was heartened that Searle seemed disposed to negotiate. At the end of August, Nick wrote back suggesting a more equitable solution. We offered to split the ownership of the painting. Reluctantly, my family had come to the realization that a truly just resolution was probably out of our reach. Given the intransigence of the opposition, along with the complexities of the law, it became apparent that some compromise would be inevitable. The legal realities were beginning to take their toll. Unfortunately, rather than accept graciously or even make a realistic counteroffer, Searle merely suggested we could all get a nice tax write-off. Clearly it hadn’t occurred to the Chicago billionaire that not everybody was in his same tax bracket.

  The trial would be held in the Superior Court of Illinois. In September of 1997, Nick and I flew to Chicago, where we met Lili. Over several days we would all give our depositions to Searle’s battery of lawyers. Lili seemed particularly anxious. Her doctors had warned her against the long flight from Italy, considering her recent heart condition.

  Throughout this ordeal, Searle’s attorneys seemed determined to put words in our mouths. I was supposed to have found Paysage the very first day I started looking. The implication was that since it had been so “easy” for me, if my father had indeed been searching for the Degas, he would have found it decades earlier. Then they tried to twist Lili’s statements to imply that Fritz had been bankrupt in 1939, that his business had failed, and he was desperate to liquidate his entire collection.

  The truth was that Firma F. B. Gutmann did not close until 1942 (two years into the occupation of the Netherlands), and then only on orders of the Nazis. Meanwhile, the Gutmann Trust actually survived the war and, against all odds, emerged with considerable assets.

  The case seemed to hinge largely on the interpretation of the word consignment. Searle’s lawyers insisted that the term implied “intent to sell.” This might have been the usual American/English understanding. However, in French, consigner simply designated a shipment entrusted for deposit. Unfortunately these linguistic subtleties seemed to be lost on the hard-nosed Midwesterners we were up against.

  Even though Searle’s side conceded that the Gutmann collection was looted by the Nazis, they obstinately claimed there was no “proof” that this particular work had been stolen. The fact that there was not one document indicating a sale of the Degas did not seem to deter Searle or his team. Neither did the fact that Hans Wendland never claimed, after he was arrested, that he had purchased Paysage.

  We countered that not only did Fritz’s agent, Paul Graupe, not sell the Degas, he didn’t sell any of the other paintings or artworks from the so-called consignment to Paris—not one. Every piece of the Paris “consignment” had, one way or another, been taken by the Nazis.

  Lili, Nick, and I were proud of how much we had been able to piece together after so much time had passed. Inevitably, though, after half a century or more, it was virtually impossible to fill in all the gaps of provenance. We were learning that the burden of proof lay with the victims. My family became increasingly aware of how hard it was to disprove a negative. The insinuation that Fritz had sold the Degas persisted. The more Howard Trienens repeated the allegation, the more stubborn Daniel Searle became.

  Oftentimes I wondered whether this legal stonewalling wasn’t just a ploy to push up our expenses and force us to back dow
n. When I arrived in Chicago for the depositions, somebody actually warned me, “Nobody ever sues Daniel Searle!”

  The legal back and forth dragged on. On July 30, 1998, just days before the trial was to begin, we were advised that Searle’s request for a motion to dismiss had been denied by the court. Clearly, too much evidence was on our side. Judge Lindberg ruled that the case must proceed to trial. Tom Kline and his Chicago associate, Barry Rosen, had done an exemplary job. This would be the first Nazi looting case to be successfully brought to trial in the United States.

  After the elation subsided, Nick and I realized that we had a few tough decisions to make. Our hardworking legal team had already cost us a few hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile, after the depositions Searle had actually complained to us that he had already spent more on the case than he had spent on the painting. We assumed that to be around a million dollars—evidently Trienens’s legal posturing had not been cost-effective.

  The trial would obviously drag out again everything that we had already gone over. Our costs were about to double. Regardless, I was confident that we would win. Right was on our side and so was public opinion. However, a greater consideration came into play. Lili had hated the depositions. She was filled with trepidation when she learned that she would have to return to Chicago and undergo another harsh grilling as the star witness. Nick and I feared that Lili’s weak heart might not endure such a public ordeal. Moreover, the thought of her being forced to relive from the witness stand what had happened to her parents was too much to bear.

  On August 7, Nick called Daniel Searle again and reoffered the fifty-fifty arrangement. This time Searle accepted. While it was clearly a victory, a vindication, after nearly three years of battle (and almost sixty years after my family lost possession of the Degas), I felt deflated. We had taken the prudent course, but in my heart I wanted to go to trial. At least the Chicago Jewish Star pointed out how “the final settlement shows just how skewed and crass Searle’s insinuation of extortion was.”

  Nick was justly proud of an honorable conclusion. The press started to call it a “Solomonic solution.” The settlement was somewhat complicated, though. Our friend Hector Feliciano (author of The Lost Museum) had helped broker the deal with the Art Institute of Chicago, which would become the third party in the agreement. At first the museum didn’t want to get involved in what appeared to be a legal morass. However, Hector skillfully reminded James Wood, then director of the Art Institute, how much they had always wanted the Degas landscape. Before my family came along, the museum had assumed Searle would bequeath it to them. Now they had an opportunity to acquire Paysage, effectively at half price, since Searle would donate his half. The deal was set. My family would receive payment from the Art Institute for our half of the appraised value; Daniel Searle would donate his half of the painting to the museum in return for a tax deduction.

  Clearly, Searle had not wanted to take his chances in court. Another factor that might have loomed large for Searle was the power of the press. Anne Webber’s Making a Killing had received strong reviews in the United Kingdom and Europe. This compelling detective story about my family’s fifty-year quest to recover our missing art collection was set against a background of murder, greed, and corruption. The Seattle Jewish Film Festival would later write, “Making a Killing is not only a beautifully-shot documentary, it has become a powerful tool in the arsenal of those fighting to address the ‘unfinished business of the Holocaust.’ ”

  Meanwhile, PBS affiliates had just started to run the US version on TV. It was scheduled to air in Chicago on August 10, but Searle had already viewed an advance copy. According to Anne Webber, now chair of the European Commission on Looted Art, Searle was beginning to have a change of heart after seeing himself in the documentary. Not surprisingly, his cold, offhand bluster had not come across sympathetically.

  Before the ceremonies and unveiling of the Degas, which would be organized by the Art Institute, we had one more important piece of business to attend to—the appraisals. The agreement was that two established art institutions would give their estimates for the Degas and that a median price would establish the painting’s current value. The first appraiser had to come from a list supplied by the Art Institute, from which we chose the art dealer Richard Feigen. The second appraiser had to be from either Christie’s or Sotheby’s. We chose Christie’s because we had just begun a new legal dispute with Sotheby’s concerning another painting. During the endless legal delays we had not been idle. We had been busy pursuing our Renoir, Le Poirier.

  During the Degas case, we hadn’t given too much notice to the reaction from the art world. Public opinion had been almost universally supportive of my family, but now it became apparent that the art trade thought differently. Before the court ruling in our favor, and the subsequent settlement, the art world had viewed us as upstarts. From art dealers, museum directors, gallery owners, auction houses, and, of course, wealthy collectors came the same indignant questions: Who were these people who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and claimed a valuable painting? Wasn’t it over half a century ago? Aren’t there statutes of limitations? Entirely overlooking the Holocaust and Nazi plunder, their main concern seemed to be that the art market might be “disrupted.” When we prevailed, a lot of hand wringing went on. What will it mean for us? Are there Nazi looted pieces in our collections as well? Will we have to return artworks for which we paid hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars? Will we be exposed in the press as purveyors or possessors of art stolen from Holocaust victims?

  I could not feel much sympathy for them, and then, suddenly, it became quite clear that the art trade felt no sympathy for us, either.

  In November 1998, the Christie’s appraisal came in at $300,000—a staggering $550,000 less than Daniel Searle had paid for the landscape. Next Richard Feigen, a Chicago native, came in with $575,000 (33 percent below the purchase price of eleven years before).

  Was it possible that the art establishment wanted to punish us for helping to expose its witting or unwitting role in the scandal of Holocaust art?

  Nick and I decided action was required. We requested a meeting at Christie’s. Meanwhile, I busily prepared a dossier of Degas sale and auction prices. At Christie’s West Coast headquarters in Beverly Hills, we were introduced to Marc Porter, the newly appointed international managing director. Porter appeared friendly, even slightly apologetic. We asked about the disparity between Feigen’s already low estimate and Christie’s rock-bottom evaluation. To reinforce our position, I presented a lengthy list of other Degas pastels that had fared comparatively better on the open market. Porter seemed sympathetic and assured us that Christie’s would do what they could.

  A month later, Christie’s increased their appraisal from $300,000 to $400,000. Ultimately the art experts set the average value of the Degas at $487,500—just over half of what Searle had paid a decade earlier. Our portion barely covered our legal fees, but it had never been just about the money. It was still a significant victory and, it would turn out, an important turning point in the history of the art world since the end of World War II.

  At the end of 1998, the (American) Association of Art Museum Directors called on all museums to check their collections for Nazi-era artworks. The Art Institute of Chicago agreed to a systematic provenance search on all the institute’s works from the Holocaust era. In October they invited my whole family to an inaugural luncheon before the unveiling of the Degas landscape. Lili had no appetite for such events; the endless compromises had been a bitter experience for her (and certainly did not justify another round-trip from Italy to the States). However, Nick, his daughter Cheyenne, my wife, May, and our son, James, were all there for the emotional occasion.

  When Paysage finally went on display at the Art Institute of Chicago—after a world war and more than half a century—it would at long last be publicly credited “From the Collection of Friedrich and Louise Gutmann.”

  Nick and Simon with the Degas landscape, C
hicago, 1998.

  CHAPTER 11

  RENOIR AND BOTTICELLI

  Sotheby’s letter to my mother about the Renoir and other paintings.

  Two months after I had found the Degas, Nick went to the old Getty Villa to meet with David Jaffe, the curator of nineteenth-century paintings at the museum. He outlined our search to Jaffe and showed him the other two Impressionist photographs that Rose Valland had taken during the war. Jaffe was sympathetic to our cause as his family had also been targeted by the Germans. For the next two weeks, Jaffe rummaged through countless catalogs. The image of the Renoir seemed to ring a bell. Suddenly he was on the phone: “I’ve found your Renoir.” We were ecstatic, although it turned out what Jaffe had discovered was where the painting had been in the late sixties.

  Renoir’s Le Poirier (The Pear Tree) had been auctioned at Parke-Bernet (a subsidiary of Sotheby’s) in New York, in 1969. The catalog stated that the painting was the “property of the estate of the late Lucienne Fribourg and property of the Fribourg Foundation Inc.” The scant provenance consisted of just one line, “Provenance: Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York,” and even that one line was incorrect. In fact, Fritz Gutmann had bought the Renoir in October 1928 from Paul Cassirer, who had in turn bought it from the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris—not New York.

  We discovered the Fribourg Foundation had been founded in 1953 by Jules and Lucienne Fribourg, who had, coincidentally, fled Paris in 1940. Jules Fribourg was from a long line of famous grain merchants, and when his family reached Lisbon, they were lucky enough to be picked up by one of their own freighters. After a brief detour to the Dominican Republic, they arrived safely in New York in August 1940.

  Jules Fribourg had died toward the end of the war, but we were able to trace his son, Michel, who was still living in New York. Tom Kline wrote a polite letter inquiring about the origins of the painting. The chilling response we received from the Fribourgs’ attorneys, like the sound of a door slamming, seemed to set the tone for what was to follow: “We regret to inform you that we are not in a position to respond to your inquiries.”