The Orpheus Clock

by Simon Goodman

  The pair of Angela Schuszler paintings had to be recalled from the Paushuize in Utrecht. Chicken with Hens by Aelbert Cuyp, formerly in the dining room at Bosbeek, was coming back from the Dutch Embassy in Stockholm. The museum in Enschede returned the Jakob Elsner portrait. Gradually they started to assemble our collection in a huge room at the ICN that had been reserved just for our family. Over the next months items came from far and wide: tapestries from Maastricht, an Etruscan terra-cotta mask from Leiden, Meissen bowls and dishes from the museum in Zwolle, and an Italian Renaissance table and Chantilly vases from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. An eighteenth-century, gilded Italian sofa had been exhibited, until recently, at the royal palace Het Loo in Apeldoorn, and an exquisite Dutch tulipwood parquetry commode, circa 1780, had been in The Hague. A Louis XV desk was on its way back from the New World, where it had once decorated the Dutch Embassy in Buenos Aires. The François Boucher Pastoral Scene was taken down from the wall of the Consulate General’s suite in Toronto. Meanwhile, the beautiful floral dinner service that Nick had complained about was being returned from the Netherlands’ Embassy in Moscow, where the corps diplomatique had used it to entertain since the sixties. Apparently Nikita Khrushchev had been served dinner from our hand-painted 1750 Meissen plates.

  As our room in Rijswijk was filling up nicely, according to reports it became evident the Rijksmuseum was not completely cooperating. It appeared to be dragging its feet over some pieces it clearly did not want to give up. About twenty pieces were involved. The most significant were three silver-gilt sculptures that Fritz had acquired from his father’s collection. Nick and I agreed we would lend the twenty pieces back to the museum temporarily, provided they first delivered them to Rijswijk. Apparently they wanted to make us an offer, which seemed rather premature. We just wanted to get everything back and see it all together before we made any big decisions.

  May and I arrived in Amsterdam in mid-September. The Dutch government had agreed to cover the airfares for the three principal heirs, so I felt in a generous mood when we checked in at my favorite hotel on the Prinsengracht (Prince’s Canal). Despite all that had happened, Amsterdam had always felt like a home away from home. The next day we met with Nick and drove together to Bosbeek, just outside Heemstede. Lili and my cousin Lorenzo must have arrived at the same time. The nuns who lived there had left the door open and were making themselves scarce. Shuchen Tan was also there to record the emotional homecoming.

  Lili opened the door and invited us all in, the way it might once have been, if only. The house was still strangely bare and empty. The sparse modern furniture seemed random and hardly present. I had vague memories of Bosbeek from when I was very young, with my father, but I had never been with Lili in the house where she grew up. With a loud-echoing voice she began to describe what used to be. Pointing to a blank wall: “To the right of the marble fireplace was the Liotard Tea Set or Service, underneath it was the Goya-like Spanish Lady.” Then swinging farther to the right: “On this wall was a huge Gobelin tapestry, you could see children playing under a tree.” Through double doors, on either side of which had been a bronze Louis XV clock and a gilded Louis XV barometer, we entered the great room. May and I caught our breath simultaneously as we were struck by Jacob de Wit’s magnificent painted ceiling. With colors vibrant and beautifully restored by the state, it was surrounded by a newly gilded frame, all of which contrasted depressingly with the sanatorium’s functional furnishings. Lili pointed to more barren walls where there had once been Louis XIV silk damask paneling in between floor-to-ceiling Louis XV mirrors. Over the doors we could still see where the trompe l’oeil wall painting, also by Jacob de Wit, had been pried out of the wall. Two large open cabinets, once brimming with Qing dynasty Chinese vases, were now ignored and unused. Later one of the nuns explained that they preferred to use the modern annex, built in the 1990s. Upstairs Lili showed us the deserted bedrooms. Louise, from her dressing room, had the best views over the ornamental hedges and garden sculptures. Grandmother Thekla von Landau’s room seemed particularly modest. Lili expressed relief that she had died just before the vicious anti-Semitic laws had taken hold. Lili pointed out the window toward Thekla’s grave, thankfully unmolested, across the lawn and under a lovely willow. Off in a wing almost to itself was my father’s old room. A rare smile came over Lili’s face as she recalled how Bernard would drive the older generation mad playing his American jazz records as loud as he could. The unlikely image of my father as a carefree young man brought a tear to my eye.

  My aunt had remained inscrutable and distant throughout, her guard coming down, only for a moment, when confronted with some modern aberration. She would gesture and say almost angrily, “This is all wrong!” As we drove away, I think we all took comfort from the final view of Bosbeek, its exterior intact, looking much as it always had, surrounded by the well-maintained lawns. The void inside was still a difficult image to shake.

  By contrast, when we arrived at Rijswijk, the ICN building appeared like any other sprawling complex in a modern business park. Only when we got through security and had each been issued a laminated badge did it dawn on us we were surrounded by approximately fifty thousand artworks. The director, Rik Vos, and the head of collections, Evert Rodrigo, escorted us down corridor after corridor, passing room after room stuffed with paintings, drawings, sculptures, and every conceivable other art form. There were far too many paintings to display; most were ranged tightly in gallery racks. As we descended several floors, Nick likened the complex to a giant bunker. Finally we arrived at our room. A throng was already there to greet us, and somebody was taking pictures with a flash. As I got to the door, a very tall man extended his hand and introduced himself as the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science. He muttered something that sounded like an apology, and I replied that I wished he had been there fifty years earlier.

  Our room was the size of a warehouse, windowless, its walls all brick, and definitely bunkerlike. Yet the ICN had gone to a lot of trouble. Rik Vos and Evert Rodrigo took turns showing each of us around. The first thing I noticed was an enormous chocolate-brown carpet on the ground. The beautiful Savonerrie carpet had once been in the dining room at Bosbeek. When May and I entered the cavernous room, the tables and chairs were all neatly arranged, and the shelves laden with sculptures and vases. Paintings were on the walls. Many tables were decked with bronzes and porcelain. Farther in the room, one wall was covered with two large tapestries depicting an array of exotic animals. Under each were giltwood console tables, and on each of these was perched one of a pair of spectacular ormolu chenets, which must originally have stood on each side of the marble fireplace in the drawing room at Bosbeek. On the opposite wall hung a brilliant Dutch mirror that had exuberant gilded feathers sprouting from its top; made around 1720, it must have been nearly six feet tall. Then I came across a little desk, or bureau, with intricate parquetry. When I pulled out the writing compartment, I suddenly imagined Louise composing a letter. Not far away I found Lili lost in thought in front of a Louis XV beechwood duchesse, an eighteenth-century daybed. I went up to my aunt and realized she must be thinking of Louise as well. I was stunned to see that, although a little threadbare, the floral yellow silk upholstery had survived all this time.

  “It’s ours again,” I said in disbelief.

  Lili rejoined, “I think I’m going to sit in it.”

  I took her arm and carefully eased her onto her mother’s cushions. It was a sublime moment. Suddenly I noticed several people watching us, and then there were those camera flashes again. A Dutch newspaper ran the story “Mrs. Gutmann Takes Her Seat.”

  On another table we found an odd assortment of ancient wine-glasses. Nearby were large amounts of Meissen plates and bowls. A delightful teapot attracted May, and I found myself drawn to a pair of four-legged, floral sauceboats. Visions of dinner at Bosbeek soon crossed my mind.

  That a sturdy bronze, fifteenth-century mortar and pestle, with German coat of arms, had survived was no
t so surprising, but close by were two ancient cushions still in remarkable condition. Embroidered on both was their year of creation—1689. They seemed to epitomize to what lengths the Nazis had gone to preserve everything of value—except human life. In contrast, next to the cushions were some shards and fragments of china and porcelain. May and I wondered how long these broken bits had been preserved and who had broken them. Was it the Dutch or, even longer ago, the Germans?

  Then on the back wall I glimpsed three of the most prized objects from Fritz’s personal collection. They had been part of that very first forced sale to Hermann Göring’s agents. I was a little shocked to see them in the open, just standing on a table, even though we were in one of the most secure buildings in the Netherlands.

  At first I was taken by the clean lines and simplicity of the Horse and Rider sculpted by Hans Kienle in 1630. The heroic rider was naked and in pure silver, in contrast to the smooth golden horse, dramatically rearing on its hind legs. The next magnificent piece was a silver-gilt ewer in the shape of a triton blowing a shell, while on his back sat a seminaked nymph. Art historians described it as Johannes Lencker’s Baroque masterpiece. The third piece, dating from 1596, consisted of the silver-gilt double cups by Hans Petzolt of Nuremberg. These towering Renaissance cups had once been the pride and possessions of my family, until 1940, when Göring’s agents pried them from my grandfather’s hands. Originally Eugen had acquired the Petzolt cups from the estate of Karl von Rothschild, who had died in 1886.

  After the US army had retrieved the golden cups from Göring’s alpine hideaway in Berchtesgaden at the end of 1945, they had been shipped to the new government of the Netherlands a year later. Nick and I were shocked to discover that the Petzolt cups had been transferred, in 1960, to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, without my family’s ever being notified.

  By now Nick and Lili had joined me, and we stood in wonder together. Lili was also visibly stunned to see the three silver-gilt works of art seemingly unprotected. When she was a child, Fritz had usually kept the great silver pieces safely under lock and key in the safe room, only to be brought out on special occasions. With the exception of the automatons (the Jamnitzer scales with the bronze lizard, the ormolu lady strumming her golden lute, and, Lili’s favorite, the Ostrich with its flapping wings and drum-beating monkey), the children were never allowed to touch any of the masterpieces in the Silbersammlung Gutmann. Lili had recently turned eighty-three, but from somewhere she must have heard her father’s admonishing tone. She stood back with a certain reserve, but Nick and I felt no such restraint. We were both instinctively drawn to the Rothschild cups. I lifted the top half of the double cup, and Nick grasped the bottom cup. To our surprise at the bottom of each were silver medallions, one of a man and the other of a woman, both sporting sixteenth-century ruff collars. They must have been wedding cups. Nick gallantly handed his to May so that she and I could symbolically toast each other and our family’s success.

  We would have much to decide when we returned to Rijswijk the next day. None of us lived the way the Gutmanns had before the war; those days seemed to be gone forever. When we looked at all the Meissen, Lili reminded us how Fritz and Louise once used to entertain. That night back in Amsterdam, with much to celebrate, we also had quite a large dinner, albeit not in the style of Bosbeek. Lili chose a favorite Indonesian restaurant, on the other side of the Vondelpark, where we could sample the endless dishes of a truly authentic rijsttafel. It was quite a gathering: Christine Koenigs joined us, and our cousin Nadine von Goldschmidt-Rothschild came all the way from Frankfurt with her nephew Jean-Paul. With a lot of laughter we shared the exotic food. Our family seemed to have found a new sense of optimism.

  The following morning Nick, Lili, and I started to make lists of what we most wanted to keep. It was difficult to be so practical, but we did our best. Nick decided on the Cuyp painting, two lovely bronzes, some Kangxi platters, one of the marble-top console tables, and some Meissen, including a set of teacups. More surprisingly, though, he also chose an enormous Italian Renaissance table. He was overjoyed when we discovered that the ICN would even cover the shipping. Nick gallantly suggested we send the first little teacup that had started this round of discovery to Eva, as a symbolic thank-you for those old boxes and our dear father’s papers.

  Lili wanted the least, for reasons I think I understand. Most important to her was a De Wit pen-and-ink drawing that her father had found in the twenties. Remarkably, it was the original sketch for the enormous ceiling painting in Bosbeek, which De Wit had later installed. She also kept a lovely Italian gilt mirror. Then she gave Lorenzo the two Angela Schuszler paintings, which made him happy. His brother, Enrico, chose a huge seventeenth-century walnut candlestick lamp and several Chinese pieces, while his sister, Luisa, kept a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury.

  Ultimately May and I decided on a delightful small painting of French lovers in a park, by Henri-Victor Devéria, and several pieces of Chinese porcelain, including a set of Kangxi Immortals. Nick and I each decided to keep one of the ancient cushions. Then May and I settled on an enchanting French, early-seventeenth-century, bronze group of a mother and child, one of the marble-topped consoles, and a Parisian barometer from before the Revolution. Also, I had to have some Meissen to commemorate our family’s roots in Saxony. But perhaps most dear to my heart was my grandfather Fritz’s shaving stand. We had recovered the little mahogany stand from the basement of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it had been since 1960. Years later, I would discover that Julius Böhler had personally kept this sturdy, little piece of furniture as a stand for a flowerpot.

  It was a miracle that so much had come back after all these years, yet I could not help thinking that all these things from my family had only been part of the first inventory Böhler had taken of Bosbeek. I would later deduce that there were still several pieces missing from the Gutmann Silver Collection, including the fierce silver cat, known as the Tetzelkatze, and the enigmatic Orpheus Clock. Also, a second Bosbeek inventory had consisted of well over another four hundred pieces. In that contract, Böhler’s cynicism knew no bounds. He had inserted a provision that allowed my grandparents to continue enjoying the use of their own furniture “as long as they were residents at Bosbeek.” After Fritz and Louise had been taken away that day in May 1943 in a black SS limousine, the vultures had descended on Bosbeek, and those last four hundred pieces had, I feared, been strewn to the wind.

  • • •

  The next afternoon we met with Rik Vos of the ICN at their lawyer’s offices on the Keizersgracht, just two bridges down from where Firma F. B. Gutmann had been, until the Nazis closed it in 1942. It seemed like a sensitive touch by the ICN to pick Mr. Maarten Meijer, one of the few remaining Jewish lawyers in Amsterdam. The meeting was to establish the official line of inheritance for Fritz and Louise’s estate. I hoped it would be a foregone conclusion, since Nick and I were the only two children of their only son, and Lili was their only other child. Nevertheless I had to supply birth certificates and many other legal documents. The process, perhaps a little tedious, resulted in my being issued a certificate of inheritance that was then authorized and stamped by the government of the Netherlands. In the complex world of restitution, it is crucial to be able to prove you are who you say you are. Now when I say I am Fritz Gutmann’s grandson and Eugen Gutmann’s great-grandson, I can prove it. This certificate has since been worth its weight in gold, on many occasions, in negotiations with the Swiss, French, and German authorities.

  With the legalities taken care of and our personal lists complete, the next big decision to make was to whom to entrust the rest of the collection. Not long ago, the big auction houses had treated us with barely concealed contempt. Nick and I were still smarting from our treatment over the Renoir. Now Christie’s and Sotheby’s had come courting. How times had changed in just four short years. Clearly the Washington Principles had made a great impression, but also I suspected the prospect of priceless works of art coming on the marke
t, through restitution, had proved irresistible to the auction houses. Unique works, once under lock and key in the world’s great museums, could now reenter the art market.

  Based on our recent experiences, Christie’s was the obvious choice. I instinctively felt we could do business with Sheri Farber, Christie’s vice president in charge of estates. It proved to be a good decision. That evening to cement our new relationship, Sheri and Jop Ubbens, chairman of Christie’s Amsterdam (and another extremely tall Dutchman), took us to a lovely restaurant called La Rive overlooking the Amstel River. One of the important concessions they offered us was a “single-owner” sale. The auction would be devoted exclusively to the Gutmann Collection, and as a result we would get our own catalog. The thought of a Gutmann catalog’s always being there as a form of commemoration appealed to us enormously. After a few more concessions, Jop threw in tickets for the Concertgebouw concert hall, the following evening. We all laughed. It was an unashamed move, but it was also a clincher.

  • • •

  Early in 2003, the director and the keeper of the Rijksmuseum, on their way back from a trip to the Far East, flew to Los Angeles to talk with Nick and me. On a bright, late-January morning they arrived at my house. They were making every effort to keep at least three of twenty artworks we had lent back to them. Due to budget restrictions, they had to concentrate on what they considered essential, and apparently the three silver-gilt works by Petzolt, Lencker, and Kienle were essential.

  Thanks to expert reports from Anthony Phillips, head of silver at Christie’s in London, Nick and I had a good idea what they might fetch on the open market. We also had an initial report from Sotheby’s. After a little back-and-forth, the director delivered their absolute best offer. Nick and I knew this was coming, yet we were still, inwardly at least, quite stunned. We requested a brief time-out. In the hallway we looked at each other openmouthed: nobody had ever offered us that kind of money before. Without having to say much at all, we knew we were agreed. I think we both felt a deep-rooted responsibility to get the best results for our family. Back in the living room Nick informed the director, perhaps a little bluntly, “I’m afraid it’s not enough.” The two heads of the Rijksmuseum were clearly crestfallen; they had come a long way. I pointed out that as much as our family appreciated their generous offer, we were convinced the value of the three unique pieces was greater. As they were leaving, Nick added that we hoped to see them at the auction. Money aside, I felt that something was wrong in just letting the museum keep these precious works. I kept thinking of my father in Amsterdam, during those nightmare years after the war, and how the authorities had kept so much from him.