The Orpheus Clock

by Simon Goodman

  Immediately on my return to LA, I received a letter from the Dutch Ministry of Culture informing me that they had authorized the return of six more pieces: two beautiful Meissen dishes, three Persian prayer rugs, and a wonderful albarello jar made in 1560 in Castel Durante, which was painted with the story of Daniel and the Dragon. A fourth prayer rug had been deemed so threadbare that the Dutch authorities had destroyed it in the fifties. The letter also promised an imminent decision on five exquisite powder-blue Chinese vases (still in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) and the large Pietà sculpture (in the Catharijneconvent Museum in Utrecht). Despite my medical close call, 2010 was turning into a very good year.

  • • •

  By mid-October, Rutgers’s legal team had concluded their due diligence, and the verdict was clear. The Hans Baldung Grien would be returned by the end of the year, or as soon as all the legal transfers could be completed. Rutgers and the Zimmerli had behaved in an exemplary fashion, and their honorable decision was indeed an important milestone in our family’s history. Lili and Nick were deeply moved when I called them. I was also grateful for the relative speed of the whole affair. It had been almost exactly a year since I’d first set foot in Suzanne Delehanty’s office.

  In contrast, after a four-year wait, in early December a second settlement from the Swiss banks was finally awarded to my family. Back in 2006, after our first award from the Claims Resolution Tribunal, we became part of an appeal action. Like many other families, our first settlement from the Swiss banks had seemed unrealistic—they claimed they did not know the original value in the accounts.

  A few days later the Dutch authorities announced they were returning the five beautiful Kangxi vases from the Rijksmuseum. I was overwhelmed by these successive victories. It was hard to believe how much the world had changed since the prolonged heartbreak that followed the war. Two days after that, the Franz von Stuck beat all expectations at Christie’s in London.

  After a happy year-end holiday back home in California, May, James, and I returned in January to a freezing New Jersey. The wind ripped right through us as we stepped onto the icy platform at the New Brunswick station. Even our thickest coats did not seem to offer any protection. Instead we were comforted by the prospect of a warm reception at the museum. This time there was quite a throng, including some press and photographers. Suzanne Delehanty made the cheerful introductions. Soon I was deep in conversation with Dr. Philip Furmanski, the Rutgers executive vice president. When he explained that his parents had escaped Poland at the beginning of the Holocaust, I realized how he must have been an invaluable ally when the university had made its decision. In stark contrast to the first time I had seen the Baldung in that forlorn room, Suzanne now ushered us past a well-stocked refreshments table into a plush, red room. This was a particularly touching and sensitive gesture: Suzanne had made a clear point of remembering what I’d told her about my grandfather. He had hung the Baldung Grien, along with most of his other Renaissance portraits, in his red-walled gentlemen’s smoking room. And there was the Portrait of a Young Man, with a Green Background comfortably resting on a professional-looking easel with a red wall behind it.

  I found myself actually holding on to the easel as I began to address all those attending the ceremony. I wanted to express my gratitude for the humanity with which Rutgers and the Zimmerli had treated my family. Getting back the painting had reaffirmed my faith in justice. I felt it was also important to stress how many other museums and institutions had only paid lip service to the Washington Principles, but most had balked when it came to restituting artworks from their own collections. Even museums with more art in storage than on display often resorted to technical legal-defense tactics when confronted with a request to return a looted item. Suzanne Delehanty then added, “The Zimmerli clearly wanted to do the right thing. What happened in the Holocaust was one of the black moments in human history. You want to do anything you can to correct, in some small way, this historic wrong.”

  As is often the case, after such elation comes a moment of sadness. The time had come, regrettably, for us to say good-bye to the five-hundred-year-old Young Man. The Gutmanns, or what was left of us, were no longer the wealthy family we once were. Bernhard Gutmann’s Schloss Schönfeld, his fairy-tale moated castle high on a hill overlooking Dresden, seemed like a dream from a distant past. Today’s reality dictated that the only way to divide an heirloom among the heirs was through a sale. Lili would soon be turning ninety-two and I did not want to delay. We returned to Los Angeles and the Baldung Grien went to join the other old masters at Christie’s in New York. The Young Man did us proud.

  CHAPTER 15

  LIFTING THE CURSE: THE ORPHEUS CLOCK

  Portrait of Eugen Gutmann by Franz von Lenbach, now hanging in my office.

  For a long time I had avoided my great-grandfather Eugen’s collection. Some said it was what had really killed my grandfather. After all, if it had not been for Fritz’s determination to preserve the Silbersammlung he might well have bargained his way out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Lili thought the silver had been cursed. Certainly, the pieces from Eugen’s collection that were recovered after the war had torn apart what was left of the family. Sixty years later, I found myself still at loggerheads with estranged and invisible cousins. The curse had traveled across generations.

  In May 2011 the portrait of Eugen by Franz von Lenbach, the one that nobody had ever seen before, arrived from Cologne. It differed dramatically from the Lenbach owned by the Dresdner Bank, and it certainly was not as famous as that other portrait of Eugen by Germany’s most distinguished Impressionist, Max Liebermann. My great-grandfather had often been compared to Bismarck: stern, authoritarian, and very Prussian. My painting was quite different: gone was any sense of austerity or aloofness. The man in my portrait loved music and collected beautiful things. Somehow he felt more like family.

  I hung the new Eugen over the end of my desk. He seemed to watch over me as I worked, sometimes even with a benign smile. Oddly, the sense of foreboding about the silver collection and the old family trust began to lift. I realized it was time to try to make better sense of my neglected files on Eugen’s collection.

  I knew exactly what had been taken by Julius Böhler in 1942, all 225 items, and I also knew what had been restored to the Gutmann Family Trust in 1949. Several discrepancies between the 1942 list and the 1949 list were clear. Many precious works such as the Orpheus Clock had slipped through the cracks. If I could discover exactly which pieces from the Silbersammlung the Allies had recovered in 1945, I would have a much better grasp of the situation.

  A good place to start was in the Ardelia Hall Collection, now part of the US war archives. Ardelia Hall was a Monuments Officer, and an unsung heroine, who almost single-handedly made sure the files dealing with war-related looting and recovery remained intact. Today they are kept at the National Archives in Washington and Maryland and named in her honor.

  In stark contrast to the endless traveling my father was compelled to undertake, today we are blessed with the ability to travel much farther with just a few strokes on a keyboard. From the comfort of my home I am able to search the vast, and ever-growing, National Archives records relating to Holocaust-era assets. Regrettably, these records were sealed from the public for more than fifty years. Only in recent years has the arduous task of digitizing these records begun. Every time I go back to search for something about my family’s collection, it seems as if there is more and more to review.

  I was sure I had performed this particular search before, but this time I suddenly came across a remarkable letter, written on October 26, 1945, by a young American lieutenant, William E. Frye. Under the heading “Subject: Property of Jewish Refugees,” the lieutenant warned the US director of military government for Bavaria that a collection belonging to Countess Lili Orsini (my great-aunt) and just recently discovered on the shores of Lake Starnberg was going to be stolen again. “I notified the CO at Starnberg by telephone this date that this proper
ty should be placed under control immediately as an attempt was to be made to loot this property by the former custodian Herr Böhler, Briennerstrasse, Munich.”

  It appeared that the collection had remained intact from 1942 right up until the end of the war. Fritz’s subterfuge of placing the Eugen Gutmann Silver Collection in the name of his brother-in-law Luca Orsini had worked against all odds. The German lawyer whom Luca and Great-Aunt Lili had hired had been remarkably effective. When a preservation order was issued and the collection declared a “national treasure” in 1943, the Nazi dealers had clearly taken note. Even though the Germans had no compunction in violating other people’s laws, their own laws were evidently sacrosanct.

  A short while later I received dramatic evidence of this Nazi quirk. I had been using my brother’s copy of Eugen’s one-hundred-year-old catalog by Otto von Falke, Die Kunstsammlung Eugen Gutmann, published in Berlin in 1912. This sumptuous, oversize book itemized 326 amazing artworks with elaborate detail, and fortunately almost every one was accompanied by an ancient, but still clear, photograph. Both Nick and I were worried about my constantly referencing this family heirloom and the resultant wear and tear. For years I had looked for another copy (only a few hundred had ever been printed), and in early 2012 I found one. It was incredibly expensive but I had to have it. When I opened the book for the first time, I was stunned to find inside a letter dated March 30, 1943. The letter had been signed “Heil Hitler” by none other than Julius Böhler.

  This original letter was addressed to the Führerhaus in Munich and marked for the attention of Dr. von Hummel. It read simply, “On behalf of Herr Karl Haberstock, we hereby send you the enclosed catalog of Eugen Gutmann’s collection. Heil Hitler! Julius Böhler.” Hauptsturmführer Baron Helmut von Hummel was chief secretary of the Nazi Party Chancellery, and as one of his many duties he was in charge of collecting gold, coins, and armory for the Führer (his immediate boss, Martin Bormann, was head of the Linz Commission). By some mysterious process I was now holding the copy of my family’s catalog that had once belonged to the man who had stripped our family home. I shuddered, then I shuddered again when it occurred to me that none other than Adolf Hitler had probably held this book. Based on correspondence between Böhler and Haberstock that I had found in the German Koblenz archives, they had intended Eugen’s catalog to become a shopping list for the Führer.

  Yet, subsequently, the Nazi dealers must have decided, however reluctantly, to respect the preservation order (declaring the collection a “national treasure” not to be touched). As a result the remaining 225 pieces from the Eugen Gutmann Silbersammlung languished for the rest of the war in Böhler’s premises on the Briennerstrasse, just a few doors down from Nazi Party headquarters, and, no doubt, the equally frustrated Baron von Hummel. Just as the war was ending, Böhler decided to move the collection from his more visible headquarters in Munich to his associate Hans Sauermann’s storage facility by Lake Starnberg. It was here that the young American lieutenant Frye was hoping to secure the Silbersammlung. Somehow he had got wind that Sauermann and Böhler, after having sat on my family’s treasures for over three years, were not prepared to just hand them over to the Allies.

  Close to the lieutenant’s letter in the archives, under the heading “Orsini,” I found a copy of the original list of 225 artworks that the Germans had removed from Bosbeek. At first glance it appeared to be just another copy of the same inventory, except that this version had the heading “Restituted.” In front of me was the crucial document I had been searching for. I realized that I must be looking at a copy of the inventory that was used when the Silbersammlung was being checked into the Munich Collecting Point. Next to each item number that Böhler had originally assigned was now a check mark. Soon it became apparent that two eighteenth-century gold rings were missing; unfortunately these were among the few items that did not have illustrations in the Otto von Falke catalog, and as a result they would prove next to impossible to trace. On the next page, however, my intuition seemed to pay off: Eugen must have been looking over me.

  Item number 103 was a “Round gilt-bronze Table Clock, South German, second half of the 16th century.” This was the long-lost Orpheus Clock. My heart started to race. It was clearly not checked, so it must not have been turned over to the lieutenant or his superior officer. Which meant that Böhler and Sauermann had kept it. This time I had a photo and a very elaborate description by Von Falke. Now I knew exactly what to look for. I tried to contain my excitement. Only three lines farther down the inventory, item number 106 was also unchecked. It was another clock: “Square Table Clock, of gilded-bronze, South German, second half of the 16th century.” This was the remarkable astronomical clock by Johann Reinhold.

  I quickly saved copies of the lieutenant’s letter and the newly discovered “Restituted” inventory, while I made a supreme effort to complete the exercise on hand. My mind was already racing ahead toward the hunt for the Orpheus Clock. I quickly ascertained that four lines below the clocks, item number 110 also seemed to be missing. This was a majolica bowl made in 1537 by the Casa Pirota workshop of Faenza. The notations on a few other items were also not clear, but I would have to come back to them another time.

  I decided to concentrate my investigation on the Orpheus Clock. According to Von Falke’s description, I was certain that this piece was unique. It only had a six-hour dial (sometimes used in Italy at the end of the Renaissance), which meant it had to be reset at midnight, sunrise, midday, and sunset. Also most unusual, it only had one hand. When I first looked at Von Falke’s sepia-toned photograph, though still quite clear, I could not see the hand at all because the dial face was such a maze of golden leaves, vines, tendrils, and grapes, which in turn hid golden birds and lizards. It was both hugely confusing and yet strangely symmetrical. Then I finally caught sight of the hand, which was concealed in the shape of a long, undulating serpent, its gilded head facing the center of the dial and its tapering tail indicating, oh so subtly, the time. What a marvel.

  The artist, reputedly, was Wenzel Jamnitzer of Nuremberg, the master of the Kunstkammer. The theme of Orpheus in the underworld had been utilized by some of his competitors in the silversmith and goldsmith workshops of Nuremberg and Augsburg, but clearly Jamnitzer would not be outdone.

  Few artworks in my great-grandfather’s extraordinary catalog warranted two illustrations, but this “round clock” was one of them—and fortunately so, because the other photograph contained a clue that led me to discover its whereabouts. This side view depicted a frieze that told the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. You could see a bearded Orpheus playing his lyre as he attempted to induce the gods of the underworld to release Eurydice, his beloved. Eurydice is seen rushing to escape Hades, her long, golden locks billowing behind her. The rest of the frieze consisted of vividly embossed animals: horses, bears, elephants, and some mystical creatures—all apparently entranced by Orpheus’s mournful music. During the Renaissance, Orpheus was often used as a metaphor for the triumph of art over nature. Similarly, the artist had sought to harness time through the means of a scientific instrument—the clock.

  The hundred-year-old photos of the Orpheus Clock from my great-grandfather’s catalog.

  So began my search for our mystical “Orpheus Clock.” I was convinced the key lay in the name Orpheus, which symbolized the unique character of the clock. Almost as soon as I started looking, I discovered a complete book by P. Coole and E. Neumann, entitled aptly The Orpheus Clocks. It seemed about ten were in the series, albeit by different goldsmiths. One clock was in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, another in the British Museum in London, but our clock, I was proud to discover, was considered the preeminent Orpheus Clock. Historians would say Jamnitzer’s Orpheus Clock was “perhaps one of the most beautiful clocks of [all] the Renaissance.” I was beginning to see why, of all the wonders in the Gutmann cabinet of curiosities, this was the piece Böhler could not bear to part with.

  At the beginning of the book was a full list of
the clocks—the Gutmann clock was listed first. I was encouraged to see Eugen, along with Otto von Falke, both mentioned. But then I became a little apprehensive when I read that our clock had been oddly renamed Fremersdorf 1.

  I soon discovered that the Orpheus Clock had been purchased, apparently in 1962, by a certain Herr Fremersdorf. After several frantic searches, I assembled an outline of who Joseph Fremersdorf was. Born in Germany, he became a Swiss resident in the 1920s. There, after the war, Fremersdorf developed his passion for Renaissance and Baroque timepieces. He had made his fortune by selling shoes, lots of them.

  The next big break came with an old 2002 Christie’s catalog. They were offering a rare eleventh Orpheus Clock, which Coole and Neumann had not included in their book. By way of comparison, Christie’s mentioned the other famous Orpheus Clocks at the end of their catalog entry. Yet again, the Gutmann clock (now Fremersdorf 1) was first on the list. Except this list also included its current location: the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart, Germany.

  In 1973, Joseph Fremersdorf had bequeathed the finest clocks from his collection to the historical museum of the State of Baden-Württemberg. This generous donation included our clock.