The Orpheus Clock

by Simon Goodman

  As I looked over my shoulder toward the painting on the wall, Eugen was definitely smiling. I’m sure Fritz would have appreciated this moment, too. It was almost exactly sixty-nine years since Julius Böhler’s truck had carried away the Orpheus Clock from Bosbeek, along with Eugen’s other treasures. Fritz had tried so hard to preserve our family’s legacy, and now after all this time, this lost masterpiece was within my grasp. I knew I had a lot more to do, but for the moment I was overcome with a warm sense of satisfaction.

  I immediately wrote to the Landesmuseum in Stuttgart. I took it as a good sign when I discovered that the museum had a much-respected historian as head of provenance research, Dr. Anja Heuss. She soon wrote back to me to confirm that the Orpheus Clock was indeed in the museum’s collection. There was one snag, though: she was under the impression that the clock had been sold by my family to the Bachstitz Gallery in The Hague, long before the war.

  Several items from Eugen’s collection had, in fact, been offered to Kurt Bachstitz, but on consignment only. Fritz had arranged all this while Eugen was still alive. However, Bachstitz then included all these artworks in his 1922 catalog, with unfortunate results for me and my family. Everybody now believed Bachstitz owned these artworks.

  Eventually, I was able to prove to Dr. Heuss that most of the Gutmann artworks had not been sold by Bachstitz, but had been returned to Fritz, as custodian of the family collection. Fortunately, the Bachstitz Gallery stock cards were now accessible in a Dutch archive. I then sent the Landesmuseum a copy of the relevant card, which clearly indicated that the Orpheus Clock had been returned to Fritz’s office in July 1924.

  When I provided Anja Heuss with copies of the contract Fritz was obliged to enter into with Julius Böhler and Karl Haberstock, in March 1942, along with the Munich 1945 “Restituted” lists, she became convinced that the clock in her museum belonged to my family. The Orpheus Clock was clearly marked as number 103 in that forced transaction. By the next time she wrote to me, she was certain not only one Gutmann clock was in the museum, but actually three.

  I tried not to let my expectations soar too high. I was almost sure I knew at least one of the other clocks. I had already seen on the Landesmuseum’s website a picture of an automaton clock that looked identical to the wonderful Ostrich, with its flapping wings and drum-beating monkey, which had once been Lili’s favorite. When Dr. Heuss confirmed that this was indeed one of the other clocks, I reassured her that this piece had in fact been successfully returned after the war and that my father, along with his feuding cousins, had sold it at the end of the 1950s, through the Manhattan antique dealer A La Vieille Russie. It appeared to be just an odd coincidence that Fremersdorf had bought the Ostrich automaton, too. The third clock, however, was a different matter. I could not believe my luck. It was Item 106 from the Böhler list: the “Square Table Clock,” which had also disappeared from under the nose of the eager lieutenant.

  The bland, generic title of Square Table Clock for this amazing instrument was a great understatement. While our Round Table Clock had to share a book with at least eight other masterworks, the so-called Square Table Clock had all 120 pages of a book just to itself. The title was The Great Astronomical Table Clock of Johann Reinhold: Augsburg 1581 to 1592.

  Johann Reinhold’s clock had not just one dial, like most, but nine dials in total. The main top, or horizontal, dial was by no means as beautiful as the Orpheus Clock’s, but was still impressive. Its finely etched gold frame enclosed a distinctive thick gold circle, which, in turn, encircled a twenty-four-hour dial. Under the widely latticed gold dial was a silver astrolabe that kept track of the sun and the moon. Each of the four sides of the square clock exhibited two smaller dials. There were two zodiacal dials (one ornamental and one scientific), two intricately decorative twenty-four-hour dials, and one dial that alternated between the cycles of the sun and the moon. One dial was for the planets, another for the weeks and the months, and one final dial followed the twenty-eight-year solar cycle of the Julian calendar. Reinhold had reached the high point of clockmaking in the Renaissance. It was a veritable sixteenth-century computer, and a beautiful one.

  I tried to find out who had sold the two Gutmann clocks to Fremersdorf. Anja Heuss replied that the collector, rather significantly, had left no information about how or where he had acquired them. It continued to amaze me how serious collectors, especially those who had published academic treatises, managed to overlook (conveniently) the whole issue of where a valuable artwork had actually come from. I pointed out that the Böhler family had opened its own gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland, Fremersdorf’s adopted home. The notorious Theodor Fischer had been one of the gallery’s financial backers. All we knew for sure was that Fremersdorf had acquired the two clocks before 1962, while he was living in Lucerne.

  One most revealing piece of information that Fremersdorf did make a note of was that, at the time he acquired the clocks, they still had sand and dirt in them. He deduced that they must have been buried for some while. Immediately I had an image of Böhler and Sauermann frantically burying the two Renaissance masterpieces in the sands by Lake Starnberg, just before the Munich Collecting Point truck arrived to pick them up.

  I uncovered a little more background information. Edgar Breitenbach had been the Monuments officer in charge of the investigation of the missing pieces from the Silbersammlung. His speciality was “second-generation loot”; this referred to items looted by the Nazis and then stolen again by desperate Germans in the chaotic months following the Allied victory. Unfortunately the trusting and understaffed Allied officers often enlisted the help of the local population. In this case a Bavarian State policeman called Georg Denzel was put in charge of moving the 225 pieces to the Munich Central Collecting Point. Denzel continued working for the US occupation forces until 1948, when he was finally let go. Ultimately Breitenbach’s investigation proved inconclusive. Denzel, Sauermann, and Böhler all had opportunity and motive. However, I found a statement by Dr. Hoffmann, an associate of Böhler’s, where he admitted, much later in 1953, that only 216 pieces had been turned over.

  • • •

  I was fortunate to be dealing with a provenance expert of Dr. Heuss’s caliber. She soon agreed that the Orpheus and Reinhold Clocks should be considered for restitution and quickly requested a decision from the state ministry in charge.

  There was one catch. I had already pointed out that the Silbersammlung, or what was left of it, belonged to all qualified heirs of Eugen Gutmann, not just the Fritz Gutmann branch. Dr. Heuss recommended that I work on a family agreement while the ministry considered the return of the clocks. In anticipation of this I had already begun to sound out various cousins. My fear was that my entreaties would fall on deaf ears.

  No substantial effort to bring the family together had been made in well over a half century. Just four years before finding the clocks, I had felt a new attempt at reconciliation, with one particular branch, was called for. Some unsubstantiated duplicate claims had been filed in Holland, based, I assumed, on bad advice. Unfortunately, my stab at establishing normal relations had quickly fizzled out. Sadly, one of the cousins with whom I had tried to reach an understanding had died suddenly. Now we had a new opportunity: I was dealing with a different cousin and I had something tangible to offer. Anja Heuss had already let it be known that, in the event the ministry agreed to a restitution, the museum would like to buy back at least one of the clocks.

  This time the tone seemed far less confrontational. I was happy to put the competing Dutch claims aside (after all, they had already been settled in my favor). Most of us could not remember when the previous generation’s rifts had started, or the reasons why our parents had fallen out. I proposed that we start with a clean slate. The only equitable way to sidestep all the old wrangles about who got which share was to make sure that each entitled branch of the family, in the future, received an equal share. After a fair amount of back-and-forth, this time we reached a consensus, perhaps because no outsid
e lawyers were involved. After all, I had two golden carrots to tempt them with. The third branch of the family was delighted to be included—I think that they had been cut out of most of the settlements back in the fifties. I would get my expenses and a reasonable fee for my efforts; the rest was to be divided proportionally. It was also agreed that from this point on I would be the family’s legal representative for all claims relating to the Eugen Gutmann Collection.

  In October, as I was drafting the final version of our new family contract, I heard from Dr. Heuss again. The Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung, und Kunst Baden-Württemberg had agreed to return both clocks. I was jubilant and awash with feelings of vindication and pride.

  This was a historic moment. Just two years earlier, the grandchildren of Herbert had been returned a Franz von Lenbach portrait of Bismarck, which was found hanging in the Bundestag in Berlin. However, for my branch of the family, the children and grandchildren of Fritz, this would be our first direct restitution from Germany.

  Everything had gone so smoothly I knew the other shoe had to drop, and then it did. The ministry had received our family agreement but was unsure whether it would satisfy the letter of the law in Germany. Under normal circumstances, to comply with the German laws of inheritance, I would have to obtain a document called an Erbschein. Unfortunately, this public deed or certificate of inheritance could only be obtained in a probate court. The thought of spending two years in a German court terrified me. Maybe I could forestall any such action with the certificate of heirship that the Dutch government had issued me ten years earlier. I could not help thinking about Bernard and how hard it had been for him to prove he was his father’s heir. I would have to prove not just that I was my father’s heir, not just that I was my grandfather’s heir, but that I was my great-grandfather’s heir.

  More months went by. The museum seemed eager to strike a deal. Dr. Heuss and the museum director, Dr. Ewigleben, were applying as much diplomatic pressure on the ministry as was politically advisable. To back up my position, I had the museum forward to the ministry a family tree that had been compiled by the new Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt. I suggested that if the minister had any questions, he should contact Michael Jurk, who was president of the Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft (the Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank historical society), which had been named after Eugen. I tried to emphasize that any unnecessary legalistic delays would be in violation of the spirit of restitution.

  While we were waiting, my second cousin Nadine died. She had been one of the few cousins we had always been on friendly terms with. I was very upset about her loss; I was also getting rather frustrated. Nadine was a great-grandchild of Eugen’s and would also have been one of the beneficiaries from any clock settlement. At the risk of appearing melodramatic, I decided to inform the museum and the ministry that, while we had been waiting for a conclusion to this restitution, one of the heirs, Nadine von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, had passed away. She had been the last of our immediate family who still lived in Germany (and the last of the Rothschilds in Frankfurt). I feared that this generation, which suffered so much during the war, would soon be completely gone. I appealed to them that, where possible, reparations should be made directly to those who were personally deprived at the time.

  I had even more bad news to share. My dear aunt Lili, who was now ninety-two, had just suffered an accident; she had slipped in the street and broken her hip and was in the hospital in Florence. Dr. Ewigleben, the director of the museum, was horrified at my news and promised to press the ministry for a quick decision. Nevertheless the bureaucratic process ground on inexorably.

  On the bright side, my amazing aunt was determined to escape the clinic she had been sent to. She quickly abandoned the walker they had given her and started practicing daily with crutches. Her strength and resolve were remarkable. I laughed when she told me, on the phone, that she could not bear all the old people in the clinic. I wondered how many others were actually over ninety-two. One of the reasons for her determination was that the Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft was hosting an April event in the grand auditorium of the Commerzbank tower in Frankfurt to honor her father and his collection. A Dutch art historian was to give a lecture focusing on Fritz’s taste and, in particular, on the Hieronymus Bosch, which was now in the National Gallery of Canada. Lili was to be the guest of honor and had set her heart on attending. She had also very much hoped that I would join her. I had done my best to make it a double event, with our going, after Frankfurt, to Stuttgart to accept the return of the clocks. Instead, I had to wait in Los Angeles for the ministry in Stuttgart to finally process our family contract.

  I kept myself busy with a new claim against the French government, for a second painting by Liotard, another still life, and with a small claim in Holland for a lovely majolica dish. Meanwhile, Aunt Lili did make it to Frankfurt, on crutches no less, where everybody from the Dresdner and Commerzbank made a big fuss over her.

  Not until June did I receive news from the ministry in Stuttgart, but at last it was good news. They were sending me a contract that would officially transfer the two incredible clocks back to the Gutmann family. Part of the agreement was that we would give the Landesmuseum first rights of refusal.

  Excited, I called my brother and all the cousins with the good news. I was enjoying the accolades, and it felt wonderful that we were all on the same side for the first time in decades. Then I called dear Lili, who had made it safely home to Italy after her Frankfurt jaunt. She was fast approaching ninety-three and learning anew how to navigate the bumpy streets of Florence. When I broke the news about the clocks, I could sense her delight. I relished the opportunity to bring her good tidings. But Lili also had a surprise for me. She was already planning a new trip to Germany, and this time I had to join her. It was really an order.

  The Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft was planning a big celebration during the first week of October in Dresden for the 140th anniversary of the Dresdner Bank. The whole family was invited. This time I had to make sure I could take care of all our family business in Stuttgart, too.

  I was encouraged by a letter from Dr. Ewigleben informing me that the museum would have its evaluations done by mid-September. I had been assembling our own estimates for almost a year. Sheri Farber at Christie’s had provided me with the auction results of the Rothschild and Wernher Orpheus Clocks. Lucian Simmons at Sotheby’s had also been helpful. I felt well prepared. The ministry, the museum, and I agreed our meeting would take place on October 9 in Stuttgart.

  I began to plot what would be a fairly extensive tour of Germany. I had unfinished business with other museums. Now, possibly for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to going to Germany.

  May and I arrived in Stuttgart toward the end of September. Our first stop was in Tübingen, where we spent a lovely day with my father’s companion, Eva, bringing her up-to-date with my many exploits. She was pleased to see us, but a little stunned to think that Bernard had spent his last years so close to the fabulous gold clocks, yet so far away. We visited his grave and laid some new flowers. I was grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with my dear father. Whether I liked it or not, I had deep roots in Germany.

  We took the train to Augsburg, the home of so many of the amazing Renaissance goldsmiths and silversmiths, whose work Eugen had treasured. Augsburg also included among its favorite sons, at least until recently, the other man who had stripped our family home in Bosbeek—the infamous Karl Haberstock. Behind the lovely Baroque facade of this historic Bavarian city, if you looked closely, you could still see occasional vestiges of the Third Reich. A huge Nazi-era eagle had been preserved above a doorway at the railway station—just the swastika under its talons had been removed. I reminded myself that Augsburg had been home to the first Nazi newspaper.

  My main reason to come here was to visit the state museum housed in the Schaezlerpalais. This museum was home to the Karl and Magdalene Haberstock Foundation for the Promotion of Science, Education, and Culture. Ever since
I had received the Karl Haberstock catalog, which had led me to discover our Franz von Stuck, I knew that the city of Augsburg was the custodian, among other things, of the antiques Frau Magdalene Haberstock had, so generously, donated in 1957. I was convinced Julius Böhler had transferred much of it to Karl Haberstock, from Böhler’s share of the loot from Bosbeek. Haberstock had not turned over many pieces to the Allied authorities at the end of the war. I was fairly sure much of it was in Augsburg to this day—including even Louise’s set of six mocha-coffee cups.

  Even though the city of Augsburg had finally seen fit to remove the bust of the notorious Haberstock from the entrance to the Palais in 1999, I was not aware that the state authorities had also, discreetly, removed Frau Haberstock’s antiques from the museum. I wondered, rather self-importantly, if they had known I was coming. I never heard back from the curator I was trying to reach. Clearly this unfinished business would require some serious effort when I got home.

  May and I decided to sightsee. I was intrigued by the Fuggerei, which was the oldest public housing complex still in use, founded by Jakob Fugger the Rich in 1516. I remember my father mentioning that a Prince Fugger had been at school with him, in Zuoz. As we entered the walled enclave, I went into a little alcove to ask, in my best German, for two tickets to the museum section. What followed was the oddest experience. The old woman behind the counter just looked at me with such unashamed and unmistakable hatred. Suddenly I felt ice run through my veins. I wondered what it was she saw—was it somebody wearing a yellow star?

  I repeated loudly in an authoritative German tone, “Two tickets please?” Very begrudgingly, she pushed the tickets toward me. May and I moved on quickly. Chillingly, May had also felt the same sensations from several feet away. The museum seemed to be all about the destruction of the complex toward the end of the war (and its subsequent rebuilding). History had been turned on its head. For the Augsburgers, the British were the instigators, the RAF the villains, and the Germans were the victims. For a second I wondered if the evil woman knew I was English, but then I realized I spoke German with, if anything, a hint of a French accent. We left in a hurry.