Hitler's Art Thief

by Susan Ronald

  Life was an eternal struggle to Hitler, an “endless ladder.”22 For Germany to win its struggle and see its Aryan supermen and superwomen prevail, he created his own warped philosophy—a crude and brutal social and cultural Darwinism. His was a “world where one creature feeds on the other and where the death of the weaker implies the life of the stronger.”

  Yet even this determined philosophy did not go far enough for Hitler. Corrupting the great German philosophers from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and writers from Schiller and Goethe, as well as Nordic myth, Hitler cobbled together an ersatz Aryan history, a grand mythology of legend with which his people could readily identify. In a passage redolent of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, “the Aryan gave up the purity of his blood, and therefore, lost his sojourn in the paradise which he had made for himself.”

  The Aryan had been at the heart of the great cultures of the past, Hitler argued, until the dilution of Aryan blood. Indeed, until then, the Aryans were the “culture bearers” from whom stemmed “everything we admire on this earth today—science and art, technology and inventions.… If they perish the beauty of this earth will sink into the grave with them.”23 The Aryan was the “Prometheus of mankind … kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery.… It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture.”24

  Of course, the Jews were at the heart of this impurity. So were Freemasons, Slavs, and Russians. Hitler believed the eternal Jew dragged down all that was great “into the gutter.… Culturally, he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature.”25 The assimilation of Jews into the Aryan culture was the source of all Germany’s problems. It went against the laws of nature, like the mating of a fox with a goose.26

  * * *

  Unaware of the danger Hitler represented, Hildebrand lectured part-time that autumn on art in Chemnitz at its school of art. Although aged twenty-nine, he remained at a loose end. Certainly, Cornelius as a concerned father who enjoyed his son’s and daughter-in-law’s company, did everything in his power to see his son established as an art historian closer to home, but to no avail.

  The man who held the reins of power for all art historians’ jobs in Saxony was Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie director, Hans Posse—a generation younger than Cornelius, and a man who already demonstrated a covetousness and meanness of spirit. As can often be the case between academics, battle lines were drawn. Posse’s feet were firmly planted in the Pinder camp. Still more galling, Pinder wrote about the German baroque in his recent book of the same title, detracting from Cornelius’s own work. If Cornelius had approached Posse cap in hand, he would have been disappointed to discover that young Nikolaus Pevsner had just been awarded the only internship granted at Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie. It was a plum position, since Dresden’s picture gallery was deemed one of the best for Renaissance art in all Germany.27 Pevsner was seven years younger than Hildebrand, making this snub sting in the Gurlitt household like an oozing sore.

  Not only did Pevsner bag the top junior job available in the whole of Saxony, but to earn his crust of bread he was almost immediately hired on as an art reporter and critic for the Dresdner Anzeiger, one of Dresden’s two daily newspapers, producing some forty articles in the first year.28

  * * *

  In the fall of 1923 the Freikorps groups wanted to march on Berlin, in the hope of spilling some blood, preferably Hitler’s, along the way. Kahr diverted them in October by sending them into neighboring Thuringia and Saxony and removing the local leftist governments.29 Saxony’s two thousand NSDAP members waited in anticipation of filling the void. Göring and his SA knew what to do. Captain Ernst Röhm had his own Freikorps command. At last, Der Tag—the Day—had come. It was November 9.

  Kahr knew that Hitler was up to something. Hitler’s plan to ambush Kahr, Reichswehr Major General Lossow, and Hans Ritter von Seisser, head of the Bavarian State Police, to prevent them from announcing the reinstatement of the Wittelsbach monarchy had to be abandoned at the eleventh hour. A second opportunity should present itself, however, for the night of November 10–11, when combined Battle Leagues would meet and march to protest the anniversary of the armistice. At short notice, Kahr announced in the press on the morning of November 8 that he would be publishing the forthcoming program of the Bavarian government. Hitler was in an unspeakably foul temper. Throughout the day of the eighth, Kahr refused to see him.

  Ever calculating and opportunistic, Hitler swiftly revised his plan. He’d attend Kahr’s Bürgerbräukeller (Bürgerbräu beer hall) meeting, and take over Bavaria’s government by force. After listening to Kahr speak for half an hour, Hitler stood on a table and fired his revolver into the air, proclaiming, “The National Revolution has begun! This building is occupied by six hundred heavily armed men. No one may leave the hall. Unless there is immediate quiet I shall have a machine gun posted in the gallery.”30

  Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were herded into a back room. Initially they refused to comply with Hitler’s demands. Yet Hitler had a trump card: General Ludendorff. The putsch had been presented to the former head of Germany’s military, and if it was successful, Ludendorff would have a place in Hitler’s government. That was all it took. Ludendorff persuaded Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser that they would need to lend their support to the upstart Hitler. They all rejoined the bemused audience in the main hall, where it was announced that “the November criminals [the founders of Weimar] had been overthrown.”31 During the speech, Hess, aided by an army of storm troopers, prevented other cabinet members from slipping away.

  Still, revolutions are never that straightforward. As the meeting broke up, rumors of street fighting reached Hitler. He immediately decided to drive to the scene and join the fray. Meanwhile, the ambushed triumvirate escaped and repudiated their support for Hitler—demanding instead the rebels’ arrests.

  Battle was joined shortly after midday on November 9. Röhm was reported captured at the War Ministry. Hitler and Ludendorff were determined to free him. As Hitler and his men funneled through the narrow Residenzstrasse just beyond the Feldherrnhalle into Odeonsplatz, they were met by over a hundred armed police. Some say Hitler fired the first shot, others the police. Göring was felled by a bullet to his thigh. By the time the gunfire abated a minute later, three police and sixteen Nazis lay dead or dying. Hitler was injured while fleeing.

  Despite being the first to scamper to safety, Hitler was arrested two days later at Putzi Hanfstaengl’s home. Göring was smuggled across the border into Austria to convalesce in his wife’s arms at a hospital in Innsbruck. Hess, too, went into hiding.32

  Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser immediately outlawed the NSDAP. They believed that national socialism was dead and Hitler utterly humiliated. They could hardly know that the date, November 9—Die Neunte Elfte, the ninth of the eleventh—would become one of the most important dates in the Nazi calendar and a national holiday from 1939.

  11

  HOPES AND DREAMS

  Money is human happiness in the abstract; he … who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness … devotes his whole heart to money.

  —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

  Money, or rather its lack of value, was the bane of the Gurlitt’s—and Germany’s—existence. Within three days of the Hitler putsch, President Ebert appointed Hjalmar Schacht the Reich’s currency commissar. The exchange rate stood at a mind-blowing 26 trillion marks to one dollar.

  By 1921, Schacht was deemed a genius, and the investment firm of Databank that employed him had benefited from his elevated status. Still, within the year, the bank’s directors abandoned Schacht for its new swaggering executive board member, Jakob Goldschmidt, a Jew, who also owned a brokerage house and investment bank. Goldschmidt’s “views of banking were diametrically oppos
ed to mine,” Schacht wrote in his memoirs.1 Schacht’s distaste for Goldschmidt’s dramatic risk taking drove him to distraction, giving rise to Schacht’s previously suppressed antipathy toward Jews. Once, when Goldschmidt lost all sense of proportion, Schacht admonished, “For God’s sake, Goldschmidt, calm down. This situation must not be handled with Jewish hyperactivity, but with Aryan calm.”2

  Schacht knew that Germany’s inability to pay reparations had caused the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium, the armed revolt in Lithuania, and countless riots and looting incidents throughout the country in reaction to the untenable hyperinflation. Confidence needed to be restored at once. A new kind of mark was needed. Alongside the near-worthless official mark existed all sorts of industrial, private marks, called Notgeld (emergency money), such as those from the conglomerates of Krupp and Thyssen and other large companies. Their Notgeld put them in a position of exceptional power, since it was backed by their own output and foreign exchange.

  Then there was the matter of the Reichstag’s poor leadership. Schacht declared publicly that inaction was no longer possible and immediately attracted Stresemann to his ideas. A compromise solution the Rentenmark, was swiftly agreed to by Stresemann. The Rentenmark would be based on all of Germany’s land values, which in turn were mortgaged against Germany’s remaining gold reserves. Stresemann’s agreement to the proposal in the Reichstag was contingent on his reciprocal demand that he must be granted complete control of all matters concerning the new currency by parliament. The Reichstag hastily accepted.3 Schacht was immediately appointed to the finance ministry to spearhead the Rentenmark’s use, despite the Reichstag’s cries against him as an appropriate candidate. Stresemann had outwitted the Reichstag.

  On the morning of November 13, 1923, Schacht took his secretary of long standing to their new office—a janitor’s cupboard that reeked of carbolic—at the Finance Ministry. From their windowless aerie they directed Germany’s financial rescue. Schacht refused any salary, but insisted that his secretary, Clara, be paid six hundred marks per month.4

  As Schacht sat down in his eyeless closet, the official printing presses could no longer keep pace with demand. With the exchange for the equivalent of one dollar in the trillions, the Finance Ministry had issued orders that the mark should only be printed on one side to hasten the process. Two days later, the presses stopped momentarily while the plates were replaced with those of the new Rentenmark. One Rentenmark equaled one trillion inflated old marks.

  Schacht’s sole concern remained reestablishing confidence in the mark. To do that, he knew he needed to create trust in him as the embodiment of the new German resolve. The Reichsbank and Reichstag had lost credibility internationally as well as nationally. As Schacht told the Saturday Evening Post, “I have tried to make German money scarce and valuable.”5 Days later, the ruthless Raffkes found that they no longer had sellers they could plunder. The piratical speculation with foreign currency was over. On November 20, a fixed exchange rate was announced at approximately the prewar gold mark value of 4.2 to the dollar.*

  * * *

  Against this background, Cornelius feared if Hildebrand did not concentrate on making his own future and lose his innate laziness, life would pass him by, especially in hard financial times. Aged twenty-nine, Hildebrand had yet to fulfill his dream of becoming a museum director despite his father’s growing international recognition in the world of architecture.

  In February 1924, Hitler was put on trial with nine of his cohorts for the treasonous beer-hall putsch. He used it as a showcase for his oratorical skills, knowing that his words would be reprinted across the world’s newswires. It was a gilded opportunity, especially since he had the Bavarian justice minister firmly in his pocket. Hitler interrupted the proceedings as often as he liked, cross-examining witnesses and regaling his audience with more than one lengthy, passionate monologue. “I alone bear the responsibility,” Hitler stated with his chin thrust out like Karl Harrer. “But I am not a criminal because of that.… There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918.”6 Evidently, either he forgot or chose to ignore that Ludendorff, who stood in the dock with him, was the greatest of those traitors.

  Ludendorff’s defense was to call Hitler an unemployed, unscrupulous demagogue who believed that a mere “drummer” in the army could be the country’s leader. “How petty are the thoughts of small men!” Hitler exclaimed. “I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism. I am going to achieve this task.” Evoking the greatness of Wagner, he babbled on about Fate having decreed his role. “The man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled.… He is not driven forward, but drives himself. There is nothing immodest about this.”7

  Hitler predicted that “the hour will come when the masses, who today stand in the street with our swastika banner, will unite with those who fired upon them.… For it is not you, gentlemen, who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history.”8

  Ludendorff was acquitted with the slightest of finger wagging, admonishing him to choose his friends better. Hitler and the others were found guilty, with Hitler’s sentence being five years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Landsberg. Despite the apparent severity of the sentence, Hitler would be eligible for parole within six months. Less than nine months after he was sentenced, on December 20, Hitler was released.

  His time at Landsberg was spent fruitfully in planning the future. Treated as a revered guest, Hitler dictated his book, first to his chauffeur, then to Rudolf Hess from his “cell” with its superb view over the River Lech. Originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice, this foundation for Nazism and the cult of Hitler would be given a catchier title by Hitler’s former adjutant and current business manager of Nazi publications, Max Amann. Instead, it would be infamously called Mein Kampf.

  * * *

  That same autumn, Cornelius was summoned to meet President Ebert. At their Berlin meeting he was informed that, as the longstanding president of the architectural association he had been invited to the United States to head a large German delegation for the World Architects’ Congress in New York City in April 1925. The trip would be entirely paid for by the government, and because the delegation represented Germany, it would go in style, visiting some ten or so cities.

  Certainly, it would be the opportunity of a lifetime if Hildebrand could cover the event, Cornelius mused. Fortunately, due to his prior coverage of arts subjects and his father’s preeminent role in the American voyage, Hildebrand had little trouble in convincing the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to hire him to cover the story as an insider.

  The tour would begin in New York—the heart of the American art trade—and provide some invaluable insight and contacts for Hildebrand in the years to come. He was poised, or so he thought, to bring Weimar culture to the world.

  12

  FROM NEW YORK TO ZWICKAU

  I’m an international “Star”—The trip will pay to install electricity, replaster and paint the house.

  —CORNELIUS GURLITT, March 1925

  On April 3, Cornelius and Hildebrand embarked on the SS Westphalia from Hamburg to New York as part of a twenty-five-man contingent of German architects. The early-spring North Atlantic crossing was desperately cold, with storm-tossed seas delaying their arrival in New York by a full day. Disembarking at one of New York’s West Side piers on April 17, Hildebrand described himself as a teacher to immigration officials. He also told a second lie—the second of hundreds to American officials over the next twenty years—that he was living at his father’s home.

  Neither Marie nor Helene accompanied their husbands. It was decided that Helene would move in with the ever-fretful Marie while the men were away.1 They received “beautiful reports” daily, dated April 18–20, all seemingly having come on the same steamer. “I have to gather all my strength for when Cornelius and Hildebrand return,” Marie wrote breathlessly, “probably on 20th May. I’ve made up the beds in Eitl
’s atelier and hung her paintings, all with a heavy heart.”2 Cornelia’s ghost was never far away.

  * * *

  Predictably, Cornelius took an instant dislike to New York City. Hildebrand kept his own counsel. New York was brash, quarrelsome, with the noise of echoing jackhammers that expanded the already huge skyscape, Cornelius wrote home. He saw no beauty in the built environment. The tooting of car horns, automobiles thundering at speed over cobbled streets, the pollution, the roar of police and fire sirens, the speed of life and the vast sums of money spent on nonsense made him long for the peacefulness of Dresden. The eleven-hour sightseeing tour of the city behind three policemen on motorcycles holding back traffic was pure purgatory for the old man. He hastened to write to Marie that they had seen less of the excellent New York had to offer and more of the vulgar. Americans, Cornelius lamented, loved money too much and were too flamboyant.3

  New York’s officials would have proudly explained the first zoning law in existence in America—the New York zoning law of 1916. This regulated the configuration of all skyscrapers until 1960, and enshrined in law that light and air were to meet the ground at all times, giving New York its unique profile. Cornelius was, nonetheless, unmoved.4

  Meanwhile, Hildebrand made it his duty to discover the city. This new, improved, determined Hildebrand had, perhaps, a financially motivated wife to consider. Or maybe his laziness evaporated when Helene pointed out that he was a victim of the academic jealousy between Pinder, Posse, and his father? Or was it quite simply that he sensed there was real money to be made from modern art as a dealer? Whatever his innermost thoughts, he undoubtedly saw money everywhere in New York.

  This was his unique opportunity to understand the ever-expanding American art market—ostensibly for the newspaper articles he was writing—while also making useful contacts for his own future. After visiting the world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hildebrand dashed over to J. B. Neumann’s gallery, the New Art Circle, located on West Fifty-seventh Street.* Neumann was German, a recent immigrant to New York and a devotee of Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and Dresden-born Max Pechstein. His business partner, Karl Nierendorf, remained in Germany to manage the Neumann-Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin.5 Within ten years, Nierendorf and dozens of other Jewish gallery owners would attempt to join Neumann—or die doing so.