by Susan Ronald
In Neumann, Hildebrand found a kind, generous man and indefatigable champion of modern art. As a dealer and publisher with broad German and European experience, Neumann offered a kaleidoscope of ideas and perspectives to the hungry Hildebrand. Most likely Neumann would have shared the drawing of himself that Dresdner Otto Dix had given him, and informed Hildebrand that he intended to promote American modern art in Germany and German art in America.6 Neumann would show his generosity to another fledgling art academic in 1926: the future director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr.7 Five years later, Hildebrand made Neumann’s ideas about cross-border exhibitions his own.
* * *
Another must-see on Hildebrand’s list was Alfred Stieglitz’s exhibition at the Anderson Galleries. Stieglitz was the leader of the Photo-Secession movement in New York, and with Edward Steichen in 1905 set up Gallery 291—known simply as “291”—on Fifth Avenue. Stieglitz, above all others, strove to make photography an accepted and collectable art form in the United States. His latest show at the Anderson Galleries, entitled Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs and Things, Recent and Never Before Publicly Shown, was a runaway success. The Anderson Galleries immediately gave Stieglitz a permanent exhibition there.8
Born only four years after Cornelius, in 1864, Stieglitz was one of the most important figures in American visual arts for more than twenty years when Hildebrand saw his work in New York. It was an illuminating initiation to the huge significance of photography, which Gurlitt would never forget, especially since American art was not yet popular in Europe.
What Hildebrand found especially fascinating about 1925 New York was that names which were present and appreciated in Germany, like Picasso and Cézanne, were not yet accepted in New York art circles. Both painters and other Postimpressionists and Cubists were on sale at his cousin’s gallery in Berlin for more than a dozen years. Matisse, who was feverishly collected by the influential Stein family living in Paris since the early 1900s, was known and loved throughout Europe. It was Stieglitz who’d requested that Leo Stein write an article for his periodical Camera Work, but had to settle for Gertrude’s short texts on Matisse and Picasso instead.9 The significance of having a great patron collecting an artist’s works was not lost on the cash-strapped Hildebrand.
The German architects toured the United States like dust devils, swirling through relative “backwaters” like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Saint Louis, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. In each city, presumably, the routine was much the same. Cornelius and his architects would be whirled through grand city tours and asked unctuously to lecture on German architecture while Hildebrand darted between the scheduled events, museums, and galleries. Unfortunately, neither Hildebrand nor Cornelius provided posterity with any detail of their epic journey.10
* * *
Finally, in Germany that September, Hildebrand got his big break. He and his wife moved 115 miles away, to the industrial Saxon town of Zwickau. At long last, he had secured a position as the director of the small König-Albert-Museum there. It was a bitter pill for Cornelius to swallow, having set his hopes on Hildebrand securing a museum position in the higher-profile city of Dresden.
Whether there was a “discussion” about the move can only be surmised. Chances are that there were several. Still, it was a museum job. Zwickau’s mayor, Richard Holz, had offered the younger Gurlitt a job based on a talk Hildebrand had given in nearby Chemnitz and on the glowing reports received from the school of art there. It would be some while, if ever, before Cornelius would come to terms with the shock move.
Marie, too, tried to put on a brave face. Hildebrand was already at work in Zwickau when she wrote to her sister-in-law that Helene’s dancing classes commenced on October 1, and that her daughter-in-law would leave Dresden on September 22, since their accommodation in Zwickau needed redecoration. “Hildebrand will need to be in Dresden from time to time,” Marie consoled herself, “since exhibitions will travel here from Zwickau.” At least, she added, Zwickau was closer than Freiburg, where Wilibald had settled.11
* * *
That autumn, the political complexion of Saxony changed, too. Zwickau had become an NSDAP stronghold four years earlier, with a large following among the lacemaking and bobbin manufacturers. Although the NSDAP was still outlawed, supporters found ways around the problem. A temporary movement called the Völkisch-Soziale Block (VSB), an ersatz organization of the NSDAP, was founded by industrialists Fritz Tittmann in Zwickau and Martin Mutschmann, a lacemaker, in the southern part of the province at Plauen. Mutschmann soon became the preeminent Nazi in Saxony, and would remain so for the next twenty years.
The NSDAP’s outlaw status did not last long. The Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, resumed publication in February 1925. Hitler was released from prison the previous December, and feverishly toured Germany, fully funded by his patron Stinnes and other industrialists. In June, a relatively unknown journalist wrote a front-page article, “The Idea and Sacrifice,” dedicated to an imaginary, unknown Communist who had seen the errors of his ways and joined the Nazi Party—the real party representing the workers’ struggle. His name was Joseph Goebbels.
Both Goebbels and Hitler were in Saxony in 1925 at the same time that Hildebrand took up his position. Goebbels had become a rising star in journalism and already held a true veneration for Hitler. After he read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he wrote in his diary, “Führer was more than a man. He was half plebeian, half God, perhaps even Christ.”12 On November 5, 1925, Goebbels met Hitler at Braunschweig just before they were both due to speak at a meeting of their followers.
Mesmerized by Hitler’s big blue eyes—they were like shining stars, he claimed—Goebbels could hardly believe what he saw and heard that night: “With wit, irony, humor, sarcasm, with seriousness, and glowing with passion. That man has got everything to be a king. A born people’s tribune. The coming dictator.”13
In mid-November, Goebbels traveled to Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann’s hometown of Plauen, in southwest Saxony. After Goebbels met Mutschmann, he described him as “a decent, brutal leader.” The following day, Goebbels continued his grueling schedule, traveling on to Chemnitz, where two thousand Communists interrupted the speeches before brawling broke out, reportedly killing two people. Next, Goebbels spoke at Zwickau—the heartland of Germany’s automotive and lacemaking industries. There he met Hitler again, “to his great joy.” Goebbels wrote in his diary that “he greets me like an old friend. And looks after me. How I love him! He gives me his photograph!”14
This was no chance meeting. Hitler had heard that the little man with the clubfoot had a deep, melodious voice. He also heard that Goebbels could grip a packed hall and persuade his listeners to become members of the party. The führer was there to witness Goebbels in action personally; to see what use he could make of him in the days and years ahead. Goebbels passed the test and became part of the inner circle, contributing the key phrase, which he’d taken from a book by Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich—The Third Reich.15
* * *
While Goebbels and Hitler toured Saxony, Gurlitt prepared his first-ever museum exhibition. There is no surviving public record of whether he went to hear the Nazi leaders speak; however, given the publicity Hitler generated, it would have been in keeping with Hildebrand’s curiosity to go along to hear the man whom people were already calling the führer.
13
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. KIRCHBACH
Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.
—SAMUEL JOHNSON
To succeed, Hildebrand needed three things: a proper job at a museum to build his credentials, to publish academic articles on artistic subjects, and, above all, a patron. It is easy to forget that every museum, just like every artist, needs at least one patron. In Germany, patronage came through the auspices of well-respected galleries, where the gallery owner would agree to exh
ibit and act as an agent for the artist’s works for a fee from 10 to 25 percent.
Others were fortunate enough to have the regional Kunstverein, or artists’ association, exhibit for them. These associations were effectively quasi-dealers and agents as well as quasi-museums—writing intelligent articles about the artists and portraying their work in the most favorable light while advertising their exhibitions at the association. As the Kunstvereine were essentially state-funded, it was the German taxpayer who was the patron.
For museums, life was simpler. European museums were funded by the state and run as private fiefdoms by their directors, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities inherent in that relationship, for the portrayal of civilizational and cultural heritage in their communities. Still, museum directors had to create a sparkling universe that would become a magnet for visitors, gallery owners, and artists, too.
* * *
Hildebrand Gurlitt’s patron came from the most unlikely of places and proved to be the turning point in his life. As a first step, however, he needed to assess Zwickau’s holdings and arrange special loans with gallery owners, artists, other museums, and private collectors, like his parents’ nearby Jewish neighbor Fritz Glaser, who owned over sixty Dix paintings. As with museums today, Gurlitt knew that creating an original themed show would attract visitors, and German modern art was already his passion. The trip to the United States had given him a fresh perspective on how to capitalize on that love, as well as on future trends. With his father’s connections—and his own made during the war and afterward—he hoped to put Zwickau on the artistic map.
The German art market in the second half of the 1920s was changing rapidly. The great art dealers like Alfred Flechtheim and J. B. Neumann had moved their center of operations—Flechtheim from Düsseldorf to Berlin and Neumann from Berlin to New York. Where Neumann’s move was opportunistic, Flechtheim’s was political.
Düsseldorf was in the French-occupied Ruhr, and Flechtheim was on the French political war-criminals list, since he had served as the administrative head of the Flamenpolitik units in Brussels.1 Having worked for Flechtheim during the war, Gurlitt was keen to renew the acquaintance now that he had a job. On the back of meeting Neumann in New York, it was especially easy. The revived acquaintance gave Gurlitt an opportunity to network with others in Flechtheim’s circle, too, like his young and debonair assistant Karl Buchholz. Other Berliners were courted, too—Walter Feilchenfeldt and Grete Ring, who took over Paul Cassirer’s gallery in 1926 following Cassirer’s suicide attempt, and Karl Nierendorf, who ran the Neumann-Nierendorf Berlin gallery, to name a few.2
Neumann’s Munich art gallery specialized in graphics and was now run by Günther Franke, who would often deal with Gurlitt in the years ahead. In much the same way, Flechtheim’s Düsseldorf gallery was operated by the man he and Buchholz had trained, Alex Vömel. Other key dealers in Bavaria were Anna Caspari and Maria Almas-Dietrich, in Munich, and Karl Haberstock, originally from Augsburg.
Flechtheim also had international contacts in London, specifically with the Marlborough Gallery, as well as a partnership in Paris with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler of Galerie Simon. Hildebrand soon found another attraction to Flechtheim: his legendary parties replete with movie stars, artists, financial barons, musicians, cabaret dancers—essentially anyone who thought they were someone in Weimar’s increasingly decadent culture. As Gurlitt knew, “The future of Germany is being tentatively anticipated by Berlin. The man who wants to gather hope should look there.”3
On a personal level, Hildebrand was aware that his father opposed his new strategy for success. It smacked of the mercenary, of the brash commercial—perhaps even, heaven forfend, of the American. He saw that his parents were aging and could no longer comprehend the new order of this alien world. The loss of the war, hyperinflation, and political instability had all taken their toll.4
Cornelius disliked the very idea of modern Berlin—often likened to a desirable woman. It had a racy, almost immoral cultural energy. Frequently referred to as cold, coquettish, arrogant, snobbish, parvenu, uncultivated, and common, Berlin became the symbol of something every man “wanted to own, for if he owned Berlin, he would own the world.”5
Berlin’s rawness worried Cornelius. After all, hadn’t he fretted over his son’s mental health since 1915? Besides, diving into Berlin’s depths as Hildebrand had determined to do was not a road to scholarship. It was simply unnecessary to circulate among such people with a predatory intent or vulgarity of spirit. Yet Gurlitt needed to rebel against this intransigent “old guard” viewpoint to succeed. Over the next ten years, Hildebrand purposely cultivated a more distant relationship with his father, where he said little and explained less.6 It was time to come of age.
* * *
Gurlitt agreed with his University of Frankfurt cohort, playwright and winner of the coveted Georg Büchner prize Carl Zuckmeyer, who borrowed from the French king Henry IV, “Berlin was worth more than a mass. This city gobbled up talents and human energies with unexampled appetite … with tornado-like powers.”7
In 1929, Zuckmeyer rose to fame as the scriptwriter for the film adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. The film’s title was Der blaue Engel—The Blue Angel—and starred Marlene Dietrich. Hildebrand’s long-envied cousin, Wolfgang, had already imbibed at Zuckmeyer’s starry table; and to Hildebrand’s mind, Wolfgang owed it to him to open up the world of Berlin.8 It would be a partial payment of the family debt to introduce him into the cutthroat art world there.
Any Berlin art dealer of worth had his own pet collectors and artists. Wolfgang was no exception. Like Flechtheim, he had made a specialty of selling French modern art, much as his own father, Fritz, had done in the late 1880s. Still, Hildebrand knew it would be difficult to win Wolfgang’s confidence. It was also doubtful that Hildebrand knew that Wolfgang had never returned nineteen Henri Matisse paintings loaned by Michael and Sarah Stein in June 1914 for an exhibition at his gallery.9
Even if Hildebrand had found out, he might have shrugged and agreed with Wolfgang that the nineteen Matisse paintings were victims of the Great War. Besides, the art world was colonized by shady deals and highly selective secrecy. Treachery was the common currency. Relationships were jealously guarded, and no one told anyone else the absolute truth for fear of being outmaneuvered or discredited.
* * *
Berlin remained Gurlitt’s artistic priority, even from the wilds of Zwickau. Helene was no longer able to teach due to an injury, and the daily grind of how to pay their living expenses overshadowed any grand plans. While Hildebrand achieved a great deal in a short period of time with his exhibitions and lectures, he had already discovered that changing Zwickau’s staid institution known for its classical sculptures would be difficult during the ascendancy of the Nazi Party. He was still borrowing from his mother, who delayed the installation of heating and electricity for the Dresden house as a result. “We have a lot of obligations,” Marie wrote in August 1926. “We need to husband our resources.”10
More worrying, the gauleiter of Saxony, Martin Mutschmann, a devoted Hitler acolyte, was already interested in what should be allowed in exhibitions at Zwickau. He also determined what did or did not make “good art.” This shouldn’t have surprised Gurlitt, since the basic tenet of Hitler’s philosophy in the arts was about the degeneracy of culture. Everything from prostitution—that “disgrace against humanity”—to education at German Gymnasiien was deemed “a mockery of the Greek model” that contributed to “the emergence of sexual ideas.” The responsible catalyst for the collapse of culture in society was naturally Jewish bolshevism. “It is no accident,” Hitler claimed, “that the Bolshevistic wave never found better soil than in places inhabited by a population degenerated by hunger and constant undernourishment: in Central Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr.” In a blunt stab at the cognoscenti, he continued, “the so-called intelligentsia no longer offers any serious resistance to the Jewish disease, for the simple reason that
this intelligentsia is itself completely degenerate.”11
Perhaps Cornelius had read Mein Kampf by the late 1920s. If not, it certainly made for poor scholarship in view of his support for Hitler until 1936.12 If Hildebrand had read it at this juncture, he chose to ignore damning statements about his beloved contemporary art. In 1923, Hitler maintained that art bolshevism was the cultural and spiritual expression of the movement as a whole.13 As Albert Einstein would later say, “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
“Even before the turn of the century,” Hitler cried, “an element began to intrude into our art which … could be regarded as entirely foreign and unknown.”14 This was no mere aberration of taste as in the past. It was the dissolution of German culture. Hitler called anyone who refused to see his viewpoint as an “accomplice in the slow prostitution of our future.” A cleansing of German culture was essential in the theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and even window displays. Failing this, the “rotting world” would be suffocated by “the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, just as it must be freed from all unmanly, prudish hypocrisy.”15
As early as 1924, Weimar culture was branded as “degenerate” by Hitler. This hid a deep-seated hatred masquerading as a philosophy from which he would never stray. Mein Kampf was more than a mere book. It was Hitler’s manifesto. If he came to power, he would carry out his vision. Indeed, on February 27, 1925, in his first speech upon his release from Landsberg, Hitler laid down the gauntlet. The enemies of the NSDAP were the Weimar Republic, Marxists, and Jews. “To this struggle of ours there are only two possible issues: either the enemy passes over our bodies or we pass over theirs!”16
