by Susan Ronald
The same punctilious bookkeeping existed for other mines rented out to the Reich. Hallein, Heilbronn, Jagstfeld, Kochendorf, Laufen, and Merkers—which comprised the Dietlas, Menzengraben, and Philippstal mines—were other salt mines used, along with the Siegen copper mine and the Heimboldshausen potassium mine, as repositories for looted artworks. Each had its specific use. Some had their special depositors. Hallein became known as “Himmler’s Cave.”7 Local castles, such as Weesenstein, near Dresden, and private castles near Bamberg, such as Schloss von Pölnitz, were used as local repositories. Monasteries, like the baroque monastery at Ettal, which housed collections from the State Library, and the Carthusian monastery at Buxheim, which doubled as a restoration laboratory for the ERR, were coopted. Former royal palaces, too—the most famous of which being Ludwig II’s fairy-tale castle Neuschwanstein, near Füssen—housed several thousand works of art.
During this freewheeling, chaotic time, Gurlitt arranged for some of the paintings he possessed to be sent to Curt Valentin in America for sale through Buchholz. Dollars were needed in addition to Swiss francs to maximize his profits. The reichsmark was no longer a currency that anyone wanted to trade in. He could hardly have imagined that his Käthe Kollwitz artworks, initially acquired in memory of his sister, would be sequestered by the Office of Alien Property and the FBI in New York.
* * *
On May 20, 1944, Hermann Voss signed an authorization for Gurlitt to travel to Paris to “purchase artworks worth RM 2,000,000.… This is of great cultural political interest.” Voss expected that Gurlitt’s assignment would require him to “sequester transportation.” His authorization declared that Voss expected the full cooperation of the various departments of the Third Reich. It was, naturally, signed “Heil Hitler! Voss.”8 Forty-six of Gurlitt’s export-license applications were filed on the basis of this single authorization.
It covered export applications that in turn represented at least 241 paintings, thirty-seven tapestries, thirty-nine drawings, and two pastels. In other words, the applications covered a little less than half of all of Gurlitt’s “official” booty. Armed with such a sweeping yet vague permit from Voss personally, Gurlitt had effectively received carte blanche to run roughshod over whatever system had been previously agreed. From this point, he not only created a black market for himself, but also ran one for other, less fortunate, dealers. His price was a cut of the booty or the profits after the war.
Everyone piled on the bandwagon: Gustav Rochlitz, Hans Wendland, Herbert Engel, Theodor Fischer, and even the delightful Maria Dietrich. Naturally, as with all black-market transactions, much was hidden—and still less documented.9 Anyone who was involved in the plunder of France wanted to board a vessel impervious to destruction.
* * *
Just as the dealers sensed the defeat of the Third Reich, so the French curators sensed an Allied liberation. While nothing appears in the files to reveal an official “go slow” policy, the usual three-week deadline for making a determination on the artworks placed at customs was widely ignored.10 One of these applications, number 28561, of August 8, 1944, is of particular interest. Seven paintings by van Ruysdael, Fragonard, Nattier, and others were examined, but only the Nattier was refused export. All were bought on behalf of the Dorotheum through Theo Hermsen, and yet were invoiced to Linz. None arrived in Germany or Austria. The Nattier went missing, too.
A similar but different incident occurred with application number 27684. This consignment of seven paintings and two pastels included works by Cranach, Bouilly, Lampi, and Ricci worth approximately FF 5.2 million. Before the paintings could be inspected, the Bouilly had vanished. In a fury, the Louvre inspector refused an export license for the Cranach, which he knew the Reich held dear. The only problem is that by the time the decision had been made the entire consignment was already en route to Germany.11
The inevitable, of course, happened. When the consignment arrived in Germany, one of the paintings—the Ricci—had disappeared. It was hoped that it had been mistakenly sent to Neuschwanstein. “It was supposed to have been sent to Munich,” Oertel huffed in a letter to the former ERR man Schiedlausky, who was now stationed at the castle.12 Oertel suggested that Schiedlausky bring it to Munich personally, but it was not at the castle either. Oertel thundered in dismay. He needed to find out how such a valuable work of art could simply melt away.
On further investigation, Oertel discovered that Gurlitt had used Rochlitz as his courier to bring the Ricci and other paintings to Germany. Oertel wrote vengefully to Gurlitt, the more time that lapsed between the sale of the Ricci and other missing paintings, the less likely they were to find them. Gurlitt claimed these had been personally transported by Rochlitz to Germany. Oertel replied, “I can no longer certify all [art] and withdraw the covenant of the Sonderauftrag Linz from these artworks.”13 There was no salutation at the end of the note, only the icy facts. Gurlitt would need to locate the missing art if he wanted to receive payment. He had been rumbled once again.
Gurlitt’s accounts now came under heavy scrutiny, often receiving notes with stipulating phrases like “the first three of your paintings have already been accounted for in an orderly manner … however the last three cannot be certified as having been delivered to us.” Alternative phrasing, “to make myself crystal clear” and “I have already passed these paintings” and “your previous invoice for RM 75,000 has already been disputed,” litter the pages of the archives.14
Yet Gurlitt remained at large and continued to work closely with Voss. Somehow, Rochlitz alone shouldered the blame, and attempted to defend himself against Gurlitt’s “lies.” In a falling-out among thieves, Gurlitt made a statement under oath through a Hamburg lawyer attesting to his innocence, implicating Rochlitz. Oertel was obliged to back down.
* * *
In October 1944, Voss personally wrote three separate authorizations for Gurlitt: the first for an advance of RM 500,000 to go to Hungary; the second, to travel to Holland and Belgium to repatriate German artworks; and the third, to return with artworks from France. Naturally, every courtesy was to be extended, and whatever transportation arrangements he would require. Even Martin Bormann availed himself of Gurlitt’s undoubted expertise in spiriting away art. Bormann’s authorization for Gurlitt specified that “the Wehrmacht and civil authorities lend Dr. H. Gurlitt whatever assistance he requires as he is working on a special mission for the Sonderauftrag Linz.”15 Speer, too, availed himself of Gurlitt’s talents.
From the autumn of 1944, Gurlitt brought back art from sundry occupied territories and concealed it on behalf of Hitler, Bormann, Linz, Speer, and other Nazis. Not only were mines and castles required, but also safe havens in the neutral countries of Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Yet only in Switzerland would the art be entirely safe from prying eyes. Portugal and Spain provided important export springboards to the United States and South America, clogging Buchholz’s network with looted art, cash, jewels, and gold. Swiss banks, too, had their vaults overflowing with art, gold, diamonds, and cash to protect the hierarchy of the Third Reich.
While the Allies closed in, they were conscious of the movements of capital and valuables into these safe havens, but powerless to do anything about it. Eventually, Allen Dulles,* who oversaw Project Safehaven from his Bern headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was empowered to stop the exodus of these funds and treasures lest they be put at the disposal of a possible Fourth Reich.
All of 1944 and early 1945 would be used by Gurlitt to ensure that his own arrangements were secure, including a good story to tell the Allies. Meanwhile, he knew that the Soviets were closing in on Dresden. He returned there before the end of January 1945 to bring all the art he had squirreled away into its final exile, safe from the looming Soviet sphere of influence. His son Cornelius Gurlitt recalled in 2013 helping his father remove Two Riders on the Beach from the living-room wall.
26
SURRENDERED … OR CAPTURED?
From now on,
every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.
—MARTIN HEIDEGGER
On Monday, February 12, all Aryans in Breslau were evacuated, leaving only its handful of Jews to face the approaching Soviet army. BBC Radio announced that all residents in Saxony should gather provisions for three weeks and bury them. The warning advised never to keep these in their homes for fear of marauding Soviets or, worse, desperate Wehrmacht deserters. On Saturday, a reported seven hundred deserters from Hitler’s army struck Dresden—more than twice the number of Jews left alive. By Monday, there were seventeen thousand. Rebellions were whispered as having taken place in Berlin, too.1
The next day destroyed Dresden. Was Gurlitt truly an eyewitness to the events on the fiery Tuesday night of February 13–14, 1945, as he claimed? That night, firestorms from Allied bombs reduced the entire city center and Old Town to ashes, killing somewhere between 22,500 and 25,000 people.2 The “Florence on the Elbe,” as Dresden had been called in guidebooks, was no more. More than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs—40 percent of which were incendiary devices—were dropped on the magnificent baroque provincial capital. Until then, Germany’s seventh-largest city had remained entirely unscathed and was a place of safety for refugees from other bombed-out towns.
At 9:39 p.m., the air raid sirens blared. Despite the late hour, the sky was suddenly darkened with a vast bombing formation—ein dicker Hund, or “fat dog.” The locals shrieked in the streets while scampering for refuge.3 The Reich air defense had issued a warning some twenty minutes earlier, but with only ten Messerschmitt-BF110 night fighters on the airfield, the sirens were Dresden’s only real defense.* If Gurlitt had been there, he would have prayed that the bombers were headed for Leipzig instead.
Dresden had only the optics manufacturer Zeiss-Ikon operating in the armaments industry on its outskirts. Still, it had been shut a year earlier as there were too “few remaining Jews” to work as slave laborers.4 On that very morning—February 13—the order was given for the last of Dresden’s few hundred Jews to report for a “work assignment outside Dresden”—the local euphemism for Theresienstadt. They were to assemble at Zeughausplatz—where the synagogue had stood until the earlier firestorm of Kristallnacht. They were also told to bring blankets and provisions for travel. The only Jew in all of Dresden to be spared was Victor Klemperer. Even he did not know why.5
When the massive forest of magnesium parachute flares—Weihnachtsbäume, or “Christmas trees”—illuminated the night sky, most believed their luck had finally run dry. By early morning on February 14—not only Valentine’s Day but also Ash Wednesday—the city, with its resplendent Old Town, had become an inferno, with temperatures peaking at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Thousands screamed as they ran through the streets, their bodies melting in the heat. Those who rushed into the Altmarkt Square were instantly cremated.
Gurlitt knew as early as the defeats of 1942 that this would be a war to the bitter end. He’d had three years to prepare for post-Nazi life, just as the Nazis had prepared for their war from 1934 to 1938. More significantly, since September 4, 1943, he had protected his private collection previously on view at Kaitzer Strasse at Schloss Weesenstein. This included his prized Breughel, Flower and Fruit Wreath, and Dürer drawings.6 He was in good company. Hermann Voss, Erhard Goepel, Robert Oertel, and other select art historians took advantage of the same privileges.7
* * *
It is interesting to pause and consider how Cornelius and Benita would have seen the preparations, and their house stripped of all its beautiful art. Cornelius remembered helping his father to pack up. Both children would have felt some deep connection to the art. It was what their ephemeral father figure battled for, returning home to his family only between art salvaging operations. Even though Cornelius was only twelve years old, it is not too far-fetched to think that Hildebrand tried to mold his son in his own image. Nor is it too speculative to presume that the key to Cornelius’s personality in later life came from this period—from the artworks his father plundered to his father’s hero stories—and the boy’s relationship to both.
It is easy to imagine Cornelius, like young Klaus Garnowski, contemplating the paintings on display in his grandmother’s home, and loving them. Unlike Klaus Garnowski, when Cornelius looked at Two Riders on the Beach he felt the need to protect it from a disconnected world on the run. His father’s paintings offered him solace in a world where there was none, other than in his relationship with his sister.
* * *
Hildebrand’s world had no place for such childhood considerations. He and his fellow art dealers would need to reply in detail to questions tediously repeated by the Allies regarding their role in “safeguarding” public and private property under the Nazis. Voss and Gurlitt agreed long before that the American sector would be the safest place to take refuge. After all, it was the American market which Gurlitt and others had targeted throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, and they could, if required, obtain—so they thought—letters of recommendation from important museum directors there.
Besides, Gurlitt had been careful. His name hardly appeared on the manifests. Better yet, he already knew that Theo Hermsen was untraceable.8 Gurlitt’s own story was clear: he would portray himself as a victim. His wife and children were compelled to stay behind with his mother while he was forced to conduct business on behalf of the Reich. The implied threat to their welfare was clear. He would play on his victimization by the Nazis and his Mischling status. He’d show that he was also a victim of the Allies for the destruction of his home—indeed, twice over, once in Hamburg and once in the city of his birth.
Although the Gurlitts’ Kaitzer Strasse home was destroyed that fateful February evening, the personal devastation suffered by the Gurlitts was negligible, due to his timely prescience. He had lived on a knife edge since Saxony’s murderous regional governor, Martin Mutschmann, rose to power and targeted him in 1925 for his lack of appreciation for völkisch art. In the twenty intervening years, foresight had become a sixth sense.
Yet as he breathed the air choked with fire, smoke, and smuts of human flesh, in the days after the bombing, what must have truly broken his hardened heart was the sight of Dresden’s magnificent buildings reduced to smoldering rubble from the firebombing. This alone made his sense of loss absolute. How could his exquisite baroque city, whose monuments and buildings his father had so painstakingly conserved and catalogued, be reduced to this charred wasteland in one foul night? Recalling this personal grief in the days ahead would help him to perform his role of victim well.
His decision—so long in the preparation—had been made. The responsibility for all that had happened in the plundering of art during the Third Reich was not of his making. The Nazi litany of thieving would not be laid at his feet. Only the stewardship of his widely dispersed collection mattered now. The Allies, indeed the world, would thank him for his preservation of all the modern art he had saved. He had averted a catastrophe for humanity by safeguarding it. That he had also prevented a personal financial disaster was merely fortuitous. His various caches within Germany might sustain the odd direct bombing hit, but the bulk of his vast fortune and stealthily shielded artworks had been scattered long before, secure in safe havens in Austria and Switzerland. Some, too, had been exported to the United States through Buchholz in Portugal.
* * *
While Dresden still burned, its Jews escaped into the countryside with their deportation papers tucked snugly in their rucksacks. Over the coming days, they trickled back to find lost loved ones. Notes fluttered on the smoky breeze, while others were still posted on unhinged doors and ruined walls: “We’re still alive” and “We’re at Auntie’s” and “Find blankets and bring them to” and “We’ve run to our favorite place in the forest,” and more. As the young Jewish slave laborer Henny Brenner stumbled across the Elbe on the bomb-damaged Loschwitz Bridge to relative safety in the districts that remained intact, she could hardly contemplate what new horrors they
might be escaping to under the Soviets.9
Gurlitt’s story was that on the morning of February 16, he struggled through the debris-laden, chaotic streets to move his terrified family to the temporary home of his eighty-six-year-old mother, who had been living with family at Possendorf. The likelihood, however, was that they, too, had been safely tucked away at the Possendorf farm. Food had been scarce, and anyone with an ounce of farsightedness and access to a motor vehicle had fled to small villages and farms long before that night. Though only some ten miles south of Dresden, all roads that remained passable were choked with refugees wedged into wood-fueled trucks, pedaling bicycles, carried in wheelbarrows, or meekly escaping on foot. Exits from Dresden were all but inaccessible, and it would have taken all day to make the ten-mile journey.
Most high-ranking Nazi officials had abandoned Dresden before the bombing—before the roads became inundated with the latest human wave. Mutschmann had saved all his valuables from his villa, even rescuing his carpets, before fleeing. Of course, he neglected to warn all of Dresden’s inhabitants. This must mean that there had been an advance warning for those who were important to the crumbling regime.10 Men like Mutschmann. Men like Gurlitt.
Seeing Dresden reduced to ashes and the plumes of smoke and fire reaching to the skies on the morning after the raid, Gurlitt would have reflected on the final touches to his contingency plans. The war was all but over. Like many who needed to face unsavory questions, Gurlitt knew the Allies would be overwhelmed with the shocking scope of the Nazi destruction. Then there would also be the physical rebuilding expected of these conquerors of a defeated Germany, requiring monumental organization and oversight. Though they might try, he was confident that the Allies would be unable to reconstruct the details of his own opaque role within the Nazi machinery that safeguarded artworks. That is, if all the art dealers stuck together and their secret documents had been “destroyed.” He also knew there were more significant mass murderers to pursue—those who had devised and run the death camps.
