Hitler's Art Thief
Page 35
Bausback was inundated with press attention, but when the German federal government became involved, he immediately moved to create a task force under his ministry’s authority to “expedite research into the artworks’ provenance.”6 In light of the public outrage internationally, this task force was quickly expanded into one comprising international experts also responsible to Berlin’s finance and culture ministries. Experts from around the globe were coopted onto what became known as the Gurlitt Task Force, thereby silencing them forever to public scrutiny.
* * *
Of course, Cornelius’s already fragile health deteriorated, and heart surgery was desperately needed. By December 2013, at the request of his doctors, a Munich court appointed Christoph Edel as his guardian. Mr. Edel hired a spokesman, an art expert, and a specialist retinue of lawyers. They removed Cornelius to a secret location where he could receive proper medical care and not be hounded by the world’s press. By February 2014, they filed a blistering complaint against the German government for violating his rights.
According to the document filed with the German prosecutor’s office, the “seizure of Mr. Gurlitt’s art collection (and various other items) was authorized by the Augsburg local court under section 94 of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO).”7 For such a seizure to be legal there must be probable cause—not a mere hunch, as was the case in this instance. This in turn means that any seizure order must clearly state the crime for which the items are to be seized, as well as which items are the subject of the seizure, and their relevance to the case. Finally, any seizure must be proportional to the stated criminal activity. All these reasons were missing in the case of Cornelius Gurlitt, and an appeal was lodged with the Augsburg courts on February 14, 2013, under section 304 StPO.8
Although negotiations were ongoing from January, they were riddled with setbacks. The appeal filed on February 14 made the government see the error of its ways, at least privately. Yet Edel, too, revealed a further cache of some sixty paintings at Cornelius’s Salzburg home. What he hadn’t made clear was that there were actually two derelict homes in Salzburg—one across the street from the other. Hence the reason for the return trip by investigators and the discovery of further paintings. Whether one of these was in Cornelius’s name and the other in his sister’s was never publicized. Yet, as these paintings were in Austria, they were not confiscated but merely sent to a secure warehouse awaiting Gurlitt’s instructions.
Since Cornelius was a private individual and not subject to the Washington Principles, the German government could not compel him to give any of the art back to the mounting number of potential claimants. It is in no small part thanks to Cornelius’s connection with Edel that he eventually changed his mind. A deal was struck with the government shortly before Easter, on April 7, 2013, in which the government agreed to restore all the art that was not suspect to Cornelius, in exchange for his agreeing to give back any works that were confirmed as having been looted. Cornelius further agreed to bind his heirs to the agreement. He could go in for his heart surgery with a clear conscience. Significantly, too, at a stroke, Cornelius had snatched the moral victory. The government was given precisely one year to accomplish its task.
Almost one month to the day after the deal was agreed, Cornelius went home to Munich. Though Tido Park, one of his criminal lawyers, had seen him the day before his death and thought he was recovering from his heart surgery, Cornelius died on May 6, 2014, with his medical team at his side.
* * *
Cornelius may have had trouble connecting with people, but he was no fool. Having been harassed beyond endurance by the government and press, he may well have seen the similarity between his predicament and his father’s as it had been explained to him seventy years earlier. It was Cornelius’s legacy to help the art survive the greed of the German government. Hospitalized at Ludwigsburg, near his brother-in-law, he summoned a notary. With Christoph Edel present, a will was certified to transfer Gurlitt’s entire estate to the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland. The furor he created should have made Cornelius smile.9
The unsuspecting museum director, Mathias Frehner, was quick to claim that he hadn’t ever had contact with Cornelius. Perhaps what was important to Cornelius was not an established relationship as much as Frehner’s outspokenness regarding the restitution of looted art. Besides, Bern had been an old stomping ground of his father’s in the days when he’d saved art. It had also been the location of one of Hildebrand’s many undeclared bank accounts.10 While Eberhard Kornfeld, the owner of the Bern auction house that Cornelius was allegedly visiting in September 2010, acknowledged that he knew Cornelius Gurlitt, and that Cornelius was a financial donor, he denied having any dealings with Cornelius after the sale of a painting for $48,757 from the collection in 1990.11
* * *
At the time of writing, nearly a year on from the Focus article, only a handful of paintings have been acknowledged by the Gurlitt Task Force as having been looted, including The Open Window, by Henri Matisse,* from the Paul Rosenberg collection, and Two Riders on the Beach, from the David Friedmann collection. The Task Force had only until April 6, 2015, to decide what should be done with the other 451 artworks on the lostart.de website. At the rate of less than five paintings assessed since February 2010, the government has woefully missed the deadline imposed by the agreement with Cornelius.
Bern’s Kunstmuseum announced at the end of November 2014 that it will accept the Gurlitt gift, but not any of the 451 remaining artworks suspected of having been looted. Perhaps that is what the German government hoped all along.
According to David Toren—formerly known as Klaus Garnowski—he received a communication from the task force stating that before they returned any artworks they wanted to mount an exhibition of the entire collection for the world to see. Toren was naturally aghast. Yet he had not come through his many ordeals without a wry sense of humor and thought that the Führerbau in Munich might be a suitable place. The humor belies an indescribable sense of frustration, lack of sympathy from the German government, and heartache at the length of time it may take before he might metaphorically see his painting again. David has been blind for seven years.
Until the painting is physically returned, David will not drop his lawsuit against the German and Bavarian governments. His connection with that painting is more than special. It was the painting that calmed him when he heard that his father had been arrested during Kristallnacht. It was the painting he turned to when he heard that his father was being sent to Buchenwald. Yet will the pain of restitution be too much to bear emotionally?
Chris Marinello, the lawyer for the Rosenberg family, who worked tirelessly for the restitution of the Matisse Open Window has been frustrated by the lack of communication from the task force, while fully understanding their monumental task. Prior to the announcement that the painting would be returned to the Rosenberg family, he had not been notified. It “continues the vein of disregard for due process and compassion that we have seen since the discovery of the Gurlitt hoard.… It is an unfortunate but entirely expected case of bureaucracy trumping empathy.”12
* * *
With the Bern Kunstmuseum’s acceptance of the Cornelius Gurlitt legacy, an imperfect justice will be served. Still, the final outcome of the looted treasure will not be known for many years to come. Bern is, understandably, reluctant to accept the suspected looted artworks, which leaves their future in doubt. There were the original 1,407 artworks found in Cornelius’s Munich flat, followed by some twenty-two further paintings in the possession of his brother-in-law, followed by another sixty-odd in Austria that burgeoned to over 250 fifty artworks. Then, belatedly, there was the Monet found in Cornelius’s hospital bag after his death. By anyone’s reckoning, the looted portion of the find must be worth somewhere around a billion dollars.
* * *
Yet is that all there is? Hildebrand had traveled to and from various caches from 1942 until his death. Many of these have been revealed, though t
here are still others to be discovered. In conversations with several Swiss bankers since the late 1990s, it has become apparent that Hildebrand held numerous bank safe deposit boxes as well as significant rental space in Swiss bank vaults. Then there were the artworks smuggled into Switzerland in the diplomatic pouches of the Third Reich.
As I said in the prologue, while still an investment banker I observed the name “RLITT” on a label beneath the frame of a nineteenth century landscape painting when a sliver of a sliding wall in a Swiss bank vault had remained slightly ajar in error. Without thinking, I asked the banker if the painting was by the nineteenth-century landscape painter Gurlitt. Pushing the wall tightly shut, he blustered at me about breaking Swiss bank-secrecy laws and declared, “No, that’s the twentieth-century Nazi art dealer.”13
Undoubtedly, there remain many more mysteries to unveil.
GLOSSARY
Abwehr
Military Intelligence
Alldeutscher Verband
Pan-German League
Alleinschulde
sole war guilt
Arbeitsgemeinschaften
labor associations
Arbeitskommandos
units of Black Reichswehr or Black Defense League
Demeures Historiques
Historic Buildings Commission
Der Blaue Reiter
Kandinsky’s expressionist art movement from Munich
Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund
German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation, more commonly known as the Organization Consul
Devisenschutzkommando
Currency Control Command Unit
Die Brücke
the Bridge Expressionist art movement, which originated in Dresden
Drang nach Osten
drive to the East
Einkreisung
encirclement
Einsatzstab Reichleiters Rosenberg
Special Commission for Reich Leader Rosenberg, ERR for short
Einzelaktionen
allegedly unrelated individual acts of brutality
Feindvermögen
Enemy Property Control
Flamenpolitik
Flemish cultural politics
Flottenverein
Naval League
Fluchtgut
objects of value sold at a discount to flee Nazi persecution
Freiheit
freedom
Freikorps
violent paramilitary groups formed from the former Imperial German Army
Fremdvölkisch
of an alien people
Freundeskreis der
Circle of Friends of the Economy Wirtschaft
Gauleiter
regional Nazi Party leader
Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit
Give me four years’ time, Hitler’s warning to the modern art community
Gemäldegalerie
literally picture gallery, but also art museum
Institut d’Études des Questions Juives (IEQJ)
Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question
Italia Irredenta
territory of native Italian-speaking people in Austria-Hungary
Justizrat
justice councillor
Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur
Combat League for German Culture, abbreviated as KDK
Kriegesgefahr
a declaration of imminent danger of war
Kriegsmarine
German Imperial Navy
Kunstverein
art association, funded by the regions
Lederhosen
leather shorts
Machtergreifung
seizure of power by the Nazis
Malverbot
prohibition to paint
Mischling
of mixed race
Neue Künstler-Vereinigung München
New Artists’ Association of Munich
Notgeld
emergency money
NSDAP
German abbreviation for the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)
Oberbürgermeister
lord mayor
OMGUS
Office of the Military Government of the United States
Ostwanderer
Eastern European immigrants
Raffkes
profiteers
Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste (RBK)
Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts
Reichswehr
National Defense Force
Sonderauftrag
Special Commission
Sturmabteilung
SA, storm troopers, brownshirts
Volk; völkisch
people; of the people (folk) or folkloric
Wehrverein
Defense League
Weltanschauung
worldview, but has come to mean the Nazi worldview
NOTES
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Abbreviations
AAA
Archive of American Art, Washington DC
ANDE
Archives Nationales des Affaires Diplomatiques et Etrangères
ANF
Archives Nationales de France, Paris
BAB
Bundesarchiv Berlin
BAK
Bundesarchiv Koblenz
BP
Bernoulli Papers, University of Basel, Switzerland
CI
Courtauld Institute of Art
CDJC
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris
CIR
Consolidated Interrogation Report(s) on file at NARA and Fold3.com
CL
Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock, Arkansas
DIR
Detailed Interrogation Report(s) on file at NARA RG 260 and Fold3.com
FAZ
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
GETTY
The Getty Museum Reference Library, Los Angeles
IMT
International Military Tribunal
JSTOR
Online scholarly digital archive
LMD
Landeshauptstadt München Direktorium
NA
National Archives, London
NARA
National Archives and Research Administration, College Park, MD and Washington, DC
NPG
Nachlass Projekt-Gurlitt, Dresden Technical University
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PC
Private collections, owners wish to remain anonymous
SKD
Archiv der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden
SpK BA
Staatlicher Archiv Bayern (Coburg)
V&A
National Archive of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Prologue
1. 9/11 brought sweeping changes to bank and money-laundering regulations throughout the world. Switzerland’s bank-secrecy laws, however, were eroded only when the US government refused to allow Swiss banks to participate in US markets at any level unless they revealed the assets of Americans seeking to evade US taxes. A number of bank directors were brought to trial as a result, and the secrecy laws are no longer as impenetrable as they had been.
1. New York, May 1944
1. spiderbites.nytimes.com/pay_1944/articles_1944_05_00004.html.
2. For the full list, consult Vesting Order 3711.
3. CL—Vesting Order 3711; NARA, RG 131, Office of Alien Property (OAP) Entry 65F-1063.
4. The first steps to found the FBI were made in 1908. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte announced the creation of the special force
of sixty men in his Annual Report to Congress that fall. When lame-duck president Theodore Roosevelt weighed in on the side of Bonaparte, a fierce political battle ensued. Roosevelt declared, “The chief argument in favor of [the Secret Service] amendment was that congressmen themselves did not wish to be investigated.” Source: www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/highlights-of-history/articles/birth.
5. www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/directors/hoover.
6. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I tried to obtain the file and was advised on appeal by the Justice Department that the FBI had destroyed it at the end of the twentieth century. In a conversation with Dr. Greg Bradsher, senior archivist at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, he recalled being seconded to the FBI in the 1990s to stop the FBI from indiscriminately destroying documents of significant historic importance which could be transferred to the National Archives. He had no recollection of seeing the Valentin file.
7. BAK, B323/134, f. 53/286.
8. Ibid., f. 53/283.