Hitler's Art Thief

by Susan Ronald

    9. Ibid., f. 48/255.

  2. At the Beginning—Germany, 1907

    1. 1907 was precisely thirty-seven years after the founding of the German Empire and thirty-seven years before Hildebrand Gurlitt’s surrender to the Allies. For a riveting and award-winning account of young Joseph Stalin, read Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Young Stalin (London, 2008). The book opens with an incredible retelling of Stalin’s bank-robbery escapade in Tiflis.

    2. According to Hildebrand in an autobiography written in 1955 intended to accompany his last art exhibition, he referred to his mother as “Madame Privy Councillor,” presumably for her bossiness as well as her love of ceremony. See article entitled “A Kind of Fief,” www.spiegel.de, November 13, 2013. Also NPG, www.gurlitt.tu-dresden.de, timeline for Cornelius Gurlitt.

    3. I noted during my research that this bust is no longer in the Grosser Garten.

    4. Louis was born in Schleswig-Holstein when it was Danish. He became German after Denmark’s loss of the region in 1864.

    5. Gurlitt’s statements to the Allies, Personalakte C. Gurlitt, Sächs Städtarchiv HStA Dresden, 11125 Ministerium des Kultus und öffentlich Unterrichts, 15367.

    6. There were no children by either of the first two marriages.

    7. Stephen Games, Pevsner—The Early Life, Germany and Art (London: Continuum, 2010), 42; cf. Heinrich von Treitschke, “Unserer Aussichten,” published in the Prüssichen Jahrbüchern.

    8. Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews 1933–1943 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 1.

    9. Else was eleven years younger than Fanny, so only seven at the time. There is no record of the family’s reaction to Fanny’s conversion. However, conversion was common, particularly as it allowed wealthy or genteel Jews to become German by marrying gentiles.

  10. Else’s conversion certificate was obtained posthumously.

  11. There are eighty-two surviving letters in the NPG between Cornelius and Wilhelm.

  12. NPG, a constant theme in the family letters.

  13. Ibid., 032/168.

  14. Ibid., 056/023.

  15. The Ephrussi family were fabulously wealthy, and like the Rothschilds, the sons were sent to foreign countries to make their fortunes. For a wonderful portrait, read the award-winning The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel exiled himself to London—along with Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Charles-François Daubigny—during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. It was Durand-Ruel who popularized Impressionism throughout Europe and America and famously said, “America does not laugh—it buys!”

  16. For more on Tschudi and his pivotal role introducing French and modern art to national museums, see Dictionary of Art Historians, www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/tschudih.html.

  17. NPG, 032/090.

  18. Ibid., 032/092.

  19. Ibid., 032/090.

  20. The date Wolfgang took control not stipulated.

  21. “A Kind of Fief,” November 13, 2013, www.spiegel.de.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Pimlico, 1997), 116–17.

  24. Barbara Butts, “Modern German Drawings 1875–1950,” Bulletin St. Louis Art Museum, New Series (vol. 21, no. 2), 5.

  3. From The Hague to Vienna

    1. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Kindle edition, Plunkett Lake Press e-book, 2012), 14–17.

    2. Bertha became a member of the advisory council of the Carnegie Peace Foundation in 1911.

    3. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), 271.

    4. Ibid., 328.

    5. Ibid., 325.

    6. For the full text of the 1907 Hague Convention, see www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/52d68d14de6160e0c12563da005fdb1b/1d1726425f6955aec125641e0038bfd6.

    7. Alan Bullock, Hitler:A Study in Tyranny (London: Book Club Associates, 1973 revised edition), 27; cf. Franz Jetzinger, Hitler’s Youth (London 1958), 68–69.

    8. Ibid., 30.

    9. Charles de Jaeger, The Linz File: Hitler’s Plunder of Europe’s Art (Exeter: Webb & Bower, 1981), 11.

  10. Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler (Oxford: Perseus Press, 2001), 30; cf. August Kubizek’s book Adolf Hitler: Mein Jugenfreund (Graz/Göttingen: 1953), 229, 203.

  11. de Jaeger, Linz File, 12.

  12. Bullock, Hitler, 30.

  13. Linz is the provincial seat of government of the Upper Danube region. Its “artistic” tradition is rooted in music rather than visual arts: Anton Bruckner composed his symphonies while an organist at the cathedral; its town orchestra had a conductor who was a pupil of Liszt and who worked with Wagner. The singer Richard Tauber was born there. Another native son was Adolf Eichmann.

  14. de Jaeger, Linz File,14.

  15. Stefan Zweig, The Society of the Crossed Keys (London: Pushkin Press, 2013), 66.

  16. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Pimlico, 1997), 48.

  17. Jugendstil was called “Secessionist” in Germany.

  18. Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna 1898–1918 (London: Phaidon, 1975), 16.

  19. Ibid., 34.

  20. Ibid., 37.

  21. Bullock, Hitler, 30; cf. Konrad Heiden, Der Führer (London: 1944), 48.

  22. de Jaeger, Linz File, 14–15. These are the recollections of Professor Andersen, who sat next to Hitler during the examinations.

  23. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 10–11.

  24. Ibid., 20.

  4. Cause and Effect

    1. Christina Kott, Préserver l’art de l’ennemi? Le patrimoine artistique en Belgique et en France occupées, 1914–1918 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006). Kott cites Cornelius Gurlitt’s articles in the German art propaganda journal Der Belfried (The Belfry), 142–43.

    2. Ibid., 317.

    3. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 11.

    4. Ibid., 8.

    5. F. Lee Benns and M. E. Seldon, Europe 1914–1939 (New York: Meredith Publishing, 1965), 5.

    6. Ibid., 9–11. Italia Irredenta was in conflict with Austria-Hungary in the Balkans and the Adriatic, making this an unnatural alliance.

    7. Von Bülow imitated the effortless parliamentary stance of the aristocratic Arthur Balfour by clutching his coat lapels. Wagging tongues claimed he practiced this stance in front of the mirror at home.

    8. Ibid., 30. King Leopold was a despicable man who had been responsible for all manner of atrocities in the Congo.

    9. Ibid., 36.

  10. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Book Club Associates, 1973 revised edition), 44.

  11. Ibid., 45.

  12. Ibid.

  13. David Starr Jordan, “The Ways of Pangermany,” Scientific Monthly 4, no. 1 (1917), 29.

  14. Ibid., 29–31.

  15. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), 272; cf. World Population and Production, W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky (New York: 1953), 530.

  16. Ibid., 273.

  17. Ibid., 275; cf. Secret Letters of the Last Czar, ed. E. J. Bing (New York: 1938), 131.

  18. Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe 1870–1970 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 56.

  19. Ibid., 66.

  5. War

    1. NPG, 126/025.

    2. Ibid., 031/045. Cornelia showed her works at Chemnitz in early June 1914.

    3. Kolig was an exact contemporary of Kokoschka and from 1907 to 1912 had attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, which had refused Hitler at the exact same time. Oxford Art Online, www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/subscriber/article/grove/art/T047206?q=Kolig%2C+Anton&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit.

    4. Hubert Portz, Zimmer frei
für Cornelia Gurlitt, Lotte Wahle und Conrad Felixmüller, Exhibition Catalogue Kunsthaus Désirée, Hochstadt, 26 April—14 June 2014 (Landau: Knecht Verlag, 2014), 29; Kolig letter; cf. Wilhelm Baum, Kunstwerke sind Stationen auf dem Passionsweg zu einem verlorenen Paradies, Briefe und Dokumente zum “Nötscher Kreis” (Klagenfurt: Kitab Verlag, 2004), 194n.

    5. This painting was at Dr. Portz’s unique exhibition at Hochstadt in Pfalz, Germany. I thank him for turning the painting over to expose this mark and putting me in touch with the owner.

    6. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine, 1990), 85.

    7. Joyce Marlow, ed., The Virago Book of Women and the Great War (London: Virago Press, 1998), 19. A superb collection of the experiences of women throughout the war from all nations.

    8. Ibid.; cf. Outbreak of the World War, collected by Karl Kautsky and edited by Max Montgelas and Walther Schucking, translated by Carnegie Endowment (New York: Oxford, 1924).

    9. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911–1914 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), 230. The italics are Churchill’s.

  10. Tuchman, Guns of August, 111–13.

  11. Ibid., 90.

  12. Ibid., 91–92.

  13. She had previously been jailed for twenty days and fined $3,000 for contempt of court in the long-standing saga of the business hovering on bankruptcy. See Brisbane Papers, “Nellie Bly,” Syracuse University of New York.

  14. Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil. Reporter. Feminist (New York, 2013, Kindle edition).

  15. Ibid.

  16. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Pimlico, 1997), 148.

  17. Tuchman, Guns of August, 144–45.

  18. Ibid., 148–49.

  19. Ibid., 145.

  20. Daily Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/ww1archive.

  21. Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), 294–95.

  22. Ibid., 143.

  23. Kgl. Sächsische 23 Reserve-Division. This division was later triangularized, however, remained on the line in the Champagne region from August 1914 to July 1916. For movements of the German army, see Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army Which Participated in the War (1914–1918), compiled from records of Intelligence section of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Forces, Chaumont, France, 1919 (1920), 337–40.

  24. Military records online at ancestry.com.

  25. Other commanders included General Erich Ludendorff, Max Hoffmann, and Hermann von François. There were 78,000 Russians killed or wounded from the Second Army of 230,000 men and another 92,000 prisoners of war. On the German side, depending on the source, there were between 10,000 and 15,000 killed or wounded from the Eighth Army, which comprised 150,000 men.

  26. BBC Radio 4, On This Day 100 Years Ago series.

  27. NPG, 125/012.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Brisbane Papers, “Nellie Bly,” New York World articles by Bly, University of Syracuse (NY) Library.

  30. Kroeger, Nellie Bly, Kindle edition.

  31. Ibid.

  32. German military list no. 0365, February 15, 1915. It is not stated what Wilibald’s injuries were. In letters with Hildebrand, it becomes apparent that Wilibald had a leg injury.

  33. www.firstworldwar.com/source/champagne1915_falkenhayn.htm; cf. Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne (National Alumni, 1923).

  34. Christopher Duffy, Through German Eyes: The British & the Somme 1916 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 110; cf. Rintelen, 1933, 246.

  6. Gurlitt’s Struggle

    1. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Book Club Associates, 1973 revised edition), 53; cf. Hitler’s speech at Hamburg, August 17, 1934 in Norman Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), vol. I, 97.

    2. Idea taken from the “Mend-Protokoll”; see below in The Hidden Hitler.

    3. Ibid., 51. See also Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler, 68.

    4. Ibid., 67.

    5. Bullock, Hitler, 52.

    6. Both his war record and his letters are silent on this point.

    7. NPG, 126/025.

    8. Ibid.

    9. Ibid.

  10. NPG, 126/029.

  11. Christina Kott, Préserver l’art de l’ennemi? Le patrimoine artistique en Belgique et en France occupees, 1914–1918 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006), 19, note 6. Kott’s study exposes the purpose of art conservation in occupied Belgium and France. She points up how scholarly research never questioned the aims of art preservation as anything but altruistic and an important progression toward the humanization of war. Given that Pan-Germanists and the military were heading up this occupation, she interrogates their motivations.

  12. Ibid., 20; cf. Wilhelm Treue, Kunstraub: Über die Schicksale von Kunstwerken im Krieg, Revolution und Frieden (Düsseldorf: Drost, 1957), 295.

  13. Kott, Préserver, 159, note 184. Clemen was repaid by the government through its subsidy of 8,000 marks for the production of 150 copies of his book.

  14. Ibid., 42.

  15. The first critical work of their efforts written in German is Thomas Goege’s “Kunstschutz und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg, Paul Clemen als Kunstschutzbeauftragter an der Westfront,” in Udo Mainzer (ed.), Paul Clemen, Zur 125. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages (1991), 149–68.

  16. Ibid., 25.

  17. Ibid., 25–26.

  18. Ibid., 125, f/n no. 53. Also p. 158. The German title for this book is Die Klosterbauten der Cistercienser in Belgien. Im Auftrage des Kaiserlich Deutschen Generalgouvernements in Belgien (Berlin: Der Zirkel, 1919).

  19. Ibid., 121, note 80.

  20. Ibid., 117.

  21. Ibid., 128–29; see note 68.

  22. Ibid.; cf. Cornelius Gurlitt, “Wallonien als Kunstland,” Der Belfried, 1ère année, 1917, 500–501. While Gurlitt makes the point about artistic activity vs. birthplace, he makes his support of Pan-Germanism clear.

  23. Kathrin Iselt, Sonderbeauftragter des Führers: Der Kunsthistoriker und Museumsmann Hermann Voss (1884–1969) (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2010), 47.

  24. Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 83–85.

  25. NPG, 126/044.

  26. Ibid., 125/004.

  27. Ibid., 126/044.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis, 42–43.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid., 44.

  32. Ibid., 82.

  33. NPG, 126/045.

  34. Ibid., 125/019.

  35. Ibid., 125/020.

  36. Ibid., 126/045.

  37. Ibid., 126/046. All underlines are original.

  38. Ibid., 126/047. Professional translation of “On Life.”

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid., 126/048.

  41. Ibid., 126/051; 126/052; 126/053.

  42. Ibid., 126/055.

  7. Peace

    1. www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/30553?docPos=6.

    2. Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985), 323.

    3. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: Mandarin Paperback, 1996), 31.

    4. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Book Club Associates, 1973 revised edition), 37.

    5. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 32n; cf. Telford Taylor in Sword and Swastika, 16.

    6. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Pimlico, 1997), 185.

    7. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 147–48. Also Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 52.

    8. Joyce Marlow, ed., The Virago Bo
ok of Women and the Great War (London: Virago Press, 1998), 375–76.

    9. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 34n; cf. Margaritte Ludendorff, Als ich Ludendorffs Frau war, 229.

  10. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 185–87.

  11. John Weitz, Hitler’s Banker—Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (New York: Warner Books, 1999), 54.

  12. Ibid., 55–56.

  13. NPG, 126/057.

  14. See wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/President_Wilson’s_Fourteen_Points.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. The Freikorps was still thought to represent the “old imperial army,” as Germany was left in limbo between the armistice and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

  18. Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism:The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918–1923 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), 62 and 62n; cf. E. J. Gumbel, Vier Jahre politischer Mord 5th ed. (Berlin, 1922), 12.

  19. See Mein Kampf, 181n.

  20. NPG, 126/059.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Frederick Taylor, The Downfall of Money (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 99. Also Peter Grose, Allen Dulles, Spymaster: The Life and Times of the First Civilian Director of the CIA (London: André Deutsch, 2006), 58. John Foster Dulles would become secretary of state under President Eisenhower in 1953.

  24. www.wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Peace_Treaty_of_Versailles.

  8. Aftermath

    1. Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), 22–23; cf. In Stahlgewittern: Ein Kriegstagebuch, 16th ed., Berlin, 1922, 257, 265 [Translated as Storm of Steel, Jünger’s diary of World War I].

    2. Ibid., 19; cf. Theodora Huber, Die soziologische Seite der Jugendbewegung, 12.

    3. Psychoanalyst and historian Erik Erikson made this analysis. While this quote refers to Martin Luther (c. 1520), it is valid for the mental state of certain men who aspired to higher education after fighting a war. See Toby Thacker’s Joseph Goebbels, 15–16, which quotes Erikson’s Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), 12.

    4. NPG, 126/066.

    5. Ibid., 053/001.

    6. Hermann Voss was not a direct descendant.

    7. Justus Ulrich Mathias was born on December 14, 1917. Hildebrand was the child’s godfather. Less than a year later, Felixmüller’s son Luca was born. Felixmüller married another woman six months to the day after the birth of Justus. Hubert Portz, Zimmer frei für Cornelia Gurlitt, Lotte Wahle und Conrad Felixmüller (Landau: Knecht Verlag, 2014), 34.