by Susan Ronald
26. Surrendered … or Captured?
PART IV • THE STOLEN LIVES
27. House Arrest
28. Under the Microscope
29. Düsseldorf
30. Aftermath and Munich
31. The Lion Tamer
32. Feeding Frenzy
Glossary
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Photographs
About the Author
Also by Susan Ronald
Copyright
HITLER’S ART THIEF. Copyright © 2015 by Susan Ronald. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Front cover photographs: Hildebrand Gurlitt by dpa/AP Images, courtesy of Kunstammlungen Zwickau; frames by iStock
Back cover top photograph courtesy of bpk.de; middle and bottom photographs courtesy of Nachlass Projekt Gurlitt
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
e-ISBN 9781466866829
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: September 2015
* Not to be confused with my much loved stepfather.
* This was the local secondary or high school. Hildebrand Gurlitt was born in 1895 and died in 1956.
* The German Empire was only thirty-seven years old at the time.
* The devastating outcome of the Homestead Strike at Carnegie’s steelworks in Pennsylvania haunted him to the end of his days. When J. P. Morgan offered to buy Carnegie Steel for millions, he jumped at the chance.
* This is a late Neolithic settlement thought to be the original settlement for the town and is one of two mountains dominating the city and the Danube.
* Men who did not fulfill skilled-labor requirements or who were not deemed countryside working class had been denied the vote in Great Britain until the Third Reform Act of 1884. Universal male suffrage was only granted at the same time as votes for women in 1918. In the German Empire universal male suffrage was granted in 1871. In the United States, universal suffrage was achieved state by state, and was only accepted nationwide in 1920.
* Italia Irredenta was the territory in Europe inhabited by Italian-speaking people not included in the Kingdom of Italy. It lay in the main within Austria-Hungary’s political boundaries.
* Johanne Charlotte Wahle (1884–1952), expressionist artist and later partner of artist Conrad Felixmüller.
* He, like the rest of the royal family, would be compelled to change his name during the course of the war to something less “Germanic.” Battenberg became Mountbatten, and King George V would head the House of Windsor, formerly the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
* Naturally, armies and navies cost money. The kaiser’s navy created a national debt that had doubled in the previous ten years.
† Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933) was the British foreign secretary.
* Today situated in Poland.
* Vilnius, Lithuania, today.
* The Nazi Party was known as the NSDAP, or National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
† Mend would also write a statement to the Abwehr called the Mend-Protokoll, accusing Hitler of homosexuality.
* Napoleon’s art historian, Jean Dominique Vivant Denon, joined him on his Egyptian campaign. In 1802 he was made Baron Denon, director of the Musée Centrale des Arts (the modern Louvre), working tirelessly to requisition artworks throughout Napoleon’s empire in the grand looting campaigns.
* Also known as The Adoration of the Lamb, it was looted again in World War II and found in the Altaussee salt mine.
† From the French-speaking regions of Belgium.
* Hanns was Hildebrand’s Jewish friend. Gertrud was Wilibald’s future wife.
* The desire of England and France to bring the United States into the war resulted in a long-running campaign involving propaganda, espionage, and desperation, giving America its well-deserved isolationist badge. It forms one of the most interesting and significant chapters of the war of 1914–18, which sadly cannot be done justice here.
* The first revolution occurred in March 1917. Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on March 15 and the moderate socialist Aleksandr Kerensky seized power. Romania had also demanded an armistice with Germany at the same time.
* Balfour (1848–1930) was prime minister from 1902 to 1905.
* Called the USSR—Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union—from October 1917.
† The United States had severed diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917. Officially it was as a result of unrestricted naval warfare, but concerns of fifth columnists and Germany inciting Mexico to declare war on America figured highly, too. The Senate voted to declare war on Germany and its allies on April 4, 1917. Congress ratified it on April 6, 1917. See Boghardt, The Zimmerman Telegram, Annapolis, MD, The Naval Institute.
‡ It is most likely the root cause of the myth of the “stab in the back.” Some argued, “How can an army have a huge victory then six days later want an immediate cease-fire?”
* The Jade Mutiny took place on October 29, when the German navy refused to engage the British Fleet.
* Kaiser Wilhelm eventually found exile in Denmark.
* Spartakusbund in German.
† The Zentrum Party was a lay Catholic political party. In English it is often called the Catholic Center Party.
* Germans used the word “terror”; today we would most likely term this “political violence”—namely, organized and unorganized violence, or the threat of it, that is motivated by political ends.
* This was a popular notion and reinforced by the Bavarian hatred for all things Prussian. It is a concept that gains ground throughout the early 1920s.
* Sixteen governments in fifteen years. There were seven in the first five years. The Reichswehr was the “official” army.
* Mary Wigman founded an expressionist dance school in Dresden and was considered one of the foremost iconic figures of the Weimar culture. Dresden artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner portrayed her “Witch Dance” in 1926.
* The French would remain in the Rhineland until the end of 1930, and would maintain control of the much smaller Saarland region until 1935.
* 18 marks = 1 pound sterling
* The Met was the first museum in the world to acquire a painting by Henri Matisse, in 1910.
* This roughly corresponded to the thirty-two electoral districts.
* This was the term used internationally for the French Occupation and French Alliances in the East.
† This was one of the causes of the 2007 banking meltdown.
* One of the causes of the ten-day work stoppage was the declining wage and quality of life of some 800,000 miners. A total of 1.7 million workers went on strike, primarily in transport and heavy industries, in sympathy for the miners.
† The most enduring outcome of the Young Conference was the establishment of the Bank for International Settlements, located in Basel, Switzerland, which would oversee reparations payments.
* Bernard Berenson was the advisor to Thyssen and the art historian who had “decrypted” Renaissance art for collectors and auction houses by introducing his “scientific method,” referring to paintings being “school of” or “Anonymous Master” or “studio of.”
* Her brother Oskar’s wife.
† The Association for the Struggle of German Culture.
‡ 6,409,600 Germans voted NSDAP and 4,592,000 voted Communist (whose seats increased to 77). Source: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 138
* While the German government and the Kunstmuseum Bern steadfastly refuse to publish Gurlitt’s papers, the redacted accounts published online by Bern show that Wolfgang was a
n early and important trading partner.
* Manfred was a first cousin, younger brother of Wolfgang.
* Less evenhandedly, he donated 1.8 million to reelect Hindenburg.
* Each side claimed that it had initiated the groundbreaking contact.
* Gurlitt’s fortieth birthday.
* Gorlitius was a correspondent of Martin Luther’s in the sixteenth century.
* Other cities, such as Karlsruhe, preferred to exhibit approved art (Government Art 1918–1933).
* It is entirely possible that Gurlitt was there.
* Her christened name was Renate, but the family called her Benita.
* Not to be confused with Curt Valentin.
* Popular three-handed German card game with bidding.
* Liebermann died in 1935. His death, however, was not announced in the Nazi-controlled media, owing to his Expressionism and Judaism.
* This campaign was known as Fall Gelb, the Yellow Campaign, and the battle for France as Fall Rot, or the Red Campaign.
* Much of British fleet was engaged in a number of naval theaters: in the Far East; in the Mediterranean; protecting convoys in the Atlantic; bringing food and armaments to Britain; and protecting British colonies.
* Institut d’Études des Questions Juives.
* Jeu de Paume, literally meaning “game of the palm,” was a medieval form of tennis played by the French kings. When the Louvre was the royal palace, the Jeu de Paume was its indoor tennis court.
* Bormann effectively took on Rudolf Hess’s role after Hess’s ill-conceived “peace mission” ended with his capture in Scotland in May 1941.
* This is the address that Ingeborg Hertmann had given to the police after the war.
† By the end of 1942 the ERR had beaten the Kunstschutz, with Dr. Bunjes as the contact person.
* Leda on the Swan—approximate size 2m x 1.5m.
† Portrait of the Father of the Artist.
* Goepel also worked for the Dienststelle Mühlmann in the Netherlands on Robert Oertel’s recommendation.
* Karl Buchholz had set up in Lisbon.
* Please see both invoices in the illustrations section.
* Worth approximately $90,787,940 in 1944 when converted from New Francs or $1,226,545,069 in 2014 values (1 US$ in 1944 = $13.51 in 2014).
† She had long before dropped the Turkish-Jewish “Almas” from her name.
‡ In the interrogation of Georg Josef Eidenschink at Moosburg Detention Camp after the war, he declared that Korth worked directly for Hitler. If true, then he served two masters with different purposes in Haberstock and Hitler.
* Not all of the export applications state what type of art was being exported or indeed the quantity.
* The various levels are called horizons.
* Dulles would later become the first civilian head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
* There had been eighty-four heavy anti-aircraft guns around Dresden until the summer of 1944, but these were withdrawn to the ever-nearer eastern front by February 1945.
* Saint Petersburg became Petrograd and the name was changed again once the Bolsheviks took control in the October Revolution, to Leningrad—then again, back to Saint Petersburg, with Glasnost.
* By this time gasoline was generally unavailable to civilians and most vehicles had been converted to wood-burning stoves as means of propulsion.
* One painting was looted from the Wiesbaden Collecting Point—never to be returned. A Rodin drawing was erroneously returned to France, and was claimed to have “never arrived.”
* Georges Viau had an irrepressible hobby of “restoring” his Impressionist art, often overpainting quite badly. It is entirely possible that beneath his well-intended restorations, a real Cézanne and Daumier might be found.
* CID—Criminal Investigation Department.
* Probably Plaut or his British counterpart, Douglas Cooper.
* Names were often spelled different ways in reports. I have adopted the French spelling of “Stocklin.”
* Engel would buy his freedom in France by acting for the security services after the war.
* General Karl Wolff (SS head in Italy and the Tyrol) had instigated discussions with Allen Dulles in Bern for the surrender of the men of the SS under his control. This incident prompted what some call the first incident of the Cold War, called Operation Sunrise.
* Karl Wolff was rearrested in 1962 when the trial of Adolf Eichmann presented evidence that he was responsible for the deportation of Italian Jews to concentration camps. In 1964, he was found guilty of the deportation of Jews to Treblinka and Auschwitz and the massacre of Italian partisans. He was released in 1969.
* Max J. Friedlander, former director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, being the main example.
* This was operated by Berthold von Bohlen und Halbach, Alfried Krupp’s brother. Alfried had stood trial at Nuremberg for slave labor of Jews, some of them children, and was convicted. He was released in 1952.
* Approximately $908,000. Gurlitt’s share was approximately $504,700 before auction commission.
* Renamed The Seated Woman or The Seated Woman by the Open Window since the Gurlitt story broke in 2013.
