Celebrations all across the Netherlands followed the engagement, in 2001, of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander to his Argentinean fiancée. The Governor of Utrecht was getting ready to greet the royal couple in the Paushuize, which had been built in sixteenth century for the only Dutch pope. Standing proudly, surrounded by fine examples of the provincial art collection, he was fielding questions from the national and local press. Out of the blue the reporter from VPRO asked, “Do you know who that painting used to belong to?”
Shuchen Tan, a veteran video reporter, thrust her microphone at the dumbfounded official. The Governor looked at the painting behind him, hoping for clues, and stuttered something about its belonging to the state.
Shuchen persevered. “How did the state get it? And who did it belong to before?”
The Governor admitted he had no idea.
“The previous owner was murdered in Auschwitz,” the reporter clarified.
The Governor began to panic. “I hope you are not recording this.”
“Of course I am,” she replied.
Later when the Governor had grasped the implications of the situation, he declared that he did not want any tainted art in his government buildings. He thought an official inquiry should be initiated. The charming painting in question was Ducks at a Pond by a talented, but little-known, early-nineteenth-century artist named Angela Schuszler. It was one of a pair, the other simply called Chickens, and both had lived happily upstairs at Bosbeek, in the hallway on the way to the bedrooms—that was, until February 11, 1942, when Julius Böhler had included the two paintings as Item 37 in his first comprehensive inventory of Fritz and Louise’s house.
In July of that same year, Böhler and Haberstock sold the pair, along with a huge amount of my grandparents’ antique furniture, to Dr. Heinrich Glasmeier, director general of the Third Reich Radio Corporation, who was decorating his new offices at the time. Apparently he had a huge budget and was buying looted artworks from at least three countries, much to Böhler and Haberstock’s delight and profit. Glasmeier had just taken over the enormous Baroque monastery of St. Florian, not far from Hitler’s hometown of Linz, to create the “Great German and European Radio.” At the instigation of his boss, Joseph Goebbels, the Gestapo had expelled the monks from the monastery in 1941. For the next few years Glasmeier lived in the lap of luxury, and then in 1945, just weeks after hosting a huge gala for the Führer’s birthday, he fled before the advancing US army and disappeared, never to be seen again.
The two Schuszler paintings, among others, and large amounts of Fritz’s furniture and antiques, were eventually returned to the Netherlands in early 1947. However, not until 1954 did the Dutch authorities offer the two paintings to my father and aunt—and then only at a price. Sadly Bernard and Lili had already spent every last penny at their disposal to buy back as much as they could from the Netherlands government. As a result the Ducks and the Chickens were absorbed into the Dutch National Collection, along with many Gutmann antiques and works of art. Some of these works the authorities never even bothered to offer.
• • •
The postwar governments of countries once occupied by the Germans were afraid that once restitution started, there would be no end. My father, like so many survivors, was officially shunned after the war because the authorities knew if they followed the problem to its ultimate conclusion, almost the entire population would be involved. Not only had many art dealers, curators, and directors of major Dutch museums actively collaborated with the Germans, but virtually the entire population of the Netherlands, just like that of Germany, had been complicit in the systematic robbing of the Jews. From my grandfather’s Botticelli and Hispano-Suiza sedan down to the brooms and brushes in the kitchen—Jewish clothes, books, furniture, apartments, jewelry, shops, cars, businesses, bicycles, everything, including the pots and pans, had been divided among a willing population. By allowing entire countries to be accessories to the greatest crime in history, the Nazis knew that everybody would also have to be part of the greatest cover-up.
It would take five decades before the Dutch government would finally admit that its postwar treatment of Jewish survivors was, in the words of one official, “extremely cold and unjust.” Even this reluctant concession had only come about as the result of enormous international pressure.
From my family’s perspective, it all began around the end of 1996. Our researcher, Helen Hofhuis, had just discovered the original Dutch customs receipt for the Renoir. During her research, she kept coming across references to the Collectie (Collection) Gutmann. At first she thought it was a historical reference; only gradually did she realize the collection in question referred to the present day.
When we asked Lili, she exclaimed, “Yes, yes! They [the Dutch] probably have hundreds of our things!” Nick tried to narrow it down a bit, so he asked Helen to start looking for one of the more recognizable works in Holland. The Portrait of a Man by Jakob Elsner seemed a good place to start. Originally attributed simply to a Nuremberg master and dated around 1490, it was exactly what Lili was referring to when she talked about all the “ugly old men” in Fritz’s Renaissance portrait gallery. It was also exactly the kind of painting the top Nazis had been looking for.
When the Monuments Men found the portrait in the mines of Altaussee in May 1945, they gave it the identifying marks Hitler nr. 1623 (referring to the inventory of the Führermuseum). After being processed through the Munich Collecting Point, the Elsner was sent back to Amsterdam at the end of April 1946. As with the pair of Schuszler paintings, it would then take almost nine years before the SNK (Netherlands Art Property Foundation) would offer the portrait back to my family. As usual, the catch was that my father and aunt would have to pay the Dutch State fourteen thousand Dutch guilders, and Bernard and Lili had already exhausted their limited budget. As I would discover years later, the SNK had been somewhat disingenuous in their offer. In 1948 they had already placed the Jakob Elsner on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, in Enschede.
In the late 1990s it was still not clear with whom in the Netherlands we might lodge a claim or even an inquiry; the only possibility was to petition the Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science. That no works of art lost during the German occupation had been returned since the 1950s did not bode well for any such new claim. Meanwhile, thanks to a class-action suit, supported by the World Jewish Congress, against the Swiss banks, attitudes were changing. Following pressure from Israel Singer and Elan Steinberg (Secretary General and Chief Executive, respectively, of the WJC), the Dutch agreed to initiate serious discussions concerning World War II assets. After a breakthrough vote in the parliament in The Hague, in October 1997 a special committee was established to investigate art confiscated during the German occupation.
The head of the special committee was Rudi Ekkart, a respected art historian, and in April 1998 he issued his initial recommendations. One of the major results was the establishment of the Herkomst Gezocht (Origins Unknown) agency. Its assignment was to investigate who originally owned the works currently in the Dutch Art Property Collection (NK). Technically the NK consisted of thousands of artworks recovered from Germany after World War II and still in the custody of the Dutch State. It was not long before Origins Unknown’s Evelien Campfens would alert Helen to the discovery of a lovely Meissen teacup, a tiny step in the right direction. Soon their initial report included a couple of paintings, several pieces of Chinese porcelain, and a set of Meissen plates from our collection. When the agency’s following report came out in October 1999, even more pieces from Fritz and Louise’s home were listed—all still in the “custody” of the Dutch State.
Nick and I were growing impatient. As each month went by and the inventory from our family’s collection grew longer and longer, we seemed no nearer to a resolution. At the end of 1999 we filed an official claim with the help and encouragement of Anne Webber, who had decided to make Holocaust restitution her life’s work after directing the documentary Making a Killing.
Origins Unknown was now also featuring countless artworks that had belonged before the war to others, including the Koenigs, Lanz, Mannheimer, and Goudstikker families. The Goudstikker collection was another case in point. Jacques Goudstikker had fled the Nazi occupation with little except his famous Black Book, which was the inventory of his gallery. When his surviving wife, Desi, returned to the Netherlands after the war, the Dutch State offered back only some of the Goudstikker paintings, and then only on condition the poor widow compensate the government.
Nick had several meetings with Christine Koenigs and Marei von Saher, heiress to the Goudstikker estate, trying to plot a common strategy. They decided to get in touch with the World Jewish Congress, which was more than receptive. The WJC was fresh from its success in forcing the Swiss banks to establish a fund (ultimately $1.25 billion) to compensate families, such as the Gutmanns, for the loss of so-called dormant accounts during the Holocaust era. Israel Singer called the Netherlands’ Prime Minister, Wim Kok. The Prime Minister was not only extremely stubborn, but, like so many of his predecessors, seemed to have a blind spot about what had happened during and after the war. In a notorious example of how far Wim Kok was missing the point, he actually went on Israeli radio and asserted, “The Dutch have never been responsible for the misbehavior of the Germans in the Netherlands during the war.” I think the images left by Anne Frank’s diary of good Dutch folk trying to hide poor Jews had become widely accepted. In reality, about a third of all the Jews hiding in the Netherlands were betrayed to the Germans—not to mention the twenty-five thousand or so Dutchmen who volunteered for the Waffen-SS.
Moreover, the current issue was what the Dutch had done after the war. Eventually the Prime Minister conceded, “The restitution of legal rights in the impoverished postwar Netherlands was basically correct from a legal and formal point of view, but at the same time . . . reports identify and criticize a number of shortcomings: the length of the process, the cumbersome and inflexible procedures, and above all the chill reception and lack of understanding that awaited those returning from the camps.” The Dutch authorities, despite some reactionary elements, were finally coming to grips with their behavior at the end of the Holocaust era. The more progressive felt an outright apology to the Jewish people was long overdue.
History was on our side, for once, when Rudi Ekkart issued his recommendations in April 2001. “The Committee recommends that sales of works of art by Jewish private persons in the Netherlands from 10 May 1940 onwards be treated as forced sales.” And: “The Committee recommends that a work of art be restituted if the title thereto has been proved with a high degree of probability.”
Nick and I were elated, but Lili, with her long years of dealing with the Dutch, soon brought us back to earth. Her cynicism proved justified as we watched Ekkart’s recommendations get kicked around like a political football for half a year. I was also bothered by the sanctimonious tone of the Dutch authorities, as if they might be doing us a favor. They were attempting to gain the moral high ground by claiming everything they had done had been entirely lawful (not unlike the Germans after the war).
• • •
Meanwhile, Shuchen Tan flew out to Los Angeles to continue her report of the Gutmann saga. Nick shared rather indignantly that the Dutch authorities were still holding on to (among other things) our grandmother’s dinner service—quite possibly the one used for Lili’s very last dinner with her parents. The press was on our side, again, but what about the politicians? Finally parliament was swayed, and on November 16 (my mother’s birthday) the Ekkart Committee was officially given some teeth. Evelien Campfens and Origins Unknown could finally do their work.
At the end of March 2002, almost fifty-seven years after the liberation of the Netherlands, the new committee authorized its first restitution. It was for just one painting, by the sixteenth-century Flemish artist Joachim Beuckelaer, and it was to be returned to the heirs of the Berl family, originally from Vienna. On the same day the committee advised the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science to return approximately 255 artworks and antiques to the heirs of Fritz Gutmann.
In April we received the confirmation from the ministry in The Hague. We could hardly believe it. Secretary of State Rick van der Ploeg had authorized the return of all 255 pieces claimed. This time elation was in order. Nick, Lili, and I were all frantically calling each other. Nick and I were also e-mailing each other constantly, but communications with our dear aunt remained more old-fashioned—by telephone or by mail. She could still hammer out a good letter on her faithful typewriter.
We agreed to meet in Amsterdam in September; meanwhile there was much to organize. The Dutch also had a lot to take care of. The most important thing, now that they had agreed to give back everything (from this claim at least), was to actually find all the artworks and antiques—no small feat as it turned out. Some of our antiques were already in the repository at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) in Rijswijk, just outside The Hague. The ICN, as we learned, administered a collection of over one hundred thousand pieces, half of which were in their enormous facility; the rest were scattered throughout various Dutch museums, government ministries, and even foreign embassies. The Gutmann Collectie was similarly dispersed.
The pair of Angela Schuszler paintings had to be recalled from the Paushuize in Utrecht. Chicken with Hens by Aelbert Cuyp, formerly in the dining room at Bosbeek, was coming back from the Dutch Embassy in Stockholm. The museum in Enschede returned the Jakob Elsner portrait. Gradually they started to assemble our collection in a huge room at the ICN that had been reserved just for our family. Over the next months items came from far and wide: tapestries from Maastricht, an Etruscan terra-cotta mask from Leiden, Meissen bowls and dishes from the museum in Zwolle, and an Italian Renaissance table and Chantilly vases from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. An eighteenth-century, gilded Italian sofa had been exhibited, until recently, at the royal palace Het Loo in Apeldoorn, and an exquisite Dutch tulipwood parquetry commode, circa 1780, had been in The Hague. A Louis XV desk was on its way back from the New World, where it had once decorated the Dutch Embassy in Buenos Aires. The François Boucher Pastoral Scene was taken down from the wall of the Consulate General’s suite in Toronto. Meanwhile, the beautiful floral dinner service that Nick had complained about was being returned from the Netherlands’ Embassy in Moscow, where the corps diplomatique had used it to entertain since the sixties. Apparently Nikita Khrushchev had been served dinner from our hand-painted 1750 Meissen plates.
As our room in Rijswijk was filling up nicely, according to reports it became evident the Rijksmuseum was not completely cooperating. It appeared to be dragging its feet over some pieces it clearly did not want to give up. About twenty pieces were involved. The most significant were three silver-gilt sculptures that Fritz had acquired from his father’s collection. Nick and I agreed we would lend the twenty pieces back to the museum temporarily, provided they first delivered them to Rijswijk. Apparently they wanted to make us an offer, which seemed rather premature. We just wanted to get everything back and see it all together before we made any big decisions.
May and I arrived in Amsterdam in mid-September. The Dutch government had agreed to cover the airfares for the three principal heirs, so I felt in a generous mood when we checked in at my favorite hotel on the Prinsengracht (Prince’s Canal). Despite all that had happened, Amsterdam had always felt like a home away from home. The next day we met with Nick and drove together to Bosbeek, just outside Heemstede. Lili and my cousin Lorenzo must have arrived at the same time. The nuns who lived there had left the door open and were making themselves scarce. Shuchen Tan was also there to record the emotional homecoming.
Lili opened the door and invited us all in, the way it might once have been, if only. The house was still strangely bare and empty. The sparse modern furniture seemed random and hardly present. I had vague memories of Bosbeek from when I was very young, with my father, but I had never been with Lili in the house where she grew up. With a loud-echoing voice she began to describe what used to be. Pointing to a blank wall: “To the right of the marble fireplace was the Liotard Tea Set or Service, underneath it was the Goya-like Spanish Lady.” Then swinging farther to the right: “On this wall was a huge Gobelin tapestry, you could see children playing under a tree.” Through double doors, on either side of which had been a bronze Louis XV clock and a gilded Louis XV barometer, we entered the great room. May and I caught our breath simultaneously as we were struck by Jacob de Wit’s magnificent painted ceiling. With colors vibrant and beautifully restored by the state, it was surrounded by a newly gilded frame, all of which contrasted depressingly with the sanatorium’s functional furnishings. Lili pointed to more barren walls where there had once been Louis XIV silk damask paneling in between floor-to-ceiling Louis XV mirrors. Over the doors we could still see where the trompe l’oeil wall painting, also by Jacob de Wit, had been pried out of the wall. Two large open cabinets, once brimming with Qing dynasty Chinese vases, were now ignored and unused. Later one of the nuns explained that they preferred to use the modern annex, built in the 1990s. Upstairs Lili showed us the deserted bedrooms. Louise, from her dressing room, had the best views over the ornamental hedges and garden sculptures. Grandmother Thekla von Landau’s room seemed particularly modest. Lili expressed relief that she had died just before the vicious anti-Semitic laws had taken hold. Lili pointed out the window toward Thekla’s grave, thankfully unmolested, across the lawn and under a lovely willow. Off in a wing almost to itself was my father’s old room. A rare smile came over Lili’s face as she recalled how Bernard would drive the older generation mad playing his American jazz records as loud as he could. The unlikely image of my father as a carefree young man brought a tear to my eye.
My aunt had remained inscrutable and distant throughout, her guard coming down, only for a moment, when confronted with some modern aberration. She would gesture and say almost angrily, “This is all wrong!” As we drove away, I think we all took comfort from the final view of Bosbeek, its exterior intact, looking much as it always had, surrounded by the well-maintained lawns. The void inside was still a difficult image to shake.
By contrast, when we arrived at Rijswijk, the ICN building appeared like any other sprawling complex in a modern business park. Only when we got through security and had each been issued a laminated badge did it dawn on us we were surrounded by approximately fifty thousand artworks. The director, Rik Vos, and the head of collections, Evert Rodrigo, escorted us down corridor after corridor, passing room after room stuffed with paintings, drawings, sculptures, and every conceivable other art form. There were far too many paintings to display; most were ranged tightly in gallery racks. As we descended several floors, Nick likened the complex to a giant bunker. Finally we arrived at our room. A throng was already there to greet us, and somebody was taking pictures with a flash. As I got to the door, a very tall man extended his hand and introduced himself as the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science. He muttered something that sounded like an apology, and I replied that I wished he had been there fifty years earlier.
Our room was the size of a warehouse, windowless, its walls all brick, and definitely bunkerlike. Yet the ICN had gone to a lot of trouble. Rik Vos and Evert Rodrigo took turns showing each of us around. The first thing I noticed was an enormous chocolate-brown carpet on the ground. The beautiful Savonerrie carpet had once been in the dining room at Bosbeek. When May and I entered the cavernous room, the tables and chairs were all neatly arranged, and the shelves laden with sculptures and vases. Paintings were on the walls. Many tables were decked with bronzes and porcelain. Farther in the room, one wall was covered with two large tapestries depicting an array of exotic animals. Under each were giltwood console tables, and on each of these was perched one of a pair of spectacular ormolu chenets, which must originally have stood on each side of the marble fireplace in the drawing room at Bosbeek. On the opposite wall hung a brilliant Dutch mirror that had exuberant gilded feathers sprouting from its top; made around 1720, it must have been nearly six feet tall. Then I came across a little desk, or bureau, with intricate parquetry. When I pulled out the writing compartment, I suddenly imagined Louise composing a letter. Not far away I found Lili lost in thought in front of a Louis XV beechwood duchesse, an eighteenth-century daybed. I went up to my aunt and realized she must be thinking of Louise as well. I was stunned to see that, although a little threadbare, the floral yellow silk upholstery had survived all this time.
“It’s ours again,” I said in disbelief.
Lili rejoined, “I think I’m going to sit in it.”
I took her arm and carefully eased her onto her mother’s cushions. It was a sublime moment. Suddenly I noticed several people watching us, and then there were those camera flashes again. A Dutch newspaper ran the story “Mrs. Gutmann Takes Her Seat.”
On another table we found an odd assortment of ancient wine-glasses. Nearby were large amounts of Meissen plates and bowls. A delightful teapot attracted May, and I found myself drawn to a pair of four-legged, floral sauceboats. Visions of dinner at Bosbeek soon crossed my mind.
That a sturdy bronze, fifteenth-century mortar and pestle, with German coat of arms, had survived was not so surprising, but close by were two ancient cushions still in remarkable condition. Embroidered on both was their year of creation—1689. They seemed to epitomize to what lengths the Nazis had gone to preserve everything of value—except human life. In contrast, next to the cushions were some shards and fragments of china and porcelain. May and I wondered how long these broken bits had been preserved and who had broken them. Was it the Dutch or, even longer ago, the Germans?
Then on the back wall I glimpsed three of the most prized objects from Fritz’s personal collection. They had been part of that very first forced sale to Hermann Göring’s agents. I was a little shocked to see them in the open, just standing on a table, even though we were in one of the most secure buildings in the Netherlands.
At first I was taken by the clean lines and simplicity of the Horse and Rider sculpted by Hans Kienle in 1630. The heroic rider was naked and in pure silver, in contrast to the smooth golden horse, dramatically rearing on its hind legs. The next magnificent piece was a silver-gilt ewer in the shape of a triton blowing a shell, while on his back sat a seminaked nymph. Art historians described it as Johannes Lencker’s Baroque masterpiece. The third piece, dating from 1596, consisted of the silver-gilt double cups by Hans Petzolt of Nuremberg. These towering Renaissance cups had once been the pride and possessions of my family, until 1940, when Göring’s agents pried them from my grandfather’s hands. Originally Eugen had acquired the Petzolt cups from the estate of Karl von Rothschild, who had died in 1886.
After the US army had retrieved the golden cups from Göring’s alpine hideaway in Berchtesgaden at the end of 1945, they had been shipped to the new government of the Netherlands a year later. Nick and I were shocked to discover that the Petzolt cups had been transferred, in 1960, to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, without my family’s ever being notified.
By now Nick and Lili had joined me, and we stood in wonder together. Lili was also visibly stunned to see the three silver-gilt works of art seemingly unprotected. When she was a child, Fritz had usually kept the great silver pieces safely under lock and key in the safe room, only to be brought out on special occasions. With the exception of the automatons (the Jamnitzer scales with the bronze lizard, the ormolu lady strumming her golden lute, and, Lili’s favorite, the Ostrich with its flapping wings and drum-beating monkey), the children were never allowed to touch any of the masterpieces in the Silbersammlung Gutmann. Lili had recently turned eighty-three, but from somewhere she must have heard her father’s admonishing tone. She stood back with a certain reserve, but Nick and I felt no such restraint. We were both instinctively drawn to the Rothschild cups. I lifted the top half of the double cup, and Nick grasped the bottom cup. To our surprise at the bottom of each were silver medallions, one of a man and the other of a woman, both sporting sixteenth-century ruff collars. They must have been wedding cups. Nick gallantly handed his to May so that she and I could symbolically toast each other and our family’s success.
We would have much to decide when we returned to Rijswijk the next day. None of us lived the way the Gutmanns had before the war; those days seemed to be gone forever. When we looked at all the Meissen, Lili reminded us how Fritz and Louise once used to entertain. That night back in Amsterdam, with much to celebrate, we also had quite a large dinner, albeit not in the style of Bosbeek. Lili chose a favorite Indonesian restaurant, on the other side of the Vondelpark, where we could sample the endless dishes of a truly authentic rijsttafel. It was quite a gathering: Christine Koenigs joined us, and our cousin Nadine von Goldschmidt-Rothschild came all the way from Frankfurt with her nephew Jean-Paul. With a lot of laughter we shared the exotic food. Our family seemed to have found a new sense of optimism.
The following morning Nick, Lili, and I started to make lists of what we most wanted to keep. It was difficult to be so practical, but we did our best. Nick decided on the Cuyp painting, two lovely bronzes, some Kangxi platters, one of the marble-top console tables, and some Meissen, including a set of teacups. More surprisingly, though, he also chose an enormous Italian Renaissance table. He was overjoyed when we discovered that the ICN would even cover the shipping. Nick gallantly suggested we send the first little teacup that had started this round of discovery to Eva, as a symbolic thank-you for those old boxes and our dear father’s papers.
Lili wanted the least, for reasons I think I understand. Most important to her was a De Wit pen-and-ink drawing that her father had found in the twenties. Remarkably, it was the original sketch for the enormous ceiling painting in Bosbeek, which De Wit had later installed. She also kept a lovely Italian gilt mirror. Then she gave Lorenzo the two Angela Schuszler paintings, which made him happy. His brother, Enrico, chose a huge seventeenth-century walnut candlestick lamp and several Chinese pieces, while his sister, Luisa, kept a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury.
Ultimately May and I decided on a delightful small painting of French lovers in a park, by Henri-Victor Devéria, and several pieces of Chinese porcelain, including a set of Kangxi Immortals. Nick and I each decided to keep one of the ancient cushions. Then May and I settled on an enchanting French, early-seventeenth-century, bronze group of a mother and child, one of the marble-topped consoles, and a Parisian barometer from before the Revolution. Also, I had to have some Meissen to commemorate our family’s roots in Saxony. But perhaps most dear to my heart was my grandfather Fritz’s shaving stand. We had recovered the little mahogany stand from the basement of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it had been since 1960. Years later, I would discover that Julius Böhler had personally kept this sturdy, little piece of furniture as a stand for a flowerpot.
It was a miracle that so much had come back after all these years, yet I could not help thinking that all these things from my family had only been part of the first inventory Böhler had taken of Bosbeek. I would later deduce that there were still several pieces missing from the Gutmann Silver Collection, including the fierce silver cat, known as the Tetzelkatze, and the enigmatic Orpheus Clock. Also, a second Bosbeek inventory had consisted of well over another four hundred pieces. In that contract, Böhler’s cynicism knew no bounds. He had inserted a provision that allowed my grandparents to continue enjoying the use of their own furniture “as long as they were residents at Bosbeek.” After Fritz and Louise had been taken away that day in May 1943 in a black SS limousine, the vultures had descended on Bosbeek, and those last four hundred pieces had, I feared, been strewn to the wind.
• • •
The next afternoon we met with Rik Vos of the ICN at their lawyer’s offices on the Keizersgracht, just two bridges down from where Firma F. B. Gutmann had been, until the Nazis closed it in 1942. It seemed like a sensitive touch by the ICN to pick Mr. Maarten Meijer, one of the few remaining Jewish lawyers in Amsterdam. The meeting was to establish the official line of inheritance for Fritz and Louise’s estate. I hoped it would be a foregone conclusion, since Nick and I were the only two children of their only son, and Lili was their only other child. Nevertheless I had to supply birth certificates and many other legal documents. The process, perhaps a little tedious, resulted in my being issued a certificate of inheritance that was then authorized and stamped by the government of the Netherlands. In the complex world of restitution, it is crucial to be able to prove you are who you say you are. Now when I say I am Fritz Gutmann’s grandson and Eugen Gutmann’s great-grandson, I can prove it. This certificate has since been worth its weight in gold, on many occasions, in negotiations with the Swiss, French, and German authorities.
With the legalities taken care of and our personal lists complete, the next big decision to make was to whom to entrust the rest of the collection. Not long ago, the big auction houses had treated us with barely concealed contempt. Nick and I were still smarting from our treatment over the Renoir. Now Christie’s and Sotheby’s had come courting. How times had changed in just four short years. Clearly the Washington Principles had made a great impression, but also I suspected the prospect of priceless works of art coming on the market, through restitution, had proved irresistible to the auction houses. Unique works, once under lock and key in the world’s great museums, could now reenter the art market.
Based on our recent experiences, Christie’s was the obvious choice. I instinctively felt we could do business with Sheri Farber, Christie’s vice president in charge of estates. It proved to be a good decision. That evening to cement our new relationship, Sheri and Jop Ubbens, chairman of Christie’s Amsterdam (and another extremely tall Dutchman), took us to a lovely restaurant called La Rive overlooking the Amstel River. One of the important concessions they offered us was a “single-owner” sale. The auction would be devoted exclusively to the Gutmann Collection, and as a result we would get our own catalog. The thought of a Gutmann catalog’s always being there as a form of commemoration appealed to us enormously. After a few more concessions, Jop threw in tickets for the Concertgebouw concert hall, the following evening. We all laughed. It was an unashamed move, but it was also a clincher.
• • •
Early in 2003, the director and the keeper of the Rijksmuseum, on their way back from a trip to the Far East, flew to Los Angeles to talk with Nick and me. On a bright, late-January morning they arrived at my house. They were making every effort to keep at least three of twenty artworks we had lent back to them. Due to budget restrictions, they had to concentrate on what they considered essential, and apparently the three silver-gilt works by Petzolt, Lencker, and Kienle were essential.
Thanks to expert reports from Anthony Phillips, head of silver at Christie’s in London, Nick and I had a good idea what they might fetch on the open market. We also had an initial report from Sotheby’s. After a little back-and-forth, the director delivered their absolute best offer. Nick and I knew this was coming, yet we were still, inwardly at least, quite stunned. We requested a brief time-out. In the hallway we looked at each other openmouthed: nobody had ever offered us that kind of money before. Without having to say much at all, we knew we were agreed. I think we both felt a deep-rooted responsibility to get the best results for our family. Back in the living room Nick informed the director, perhaps a little bluntly, “I’m afraid it’s not enough.” The two heads of the Rijksmuseum were clearly crestfallen; they had come a long way. I pointed out that as much as our family appreciated their generous offer, we were convinced the value of the three unique pieces was greater. As they were leaving, Nick added that we hoped to see them at the auction. Money aside, I felt that something was wrong in just letting the museum keep these precious works. I kept thinking of my father in Amsterdam, during those nightmare years after the war, and how the authorities had kept so much from him.
• • •
There would be not just one auction, but two. The first would be in Amsterdam on May 13 for everything except the three silver pieces. The catalog would be entitled Property from the Gutmann Collection, and the cover illustration was to be one of the Louis XIV ormolu chenets. The second auction was scheduled for exactly a month later in London. The three Renaissance silver-gilt pieces would be the highlight of the London auction, entitled “Important Silver Including Three Magnificent Renaissance Silver-Gilt Works of Art from the Collection of Fritz and Eugen Gutmann.” The Lencker ewer would adorn the cover of the catalog.
The night before the Amsterdam sale, Jop Ubbens organized a grand dinner, surprisingly right in the auction room. Immediately I noticed, just behind the auctioneer’s stand, two familiar photos: extremely large copies of Man Ray’s portraits of Fritz and Louise. They made me feel straight at home. It was a good omen. At dinner were a large contingent of Christie’s executives from across Europe; they seemed to be taking this first restitution sale seriously. A contingent also came from the new Dresdner Bank, now based in Frankfurt, to pay their respects. Lili always enjoyed the attention they showered on her, albeit so late in life.
The auction room was already packed when Nick and I arrived the following morning. We could hardly contain our excitement. Jop Ubbens was our auctioneer. May and I were spellbound by his command of the room. Things were going well. Early on, an armorial plaque by Andrea della Robbia started a bidding war. It was thrilling to watch. Next the Jakob Elsner sold extremely well. Equally successful were the two exotic Flemish tapestries that followed. Most surprising, the sturdy bronze mortar and pestle started a frenzied bidding contest. Eventually it went for something staggering—twenty-five times its low estimate. Jop was more animated than the conductor at the Concertgebouw. Then the woman sitting right in front of me became determined to win the huge Savonerrie carpet. Every time she asked her husband, sitting right next to her, for more money to bid with, May and I unashamedly egged him on. I’m not sure if she realized who we were when she thanked us afterward. Then we watched as a beautiful, richly painted canvas by Michele Rocca, entitled Rinaldo and Armida, went for nearly four times the low estimate. During all the excitement my son, James, managed to fall sound asleep. People nearby seemed genuinely charmed by his snoring. In another touching moment a nice lady from Heemstede bought a Delft dish as a memento of Bosbeek in its better days. Lili appeared moved by this gesture; otherwise she remained stoic throughout. It must have been difficult to say good-bye to all these wonderful things one more time. Nevertheless, the auction was a great success.
A month later in London, I arrived with my family at Christie’s in St. James’s for an elegant dinner in the Directors’ Boardroom, arranged by Anthony Phillips. Nick was already there, as was Sheri Farber. Out of the blue, seven-year-old James politely asked for some chocolate. He cut such a dashing figure, in his brocade waistcoat and silk bow tie, that two pretty interns immediately rushed off to find some. Christie’s silver specialist Harry Williams-Bulkeley calculated that James must have been the youngest person to have ever had dinner in the boardroom in the 180 years since Christie’s moved from Pall Mall to St. James’s. I was moved by the lengths to which the venerable old firm had gone to accommodate my family. A lot had changed since that day less than five years before when Nick and I had gone to Marc Porter’s office in Beverly Hills to complain about the Degas evaluations.
Over dinner the conversation inevitably turned to Eugen’s original collection. Anthony Phillips asserted that the collection was of exceptional quality and depth. He went so far as to say he thought there was no better example of late-nineteenth-century taste and that Fritz’s three pieces being offered the next day were of the greatest artistic importance. His exuberance reached a pinnacle when he began to describe the Lencker ewer: “It is a sublime work.”
The next day our anticipation was extremely high. We had taken a big gamble turning down the Rijksmuseum and their money. Lili, as a result, had started to find all these financial shenanigans, including the negotiations with Christie’s, a little distressing. She had decided to stay home in Florence. Nick and I devised a plan to make sure she would not suffer regardless of the final results. In case we had miscalculated, she would still receive her share of what the museum had originally offered—even if it came out of our own pockets.
Christie’s had saved the Gutmann silver until last. By now several old friends were in the room. After a slow start and well over a hundred lots, the silver-gilt ewer by Johannes Lencker came up for bidding. Slowly it reached a point near the reserve price, then the bidding stopped for what seemed an age. We could hardly breathe. Suddenly the bidding resumed, this time much faster. Quickly it went over what the Rijksmuseum had offered and then kept going, hitting some kind of a record. James was definitely not asleep this time. Next came the Petzolt cups. They, too, quickly reached their reserve, then the low estimate, then passed the high estimate. Nick and I looked at each other in triumph and relief. By the time the beautiful Horse and Rider by Hans Ludwig Kienle came up, I had started to breathe normally again. Whatever happened, we had been vindicated. The Kienle finished the auction in great style, also comfortably surpassing its high estimate.
We soon discovered that the winning bidder for the Lencker ewer had in fact been a proxy for the Rijksmuseum. With enormous satisfaction, we realized the museum had just paid more for the ewer than they had originally offered us for all three of our silver-gilt masterworks.
The Petzolt cups found a good home at the Detroit Institute of Arts (now sadly beleaguered), and the Kienle also made its way across the Atlantic. Just a few months later May and I were in Chicago when we were invited for lunch at the Art Institute by Ghenete Zelleke, the curator of European decorative arts. Ghenete was justifiably proud of the Art Institute’s new acquisition and enthusiastically showed me some of the results of her exhaustive analysis of the sculpture. During that same visit, Suzanne McCullagh, curator of prints and drawings, came by to say hello. Suzanne was also a lifelong friend of Daniel Searle’s daughter, and, rather significantly, she wanted to show me the institute’s new provenance and research department. She proudly ushered me into the large new wing, where I saw bright-eyed university graduates studying delicate drawings. The scale of the department and its state-of-the-art facilities were impressive. Then she took us to a room to greet an old friend. More than five years had passed since May and I had last seen the Degas Landscape with Smokestacks, and James had only been a baby when he had first seen our Paysage. As I again mused over its beautiful colors, I began to reflect on how much all our lives had changed since that day in September 1995 when I first found it.
