For a long time I had avoided my great-grandfather Eugen’s collection. Some said it was what had really killed my grandfather. After all, if it had not been for Fritz’s determination to preserve the Silbersammlung he might well have bargained his way out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Lili thought the silver had been cursed. Certainly, the pieces from Eugen’s collection that were recovered after the war had torn apart what was left of the family. Sixty years later, I found myself still at loggerheads with estranged and invisible cousins. The curse had traveled across generations.
In May 2011 the portrait of Eugen by Franz von Lenbach, the one that nobody had ever seen before, arrived from Cologne. It differed dramatically from the Lenbach owned by the Dresdner Bank, and it certainly was not as famous as that other portrait of Eugen by Germany’s most distinguished Impressionist, Max Liebermann. My great-grandfather had often been compared to Bismarck: stern, authoritarian, and very Prussian. My painting was quite different: gone was any sense of austerity or aloofness. The man in my portrait loved music and collected beautiful things. Somehow he felt more like family.
I hung the new Eugen over the end of my desk. He seemed to watch over me as I worked, sometimes even with a benign smile. Oddly, the sense of foreboding about the silver collection and the old family trust began to lift. I realized it was time to try to make better sense of my neglected files on Eugen’s collection.
I knew exactly what had been taken by Julius Böhler in 1942, all 225 items, and I also knew what had been restored to the Gutmann Family Trust in 1949. Several discrepancies between the 1942 list and the 1949 list were clear. Many precious works such as the Orpheus Clock had slipped through the cracks. If I could discover exactly which pieces from the Silbersammlung the Allies had recovered in 1945, I would have a much better grasp of the situation.
A good place to start was in the Ardelia Hall Collection, now part of the US war archives. Ardelia Hall was a Monuments Officer, and an unsung heroine, who almost single-handedly made sure the files dealing with war-related looting and recovery remained intact. Today they are kept at the National Archives in Washington and Maryland and named in her honor.
In stark contrast to the endless traveling my father was compelled to undertake, today we are blessed with the ability to travel much farther with just a few strokes on a keyboard. From the comfort of my home I am able to search the vast, and ever-growing, National Archives records relating to Holocaust-era assets. Regrettably, these records were sealed from the public for more than fifty years. Only in recent years has the arduous task of digitizing these records begun. Every time I go back to search for something about my family’s collection, it seems as if there is more and more to review.
I was sure I had performed this particular search before, but this time I suddenly came across a remarkable letter, written on October 26, 1945, by a young American lieutenant, William E. Frye. Under the heading “Subject: Property of Jewish Refugees,” the lieutenant warned the US director of military government for Bavaria that a collection belonging to Countess Lili Orsini (my great-aunt) and just recently discovered on the shores of Lake Starnberg was going to be stolen again. “I notified the CO at Starnberg by telephone this date that this property should be placed under control immediately as an attempt was to be made to loot this property by the former custodian Herr Böhler, Briennerstrasse, Munich.”
It appeared that the collection had remained intact from 1942 right up until the end of the war. Fritz’s subterfuge of placing the Eugen Gutmann Silver Collection in the name of his brother-in-law Luca Orsini had worked against all odds. The German lawyer whom Luca and Great-Aunt Lili had hired had been remarkably effective. When a preservation order was issued and the collection declared a “national treasure” in 1943, the Nazi dealers had clearly taken note. Even though the Germans had no compunction in violating other people’s laws, their own laws were evidently sacrosanct.
A short while later I received dramatic evidence of this Nazi quirk. I had been using my brother’s copy of Eugen’s one-hundred-year-old catalog by Otto von Falke, Die Kunstsammlung Eugen Gutmann, published in Berlin in 1912. This sumptuous, oversize book itemized 326 amazing artworks with elaborate detail, and fortunately almost every one was accompanied by an ancient, but still clear, photograph. Both Nick and I were worried about my constantly referencing this family heirloom and the resultant wear and tear. For years I had looked for another copy (only a few hundred had ever been printed), and in early 2012 I found one. It was incredibly expensive but I had to have it. When I opened the book for the first time, I was stunned to find inside a letter dated March 30, 1943. The letter had been signed “Heil Hitler” by none other than Julius Böhler.
This original letter was addressed to the Führerhaus in Munich and marked for the attention of Dr. von Hummel. It read simply, “On behalf of Herr Karl Haberstock, we hereby send you the enclosed catalog of Eugen Gutmann’s collection. Heil Hitler! Julius Böhler.” Hauptsturmführer Baron Helmut von Hummel was chief secretary of the Nazi Party Chancellery, and as one of his many duties he was in charge of collecting gold, coins, and armory for the Führer (his immediate boss, Martin Bormann, was head of the Linz Commission). By some mysterious process I was now holding the copy of my family’s catalog that had once belonged to the man who had stripped our family home. I shuddered, then I shuddered again when it occurred to me that none other than Adolf Hitler had probably held this book. Based on correspondence between Böhler and Haberstock that I had found in the German Koblenz archives, they had intended Eugen’s catalog to become a shopping list for the Führer.
Yet, subsequently, the Nazi dealers must have decided, however reluctantly, to respect the preservation order (declaring the collection a “national treasure” not to be touched). As a result the remaining 225 pieces from the Eugen Gutmann Silbersammlung languished for the rest of the war in Böhler’s premises on the Briennerstrasse, just a few doors down from Nazi Party headquarters, and, no doubt, the equally frustrated Baron von Hummel. Just as the war was ending, Böhler decided to move the collection from his more visible headquarters in Munich to his associate Hans Sauermann’s storage facility by Lake Starnberg. It was here that the young American lieutenant Frye was hoping to secure the Silbersammlung. Somehow he had got wind that Sauermann and Böhler, after having sat on my family’s treasures for over three years, were not prepared to just hand them over to the Allies.
Close to the lieutenant’s letter in the archives, under the heading “Orsini,” I found a copy of the original list of 225 artworks that the Germans had removed from Bosbeek. At first glance it appeared to be just another copy of the same inventory, except that this version had the heading “Restituted.” In front of me was the crucial document I had been searching for. I realized that I must be looking at a copy of the inventory that was used when the Silbersammlung was being checked into the Munich Collecting Point. Next to each item number that Böhler had originally assigned was now a check mark. Soon it became apparent that two eighteenth-century gold rings were missing; unfortunately these were among the few items that did not have illustrations in the Otto von Falke catalog, and as a result they would prove next to impossible to trace. On the next page, however, my intuition seemed to pay off: Eugen must have been looking over me.
Item number 103 was a “Round gilt-bronze Table Clock, South German, second half of the 16th century.” This was the long-lost Orpheus Clock. My heart started to race. It was clearly not checked, so it must not have been turned over to the lieutenant or his superior officer. Which meant that Böhler and Sauermann had kept it. This time I had a photo and a very elaborate description by Von Falke. Now I knew exactly what to look for. I tried to contain my excitement. Only three lines farther down the inventory, item number 106 was also unchecked. It was another clock: “Square Table Clock, of gilded-bronze, South German, second half of the 16th century.” This was the remarkable astronomical clock by Johann Reinhold.
I quickly saved copies of the lieutenant’s letter and the newly discovered “Restituted” inventory, while I made a supreme effort to complete the exercise on hand. My mind was already racing ahead toward the hunt for the Orpheus Clock. I quickly ascertained that four lines below the clocks, item number 110 also seemed to be missing. This was a majolica bowl made in 1537 by the Casa Pirota workshop of Faenza. The notations on a few other items were also not clear, but I would have to come back to them another time.
I decided to concentrate my investigation on the Orpheus Clock. According to Von Falke’s description, I was certain that this piece was unique. It only had a six-hour dial (sometimes used in Italy at the end of the Renaissance), which meant it had to be reset at midnight, sunrise, midday, and sunset. Also most unusual, it only had one hand. When I first looked at Von Falke’s sepia-toned photograph, though still quite clear, I could not see the hand at all because the dial face was such a maze of golden leaves, vines, tendrils, and grapes, which in turn hid golden birds and lizards. It was both hugely confusing and yet strangely symmetrical. Then I finally caught sight of the hand, which was concealed in the shape of a long, undulating serpent, its gilded head facing the center of the dial and its tapering tail indicating, oh so subtly, the time. What a marvel.
The artist, reputedly, was Wenzel Jamnitzer of Nuremberg, the master of the Kunstkammer. The theme of Orpheus in the underworld had been utilized by some of his competitors in the silversmith and goldsmith workshops of Nuremberg and Augsburg, but clearly Jamnitzer would not be outdone.
Few artworks in my great-grandfather’s extraordinary catalog warranted two illustrations, but this “round clock” was one of them—and fortunately so, because the other photograph contained a clue that led me to discover its whereabouts. This side view depicted a frieze that told the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. You could see a bearded Orpheus playing his lyre as he attempted to induce the gods of the underworld to release Eurydice, his beloved. Eurydice is seen rushing to escape Hades, her long, golden locks billowing behind her. The rest of the frieze consisted of vividly embossed animals: horses, bears, elephants, and some mystical creatures—all apparently entranced by Orpheus’s mournful music. During the Renaissance, Orpheus was often used as a metaphor for the triumph of art over nature. Similarly, the artist had sought to harness time through the means of a scientific instrument—the clock.
So began my search for our mystical “Orpheus Clock.” I was convinced the key lay in the name Orpheus, which symbolized the unique character of the clock. Almost as soon as I started looking, I discovered a complete book by P. Coole and E. Neumann, entitled aptly The Orpheus Clocks. It seemed about ten were in the series, albeit by different goldsmiths. One clock was in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, another in the British Museum in London, but our clock, I was proud to discover, was considered the preeminent Orpheus Clock. Historians would say Jamnitzer’s Orpheus Clock was “perhaps one of the most beautiful clocks of [all] the Renaissance.” I was beginning to see why, of all the wonders in the Gutmann cabinet of curiosities, this was the piece Böhler could not bear to part with.
At the beginning of the book was a full list of the clocks—the Gutmann clock was listed first. I was encouraged to see Eugen, along with Otto von Falke, both mentioned. But then I became a little apprehensive when I read that our clock had been oddly renamed Fremersdorf 1.
I soon discovered that the Orpheus Clock had been purchased, apparently in 1962, by a certain Herr Fremersdorf. After several frantic searches, I assembled an outline of who Joseph Fremersdorf was. Born in Germany, he became a Swiss resident in the 1920s. There, after the war, Fremersdorf developed his passion for Renaissance and Baroque timepieces. He had made his fortune by selling shoes, lots of them.
The next big break came with an old 2002 Christie’s catalog. They were offering a rare eleventh Orpheus Clock, which Coole and Neumann had not included in their book. By way of comparison, Christie’s mentioned the other famous Orpheus Clocks at the end of their catalog entry. Yet again, the Gutmann clock (now Fremersdorf 1) was first on the list. Except this list also included its current location: the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart, Germany.
In 1973, Joseph Fremersdorf had bequeathed the finest clocks from his collection to the historical museum of the State of Baden-Württemberg. This generous donation included our clock.
As I looked over my shoulder toward the painting on the wall, Eugen was definitely smiling. I’m sure Fritz would have appreciated this moment, too. It was almost exactly sixty-nine years since Julius Böhler’s truck had carried away the Orpheus Clock from Bosbeek, along with Eugen’s other treasures. Fritz had tried so hard to preserve our family’s legacy, and now after all this time, this lost masterpiece was within my grasp. I knew I had a lot more to do, but for the moment I was overcome with a warm sense of satisfaction.
I immediately wrote to the Landesmuseum in Stuttgart. I took it as a good sign when I discovered that the museum had a much-respected historian as head of provenance research, Dr. Anja Heuss. She soon wrote back to me to confirm that the Orpheus Clock was indeed in the museum’s collection. There was one snag, though: she was under the impression that the clock had been sold by my family to the Bachstitz Gallery in The Hague, long before the war.
Several items from Eugen’s collection had, in fact, been offered to Kurt Bachstitz, but on consignment only. Fritz had arranged all this while Eugen was still alive. However, Bachstitz then included all these artworks in his 1922 catalog, with unfortunate results for me and my family. Everybody now believed Bachstitz owned these artworks.
Eventually, I was able to prove to Dr. Heuss that most of the Gutmann artworks had not been sold by Bachstitz, but had been returned to Fritz, as custodian of the family collection. Fortunately, the Bachstitz Gallery stock cards were now accessible in a Dutch archive. I then sent the Landesmuseum a copy of the relevant card, which clearly indicated that the Orpheus Clock had been returned to Fritz’s office in July 1924.
When I provided Anja Heuss with copies of the contract Fritz was obliged to enter into with Julius Böhler and Karl Haberstock, in March 1942, along with the Munich 1945 “Restituted” lists, she became convinced that the clock in her museum belonged to my family. The Orpheus Clock was clearly marked as number 103 in that forced transaction. By the next time she wrote to me, she was certain not only one Gutmann clock was in the museum, but actually three.
I tried not to let my expectations soar too high. I was almost sure I knew at least one of the other clocks. I had already seen on the Landesmuseum’s website a picture of an automaton clock that looked identical to the wonderful Ostrich, with its flapping wings and drum-beating monkey, which had once been Lili’s favorite. When Dr. Heuss confirmed that this was indeed one of the other clocks, I reassured her that this piece had in fact been successfully returned after the war and that my father, along with his feuding cousins, had sold it at the end of the 1950s, through the Manhattan antique dealer A La Vieille Russie. It appeared to be just an odd coincidence that Fremersdorf had bought the Ostrich automaton, too. The third clock, however, was a different matter. I could not believe my luck. It was Item 106 from the Böhler list: the “Square Table Clock,” which had also disappeared from under the nose of the eager lieutenant.
The bland, generic title of Square Table Clock for this amazing instrument was a great understatement. While our Round Table Clock had to share a book with at least eight other masterworks, the so-called Square Table Clock had all 120 pages of a book just to itself. The title was The Great Astronomical Table Clock of Johann Reinhold: Augsburg 1581 to 1592.
Johann Reinhold’s clock had not just one dial, like most, but nine dials in total. The main top, or horizontal, dial was by no means as beautiful as the Orpheus Clock’s, but was still impressive. Its finely etched gold frame enclosed a distinctive thick gold circle, which, in turn, encircled a twenty-four-hour dial. Under the widely latticed gold dial was a silver astrolabe that kept track of the sun and the moon. Each of the four sides of the square clock exhibited two smaller dials. There were two zodiacal dials (one ornamental and one scientific), two intricately decorative twenty-four-hour dials, and one dial that alternated between the cycles of the sun and the moon. One dial was for the planets, another for the weeks and the months, and one final dial followed the twenty-eight-year solar cycle of the Julian calendar. Reinhold had reached the high point of clockmaking in the Renaissance. It was a veritable sixteenth-century computer, and a beautiful one.
I tried to find out who had sold the two Gutmann clocks to Fremersdorf. Anja Heuss replied that the collector, rather significantly, had left no information about how or where he had acquired them. It continued to amaze me how serious collectors, especially those who had published academic treatises, managed to overlook (conveniently) the whole issue of where a valuable artwork had actually come from. I pointed out that the Böhler family had opened its own gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland, Fremersdorf’s adopted home. The notorious Theodor Fischer had been one of the gallery’s financial backers. All we knew for sure was that Fremersdorf had acquired the two clocks before 1962, while he was living in Lucerne.
One most revealing piece of information that Fremersdorf did make a note of was that, at the time he acquired the clocks, they still had sand and dirt in them. He deduced that they must have been buried for some while. Immediately I had an image of Böhler and Sauermann frantically burying the two Renaissance masterpieces in the sands by Lake Starnberg, just before the Munich Collecting Point truck arrived to pick them up.
I uncovered a little more background information. Edgar Breitenbach had been the Monuments officer in charge of the investigation of the missing pieces from the Silbersammlung. His speciality was “second-generation loot”; this referred to items looted by the Nazis and then stolen again by desperate Germans in the chaotic months following the Allied victory. Unfortunately the trusting and understaffed Allied officers often enlisted the help of the local population. In this case a Bavarian State policeman called Georg Denzel was put in charge of moving the 225 pieces to the Munich Central Collecting Point. Denzel continued working for the US occupation forces until 1948, when he was finally let go. Ultimately Breitenbach’s investigation proved inconclusive. Denzel, Sauermann, and Böhler all had opportunity and motive. However, I found a statement by Dr. Hoffmann, an associate of Böhler’s, where he admitted, much later in 1953, that only 216 pieces had been turned over.
• • •
I was fortunate to be dealing with a provenance expert of Dr. Heuss’s caliber. She soon agreed that the Orpheus and Reinhold Clocks should be considered for restitution and quickly requested a decision from the state ministry in charge.
There was one catch. I had already pointed out that the Silbersammlung, or what was left of it, belonged to all qualified heirs of Eugen Gutmann, not just the Fritz Gutmann branch. Dr. Heuss recommended that I work on a family agreement while the ministry considered the return of the clocks. In anticipation of this I had already begun to sound out various cousins. My fear was that my entreaties would fall on deaf ears.
No substantial effort to bring the family together had been made in well over a half century. Just four years before finding the clocks, I had felt a new attempt at reconciliation, with one particular branch, was called for. Some unsubstantiated duplicate claims had been filed in Holland, based, I assumed, on bad advice. Unfortunately, my stab at establishing normal relations had quickly fizzled out. Sadly, one of the cousins with whom I had tried to reach an understanding had died suddenly. Now we had a new opportunity: I was dealing with a different cousin and I had something tangible to offer. Anja Heuss had already let it be known that, in the event the ministry agreed to a restitution, the museum would like to buy back at least one of the clocks.
This time the tone seemed far less confrontational. I was happy to put the competing Dutch claims aside (after all, they had already been settled in my favor). Most of us could not remember when the previous generation’s rifts had started, or the reasons why our parents had fallen out. I proposed that we start with a clean slate. The only equitable way to sidestep all the old wrangles about who got which share was to make sure that each entitled branch of the family, in the future, received an equal share. After a fair amount of back-and-forth, this time we reached a consensus, perhaps because no outside lawyers were involved. After all, I had two golden carrots to tempt them with. The third branch of the family was delighted to be included—I think that they had been cut out of most of the settlements back in the fifties. I would get my expenses and a reasonable fee for my efforts; the rest was to be divided proportionally. It was also agreed that from this point on I would be the family’s legal representative for all claims relating to the Eugen Gutmann Collection.
In October, as I was drafting the final version of our new family contract, I heard from Dr. Heuss again. The Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung, und Kunst Baden-Württemberg had agreed to return both clocks. I was jubilant and awash with feelings of vindication and pride.
This was a historic moment. Just two years earlier, the grandchildren of Herbert had been returned a Franz von Lenbach portrait of Bismarck, which was found hanging in the Bundestag in Berlin. However, for my branch of the family, the children and grandchildren of Fritz, this would be our first direct restitution from Germany.
Everything had gone so smoothly I knew the other shoe had to drop, and then it did. The ministry had received our family agreement but was unsure whether it would satisfy the letter of the law in Germany. Under normal circumstances, to comply with the German laws of inheritance, I would have to obtain a document called an Erbschein. Unfortunately, this public deed or certificate of inheritance could only be obtained in a probate court. The thought of spending two years in a German court terrified me. Maybe I could forestall any such action with the certificate of heirship that the Dutch government had issued me ten years earlier. I could not help thinking about Bernard and how hard it had been for him to prove he was his father’s heir. I would have to prove not just that I was my father’s heir, not just that I was my grandfather’s heir, but that I was my great-grandfather’s heir.
More months went by. The museum seemed eager to strike a deal. Dr. Heuss and the museum director, Dr. Ewigleben, were applying as much diplomatic pressure on the ministry as was politically advisable. To back up my position, I had the museum forward to the ministry a family tree that had been compiled by the new Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt. I suggested that if the minister had any questions, he should contact Michael Jurk, who was president of the Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft (the Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank historical society), which had been named after Eugen. I tried to emphasize that any unnecessary legalistic delays would be in violation of the spirit of restitution.
While we were waiting, my second cousin Nadine died. She had been one of the few cousins we had always been on friendly terms with. I was very upset about her loss; I was also getting rather frustrated. Nadine was a great-grandchild of Eugen’s and would also have been one of the beneficiaries from any clock settlement. At the risk of appearing melodramatic, I decided to inform the museum and the ministry that, while we had been waiting for a conclusion to this restitution, one of the heirs, Nadine von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, had passed away. She had been the last of our immediate family who still lived in Germany (and the last of the Rothschilds in Frankfurt). I feared that this generation, which suffered so much during the war, would soon be completely gone. I appealed to them that, where possible, reparations should be made directly to those who were personally deprived at the time.
I had even more bad news to share. My dear aunt Lili, who was now ninety-two, had just suffered an accident; she had slipped in the street and broken her hip and was in the hospital in Florence. Dr. Ewigleben, the director of the museum, was horrified at my news and promised to press the ministry for a quick decision. Nevertheless the bureaucratic process ground on inexorably.
On the bright side, my amazing aunt was determined to escape the clinic she had been sent to. She quickly abandoned the walker they had given her and started practicing daily with crutches. Her strength and resolve were remarkable. I laughed when she told me, on the phone, that she could not bear all the old people in the clinic. I wondered how many others were actually over ninety-two. One of the reasons for her determination was that the Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft was hosting an April event in the grand auditorium of the Commerzbank tower in Frankfurt to honor her father and his collection. A Dutch art historian was to give a lecture focusing on Fritz’s taste and, in particular, on the Hieronymus Bosch, which was now in the National Gallery of Canada. Lili was to be the guest of honor and had set her heart on attending. She had also very much hoped that I would join her. I had done my best to make it a double event, with our going, after Frankfurt, to Stuttgart to accept the return of the clocks. Instead, I had to wait in Los Angeles for the ministry in Stuttgart to finally process our family contract.
I kept myself busy with a new claim against the French government, for a second painting by Liotard, another still life, and with a small claim in Holland for a lovely majolica dish. Meanwhile, Aunt Lili did make it to Frankfurt, on crutches no less, where everybody from the Dresdner and Commerzbank made a big fuss over her.
Not until June did I receive news from the ministry in Stuttgart, but at last it was good news. They were sending me a contract that would officially transfer the two incredible clocks back to the Gutmann family. Part of the agreement was that we would give the Landesmuseum first rights of refusal.
Excited, I called my brother and all the cousins with the good news. I was enjoying the accolades, and it felt wonderful that we were all on the same side for the first time in decades. Then I called dear Lili, who had made it safely home to Italy after her Frankfurt jaunt. She was fast approaching ninety-three and learning anew how to navigate the bumpy streets of Florence. When I broke the news about the clocks, I could sense her delight. I relished the opportunity to bring her good tidings. But Lili also had a surprise for me. She was already planning a new trip to Germany, and this time I had to join her. It was really an order.
The Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft was planning a big celebration during the first week of October in Dresden for the 140th anniversary of the Dresdner Bank. The whole family was invited. This time I had to make sure I could take care of all our family business in Stuttgart, too.
I was encouraged by a letter from Dr. Ewigleben informing me that the museum would have its evaluations done by mid-September. I had been assembling our own estimates for almost a year. Sheri Farber at Christie’s had provided me with the auction results of the Rothschild and Wernher Orpheus Clocks. Lucian Simmons at Sotheby’s had also been helpful. I felt well prepared. The ministry, the museum, and I agreed our meeting would take place on October 9 in Stuttgart.
I began to plot what would be a fairly extensive tour of Germany. I had unfinished business with other museums. Now, possibly for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to going to Germany.
May and I arrived in Stuttgart toward the end of September. Our first stop was in Tübingen, where we spent a lovely day with my father’s companion, Eva, bringing her up-to-date with my many exploits. She was pleased to see us, but a little stunned to think that Bernard had spent his last years so close to the fabulous gold clocks, yet so far away. We visited his grave and laid some new flowers. I was grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with my dear father. Whether I liked it or not, I had deep roots in Germany.
We took the train to Augsburg, the home of so many of the amazing Renaissance goldsmiths and silversmiths, whose work Eugen had treasured. Augsburg also included among its favorite sons, at least until recently, the other man who had stripped our family home in Bosbeek—the infamous Karl Haberstock. Behind the lovely Baroque facade of this historic Bavarian city, if you looked closely, you could still see occasional vestiges of the Third Reich. A huge Nazi-era eagle had been preserved above a doorway at the railway station—just the swastika under its talons had been removed. I reminded myself that Augsburg had been home to the first Nazi newspaper.
My main reason to come here was to visit the state museum housed in the Schaezlerpalais. This museum was home to the Karl and Magdalene Haberstock Foundation for the Promotion of Science, Education, and Culture. Ever since I had received the Karl Haberstock catalog, which had led me to discover our Franz von Stuck, I knew that the city of Augsburg was the custodian, among other things, of the antiques Frau Magdalene Haberstock had, so generously, donated in 1957. I was convinced Julius Böhler had transferred much of it to Karl Haberstock, from Böhler’s share of the loot from Bosbeek. Haberstock had not turned over many pieces to the Allied authorities at the end of the war. I was fairly sure much of it was in Augsburg to this day—including even Louise’s set of six mocha-coffee cups.
Even though the city of Augsburg had finally seen fit to remove the bust of the notorious Haberstock from the entrance to the Palais in 1999, I was not aware that the state authorities had also, discreetly, removed Frau Haberstock’s antiques from the museum. I wondered, rather self-importantly, if they had known I was coming. I never heard back from the curator I was trying to reach. Clearly this unfinished business would require some serious effort when I got home.
May and I decided to sightsee. I was intrigued by the Fuggerei, which was the oldest public housing complex still in use, founded by Jakob Fugger the Rich in 1516. I remember my father mentioning that a Prince Fugger had been at school with him, in Zuoz. As we entered the walled enclave, I went into a little alcove to ask, in my best German, for two tickets to the museum section. What followed was the oddest experience. The old woman behind the counter just looked at me with such unashamed and unmistakable hatred. Suddenly I felt ice run through my veins. I wondered what it was she saw—was it somebody wearing a yellow star?
I repeated loudly in an authoritative German tone, “Two tickets please?” Very begrudgingly, she pushed the tickets toward me. May and I moved on quickly. Chillingly, May had also felt the same sensations from several feet away. The museum seemed to be all about the destruction of the complex toward the end of the war (and its subsequent rebuilding). History had been turned on its head. For the Augsburgers, the British were the instigators, the RAF the villains, and the Germans were the victims. For a second I wondered if the evil woman knew I was English, but then I realized I spoke German with, if anything, a hint of a French accent. We left in a hurry.
I was relieved the next day when we arrived in Dresden. Lili and her son Enrico were there to greet us. She was now moving nimbly about on just one stick; gone even were the crutches. As we made our way to dinner across the Neumarkt, she seemed to navigate the cobblestones with ease. Her cane came in handy for pointing out the Baroque wonders of the beautifully reconstructed Frauenkirche. For so many years after the war, the East German authorities had left the remnants of the eighteenth-century church as a pile of rubble on the side of the Neumarkt place. Like a native Dresdner, my aunt seemed to take enormous pride in the skilled restoration of the high-domed church—perhaps it was a symbol of reconciliation between the old and new Germanys. Dinner was traditional, hearty, local fare in what had been an old wine cellar. An accordion was playing, and men were humming old drinking songs. As the singing got louder, May and I instinctively began to feel uncomfortable. May thought it was a scene out of Cabaret. Lili, by comparison, appeared to take it all in her stride. She was enjoying herself and nothing was going to stop her.
The next day the Eugen-Gutmann-Gesellschaft had rented a bus, which took us along the river to Pillnitz Castle for a formal luncheon. The many speeches extolled the influences on German life and the economy that had been brought about by the now-combined Dresdner and Commerzbank. The dark period between 1931 and 1945 was barely touched on—how the Dresdner Bank, which had essentially been a Jewish bank, became the bank of choice for the SS. (During the Nuremberg trials, the chairman of the board of the Aryanized bank was sentenced to seven years in prison.) To the modern Dresdner’s credit, in 2006 they published an exhaustive four-volume history, The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich.
The speeches at lunch emphasized the postwar innovators and the original driving force: Eugen Gutmann. Lili took great pains to explain to the new Commerzbank powers-that-be our family connection to both banks. Jacob and Eugen von Landau had been instrumental in the founding of the Commerzbank, and Louise’s first cousin Kurt Sobernheim was one of the first directors. One way or another, the Gutmann–Von Landaus had been connected to just about every bank in Germany before the war; some had said that was part of our problem. All the bankers and officials were keenly interested in my forthcoming book.
Our return trip to Dresden was pleasant. We returned leisurely by boat, along the river Elbe, to the Florence of the North. Just out of sight, on the hill above, was the fairy-tale castle Schloss Schönfeld, where our great-great-grandfather Bernhard had lived nearly 140 years before.
Back in Dresden, we went to a performance at the Semper Opera House. Again there were many family ties. Bernhard had helped finance the rebuilding in 1869, after the first time it had burned down. In 1945, again all but a shell had remained. Now we were sitting in the almost identical third incarnation. My great-grandmother Sophie, who sang here, would hardly have known the difference. But I’m sure she would have enjoyed the good production of Tosca.
The next day, after breakfast, we walked to the last surviving branch of the Dresdner Bank that had kept the name. (The others had all become Commerzbank.) The manager and a city official greeted us. Cameramen were there to take our picture next to a copy of the bust of Eugen, which was in the lobby. The original bust, by Hugo Lederer, had been smashed to the ground when the Brownshirts had stormed into the Berlin headquarters in May 1933—that fateful day when they began burning books in the Opernplatz just in front of Dresdner Bank.
On our last day in Dresden, May and I made straight for the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault), one of Eugen’s and my favorite places. The Saxon Kings’ enormous treasure-house never ceased to amaze. As I stood spellbound by all 140 jewel-encrusted figures that make up Johann Dinglinger’s masterpiece, The Birthday of the Grand Mogul, I felt Eugen looking over my shoulder again. In the afternoon, we went to the Jewish cemetery, which had survived so miraculously, to pay our final respects. Everybody was in place: Bernhard on the east wall, surrounded in marble by his wife and many of his children; Alfred, somewhat independently, on the south wall with his favorite daughter. It was all quite reassuring, but just in case anything happened to the cemetery, I must have taken photographs of about one hundred headstones.
It was time to get back to business. Lili returned to Italy, while I rented a car and drove quickly, right across Germany, back to Stuttgart and the clocks. When we arrived at the Old Castle the next morning, we were greeted by Dr. Heuss, as well as Dr. Irmgard Müsch, the curator of clocks and scientific instruments, and Moritz Paysan, the head restorer. The Renaissance castle, we learned, was home to the Württemberg State Collection and consisted of a staggering eight hundred thousand objects. We were led down the ancient stone stairs of the tower that housed the clocks. Our hosts proudly explained that the collection consisted of nearly seven hundred unique timepieces, dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. However, they only exhibited the most exceptional pieces, maybe forty at a time. When we reached the bottom of the stairway, May and I felt as if we were entering Aladdin’s Cave. Each priceless timepiece was illuminated with invisible lights, sheltered in its own Gothic alcove. We went past an exotically domed clock that looked as if it had been made for the Ottoman Sultan, and then I caught sight of the Orpheus Clock.
Our clock was more golden than I had realized and slightly larger. Once more I had that strong sensation of reconnecting with my ancestors. The privilege of holding what had once been lost was humbling. Yet again, I had underestimated the beauty of the artwork. I began to think of how, almost exactly fourteen years before, Nick and I had held our Degas Paysage for the first time.
A little farther on was the amazing Ostrich, also much larger and more imposing than I had ever imagined. Dr. Müsch proudly demonstrated that, on the rare occasions he was carefully wound up, his wings would still flap, just as they had in 1575. Still deeper in this chamber of marvels we came upon the Reinhold Clock, beautifully lit and shinning in its own Gothic showcase. Moritz Paysan opened the case for me and invited me to pick it up. At first I could not; I had not taken into account its deceptive weight. Johann Reinhold had ingeniously fit together endless cogs and wheels, all made of brass and iron, so that all nine dials could operate independently. Moritz, interestingly, confirmed Fremersdorf’s first impression: on his first attempt to restore the mechanisms, to his surprise he’d discovered sand still inside.
After lunch we made our way to a pleasantly airy conference room, on the other side of the castle complex. Dr. Ewigleben made the introductions. It all seemed very agreeable, but I could not help noticing that, apart from May, I was on my own and about to face nine Germans across the table: two senior officials from the ministry, one translator, and six principals from the museum. I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that legally the clocks were already ours.
Before arriving in Stuttgart I had already sent the museum and the ministry an aggregate chart of the high and low auction estimates that both Christie’s and Sotheby’s had suggested. As soon as the political niceties were over, the senior ministerial counsel outlined the estimates they had received from their expert. To my relief, they were not so far off the mark. It was important to keep a clear objective, and I had a number below which I would not go. The ministry’s counsel then made their offer. I countered by pointing out that, under normal circumstances, a private buyer pays a premium for the privilege of taking an artwork off the market. I was quick to add that I had already made some concessions, largely because of the exemplary way the museum had conducted the restitution. Also, my family appreciated the way our clocks had been cared for, not to mention the spectacular way they were exhibited. Then I spelled out what I would accept. I had a duty to secure the best possible compensation for my family, not least because of the inordinate time we had been deprived of our legacy. Dr. Ewigleben and the counsel for the ministry looked at each other and then back at me: “We accept your terms.” I had done it. It was agreed.
“We also regret what happened to your family,” the official continued. “We are grateful, however, for the opportunity to set, at least, this matter straight.”
We got up from the table, and one by one they all shook my hand. They thanked me for my reasonable and constructive approach.
“I am also grateful that my family’s clocks have found such a good home,” I offered in reply.
Eventually Lili and Eva, and many others, would come to visit our Orpheus Clock and our Reinhold Clock. Lili even got to see her favorite Ostrich again.
• • •
May and I emerged in the October sun exhausted and elated. With deep satisfaction, that evening I broke the news to all the family. Soon, I was receiving thank-you messages from all sorts of unexpected places, and from descendants of Eugen I barely knew. Eighty-four-year-old Alexander, from the shores of Lake Constance in Switzerland, touched me particularly as he recalled his mother telling him how they had been cut off from any Gutmann inheritance. If there had been a curse because of the Silver Collection, had I helped break it?
It occurred to me that the clock, as it turned, counted the good times along with the bad. For many years my family had suffered greatly. I was hoping this fortunate occasion symbolized a new, peaceful, and successful era for the Gutmanns.
• • •
Before returning to Los Angeles I had to visit one more museum, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. After my fairly thorough tour of the museum, one item caught my eye on the way out, a Bohemian crystal cup. I was beginning to develop a photographic memory for at least Fritz’s and Eugen’s collections. I was almost certain I had seen the cup before. This would be a good test. May and I quickly took a dozen pictures of it. As we headed back to Stuttgart and the airport, I began to cross-reference my Eugen Silbersammlung photo file from my laptop on the train. Soon, there it was, the exact image: von Falke number 108; crystal bowl, silver-gilt stand, Prague ca. 1600. I quickly sent off an e-mail inquiry. When we got home, I sent a more formal letter. The last response I received was that they were still looking into it. I added them to the growing list of museums that are supposed to get back to me.
It is time to return to my quest. I will have to end my book.
