Hitler's Last Hostages Page 20

  Living in Dresden with Cornelius, now ten, and Renata, now seven, Gurlitt and his wife received a flood of letters from their friends in Hamburg, terrified by bombings and seemingly unaware of Gurlitt’s work for the Führer. “The English have done monstrously precise work. I believe that a natural disaster would hardly have been able to accomplish what they have completed in about six hours. What will remain of poor Germany if this rage doesn’t stop? The poor Fortress of Europe without a roof!” wrote one friend on 20 August. A Doctor Merck wrote of depression, noting, “When and how will this all be withstood and when will life get going again? I wager I’ll hardly live to see it.” “I find it bizarre that I’m even still alive,” wrote another friend on the back of a postcard urging Germans to carry any burdens for Hitler that they could, because the Führer knew “only struggle, work and worry.”26

  Gurlitt was also in close contact with military officers, who exchanged letters with him during this month that all described low morale. Kurt Fessel, an SS Hauptsturmführer (captain) stationed in Prague, wrote to Gurlitt to lament that the bombings in Hamburg had caused his pregnant sister to miscarry. Carl M. H. Wilkens, a Hamburg resident and commander stationed in Lutsk, in modern-day Ukraine, expressed fury that he was so jaded by his surroundings in eastern Europe that he could not fully regret the destruction of Hamburg. “I’m very much affected, but the life in the Eastern areas has already blunted a lot of my bitterness, and I’ve barely been truly conscious that my Hamburg home is now destroyed,” he wrote.

  As around 80 percent of Hamburg had been bombed, Gurlitt’s friends delivered details of the destruction. “Dear Dr. Gurlitt, I wanted to quickly let you know your house in the Alte Rabenstraße has totally burned down,” wrote a notary named Dr. Ratjen on a postcard, mailed with a purple postage stamp of Hitler that bore a stamp cancellation celebrating the destruction of thirty-two million tons of Allied shipping material. One friend, architect Werner Kallmorgen, wrote bluntly, “Never come back to Hamburg, it looks harrowing.”27

  Reading this batch of letters, Gurlitt swiftly and stoically pulled off new deals for the Führermuseum, selling about twenty works to the Führermuseum that he recorded in a 25 August invoice. It included a Van Dyck for 250,000 reichsmarks and an Ingres portrait for 300,000 reichsmarks.28

  A few weeks later, his team closed the deal with the French regarding the Schloss Affair. The Nazis allowed the Louvre to pick 49 paintings, while the Führermuseum picked 262 artworks, mostly paintings. The Nazis then transferred fifty million French francs to the French government’s bureau to address “Jewish questions,” the department that handled the liquidation of the property of Jewish French families. The remaining twenty-two paintings were sold to the French art dealer Jean Francois Lefranc to distribute as he wished. The family of Lucie Schloss, the Jewish widow who had inherited the collection, received nothing. Hitler’s art team subsequently delivered their stolen works to Hitler’s air raid shelter in Munich, until they could be displayed in Linz once the Führermuseum was constructed there after the war.29

  By the end of 1943, Gurlitt’s business buying art for himself was booming as he scavenged the areas that the Nazis had conquered. Six years before, in 1937, he had purchased around half of his artworks in Berlin, far more than in other cities. Now, emboldened by his Führermuseum credentials and the ease with which he could travel to occupied countries to exploit their markets, he made around 70 percent of his annual purchases in Paris, mostly from his Dutch dealer, Theo Hermsen; he made around 20 percent in The Hague, where Hermsen also had a presence, reflecting the widespread connections cultivated by this small clique of war profiteers.30

  Around this time, Gurlitt acquired several stunning paintings by respected Old Masters for his personal collection, including a luminous work from the 1630s by Jan Brueghel the Younger of Dutch villagers welcoming home sailors. Painted with oils on copper, the blue water and the peasants’ colorful clothing glow. Other works from the Low Countries included a pristine Isaak van Nickelen oil on canvas circa 1696 of the bright white arches of St. Bavo’s Church in Haarlem, Holland, and an early seventeenth-century oil on panel of the Marriage at Cana by the Flemish artist Frans Francken the Younger in which the lavish costumes of the wedding guests are painted with painstaking detail.

  What is certain is that, even if he paid something for them, it was a fraction of the paintings’ true value, and the money probably did not reach the genuine owners. It is inconceivable that on his salary Gurlitt could have acquired the more than 1,000 artworks he obtained during the war were it not for the dirty money he took in exchange for working as a high-ranking member of Hitler’s Führermuseum Project.

  Hitler had largely retreated from the public eye by the end of 1942. For the past twenty years he had thrived on holding large political rallies, seemingly speaking off the cuff and giving impassioned speeches to raucous and adoring supporters. Now, however, though smaller crowds still came out to see him as he conducted official functions and on special occasions, he was aware that the somber mood enveloping the nation would not abate in the foreseeable future. By year’s end, he had given only two public addresses, compared to five in 1942, seven in 1941, and nine in 1940.31 His generals grew ever more anxious after Sicily was surrendered to British and American troops and Allied bombing continued to devastate German cities.

  Yet Hitler’s passion for art proceeded unabated in 1943 and 1944, as Goebbels summarized in a 25 January 1944 journal entry after a meeting during which he and Hitler discussed “a thousand-and-one questions about cultural and artistic life which absolutely fascinate the Führer.” Unlike millions of his fellow Germans, Goebbels was as admiring of his Führer as ever. “I am amazed at how accurately informed he is about hundreds of details,” he reported.32

  Much of Hitler’s enthusiasm was due to the fact that, even as the military was bogged down by mounting challenges, the Führermuseum dealers were picking up speed. At the end of January, Voss bought for the museum several works from Gurlitt that included Scene of the Grande Canal in Venice by Francesco Guardi, an eighteenth-century Viennese classicist painter, for 60,000 reichsmarks and a bacchanalia set in Venice circa 1510, by an unknown artist, for 30,000 reichsmarks.33 Voss also purchased from Gurlitt Winter Landscape with Windmills, Skating, and Ice Hockey Players, a charming scene by the seventeenth-century Dutch realist painter Pieter Jacobscz Codde, for 20,000 reichsmarks and Landscape with Turkeys by Giuseppe Crespi, a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artist known for his unconventional artistic lighting in paintings, for 75,000 reichsmarks. Gustav Rochlitz, a Parisian dealer, had sold Gurlitt the Crespi; Gurlitt chose not to ask for the provenance of Rochlitz’s inventory. It is unclear where or how he acquired the other pieces as he did not preserve receipts in his personal files.

  Gurlitt was able to benefit from deals he had made before joining the Führermuseum Project. Though he had to account for any transfers of funds to his work account from the Führermuseum budget, he could use his own money earned from dealing on the grey market to buy pictures and claim that he had acquired them in undocumented sales before he worked for Voss. If he then sold them on for the Führermuseum, he earned a larger profit than he would have from a commission alone. This way, he got paid twice. Gurlitt sold a drawing by Moritz von Schwind, a nineteenth-century Austrian romanticist, to Voss for 12,000 reichsmarks; he had acquired it with his own funds for only 1,000 reichsmarks.34

  Gurlitt earned a reputation as a tireless worker, albeit a moody one. “Sometimes he is as angry as a film diva but then very nice again,” Gustav Rochlitz complained to Voss in a letter. Rochlitz, who had previously sold art to Gurlitt for which he received funds out of Gurlitt’s personal account, also worked with him to secure purchases using Führermuseum funds on behalf of Voss.35 Despite his occasional testiness, Gurlitt had the full confidence of the Reich’s Chamber of Art, which would routinely respond to—and grant—his requests for money to purchase art within hours, fully trusting in his efficiency and arti
stic judgment.36 In March and April 1944, Gurlitt used the Führermuseum budget to purchase fifty-three paintings and around twenty drawings, miniatures, and pastels for 1.7 million reichsmarks, for which Gurlitt was paid a finder’s fee; the amount is unknown, but it was likely around 15 percent, his standard commission.37

  In public Gurlitt appeared to be indifferent about Jews involved in the art world who had disappeared. When Paul Roemer, a Berlin art dealer, asked him about the provenance of a Delacroix work on paper, Gurlitt responded laconically, “I don’t know anymore whom I bought that sheet from, probably a non-Aryan dealer who’s gone underground, so I can’t find him anymore,” implying that the former owner was probably Jewish and most likely now dead.38

  Hitler and his entourage relocated to the Berghof for the spring of 1944. It would be his last there. Hitler instructed that the acquisition of appropriate art should continue briskly. By this point, he had spent 92.6 million reichsmarks assembling the Führermuseum collection, but he dreamed of further acquisitions. A renowned magician entertained guests at Eva Braun’s invitation, but no sleight of hand could disguise the course of the war that summer.39 By the end of 6 June—D-day for Operation Overlord—155,000 men and 16,000 Allied vehicles had successfully advanced into Normandy. The Allied invasion threatened the plans to continue gathering art from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, a point Voss emphasized by writing to Gurlitt and instructing him to send future art through diplomatic channels with the aid of the German embassy in Paris.40 Despite the Allied military push toward Paris, Gurlitt closed a huge deal in the summer of 1944, purchasing French Beauvais tapestries for between 2.2 million and 3.13 million reichsmarks. His finder’s fee was a staggering 156,500 reichsmarks.41

  As the Allies began retaking France, Gurlitt pressed forward with an enthusiasm that astounded Voss. Perhaps he knew that the years of wartime opportunity for him were nearing their end. Gurlitt sent a cautiously optimistic letter to two friends who had been close to the family since his father Cornelius was alive. “What exactly will the next year bring for us and you all? One cannot make any plans at all, instead one has to wait and see what fate brings us, hopefully nothing so burdensome,” he mused.42

  Leading up to the summer of 1944, Hitler had been confident of his invincibility. In addition to a narrowly unsuccessful assassination attempt by Johann Georg Elser at the fifteenth anniversary of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch on 8 November 1938, Hitler had already survived a botched attempted plane explosion on 13 March 1943 by Henning von Tresckow and a bungled 21 March 1943 attempt by Colonel Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, who had transported a bag loaded with explosives to a show of confiscated Soviet military equipment in Berlin.43

  On 20 July 1944, Hitler survived another attempt, this time from Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a thirty-six-year-old lieutenant colonel, who rigged a time-delayed detonator in a briefcase bomb that he left in a barracks at the Wolfsschanze, the military headquarters on the eastern front where Hitler was attending a meeting. Although the briefcase exploded, Hitler was relatively unharmed. Instead, he was left with a feeling of increased omnipotence and disdain for his detractors. “If this Stauffenberg had drawn a pistol and shot me down, then he would have been a man. But instead he is a miserable coward!” he told an aide.44 Stauffenberg was soon discovered and summarily executed.

  To his secretary, Traudl Junge, and a female colleague he declared, “Yet more proof that Fate has chosen me for my mission, or I wouldn’t be alive now.” Thrilled by his seeming immortality, Hitler sent his tattered uniform to Eva Braun as a memento.45

  Shortly before the United States liberated Paris on 25 August 1944, Gurlitt conducted his last major deal in the City of Light, acquiring 610,000 reichsmarks’ worth of art; it is unclear exactly what the works were or whether they were for his collection, the Führermuseum, or a combination of both. This deal was, however, a clear testament to Gurlitt’s desire to continue cooperating with Hitler’s regime for his own monetary gain, long after many other accomplices tasked with traveling outside Germany to conduct missions had backed away, using the increasingly dangerous travel conditions as an excuse.46

  It is extremely likely that, by this time, Gurlitt had acquired dozens of works by the most significant names in modern French art. They would remain in his permanent collection after the war. Among them were several sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by the most revered French Impressionists. Gurlitt carefully brought back to Germany a fragile three-inch-tall wax-and-cork statue by Edgar Degas of a woman bathing, along with at least four other works by the artist, including one of his classic portraits of lithe ballet dancers rehearsing. He acquired Édouard Manet’s dramatic 1883 painting Sea in Stormy Weather, showing two sailboats battling the rain on a choppy ocean, and his circa 1864 pastel landscape View of Sainte-Adresse, as well as three works by Camille Pissarro and an oil portrait of a nude young brunette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, along with at least six other Renoir works. Gurlitt also obtained at least five works by the French realist Gustave Courbet, including a portrait of the nineteenth-century French socialist Jean Journet painted around 1850.

  Works by pointillists were rare because the painting style, consisting of hundreds or even thousands of tiny dots on the canvas, required a tremendous amount of time to master and execute. Yet Gurlitt acquired at least five works by the pointillist master Paul Signac, including Quai de Clichy, a charming riverboat scene.

  Gurlitt coveted paintings and sculptures; dealers and collectors generally regard them as more significant representatives of an artist’s career, and they are thus more valuable on the market. Yet he also recognized that works on paper were easier to transport. Woodcuts, lithographs, and etchings were also particularly difficult to trace as artists usually produced them in limited editions. As well as a breathtaking marble sculpture of a crouching woman, a bronze work of a daughter of the Greek god Danaus, and a terra-cotta female figure, Gurlitt’s Rodin collection included roughly thirty works on paper by the artist, fascinating preparatory drawings for numerous sculptures. Additionally, Gurlitt obtained at least six woodcuts by Paul Gauguin. One depicted the origin story of the European continent in Greek mythology, in which Zeus rapes a mortal named Europa, impregnating her with the future Cretian king Minos.

  After the war, “The Rape of Europa” would become shorthand in the international art world for the confiscation and looting of artworks by the Germans.

  When Bulgaria declared war on Germany on 8 September, sensing that the once formidable Reichswehr was weakening, Hitler knew the Reich urgently needed more troops, and the Nazis shut down nearly all businesses to free up men for the front lines. For years, German companies had been taking full advantage of forced labor, beginning with the exploitation of Jewish Europeans. Bayer Pharmaceuticals purchased Jewish women from Auschwitz for seven hundred reichsmarks each to use as human guinea pigs for drug tests. At Ravensbrück, the largest all-female camp located just outside Berlin, doctors injected women with gas bacilli and staphylococcus and presented reports on their torture at prestigious medical conferences. Siemens used prisoners as slaves, and Degussa Goldhandel processed the gold fillings taken from the teeth of murdered Jews at Auschwitz, melting the metal into bars. Stolen gold, often from the teeth of Jewish Germans, represented 95 percent of Degussa’s gold intake between 1940 and 1944.47

  By late 1944, when Germany’s industry was depleted of able-bodied men, private firms accepted help from the Nazi government to conscript non-Jewish Europeans as well. BMW exploited 16,600 displaced workers from areas the Nazis had invaded,48 while Daimler-Benz conscripted around 6,000 displaced and even kidnapped workers to make aircraft engines and other military equipment.49 Krupp used connections within the Nazi Party to move refugees to its factory near Essen, placing these largely Slavic and eastern European workers in particularly poor housing.50

  Yet, despite the shortage of workers and resources, Hitler was adamant that the Führermuseum Project would not be paused. On 12 September, th
e Reich Chamber of Culture wrote to Gurlitt’s wife, Helene, the official owner of the family business, to reassure her that “art publishers and dealers [were] exempt from the closing of all businesses,” and she was officially “authorized to continue her business just as before.”51 The letter reassured her greatly; she was already struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy for Cornelius and Benita, now eleven and nine years old, who like other Dresden schoolchildren had to wear identity cards around their necks in case they were maimed beyond recognition by a bomb.

  Helene’s husband was still traveling frequently, leaving her to manage the household alone. His trips to Paris in 1944 had been so frequent that the German government issued his war rations in a form of traveler’s checks. His time in Paris wasn’t limited to work, however. He was also conducting an affair with Olga Chauvet, a native Russian eighteen years his junior who lived in the rue de Four and was estranged from her husband, a Swiss diplomat and member of Geneva’s wealthy Chauvet family. It’s unclear whether Helene ever learned of her husband’s infidelities, though they were noted by Parisian officials in reports for the Allies after the war.52

  Continuing his work for the Führermuseum, around this time Gurlitt sold six paintings to Voss, including a still life by Franz Snyders for 70,000 Dutch guilders.53 He also acquired a still life of fruit and a wine glass by Hendrik van Struck and a painting of a wreath of flowers at a spring by Hieronymus Galle, both for 20,000 Dutch guilders; it is unclear who sold him the works.54

  Gurlitt did not shy away from socializing with the same artists whose artworks he acquired for his secret collection through dubious means. In autumn 1944, he traveled to Amsterdam and visited the sixty-year-old Max Beckmann, whom Hitler had labeled degenerate years before and whose confiscated work had appeared in the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. Deprived of a livelihood, Beckmann was in dire financial straits, and Gurlitt bought the painting Bar, Brown from him for a decent price, also bringing back several more pieces for Munich dealer Günter Franke to sell.55