Only infrequently is a window opened into the rarefied world of art and private and museum art collections. Sometimes when that happens, we have laid bare the sordid underside of what, from the outside, is generally perceived as a cultured, refined and sophisticated realm.
ART THEFT AND FORGERY have a long history, as does war-time plundering of works of art.
Nonetheless a special place is reserved for the wholesale thievery conducted by the Nazis - who stole literally truck-loads of art and artifacts, notably from Jewish collectors - and the enablers who turned a blind eye, or abetted and benefited from the massive theft.
Thanks to dogged investigation and perseverance, the story has been uncovered and told over the last 15-plus years, notably by Lynn H. Nicholas in The Rape of Europa (1994), and in 1997 by Hector Feliciano in The Lost Museum (JEWISH STAR REVIEW, May 23, 1997).
It is the subject again of a new book, Lost Lives, Lost Art by Melissa M�ller and Monika Tatzkow (Vendome Press, 248 pp., $40).
PRINTED ON COATED HOCK AND FIUJED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, Lost Lives, Lost Art - subtitled "Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice" - is part coffee-table book, part history. It tells the story of looted art through collectors who lost their art to the Nazis, and attempts by their heirs for restitution.
Fifteen Jewish collectors are the focus of the book, and their collections included both the classical and the avant-garde. Even though he declared so much modern art "degenerate", Hitler (together with Hermann Goering, his top Nazi armed forces commander) had voracious appetites for all of it.
They kept what they wanted for themselves, consigned some to museums and the rest they sold, creating a busy war-time art market through unscrupulous dealers willing to trade in stolen work. In the photo of the two above, Hitler is presenting Goering with "The Falconer" (1880), by the 19th Century Austrian academic painter Hans Makart. Hitler bought the painting legitimately; it is now in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
Some of the looted art changed hands numerous times, and eventually made its way to U.S. museums. One such example came to be included in Chicago's Art Institute.
In 1987 Daniel Searle, former head of the then Skokie-based pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle, purchased a small pastel by the Impressionist master Edgar Degas, titled "Landscape with Smokestacks" (1890; below). He had been advised on the purchase by experts at the Art Institute, and acquired the work through a New York art agent.
It hung in his Winnetka home until he asked the Art Institute, where he is a Ufe trustee, to house it for him.
There it remained in storage until heirs of Friedrich and Louise Gutmann (both of whom were killed in the Holocaust) traced its provenance back to their family (Jewish Star, March 31, 1997; August 21, 1998). It had been looted by the Nazis from the Paris warehouse where Gutmann had sent it for safe-keeping.
The story of its return - like so many of these stories - was a messy one that played out over a number of years and in the courts.
After steady rejection of the Goodmans' claims by Searle and his lawyers, a Chicago judge refused to dismiss the case, and it was set to be heard by a jury in 1998.
At that point, on the initiative of the Goodmans, the dispute was resolved in an out-of-court settlement that involved a threeway split among the heirs, Searle and the Art Institute.
"Landscape with Smokestacks" is now part of the Impressionist collection at the Art Institute. When it first went on view, not a word was stated in the description adjacent to the painting about its being looted from its original owners, or about the ensuing controversy concerning its ownership (Jewish Star, June 25, 1999).
THE GUTMANN FAMILY IS NOT ONE OF THOSE SELECTED for inclusion in Lost Lives, Lost Art, but the name does come up in connection with Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer of Vienna, collectors whose story is related here.
While the family name is not familiar to most readers, looted art from their collection certainly is. In 2006 it made headlines when paintings of Adele BlochBauer by Gustave Klimt - especially the golden "Adele BlochBauer I" (this page, at center) that graces the dustjacket of Lost Lives, Lost Art - were restored to the family's heirs and brought from Austria to New York.
Shortly thereafter, the famous Klimt work, completed in 1907, was purchased by Ronald Lauder, the Jewish communal leader. Today it hangs in his Neue Galerie in New York.
Also profiled is a branch of the Rothschild family - brothers Alphonse and Louis, Viennese bankers and collectors who were forced to turn over real estate and art to the Third Reich.
Alphonse died in America in 1942, and his wife requested the return of some of the looted property as early as 1945. Louis, also by now in America, also filed claims for restitution immediately after the war.
While some restitution was granted, the collections were deemed to be part of Austria's "cultural heritage", and thus subject to steep export taxes.
Only by "donating" parts of the collection were the owners permitted to export some works.
Not until 1999 were the coerced "gifts" returned to descendants of the original owners, following the passage in 1998 of Austria's Art iRestitution Act.
IN THE 192OS IN BERUN, Paul Westheim purchased works by contemGerman artists, so that his apartment "resembled a modern art gallery". The Nazis would soon declare many of the works "degenerate".
As early as 1931, sensing what was coming, Westheim first attempted to get his collection out of Germany, offering it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The offer was turned down.
Soon Westheim, attacked as a "cultural Bolshevik", was forced to flee. He made his way to Paris, after hiding his collection with a Berlin friend, Charlotte Weidler.
In 1941 he obtained a visa for Mexico, where he became a citizen. His attempts at restitution were unsuccessful, and he died in 1963.
Like Westheim, German industrialist Max Silberberg, a resident of Breslau, also began collecting in the 1920s, but his focus was the Impressionists.
Forced by the Nazis to sell off his collection, Silberberg and bis wife died in Auschwitz.
After the war, their son Alfred was unsuccessful in his restitution claims, until in 1999 several works were located and returned to Alfred's widow.
And so the stories - variations on a theme - are told. At best, the outcomes are bittersweet.
SINCE THE HRST INVESTIGATIONS into the whereabouts of Nazi-looted art, in Europe and this country have opened their collections to scrutiny so that the provenance of war-time and post-war acquisitions can be determined.
Some 65 years after the end of World War ?, heirs of many of the collectors continue to search for looted art that once belonged to their families, and seek its return.
Writing with a magazine style for a popular audience, authors M�ller and Tatzkow offer profiles of these 15 collectors, but do not go far beyond that. While we are given deta�s of their lives, they are presented for the most part in isolation, without a broader context.
Yet at the same time, these stories need telling, and we can be grateful to the authors for filling in these details. Some of the stories are ongoing, as justice continues to be sought by heirs of the victims.
[Author Affiliation]
BY GILA WERTHEIMER
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
