Quarantine Blog # 243

November 28, 2020

Part 3

Escape!

In mid-July 1938, Maria Altmann awoke to loud knocking. She pulled on a dress and opened the door to Gestapo officers. The men presented a gaunt, sunburnt man, his head fuzzy with short stubble. It was a fragile-looking Fritz, who bore no resemblance to the suave dandy who had won her heart. But he was alive.

Maria and Fritz before Auschwitz

Bernhard Altmann, Fritz’s brother, finally got them a message: “I have found a way for you to leave. You must do exactly what I say, and tell no one. Wait until you hear from me.”

Maria got word that the family’s jeweler needed to see her. He gave her two diamond earrings that matched Adele’s necklace. Maria had been forced to give the necklace to Landau. 

The necklace in Adele's portrait

Replica of Adele's necklace

“I saved these for you. They could help you.” Meaning that they could be used as a bribe.

Maria asked Landau for permission to leave the house with Fritz for a doctor’s appointment. They took a city train, getting off at different stations to see if anyone was following. No one seemed to be. 

Another day, Maria told the guard they were going to the dentist. They walked a few blocks, hailed a cab, and asked to go to the airport. Maria had Adele’s diamond earrings in her brassiere. A Catholic woman Maria knew had purchased tickets for a flight to Cologne.

From Cologne they boarded a train to the German city of Aachen. There they gave a cabdriver an address of a safe house on the border, but the driver could not find it.

Maria and Fritz began walking, unsure of where they were going, when Maria saw a young priest. “Ah yes, a lot of my people go to him,” the priest said, when they showed him the address. “I’ll take you.”

The priest stopped at the house of a farmer, Jan Honnef. His farmland ran along the border. Jan, Maria and Fritz waited for the shift change at the border post which would allow a several-minute lull in vigilance. Across the border, they were taken to a little hotel in Maastricht.

At dawn, Maria and Fritz ran to catch the train to Amsterdam. In the Dutch capital, Bernhard had a private plane waiting, with champagne and caviar. At Liverpool, Bernhard’s contact in Immigration welcomed them warmly. 1300 miles, and they had made it.

Stealing Beauty

On January 28,1939, a group of Austrian art curators gathered at Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer’s Elisabethstrasse palace to divide up Ferdinand and Adele’s art. They ignored the golden portrait of Adele. The Fuhrer wanted paintings that celebrated German values, not portraits of decadent Jewish society women.

The fate of the Gustav Klimt’s painting of Adele was left to Erich Fuhrer, a hack lawyer with a pedigree to match his serendipitous name. Fuhrer had the lucrative concession for managing the state theft of property of Jewish families. 

On September 30, 1941, he secured for the Belvedere Palace the spectacular gold portrait of Adele.

The Belvedere art historians knew, of course, that Adele Bloch-Bauer was Jewish, but the painting could be reinvented. The Belvedere announced the acquisition of an “awe-inspiring portrait of a woman covered with a shimmering crust of gold.” The gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer now had a new German title: “Lady in Gold.”

The Nero Decree

In the wee hours of April 29, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Across Nazi Germany, a scorched-earth farewell was taking place. Hitler had issued his “Demolitions on Reich Territory” order in March. Its nickname, the “Nero Decree,” revealed its intent – destroy everything that would help the invading Allies. Including the art work.

In the Austrian village of Alt Aussee a salt mine cradled a repository of stolen European art once destined for Hitler’s planned Fuhrermuseum in Linz. The mine held more than 6,577 paintings, from Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece to Vermeer’s The Artist in His Studio and a Michelangelo sculpture, Bruges Madonna.

Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece

Vermeer’s The Artist in His Studio

Michelangelo’s  Bruges Madonna

Bruges Madonna recovered at Alt Aussee

As American troops approached, August Eigruber, the Nazi governor who had ruled the region like a king, feverishly called for the contents of Alt Aussee to be destroyed. 500 pound bombs were put in place. 

The day before Allied forces arrived, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the SS intelligence chief, ordered the bombs removed. On May 5, the mines were safely sealed with explosives to protect the art from the Nero Decree.

When U.S. soldiers finally entered the mine, they found a seemingly endless supply of paintings and statues, packed deep into the mountain passage. 

Klimt’s gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer made it through the war. Her family and friends had been insulted, murdered, driven to suicide. Her name had been erased. Now Adele joined Europe’s survivors.

Ferdinand, Maria’s uncle, survived the war, but his world had been betrayed. A former friend, Karl Renner, who lead the postwar government, declared that “restitution of property stolen from Jews” should go “not to individual victims, but to a collective restitution fund ... to prevent a massive, sudden flow of returning exiles.”

The war was over. But the people and the life that Ferdinand had treasured were gone, leaving him, at 82, an old man alone in a hotel room. On October 22, 1945, Ferdinand signed his final will and testament. On November 13, a hotel maid came in to make up the room and discovered Ferdinand’s body.

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

Historical Amnesia

It was difficult for the Bloch-Bauers to recover the remnants of their lives after the war. Officials who had played roles in the art theft during the war were now in the position to deny families their paintings.

In 1965, Walter Frodl, a curator for Hitler’s museum in Linz, was named president of Austria’s Federal Monument Office. He was now positioned to block the return of art he had helped steal.

Then a new generation of Austrians emerged who did not participate in the denial and deceit. One of these was Hubertus Czernin, a young crusading journalist.

Hubertus Czernin

Many buyers claimed they had no idea the paintings might be Nazi loot. In Europe  purchasers could say they bought the painting “in good faith.” In the United States, buyers were under pressure to prove they had diligently researched the paintings’ wartime provenance.

Austrian Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer said the government would examine the provenance of art works in museums. Hubertus decided to take a look for himself. His first article appeared in February 1998, and it was damning. One of the world’s most recognizable paintings, the gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, did not appear to have been “donated” at all. It had been stolen from her husband. Austria had concealed the evidence and refused to return stolen art.

A new art restitution law was introduced to the Parliament. State-held art that had been obtained under duress was to be returned.

Next week: The Conclusion.

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