QUARANTINE BLOG # 229

November 14, 2020

Prologue

It was a fairy tale winter morning in 2006 when a young Los Angeles attorney trudged through the snowy gardens of the Belvedere Palace to lay claim to a painting he had spent years fighting for.

Belvedere Palace

The lawyer was Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of a venerated Viennese composer who had fled the rise of Hitler. The painting Schoenberg sought was a shimmering gold masterpiece, painted a century earlier, by Gustav Klimt – the portrait of Viennese society beauty, Adele Bloch-Bauer. Austrians regarded the painting as their Mona Lisa.

Randol Schoenberg

Inside, Schoenberg was greeted by the director of the Austrian Gallery, Gerbert Frodl. Schoenberg was the last person Frodl, or Austria, wanted to see.

Gerbert Frodl

Frodl quickly handed Schoenberg off to an administrator. Deep under the museum, the administrator opened a heavy door to reveal a strange chamber, an immense and fortified refuge, built during World War II to withstand aerial bombardment.

The bunker under construction

The bunker sheltered the artistic treasures of Middle Europe, “collected” by the Nazis – meaning stolen, appropriated as ransom from families of Jews, who were humiliated, fleeced, and finally hounded out of Vienna. If they stayed, they died.

When the administrator stopped, Schoenberg stared at Adele, the “Lady in Gold.”

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

For eight years, Schoenberg had argued this painting did not belong to Austria. Most people would have given up long ago. But Schoenberg had a remarkable client, with a stubbornness to match his own. 

At 90 years old, Maria Bloch-Bauer Altmann, was the last living link to her aunt Adele, who was the muse, and perhaps much more, of Gustav Klimt. Never had a little old Jewish lady in LA caused Austria so much trouble.

Maria Bloch-Bauer Altmann

The painting began its journey to this bomb shelter half a century before. Vienna was ruled by a native son, Adolf Hitler. An attorney, Erich Fuhrer, with a serendipitous name, entered the four-story Bloch-Bauer palais just off the Ringstrasse, or “Ring Street.” Across the square was the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Once the academy had rejected Hitler, when he was a penniless young art student. Now nothing in Vienna could be denied to Adolf Hitler.

Erich Fuhrer

In the bedroom of the deceased Adele Bloch-Bauer, Fuhrer spotted a portrait that had dazzled turn-of-the-century Vienna. The fact that the woman in the golden painting was Jewish was inconvenient, but not incurable. When it was displayed in the Austrian Gallery, the placard on the wall gave no clues as to the identity of the woman in the portrait. Any hint of her Jewish origins would betray the Nazi lie of racial superiority.

The gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was called the “Lady in Gold.” It would take years for Adele’s truth to get out.

“Lady in Gold”

Introducing Adele

The discovery of a golden scroll in a child’s grave near Vienna with a Jewish prayer – “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is Our God! The Lord is One!” – placed the Jewish presence at least as far back as the 3rd century. Christianity replaced paganism, and  Jewish citizens were tolerated.

The Shema

Gradually, Jews won respect. The ruling Habsburgs courted wealthy Jewish families to finance railroads and factories, honoring them with aristocratic titles handed out like party favors. Vienna gained some of Middle Europe’s most talented minds, like psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, composer Gustav Mahler, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Sigmund Freud

Anti-Semitism joined the rising prominence of Jewish families.  Karl Lueger, elected mayor on an anti-Semitic platform, took office in 1897. He electrified crowds by blaming Jewish entrepreneurs for Vienna’s economic woes, but he introduced electric streetlights, a public marketplace, and municipal gasworks – at the same time pleading for financial assistance from Jewish bankers. 

Karl Lueger

For members of the privileged Jewish elites like Moritz Bauer, the crude anti-Semitism of politicians like Lueger was simply background noise.  The Bauers were newcomers to Austria when their daughter was born, on August 9, 1881. They named her Adele, Old German for “Noble.”

Moritz Bauer

Fast forward to 1898. At 16, Adele Bauer would read a poem in honor of an upcoming family wedding. Her sister, Therese Bauer, was engaged to Gustav Bloch, the son of a prominent Czech sugar baron.

Adele Bauer, age 16

Gustav’s brother, Ferdinand, standing beside him, eyed Adele. Ferdinand was twice Adele’s age. But Ferdinand was hooked. Here are the Bloch-Bauers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXAvUXnyrLE.

Adele’s father was an ambitious man. By the time she came of age, Moritz Bauer’s bank was the 7th largest in the empire. He was president of the Oriental Railway, the Vienna component of a large-scale plan to create a line from Berlin to Baghdad. By 1888, the railroad carrying the glamorous luxury cars of the Orient Express.

The Orient Express

Moritz had successfully steered his eldest daughter, Therese, into marriage with Gustav Bloch, an attorney for the Orientbahn. It was difficult for Moritz to imagine a more brilliant match for Adele than Gustav Bloch’s brother, Ferdinand, captain of an emerging sugar-beet industry.

Ferdinand Bloch

On December 19, 1899, Adele and Ferdinand were married.

At the same time, the finest painter in Austria was becoming a celebrity. When Gustav Klimt strode into Vienna’s Cafe Central, heads turned. Women found him alluring. Klimt’s friends called him Konig – the King.

Gustav Klimt

Next week, Part 2, the introduction of “The Lady in Gold.”

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