In 2010, Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, part-Jewish museum director, art critic and dealer for the Nazis, who died in a car crash in 1956, attracted the attention of customs agents when he boarded a train from Munich to Switzerland with €9,000 (about $12,000) in his pocket. Twenty years prior, he had sold Max Beckmann’s “The Lion Tamer” through Kunsthaus Lempertz auction house to pay for some medical expenses (he had never worked) and deposited the proceeds (around €400,000) into a Swiss bank account, after returning 45% to the Flechtheim heirs. During the reign of Hitler, Jewish dealers were obligated to sell their collections below market prices. Those who didn’t sell and emigrate in time were forced to stand by and watch as their art was confiscated by the Nazis. Later, they were sent to concentration camps.
The Allied force called the Monuments Men united to locate the works that were lost between 1933 and 1945, eventually returning more than five million stolen pieces to their rightful owners. (Upon questioning, the elder Gurlitt explained to Americans that his collection had been incinerated in the 1945 bombing of Dresden, a lie his son considers heroic.) However, many more objects of art remain in circulation. Germany does not have a restitution law – the claims deadline under the original law expired back in the 1960s. While the 1998 Washington Conference Principles require state museums to identify lost art and return it to the heirs, this restitution obligation does not apply to private owners. German officials have designated a six-person committee to determine the provenance of more than a thousand pieces of artwork confiscated from Gurlitt’s Munich apartment in early 2012.
The German magazine Der Spiegel’s Õzlem Gezer’s interview with Gurlitt, “Interview with a Phantom: Cornelius Gurlitt Shares His Secrets,” is a fascinating and telling read. It tells of an elderly man (Gurlitt is almost 81) who lives in a world of his own, literally and figuratively. He considers himself to be the rightful owner of the artwork and is dumbfounded by everybody else’s failure to see it his way. Incensed at the crowds near his apartment, he blames the customs investigators, who broke into his place to confiscate his possessions, for putting him in this privacy-lacking hell. Gurlitt misses his dear Picassos, Matisses and Chagalls tremendously and can’t understand what it is that the public wants from him. After all, he was following his father’s lead to guard the art. According to the son, Hildebrand Gurlitt protected it “against being burned by the Nazis, against the bombs, against the Russians and against the Americans.”
Like Dostoevsky’s nameless Underground Man who can’t even look his coworkers in the eye, Gurlitt hates the society he lives in, considering himself to be an impostor. Terribly troubled by the lack of privacy, he wishes some non-violent event would refocus the attention of the media outside his place. Taking the train to his doctor’s office, he chooses to sit in the open coach car so that he won’t have to be confronted with anyone’s stare. He writes down his statements to the doctor on index cards from which he will read while in the office. Rejecting his doctor’s recommendations to move into a nursing home (Gurlitt has a weak heart), he soldiers on, traveling hundreds of kilometers to appointments every three months. To avoid having to visit a restaurant, Gurlitt brings food with him to eat at the hotel. To hide himself from the crowds, he wraps a huge scarf around his face. He shares with Gezer that, when a counselor arrived to talk him through the confiscation, he sent her away, horrified by the prospect of having to talk about his feelings to a complete stranger.
Change, like people, is unwelcome. Annoyed at the fact that his younger sister passed away before him, Gurlitt says to Gezer, “She should have outlived me,” so that he wouldn’t have to deal with this fiasco on his own. After the art seizure, Gurlitt had nightmares and couldn’t sleep at all. He acknowledges that he didn’t consider the ramifications of possessing the stolen works, never believing them to be anybody’s but his own, thus never paying taxes on them. Instead of seeing the pieces as possible amends for the Nazis’ atrocities, Gurlitt saw them as his friends. Having given up television in 1963, he spends his days reading and writing. Completely oblivious to current realities, such as cell phones and the internet, Gurlitt prefers to experience his life through literature and reside in the world where people mail letters written on a typewriter and signed with a fountain pen – his method of reserving his hotel stays. Gurlitt rejects current fashion, choosing to wear a coat that is now too large rather than buy another one. Similarly, he doesn’t want to find another internist, despite the considerable distance he must travel to see his doctor and all the inconveniences that result from these trips.
Like the Underground Man, Gurlitt rages against his universe. Unlike him, Gurlitt does not insert himself into brawls or bump against officers in provocation. Confident in his virtue, Gurlitt doesn’t need to prove that human behavior is governed by unselfish motives – he merely wants to resume his seclusion among his friends and loved ones – “his” paintings. He longs to reunite with the art to return to his life of meaninglessness. Gurlitt wants to be forgotten, uninvited to parties and dismissed by anyone he bumps into – always by accident, of course. Unlike the Underground Man, Gurlitt doesn’t see refuge in beauty as a temporary solution – it’s his life. While both see love as a way out of misery, each defines “love” differently. For the Underground Man, love is a romantic attachment, however brief. For Gurlitt, love is comfort among inanimate stand-ins for close ones – the artworks. (Gurlitt has never been in love and told Gezer “there is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures.”) Both definitions offer the men ways of identifying themselves. While the Underground Man becomes the lover of a woman, Gurlitt is a lover of his art.
Looking at the favorites in his collection was Gurlitt’s nightly activity. He’d carefully unwrap the pieces, taking them out of a suitcase. This constant in his routine no longer exists, confounding him. He doesn’t know what to do instead because, content to follow others’ orders, he has never been the decider. (His father’s wishes led to his choice of study at college – art history – and his mother’s Bohemian lifestyle guided their move to Schwabing.) His inability to stray from his anachronistic lifestyle and established entertainment causes Gurlitt to feel misery and resentment. Rather than give the authorities the benefit of the doubt, believing they acted in good faith to return the art to the families from which it was confiscated, Gurlitt cries with the annoyance of a young boy whose ice cream had fallen, “Give it back!” Instead of seeking an escape from a nihilistic life, he searches for a return to it. Longing for the unconditional love of the paintings, he contradicts the Underground Man, who rejects Liza’s genuine affection. For Gurlitt, life is not simply pointless, as it is for Dostoevsky’s character. For him, life is pointless when it is devoid of his treasured “pictures.”
Editor’s note: in addition to the cited material, the following sources were consulted:
“Germany Plans to Publish List of Nazi-Looted Works in Art Trove,” Mary M. Lane
“For Son of a Nazi-Era Dealer, a Private Life Amid a Tainted Trove of Art,” Andrew Higgins and Katrin Bennhold
“Art Theft: The Last Unsolved Nazi Crime,” Sophie Hardach