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35
The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
The Jacques Goudstikker Collection
and Nazi Art Looting
Yehudit Shendar and Niv Goldberg
Iadore [Holland] more than anything and [it] has always been so good to me.
—Jacques Goudstikker
Jacques Goudstikker was, without question, an astute man. This is clearly borne
out by the enormous success of the art and antiques business he inherited from his
father, which he turned into one of the leading and most influential galleries in the
Netherlands in his time (Sutton essay,fig. 33). But his wisdom can also, and most
importantly, be seen in the foresight he displayed by taking steps to ensure his
family’s future should Holland fall to the Germans. In a love poem he wrote to
his wife Dési on July 25, 1937 (fig. 1), he already expressed his concerns: “Despite
all the joy,despite the sunshine, thereis a note of anxiety,afear of the imminent
storm.”1Well awareof what the German occupation of Holland would mean for
him and his business, Jacques arranged for a safe haven, procuring visas for the
United States for himself, his wife, and his son on November 28, 1939 (fig. 2).2In
addition, he purchased tickets on the SS Simon Bolivar,3shipped several works of
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
36
Fig. 1
“Eine Stimme,” poem written to Dési von Halban
Kurz by Jacques Goudstikker, July 25, 1937.
Fig. 2
Dési and Eduard in the Netherlands. Photograph
art to England, and transferred money to an American bank account.4Nonetheless,
the German occupation of Holland on May 10, 1940, took even this man, who
imagined he had prepared for any contingency, by surprise. The visas in his hand
(fig. 3) had expired on May 9,5and the renewed documents were waiting for him
at the consulate in Rotterdam; however, he was no longer able to collect them:6
“We were totally surrounded. It was impossible to get to Rotterdam, which was
under heavy bombardment. All the avenues for leaving the country were closed
off.”7In her memoirs, Dési describes the idyllic days before the occupation: “So
much beauty, so much love around us and within us.”8But then she adds the
chilling words: “We wanted to take our own lives in case the Germans occupied
Holland. We wanted to live, but only as free citizens.” Although many of their
friends left the Netherlands, Jacques’s heart belonged to the country; “I adore
[Holland] more than anything and [it] has always been so good to me,” he wrote.9
“Our last May days in Holland,”10 as Dési calls them, were a trying time
for the family, who had always had a busy social life and lacked for nothing. In a
letter he wrote to a friend on May 6, 1940, Jacques spoke of his forebodings for
the future: “The question is whether the latest developments will be limited to
Europe alone . . . or will encompass the whole world. . . . I have made
arrangements, but I find the constant uncertainty very unsettling.”11 They were
soon confronted with the reality of the situation, when the air rang with the roar
of planes and machine guns. “As for us,” Dési wondered, “do we fully understand
what is going to happen to us?”12 But Jacques, a man of action and vision, foresaw
the coming events. He took leave of his mother and co-workers and quickly piled
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
37
Fig. 3
Jacques Goudstikker’s immigration visa to the
United States of America.
his family, along with a few colleagues from the art world,
into their Lincoln Zephyr, and headed for the port of
IJmuiden. Proceeding slowly, they made their way through
the sea of refugees that filled the roads, until they were forced
to abandon the luxury car in the high grass of the seaside
dunes.13 With their son Eduard, only sixteen months old,
in Dési’s arms, they boarded the cargo ship SS Bodegraven
(fig. 4) on May 13, 1940, a mere three days after the German
army had entered Holland. They departed without the
essential documents: valid visas and an official power of
attorney naming an executor of the large estate left behind in
Holland, which included personal property, their extravagant
houses, and the business with the many important works of
art adorning its walls and stored in its cellars. Only later
would it emerge that Jacques had with him a hidden treasure in the form of a
small notebook, the pages of which carefully recorded the details of most of the
approximately 1,400 artworks that remained behind in Holland (fig. 5). “In these
times, justice has sunk forever into the void of oblivion. . . . Perhaps some cork
will enable us to float, and as long as we can swim, we will get by,”14 he wrote
to a friend.
Jacques’s hasty departure left the business in turmoil. He had made all
the necessary arrangements to entrust it to the loyal hands of his best friend, the
attorney Dr.A. Sternheim, providing him with a document giving him full power of
attorney to administer all his property. Unfortunately, however, on May 10, the day
of the invasion, Sternheim suffered a heart attack, fell from his bicycle, and died.15
Jacques did not appoint a successor to Dr. Sternheim and, contrary to his usual
practice, Jacques did not formalize any arrangements with anyone. This was not
an oversight but rather a deliberate measuremeant to ensurethat he did not leave
anyone with the authority to negotiate with the Germans in his name, a fact
attested to after the war by August Eduard Dimitrios von Saher, Dési’s second
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
38
Fig. 4
The SS Bodegraven. Photograph
Fig. 5
Jacques Goudstikker’s inventory notebook, the
Blackbook. Photograph
husband, with whom Jacques had consulted for legal advice for
the gallery before the war. In effect, the decision is an indication
that Jacques, known for his competence, meticulousness, and
controlling nature, did not entirely trust the loyalty of his senior
employees. Nevertheless, following his departure, two of his
employees, Jan Dik Sr., the conservator, and Arie Albertus ten
Broek, who was to become the acting manager, took it upon
themselves to manage the firm. According to von Saher,
“Jacques left Holland and no one had power of attorney to
act on his behalf.”16 This precaution was taken “so as not to
appoint anyone the enemy could get their claws into.”17
Jacques was on board the ship with the people closest
to him, his beloved wife and son. Things seemed to be going
relatively well as he and his family sailed away from occupied
Holland. On the morning of May 15, having survived a
nighttime raid by German bombers, the ship anchored in
Dover, where “the sun shone . . . we were overwhelmed by
happiness . . . we were free in England!”18 But their joy did
not last long. None of the many Jewish refugees from all over
Europe on the SS Bodegraven was allowed to set foot on British
soil without the proper visa. “Such a disappointment,” Jacques
related, “but we must not lose courage.”19 Helpless to change
the situation, the small Goudstikker family crowded into the
hold of the ship with the other refugees and prepared to spend
the night there. Little Edo was crying inconsolably,and Dési
was waiting for Jacques to return. He had gone up on deck to
breathe a bit of fresh air. What happened on the night between
May 15 and 16, the very day of Holland’s capitulation to the
Germans, was recorded in the ship’s log (fig. 6):
On this sixteenth day of May, Nineteen Hundred and
Forty, on board of the above mentioned steamship,
presently being in the English Channel, appeared before
me, Huibrecht Regoort, Master of the above mentioned
craft, Piet Ruig, 1st Officer [and] Jan Daniel Filarski,
Boatswain, who have declared that, Jacques Goudstikker,
passenger, lately domiciled at Ouderkerk aan den Amstel,
on the sixteenth day of May 1900 and Forty at one
o’clock in the morning, passed away on the above
mentioned vessel, at the age of 42 years, married to
Désirée Louise Anna Ernestina Halban, son of Eduard
Goudstikker and Emmy Sellisberger.
We have of this made this statement and we have signed
this together with the appearers after reading aloud.
(signed)
H. Regoort
P. Ruig
J. D. Filarski20
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
39
Fig. 6
Extract from the day register of the SS Bodegraven
ship’s log, May 16, 1940, recording Jacques
Goudstikker’s death.
As Désirée describes that night: “We found your husband. Where? How? Is he
alright? . . . They took me to a cabin. He was lying there . . . with his sardonic
smile on his face . . . Jacques was dead.”21 The captain decided to make an
unscheduled stop at the military port of Falmouth in southwest England. Désirée,
whose Austrian passport branded her the citizen of a hostile nation, was not given
permission to go ashore to be present at her husband’s interment. She asked that
the grave be covered with flowers (fig. 7), that he be buried with the cufflinks she
had given him as a wedding present, and that they play his favorite song, Cole
Porter’s “Night and Day.” On a hillside facing the sea, Jacques Goudstikker, the
distinguished scion of a Dutch dynasty who had been knighted by the queen of
Holland (fig. 8)22 and was esteemed as an eminent figure in the Dutch cultural
world (Sutton essay,fig. 7), was laid to rest in a foreign land. The man forced to
flee his homeland because he was a Jew,whose ancestors appear in the records
of the Dutch Jewish community from the eighteenth century, and whose fate was
sealed by the German occupation, like that of most of the Jews of Holland, of
whom some 102,200 were murdered, was buried in the south of England, far from
his loved ones and far from his roots (fig. 9).23 “I think of you / Day and night,
night and day.”24
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
40
Fig. 7
Jacques Goudstikker’s fresh grave, with flowers.
Photograph
Fig. 8
Proclamation of induction as a Knight in the
Order of Oranje-Nassau.
Fig. 9
Certified copy of Entry of Death for Jacques
Goudstikker in the Register Book of Deaths for the
Sub-district of Falmouth.
If international Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once again in
plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of
the world and thus a Jewish victory, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race
in Europe. . . .
—Adolf Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, January 30, 1939
The fate of the Goudstikkers during the Holocaust, like that of all the Jews in
Europe, was in the hands of the Nazi extermination machine that sought to wipe
them off the face of the earth. To this end, they developed a coherent ideology and
acivil and military hierarchy to put it into practice, including engineers to design
and construct the most efficient apparatus for this national objective. Six million
of Europe’s Jews were murdered in the course of twelve years of mobocracy
orchestrated by Adolf Hitler, whom the German citizens had elected as their Führer
in 1933. Those same citizens filled the ranks of the executioners and cheered their
leader’s orations, dripping with hatred of the Jews.
The following history of the Goudstikker family draws on a variety of
written sources and the oral testimony of survivors. Although the information
is incomplete, it offers a picture of the fate of a single family that had been fully
integrated into Dutch society for hundreds of years. Only a few members of this
illustrious family survived the inferno of Nazism.
The first documented mention of the Goudstikker name in the Netherlands
appears in a surviving record of the Amsterdam Jewish community from 1797,
which notes the marriage of Lea Hartog Hirsch Goudstikker.25 Six years later, the
record of the marriage of her sister, Marianne Mindele Hartog Hirsch Goudstikker,
provides us with the origin of the family name: their father, Hartog Hirsch Mozes
Goudstikker, who accompanied the bride, is noted as having previously changed his
name from Goldstikker,26 the name to which he was bornin Tielen (most likely in
Germany), about 1750.27 Marianne Mindele’s husband, Samuel Samson Salomon,
took the unusual step of adopting his wife’s surname, and so the Goudstikker
name was passed on through their children. The earliest known civil document
containing mention of the name is a marriage registration from the town of ’s
Hertogenbosch in the Noordbrabant district dated 1840.28 It lists Salomon Elias
Sussan as the father of the groom, Elias Salomon Goudstikker, in what appears
to be his second marriage.
Surviving family trees reveal an interesting fact: Samuel Samson Salomon
was the older half brother of Elias Salomon, as both men had the same father,
Salomon Elias Sussan. Thus Elias Salomon apparently followed in the footsteps
of his older brother Samuel Samson and also took his wife’s surname, thereby
creating a second branch of the Goudstikker family. Elias Salomon Goudstikker
was the great-grandfather of Jacques Goudstikker. Born in 1800, he died in 1878,
some eleven years beforeJacques was born.
Although the Dutch Goudstikkers celebrated the birth of many children
in the generations to come, they remained a relatively small family, with only
these two main branches. The first branch, the descendants of Elias Salomon
Goudstikker, was split between Amsterdam and ’s Hertogenbosch, whereas almost
all the members of the second branch, descending from the older half brother
Samuel Samson, resided in Bergen op Zoom. These three towns form what is
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
41
nearly an equilateral triangle, with Amsterdam in the north, ’s Hertogenbosch in
the southeast, and Bergen op Zoom in the southwest, each located at a distance
of seventy to ninety kilometers from the others.
Goudstikker couples in the nineteenth century gave birth to five to ten
children. However, from the limited sources available, it appears that a rather large
proportion of the children in the next three generations either never married or
did not perpetuate the family line. Furthermore, as is typical of the early twentieth
century, the number of children per household shrank, and the Goudstikker line
consisted of the two- or three-child family units emblematic of the modern era. Also
typical of the time was the fact that many of the children born to later generations
married outside the Jewish faith and assimilated into the general population.29
Before World War II, the overall picture painted of the Goudstikkers by
existing records is that of a well-to-do family. Where family members’ occupations
are listed in historical records, we find many merchants, manufacturers, and the
like. They were not, for the most part, however, overly comfortable. Family
members who lived during the prewar era remember considerable variation in
the economic status of the expanding branches of the family.30 Not only was there
economic disparity between the members of the family, but there was significant
social distance as well. In her memoirs, Dési relates a telling episode aboard the
SS Bodegraven.There were other Goudstikkers on the ship, and when she asked
Jacques if he wanted to talk to them, he replied: “I have managed to not speak to
them for years, and I’m certainly not going to do so now.”31 His death at the age
of forty-two, less than two days later,left his widow destitute and alone.
The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, . . .
the sun is shining on my face—and right beforeour eyes, mass murder. The whole
thing is simply beyond comprehension.
—Etty Hillesum, Westerbork Transition Camp32
Jacques’s untimely death was a sad anticlimax to his life. This book and exhibition
tell his story and are a tribute to his accomplishments and his status in Dutch
society. At the same time, they throw light on the life of the Jews in the Netherlands
and the tragedy that befell them with the German occupation. Indeed, the annals of
the Goudstikker family encapsulate the story of the Jewish community of Holland
as a whole, and the cruel fate it suffered: 73 percent of Dutch Jews lost their lives
in the Holocaust.
At the outbreak of the war, twenty-seven people residing in the
Netherlands and identifiably Jewish bore the name of Goudstikker, having been
born into the family or married into it. Of these, sixteen areknown to have died
in the Holocaust. Jacques Goudstikker met his death while fleeing the Germans.
His wife and infant son were the only members of the family to successfully make
it to an Allied country, sailing from England to Canada where they stayed for some
months with the Bronfman family beforefinally settling in the United States. The
other Goudstikkers who survived the Holocaust consisted of Albert, who served in
the merchant marine during the war, and a mere seven who survived in Continental
Europe, all but one of whom, Jacques’s mother, Emilie (fig. 10), were interned in
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
42
Fig. 10
Emilie Goudstikker née Sellisberger. Photograph
concentration camps. Many more family members bearing the names Duyzend,
Boedekker, and others as a result of marriage perished as well.
Personal testimonies and existing documentation, sparse as they are,
provide an indication of the fate of two Goudstikker families headed by the cousins
Henri and Maurits Henri. Henri was born in 1891 in Bergen op Zoom to Salomon
and Roosje Goudstikker. He was the fifth of ten children, one of whom died young
and four of whom later married non-Jews. Henri married Helen Gompers, the
daughter of a diamond merchant, who was born in New York in 1896. Perhaps
because her family was in the United States only temporarily, Helen did not have
American citizenship (or at least any proof thereof). The couple had four children,
all boys: Salomon Henri, born in 1920; Hermann, born in 1924; Jacques, born in
1925; and Benjamin Henri, born in
1926. They moved to The Hague in
1930 and were living there at the time
of the German occupation. Benjamin,
Herman, and Jacques were picked up
together in August 1942 and taken to
the Westerbork transit camp. Their
parents went into hiding but were
ultimately betrayed by the owner of
the house wherethey were staying,
and they too were taken to Westerbork.
The three brothers wereall sent to
Auschwitz: Benjamin in August 1942;
Jacques on September 7, 1942; and
Hermann on October 10, 1942.33 Each
of them was sent to the gas chambers
on the day of arrival. Their father,
Henri, was transported to Auschwitz on November 30, 1942 (fig. 11),34 arriving
on December 3. He survived until January 11, 1943—precisely five weeks. Their
mother, Helen, was sent to Auschwitz on January 21, 1943, and was never heard
of again. The sole surviving member of this family was Salomon Henri, who fled to
Switzerland in October 1941. He was married there and then managed to make his
way across France to Spain, where he boarded a ship for England. He returned to
Holland in 1953 and immigrated to Israel in 1963. Known today as Shlomo
Gidron, he is still unable to sharemore than the barest of details about his
harrowing escape from Europe.
Maurits Henri Goudstikker was born to Henri and Flora, née Hirschel,
Goudstikker in Bergen op Zoom in 1893, the youngest of three children. He
married Frederika Duyzend, and the couple had two children, FloryElla, born in
1924, and Henri Jacob, bornin 1927. The family remained in Bergen op Zoom,
where Maurits Henri held a respected position as a bank branch manager.
Foreseeing the German invasion and its consequences for Dutch Jewry, Maurits
Henri arranged for American visas for the family,but events moved too quickly.
The bombing of Rotterdam made it impossible for them to take possession of these
valuable documents. The extended family managed to acquire false papers and lived
under assumed identities until September 1942, when they were informed on and
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
43
Fig. 11
Card indicating Henri Goudstikker’s deportation
from Westerbork to Auschwitz, compiled by the
International Tracing Service of the International
Red Cross, Bad Arolsen, Germany.
taken to Westerbork. From there, Alida, Maurits Henri’s older
sister, was sent to Sobibor on May 28, 1943, where she was
immediately murdered. The grandmother, Flora Hirschel, died
in Buchenwald on August 1, 1943.35 Maurits Henri, Frederika,
and their two children were piled onto the last transport from
Westerbork to the Theresienstadt Ghetto on September 6,
1944.36 Just three weeks later, on October 1, Maurits Henri and
his son, Henri Jacob, were transported to Auschwitz.37 On their
arrival, Maurits Henri was sent to the gas chambers. Henri
Jacob was given prisoner number B-11178 and assigned to the
Arbeitskommando Golleschau (fig. 12), a forced labor detail at
the Auschwitz subcamp of that name.38 On January 21, 1945,
in advance of the approaching Soviet troops, he was herded
onto a train with morethan one hundred other prisoners. They
rode for some eight days and nights without food or water in
subzero temperatures. When the train arrived in Zwittau, near
the Brunnlitz subcamp of Gross-Rosen, which was established
by Oskar Schindler,Schindler managed
to have it rerouted to Brunnlitz.39 The
survivors of this journey, including
Henri Goudstikker, were ultimately
saved by appearing on Oskar
Schindler’s famous list of supposedly
vital workers (fig. 13).40 Henri
Goudstikker died of tuberculosis
shortly after liberation. On October 6,
1944, less than one week after her
husband and son had been sent to
Auschwitz, Frederika and her daughter
Flory Ella followed them there on
Transport Eo from Theresienstadt.41
Frederika was immediately sent to the
gas chambers (fig. 14). Two weeks
later, Flory was assigned to forced labor
in eastern Germany and was eventually
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
44
Fig. 12
Card indicating Henri Jacob Goudstikker’s
assignment to the Arbeitskommando Golleschau at
Auschwitz, compiled by the International Tracing
Service of the International Red Cross, Bad Arolsen,
Germany.
Fig. 13
Page 13 of Schindler’s List; Henryk [Henri]
Goudstikker is listed as number 740.
Fig. 14
Page of testimony filled by a family member in
memory of Frederika Goudstikker, née Duyzend,
Yad Vashem Hall of Names.
liberated by the Soviet army. After the war, Flory returned to the Netherlands,
where she married Philip Wagenaar, a Dutch Holocaust survivor, and soon
thereafter they moved to the United States.
With the exception of Jacques Goudstikker’s immediate family, no other
member of this entire Goudstikker branch is mentioned in any available wartime
records. Almost all the existing documentation from the period of World War II
and the Holocaust refers to the branch descended from Samuel Samson Salomon
Goudstikker, the elder half brother of Jacques Goudstikker’s great-grandfather.
Unlike many of his relations, Jacques Goudstikker did not die a direct
victim of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the circumstances of his death are associated
with the events of that time. He could never have imagined he would meet his end
in the way he did, nor would he have wished their fate on his wife and only son.
When the SS Bodegraven docked in Liverpool in May 1940, Dési and the baby
were taken off and detained as aliens in an old-age home because of her Austrian
passport.42 Despite her connections with influential individuals, including the
American ambassador Joseph Kennedy, her visa was not renewed. The widow and
her orphaned son made their way to Canada and, from there, finally found the
haven they sought in the United States, arriving bereft of family and fortune.
Let me live modestly,but in peace. I had property. I don’t need it any more.
—Jacques Goudstikker
On February 6, 2006, banner headlines around the world brought news of a
dramatic decision taken by the government of the Netherlands: 202 artworks listed
in the national registry of Dutch cultural assets that had been stolen by the Nazis
from the collection of the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker would be returned
to their rightful owner in the United States, Marei von Saher. Nearly sixty-six years
had passed since May 16, 1940, the day Jacques Goudstikker fell to his death while
fleeing the Nazis, until his daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, could issue a public
statement on February 11, 2006, declaring: “[We] fought long and hard to see
justice done. . . . It wasn’t about money, it was about right being honored. I only
wish that my husband was still alive to celebrate this victory.”43
The family had waged a legal battle for eight years, demanding the return
of more than two hundred works of art from the Goudstikker collection, which had
been handed over to the Dutch authorities by the Allies in 1946 to be restored to
their owners. Now that the fight was over, Marei stressed that the victory did not
belong to the family alone, proclaiming: “The Dutch government’s return of these
pictures was an historic event for us and for all families whose possessions were
stolen during the Holocaust era.”44
The gravity of the government’s decision found expression in the words
of the Dutch Deputy Minister of Culture at the time, Medy van der Laan, who
described it as “a cultural bloodletting,”45 an indication of the importance of the
works of artthat would now be taken down from the walls of Holland’s leading
museums. Thus began the complex and emotional process of collecting the
artworks from the various museums. As one by one the paintings made their way
to the assembly point at the Instituut Collectie Nederland (Institute of Cultural
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
45
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
46
Heritage) near The Hague, the Goudstikker collection gradually took shape and
was ultimately revealed once again in all its glory. It is a collection rare not only
in breadth but also in the quality of each work, a collection built with love and
expertise by Jacques Goudstikker over the course of many years. What is indicated
by the bold lettering of the J. Goudstikker Gallery’s calling card, that the gallery
that was founded in 1845 dealt in old master paintings from all periods, was
unexpectedly brought back to life.46 The reassembling of the collection recrowned
the long-dead Jacques as the classic art dealer he was, a man who framed the very
definition of culture (fig. 15).
The family’s struggle to regain possession of the paintings actually began
in 1946, when Dési first returned to Holland after the war. She was appalled to
discover that her estates and gallery had been completely emptied, leaving no trace
of the art collection, the furniture, the family’s treasures, or any of their personal
possessions. It had all been looted. “Everything was gone,” reported Marei von
Saher. “But a person from the gallery came out with a big blanket under his arm
and in it was a painting of two young girls by Berthe Morisot.”47 Dési’s efforts to
recover the family property, including the artworks, were all in vain. Although a
very small number of artworks were returned to her in 1952, she went to her death
in 1996 with the sense that justice had not been done. “I was just angry,” recalls
her granddaughter Charlène. “I felt that my grandmother wasn’t treated fairly after
the war.”48 In De Zaak-Goudstikker (The Goudstikker Case),published in 1998,
Pieter den Hollander confirms that the numerous postwar commissions established
to consider the claims of Holland’sJewish citizens for the return of plundered
property were not sympathetic toward the applicants.49 In response to such charges,
the Dutch government resolved in 2004 to refer the matter to the Advisory
Committee on the Assessment for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World
War (Restitutions Committee), which had been set up in late 2001 and, at the time
of the restitution, was chaired by Mr. B. J. Asscher, an attorney and former
president of the District Court of Amsterdam. In December 2005 the committee
recommended that 202 paintings “acquired” by Göring be restored to the heirs.
The government’s statement that the works of art would be returned to the family
came less than two months later, with headlines in the press announcing that the
saga had finally come to an end. “I was in Holland a few days ago and saw the
paintings for the first time. Some hit my heart right away. It was overwhelming,”
related Marei von Saher.50
“When Goudstikker’s body was recovered, a little black book was found
in his breast pocket.”51 The leather-bound notebook (fig. 5), measuring a mere
43/4 by 7 inches and filled with pages of dense typing, is the true protagonist of
the drama of the Jacques Goudstikker collection, which was played out in so many
acts. It contained an itemized inventory, organized in columns, that listed the title
of the artwork, its dimensions, the date of its purchase, and the price paid, in code.
Under the letter R appeared names with which every art lover is familiar: Raphael,
Rembrandt, Rubens, and Jacob van Ruisdael; under D were Donatello and several
mentions of Anthony van Dyck. These areonly a few examples of the great names
that filled the pages of the notebook. Listed alphabetically by the artist’s surname
were 1,113 of the artworks left behind in the gallery on the Herengracht in
Amsterdam to await their owner’s return.
Fig. 15
Jacques Goudstikker’s business card.
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
47
Even after so many years have passed, the mere facts are chilling.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring knocked on the door of the J. Goudstikker
Antiques and Art Gallery at 458 Herengracht in Amsterdam just two weeks after
the death of the proprietor. Walter Andreas Hofer, a Berlin art dealer appointed
curator of Göring’s country estate, Karinhall, had already traveled to Holland on
May 20. A week later, Göring made the first of many visits to the Netherlands,
where he had quite a few friends.
The same reputation that had brought museum directors and collectors
to the gallery before the war now drew Göring the “art lover,” and he was eager
to see for himself the treasures of the Jew Goudstikker, hastening to the address
before anyone else could beat him to it. He was intent on obtaining for his private
collection at Karinhall the paintings that would be left after Hitler selected the ones
he wanted for the museum in Linz. In a letter dated August 22, 1940, Hans Posse,
the director of the Linz collection, confirmed the arrival of artworks in Berlin: “As
per the instructions of the Führer, I have examined the seventy-five works displayed
at the Führer’s residence, some of which I was familiar with from Holland. . . .
Most of them are the remainders of collections that come from art dealers in
Holland (mostly from the collection of Goudstikker, Amsterdam).”52 Since Hitler’s
appetite for Dutch art was well known, there was little doubt that once Holland
was occupied the artworks in that country would be looted on a massive scale.
Indeed, in early June, less than one month after the occupation, Dr. Kejetan
Muhlmann, a crony of Posse’s, arrived in Berlin. Director of the Dienststelle
Muhlmann, the authority responsible for the sale of the property of Dutch Jews
who had fled abroad, he reported that large quantities of art could be acquired
in occupied Holland.53
In the wake of his “visit,” Göring indeed “acquired” the artworks in the
Goudstikker Gallerycollection in exchange for an astonishingly small sum,54 a
fraction of its true worth. In fact, the gallery was the source of the largest number
of “acquisitions” made for his private museum. Approximately 1,400 items, mostly
paintings,55 were the subject of the “sale” arranged by Göring’s agent, Walter
Andreas Hofer. This was a typical example of a “forced sale,” a tactic often
employed by occupiers and perfected by the Nazis for the legal theft of artworks.
An American investigation unit established after the Allied victoryarticulated in
very clear language the methods used by the Germans to give the appearance of
legality to their criminal acts of plunder: “Thus no art collection or single work
was seized, requisitioned or robbed by them without their ‘legalizing’ these crimes
by some sortofsales certificate or exchange paper duly signed by their victims
through force.”56
Jacques Goudstikker’s “loyal” employees, Jan Dik Sr. and Arie Albertus
ten Broek, “sold” the contents of the galleryto Göring and his confederate, the
German-born banker Alois Miedl. Through trickeryand connivance, Dik and ten
Broek transferred everything to Miedl: not only the property but the name and
reputation of the company as well;57 the artworks went to Göring. Not only was
the “sale” accomplished hastily in order to anticipate the sharp rise in the Dutch
art market that followed the occupation,58 but those who stood to benefit from
the looting spread the false rumor that the gallery was experiencing financial
difficulties59 and was on the brink of bankruptcy, thereby causing a drop in the
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
48
value of its assets. The monetary transfers involved were conducted by Lipmann,
Rosenthal Co., the “official” bank operating under the auspices of the Dienststelle
Muhlmann, which sold numerous collections in addition to that of the Goudstikker
Gallery.60 The transfers were a contrivance that were supposed to show that the
“sales” were all legal.
The Führer is very pleased with the latest art acquisitions.
—Martin Bormann
On the whole, the preceding account of the theft of Jacques Goudstikker’s
artworks typifies the policy and methods employed by the Nazis to plunder the
art of occupied Holland. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring himself urged the
establishment of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), whose job it was to
seize art collections on behalf of the Führer. “I welcome the initiative of Reichsleiter
Rosenberg to organize teams in all the occupied territories in order to preserve all
the research materials and cultural assets of the groups mentioned above [Jews and
Freemasons] and transfer them to Germany,” Göring wrote in a document dated
May 1, 1941.61 The ERR was the most
proficient of all the arms of the Third
Reich involved in the confiscation and
looting of property and was directly
responsible for the plunder of over
twenty-one thousand works of art
from morethan two hundred art
collections belonging to Jewish
collectors (fig. 16).62 Nevertheless,
Alfred Rosenberg’s unit did not show
the same determination in Holland as
it did in Eastern Europe and France,
primarily because of the spirited
activities of other groups competing
for the same artworks, particularly
the Dienststelle Muhlmann, which
operated under the full protection
of Reichskomissar Arthur Seyss-
Inquart.63 As early as July 4, 1940, just
two months after the occupation, Seyss-Inquart issued order VO33, authorizing
Germans to seize whatever property they desired.64 After Göring and Rosenberg
had preceded him in France, Hans Posse, working directly for Hitler,was more
than happy to cooperate with Muhlmann, who reigned supreme in Holland. With
the support of Hitler’s private secretary, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Posse was
given free rein. “The Führer is very pleased with the latest art acquisitions. He
hopes that you will soon be able to procure further valuable works in Holland.
The operating funds for that purpose will be transferred to you immediately.”65
“In Brussels and Amsterdam we are also on the trail of valuable articles.
Ibelieve we will be able to bring quite a few items to Germany,”66 Rosenberg
Fig. 16
Der Einsatzstab in den besetzen Gebieten.
Photograph
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
49
reported to party treasurer Schwarz in September 1940. However, since Rosenberg’s
unit was not the dominant player in the Dutch arena, the art treasures of the
Netherlands found their way straight into the collections of the primary players
behind the Nazi plunder of art: Göring and Hitler. The two men were driven by
fundamentally different motives. Hitler regarded it as the role of the museum in
Linz, Austria, to represent the greatness of the German Reich in the town of his
birth. He saw it as part of what was for him a national objective: to demonstrate
the wealth and culture of the Third Reich to the whole world and to add his name
to the list of art patrons from the country’s glorious history, the past rulers of the
German states. It is not surprising that he chose Hans Posse for this task. Posse
had been the director of the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, which held a collection
of European masterpieces that had been brought to Saxony by Elector Augustus
the Strong, a noted patron of the arts. Posse expressed his gratitude for the
appointment in a letter to Bormann dated June 29, 1939: “I confirm receipt of
your letter in which I was informed of the weighty responsibility conferred on me
by the Führer, to establish a museum of art in the city of Linz, and permit myself
to express my deepest gratitude.”67 Alfred Rosenberg testified to the nationalistic,
ideological nature of the Nazi plunder of art at the Nuremberg trials. When asked
to explain how the actions of his unit during the war were any different from
looting, he replied that seizing works of art was the policy of the Reich. It would
have been theft, he argued, had he taken the items privately.As he perceived it, his
unit was charged with the custody of enemy property.68 The national character of
Hitler’s collection is also evidenced by a provision of his last will and testament,
which states: “The paintings in the collections I have purchased over the years
were never collected for private purposes, but only for the galleryin the city of
my birth, Linz.”69
If Hitler collected artfor nationalistic reasons, Göring did so for his
personal pleasure, his repeated insistence that he would ultimately donate the
works to the German people notwithstanding.70 Göring’s objective, to establish
an art museum in Karinhall, is linked to the story of his love for his Swedish wife,
Karin Gräfin von Fock, for whom the estate was named. He dedicated his art
collection to her as a tribute for her following him to Germany, at a time when he
had nothing to offer her. Karin died of an illness in Sweden in 1931, but when the
Nazis rose to power in 1933, Göring brought her body to Karinhall, which was
to be her mausoleum.71 As previously described, he chose as his curator Walter
Andreas Hofer,aBerlin art dealer who had extensive connections with colleagues
in the Netherlands. Through these same contacts, Göring would later hear of the
Goudstikker Gallery and the Dutch artworks that would soon find their way to his
private museum. The hundreds of paintings from the gallery formed a major part
of the Karinhall collection. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, Göring succeeded
in amassing one of the largest private artcollections of the twentieth century.
According to Consolidated Interrogation Report no. 2 of the American army’s
Office of Strategic Services Art Looting Investigation Unit, in 1945 1,300 works
of art were in his possession, half of which had been plundered from “enemies
of the Reich.”72
Two astounding photographs offer visual evidence of the lust for collecting
shared by Hitler and Göring. In the first, taken on January 12, 1938, Hitler is seen
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
50
presenting Göring with a gift for his birthday, a painting by the minor
nineteenth-century Austrian artist Hans Makart. It is a sentimental portrait
of a female falconer, a work whose theme and style reflect the petit bourgeois
taste of the two men (fig. 17). The ceremonial presentation takes place in a formal
hall in the presence of officers and soldiers. In the second photograph, Heinrich
Himmler is seen congratulating Hitler on his birthday on April 20, 1939, and
presenting him with a painting by the nineteenth-century German artist beloved
of the Kaisers, the Prussian Adolph von Menzel. Entitled Frederick the Great on a
Ride,the painting not surprisingly lionizes the Prussian rulers; Himmler’s giving it
to Hitler was meant to demonstrate that Hitler’s election as leader of the German
people continued that dynasty (fig. 18). This, too, is an official occasion attended
by high-ranking officers in resplendent uniform. An unsigned official letter to
Göring sent from Charlottenburg on January 11, 1943, in honor of his fiftieth
birthday, notes: “On this occasion I would like to present you, a patron of the arts,
with a Dutch picture as a gift for your museum. It was painted by the artist Jacob
Adriase Bellevois from the seventeenth century and is a seascape.”73 The custom of
bestowing paintings as gifts, as shown in such photographs and letters, is further
evidence of the fact that Hitler and Göring wereknown to be avid art collectors.
Moreover, these sources confirm that the gifts were given openly and officially in
the Reich, rather than solely as a private gesture.
In describing the plunder of artby the ThirdReich, it has been said that
“Never in historyhas a collection so great been amassed with so little scruple.”74
As can be adduced from the evidence presented, this was an act defined by the Nazi
leaders as a national objective. Nevertheless, the extensive looting was also driven
by the desireof Hitler and his senior officers to satisfy their craving to possess
the treasures found in occupied territories. Confidential reports of the Foreign
Economic Administration from May 5, 1945, included in the final report of the Art
Looting Investigation Unit of the American War Office dated May 1, 1946, provide
Fig. 17
Adolf Hitler presenting Hermann Göring with The
Falconer (1880), a painting by the 19th-century
Austrian academic painter Hans Makart.
Photograph
Fig. 18
Heinrich Himmler presenting Hitler with the
painting Frederick the Great on a Ride by Adolph
von Menzel as a birthday gift, April 1939.
Photograph
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
51
an indication of the scale of the plunder: “Most experts agree that it is difficult to
estimate the value of the art treasures looted by the Nazis. . . . Francis H. Taylor,
Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reported that the Nazis had stolen
European art treasures valued at $2,000,000,000 to $2,500,000,000, more than
the total value of all the works of art in the United States” (fig. 19).
He shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches.
—Dan. 11:24
The massive looting described here continues to resound in the frequent headlines
of the world press, which report on the efforts of Jewish Holocaust victims’ heirs
to regain possession of the property stolen from their families. It was the express
intent of Nazi ideology that the Jews, bereft of all protection, have their lives and
their possessions taken from them during the Holocaust.
The official emblem of the State of Israel, adopted on the eleventh of
Shevat [February 10,] 1949, bears the image of the menorah, the seven-branched
candelabrum from the Temple in Jerusalem: “I have looked, and behold a
candlestick all of gold . . . with his seven lamps thereon . . . and two olive trees by
it” (Zach. 4:2–3). The emblem was designed by the Shamir brothers, who based
their depiction of the menorah on the relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome. After
the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E., Titus, commander of
the Roman legions, brought the menorah back to Rome along with other spoils,
displaying them in a triumphal parade that is immortalized in the relief (fig. 20).
How ironic that were it not for this act of plunder, we would likely have no way
of knowing what the ancient menorah looked like.
The historyof the Goudstikker family and the artcollection of Jacques
Goudstikker thus constitutes another chapter in a long saga of looting that is
recorded as early as biblical times, was commemorated in the Roman era, and
reached its height with the Nazi persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.
The book of Daniel prophesies the unusual act of the king of the north, who will
undertake the responsibility never manifested hitherto—to return the spoils of
war—bestowing us with the following legacy: “He shall scatter among them the
prey, and spoil, and riches.”
Fig. 19
Items looted from Holland being loaded onto a
barge for their return, July 6, 1946. Photograph
Fig. 20
The sack of Jerusalem as depicted on the Arch of
Titus.
Shendar/Goldberg, The Insatiable Pursuit of Art
52
Tribunals, TR.2/PS-090.
67. Posse to Bormann, June 29, 1939, National
Archives, in Haase, Die Kunstsammlung Adolf
Hitler,p. 33.
68. Aalders, Nazi Looting,p. 49.
69. Private will and testament of Adolf Hitler,
dictated to Martin Bormann, April 29, 1945, Yad
Vashem Archives, Nuremberg Military Tribunals,
Tr.2/PS-3569.
70. Haase, Die Kunstsammlung des Reichsmarschalls
Hermann Göring,p. 12.
71. Ibid., p. 10.
72. Rothfeld, “Nazi Looted Art,” p. 135.
73. Unsigned letter to Göring, January 11, 1943,
Yad Vashem Archives, Nuremberg Military
Tribunals, TR.2/PS-1118.
74. Aalders, Nazi Looting,p. 2.
1. “Eine Stimme,” poem written to Dési von Halban
Kurz by Jacques Goudstikker, July 25, 1937.
2. Application for immigration visa no. 2346,
American Consulate, Rotterdam, Netherlands,
November 28, 1939.
3. P. Den Hollander, Roofkunst: De Zaak-
Goudstikker (Amsterdam, 2007), p. 64.
4. Ibid., pp. 166–67.
5. Immigration visa no. 2249, issued at the American
Consulate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, January 9,
1940.
6. Den Hollander 2007, p. 67.
7. Desirée von Saher, memoir in manuscript (MS),
1970s, “May 1940,” p. 4.
8. Ibid., p. 1.
9. Jacques Goudstikker to unnamed friends,
December 15, 1939.
10. Von Saher MS, p. 3.
11. Jacques Goudstikker to an unnamed friend,
May 6, 1940.
12. Von Saher MS, p. 3.
13. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
14. Jacques Goudstikker to an unnamed friend,
May 6, 1940.
15. Von Saher MS, p. 4; and Den Hollander 2007,
p. 68.
16. Von Saher MS, p. 4.
17. Den Hollander 2007, p. 68.
18. Ibid., p. 7.
19. Ibid.
20. Extract from the day register of the SS
Bodegraven ship’s log, May 16, 1940, recording
Jacques Goudstikker’s death.
21. Von Saher MS, p. 8.
22. Proclamation by Queen Wilhelmina of Jacques
Goudstikker’s induction as a knight in the Order of
Oranje-Nassau, August 24, 1931. This was
accompanied by a letter from the Dutch Ministry
of Education, Arts and Sciences, August 29, 1931,
addressed to Mr.J. Goudstikker, Director of the
Organization of ArtDealers in Amsterdam: “It has
pleased her Majesty the Queen to command you as
Knight in the Order of Oranje-Nassau on August 24,
1931, No. 20. An excerpt of the decree will be sent
to you by the Ministryof Education, Arts and
Sciences.”
23. Register Book of Deaths for the Sub-District of
Falmouth, 1940, entry no. 85.
24. Cole Porter, “Night and Day.”
25. Akevoth—Dutch Jewish Genealogical Data Base
(http://www.dutchjewry.org).
26. The name Goldstikker was given to craftsmen
who worked in gold filigree. In the Jewish
community, this typically involved not only jewelry
but also the making of ritual objects, such as
adornments for Torah covers.
27. Akevoth—Dutch Jewish Genealogical Data Base
(http://www.dutchjewry.org).
28. Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum, Civil
register—Marriage, 50.083/3943/77.
29. Telephone conversation with Shlomo Gidron
(Salomon Goudstikker), November 13, 2007.
30. Personal communication with Chana Koppel,
née Duyzend, Shlomo Gidron (Salomon
Goudstikker), and Flory Wagenaar, née Goudstikker,
November 13–15, 2007.
31. Von Saher MS, p. 6.
32. E. Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork, trans.
Arnold J. Pomerans (New York, 1986), p. 146.
33. In Memoriam: Nederlandse Oorlogsslachtoffers.
34. International Tracing Service (ITS), Master
Index.
35. Personal communication with Flory Wagenaar,
née Goudstikker, November 15, 2007.
36. List of Deportees from Holland to
Theresienstadt, September 9, 1944, Yad Vashem
Archives, O.64/274.
37. List of Deportees from Theresienstadt to
Auschwitz, October 1, 1944, Yad Vashem Archives,
O.64/324.
38. International Tracing Service (ITS), Master
Index.
39. Testimony of Mr. Reichgut, Yad Vashem
Archives, O.3/9718.
40. List of Deportees to Brunnlitz (Schindler’s List),
Yad Vashem Archives, P.41/44, p. 13, prisoner
no. 740.
41. List of Deportees from Theresienstadt to
Auschwitz, October 6, 1944, Yad Vashem Archives,
O.64/326.
42. L. H. Nicholas, “A Long Odyssey: The
Goudstikker Collection,” in Important Old Master
Paintings from the Collection of Jacques
Goudstikker,New York (Christie’s), April 19, 2007,
p. 10.
43. Stephen Castle, “Nazi Loot Back in Right
Hands,” New Zealand Herald,February 11, 2006.
44. “Christie’s to Offer Old Master Paintings from
Famed Goudstikker Collection,” press release,
Christie’s, February 22, 2007.
45. Nicholas Glass, “Collection of Grievances,” FT
Magazine,November 26, 2006, pp. 42–45.
46. Ibid., p. 42.
47. Carol Vogel, “Recovered Artworks Heading to
Auction,” New York Times, February 22, 2007.
48. Glass, “Collection of Grievances,” p. 44.
49. Pieter den Hollander, De Zaak-Goudstikker
(Amsterdam, 1998).
50. Vogel, “Recovered Artworks Heading to
Auction.”
51. Glass, “Collection of Grievances,” p. 42.
52. Letter from Hans Posse to Martin Bormann,
August 22, 1940, in Günther Haase, Die
Kunstsammlung Adolf Hitler: Eine Dokumentation
(Berlin, 2002), p. 37.
53. David Roxan and Ken Wanstall, The Jackdaw
of Linz (London, 1964), p. 69.
54. Recommendation Regarding the Application
by Amsterdamse Negotiatie Compagnie NV in
Liquidation for the Restitution of 267 Works of
Art from the Dutch National ArtCollection (Case
number RC 1.15), Advisory Committee on the
Assessment for Items of Cultural Value and the
Second World War (Restitutions Committee),
December 19, 2005.
55. Günther Haase, Die Kunstsammlung des
Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring: Eine
Dokumentation (Berlin, 2000), p. 75.
56. National Archives, RG 260, Records of the
United States Occupation Headquarters WWII,
Ardelia Hall Collection, box 180, “Special
Interrogation of Seyss-Inquart,” August 21, 1946,
in Gerard Aalders, Nazi Looting: The Plunder of
Dutch Jewryduring the Second World War (Oxford,
2004), p. 77.
57. Aalders, Nazi Looting,p. 76.
58. Charles de Jaeger,The Linz File: Hitler’s Plunder
of Europe’s Art (Exeter, 1981), p. 69.
59. Ibid.
60. Haase, Die Kunstsammlung Adolf Hitler,p. 97.
61. Memorandum issued by Hermann Göring calling
for Reich authorities to assist the ERR, May 1,
1941. Yad Vashem Archives, Nuremberg Military
Tribunals, TR.2/JM-2116.
62. A. Rothfeld, “Nazi Looted Art: The Holocaust
Records Preservation Project,” Prologue 34, no. 3
(2002), p. 130.
63. Roxan and Wanstall, The Jackdaw of Linz,
p. 68.
64. Aalders, Nazi Looting,p. 23.
65. Bormann to Posse, July 25, 1940, National
Archives, in Haase, Die Kunstsammlung Adolf
Hitler,p. 36.
66. Alfred Rosenberg to the Reich Treasurer of
the NSDAP, F. X. Schwarz, September 18, 1940,
Yad Vashem Archives, Nuremberg Military