The brushwork is pallid, with dark hues and an austere perspective. It is as if the artist sees a grim world. These were the paintings, a homeless ex-serviceman, Adolf Hitler,submitted to a school of art in Vienna, only to be turned down. Artists such as Klimt and Kokoschka with their expressive and unorthodox styles dominated the art world in that city of surprises. The luckless artist came to dominate the world as the paradigm of malice, Adolf Hitler.
Yet the evil man's early career was not forgotten. Over the years from 1939 to 1945, the art galleries of Europe and Russia were systematically pillaged by henchmen such as Goering. The purpose of this manic acquisition was to stock the largest single collection of art the Western world was ever to see. The gallery was to be built in Linz, Hitler's home town. The “degenerate” art of Kokoschka and many others was to be pilloried.
A European Fairy-Tale
One example gives an insight into this obsession. Were it not true, the story would be fantasy. It too begins in Vienna. Selma Kurz was one of Europe's greatest sopranos. She was Gustav Mahler's diva. Her coloratura performances of Mozart and Rossini were attracting the awed attention of Europe. She had a daughter, known as Desi Halban, who was brought up in an intense, hot-house culture. Her voice was not her mother's, but it had a naive freshness that responded to training.
Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch art-collector, also responded to it and brought her as his bride to Amsterdam. They had a taste for unreality, presenting living pantomimes of the Dutch masters he collected. They had a house in the country and a Castle, Nyenrode on the River Vecht. One day, as Halban and her husband were talking casually in the street, she saw German paratroopers descending.
Carrying only the most personal possessions, the couple fled with their son to catch the last cargo boat to England. Their expired visas were ignored as the guard remembered Halban's singing. Their expensive car was left on the harbour front with the key still in the ignition. Rebuffed at Dover, Jacques went out on deck while Halban attended to her fractious son. She was never to see her husband again. He fell down an open hold, still carrying the record book of his collection. After burying him at Falmouth, the widowed singer arrived in New York with her son, Edo.
Loss and Gain
Back in Amsterdam, Goering took eight hundred of Goudstikker's collection of Northern Renaissance and Baroque paintings. A legal sham allowed an agent to run the Museum. Not all the paintings went to Goering. Some were selected by Hitler for the future museum. A sly forger even succeeded in hoodwinking the Nazis into stealing fakes. In New York, Halban was incapable of acting on her indignation. After the war, hundreds of stolen paintings were tracked down and returned to the Dutch government. These were put on display in various national museums.
Halban was never to see the whole of her collection again. Despite her efforts, restitution even now remains an elusive goal. So the dream of a dull art student nearly became reality, except the public gaze was not focused in Linz. Much of the austere Northern vision plundered to twist reality still awaits return to private hands. Halban died in America, leaving a unique heritage of her own, a recording of her friend, Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony. In it she sings of life in heaven in a fresh, yet sure, voice that has never been matched.
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