譯文連載[附英文原文]：邪魔畫商 (四）

六、慕城幽靈   [The Ghost]

《焦點》周刊出版的幾個小時，全世界的媒體都相繼報道了康納利斯和他的億萬藏畫。他每次踏出大樓，都被麥克風和攝影機重重包圍。自從在街上被狗仔隊圍追後，他整整十天獨守空房足不出戶。根據《鏡報》的報道，康納利斯最後一次看電影是1967年，最後一次看電視是1963年。他看報紙聽廣播，大略了解外部世界，可是親身經曆甚為有限。他極少旅行，好多年前他和妹妹去過一次巴黎。他說他從來沒有戀愛過，這些畫就是他的一切。現在這一切全都沒了。在這一年半的時間裏，他在空空如也的公寓裏所啃噬的痛失和哀傷勢必難以想象。康納利斯唯一接受的獨家采訪來自《鏡報》的記者奧茲萊·葛澤。他說失去藏畫對他的打擊比父母過世和2012年妹妹因癌症去世更大。他責怪母親帶他們在慕尼黑紮根，從1923年希特勒的啤酒館政變未遂開始，這裏一直是禍害之源。他堅稱父親當年與納粹同流合汙是為了保護這些珍貴的藝術品，他自己的所做所為是繼父親的英勇後塵。漸漸地，這些作品成為他生命的全部，在這恐懼、激情、美麗與狂想共存的宇宙裏，他是觀眾。康納利斯就像俄國小說中的人物，緊張、癡迷、孤獨、且與現實漸行漸遠。

慕尼黑有許多像康納利斯這樣獨居的老人，他們生活在自己的記憶裏，那記憶黑暗、恐怖，隻有經曆過戰爭和納粹的人才有。曾經幾次，在街上等公車的人群裏，或是在午間的啤酒屋裏小酌一杯的飲客中，我以為我見到了康納利斯，其實那不過是另一個蒼白虛弱、滿頭銀發的慕尼黑老人。康納利斯毫不起眼，可他現在卻成了名人。

 七、古堡風暴  [Storming the Castle]

    1945年2月盟軍轟炸德累斯頓後，第三帝國完蛋的局勢已經明了。希德布蘭有一個納粹同僚，葛哈德·馮·普尼茲男爵，以前他在空軍巴黎基地時曾經幫過希德布蘭和另一個畫商卡爾·海伯斯多克撮合過幾單生意。這時普尼茲邀請他們兩位帶著自己的個人收藏，在他位於巴伐利亞北邊風景如畫的阿什巴赫城堡避難。
    1945年4月14日，希特勒自盡，德國投降在即，盟軍進入阿什巴赫城堡。他們發現了海伯斯多克和他的藏品，還有希德布蘭和他的四十七箱藝術品。“護碑人”也被派前來。所謂“護碑人”，是345名被委派保護歐洲碑宇和文化珍品的男女藝術學者，喬治·克魯尼拍的同名電影講的就是他們的故事。被派到阿什巴赫城堡的護碑人是兩位男士，一個是隊長，一個是士兵。海伯斯多克在黨衛軍介紹上被描述為“納粹畫商的領頭人物、德國在巴黎最大的買主、被視為德國藝術界多方麵最重要的人物”。1933到1939年間他參與打擊墮落派藝術的運動，1936年成為希特勒私人畫商。希德布蘭則被描述為“跟納粹高層相交的漢堡畫商、未來林茲博物館的指定經紀人”但因其猶太血統，與帝黨有分歧，他一直以納粹藝術界知名人士西奧·赫姆森的名義做掩護進行交易，直到1944年赫姆森過世。
    海伯斯多克從城堡裏被帶走，其全部收藏予以查收，而希德布蘭則就地軟禁，到1948年予以釋放。他的收藏品被帶走進行處理。希德布蘭解釋說這些收藏合法歸他所有，大部分來自於熱衷收藏現代藝術的父親。根據《鏡報》的報道，希德布蘭列舉了他收藏每幅作品的過程，對那些偷來的或強買的作品則編造謊言述說來曆。比如其中一幅出自保加利亞畫家朱利斯·派辛的作品。希德布蘭聲稱這幅畫是他從父親那裏繼承的，實際上他是1935年以超低價從裘利斯·弗地南德·沃夫手中買得。（沃夫是德累斯頓當地一家大報紙的猶太裔編輯，1933年他被撤職，1942年在被即將運往集中營時與妻子、弟弟一同自殺。）希德布蘭聲稱，有關所有收藏的詳細記錄保存在德累斯頓家中，在盟軍轟炸期間化為灰燼，他和妻子僥幸受普尼茲男爵所邀，帶著這些收藏品在轟炸開始前撤離至阿什巴赫城堡避難。他說他其它的收藏已經全部毀於一燼。
    希德布蘭令“護碑人”相信他是納粹的受害人。納粹將他從兩所博物館開除，因為他祖母是猶太人而叫他“雜種”，他隻是盡其所能保護這些精美傑出的作品不被黨衛軍燒毀。他發誓他從來沒有強買強賣過任何一幅作品。
    1945年底，普尼茲公爵被捕，另外140名麵黃肌瘦、受盡摧殘的幸存者從集中營裏轉送到希德布蘭所在的城堡，他們大多是不到二十歲的青年。阿什巴赫城堡一時成為流散人員居留地。
    “護碑人”最終將165幅還給了希德布蘭，將剩餘明顯是偷盜所得的作品予以沒收，至此對希德布蘭的戰時活動和其收藏品的來源調查劃上句號。殊不知希德布蘭騙過了“護碑人”，他把德累斯頓的收藏一部分藏在了弗蘭克尼亞的一個水車下，另一半則放在撒克索尼的一個秘密地點。
    戰後的希德布蘭搬到杜塞爾多夫，繼續他的畫作交易，他的收藏品幾乎是毫發無損。他的名譽也基本恢複，被當選為該市熱門的藝術協會會長。戰時的一切逐漸變成遙遠的記憶。1956年，希德布蘭死於車禍。
    1960年，海倫娜賣掉亡夫的四幅畫作，在慕尼黑買了兩間價格不菲的新公寓。其中的一幅畫，是出自魯道夫·施裏克特之手的作家貝爾托·布萊希特的肖像畫。
    無人知曉康納利斯的成長經曆。當盟軍接管城堡時他12歲，不久他和妹妹就被送往寄宿學校讀書。康納利斯天性極為敏感害羞。他在科隆大學主修藝術史，後來選修樂理及哲學，之後輟學，原因不明。1962年時他的妹妹跟一位友人提到，說哥哥在邵茲堡，樂於獨處，是個深居簡出的藝術家。六年後他們的母親去世，康納利斯就來往於邵茲堡和慕尼黑兩處家中，不過呆在公寓裏對畫獨處的時間變得越來越久。在過去的四十五年裏，除了跟兩年前去世的妹妹，以及每三個月搭三小時火車去沃爾茲堡見醫生，康納利斯幾乎跟任何人都沒有接觸。

圖1：康納利斯在邵茲堡的家

圖2：1945年4月,一名美國士兵守衛在一所教堂內發現的納粹劫掠品窩藏

The Ghost

Within hours of the Focus piece’s publication, the sensational story of Cornelius Gurlitt and his billion-dollar secret hoard of art had been picked up by major media all over the world. Every time he stepped out of his building, microphones were thrust in his face and cameras started to roll. After being mobbed by paparazzi, he spent 10 days in his empty apartment without leaving it. According to Der Spiegel, the last movie he saw was in 1967. He hadn’t watched television since 1963. He did read the paper and listened to the radio, so he had some idea of what was going on in the world, but his actual experience of it was very limited and he was out of touch with a lot of developments. He rarely traveled—he had gone to Paris, once, with his sister years ago. He said he had never been in love with an actual person. The pictures were his whole life. And now they were gone. The grief he had been going through for the last year and a half, alone in his empty apartment, the bereavement, was unimaginable. The loss of his pictures, he told Özlem Gezer, Der Spiegel’s reporter—it was the only interview he would grant—hit him harder than the loss of his parents, or his sister, who died of cancer in 2012. He blamed his mother for bringing them to Munich, the seat of evil, where it all began, with Hitler’s abortive Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. He insisted his father had only associated with Nazis in order to save these precious works of art, and Cornelius felt it was his duty to protect them, just as his father had heroically done. Gradually the artworks became his entire world, a parallel universe full of horror, passion, beauty, and endless fascination, in which he was a spectator. He was like a character in a Russian novel—intense, obsessed, isolated, and increasingly out of touch with reality.

There are a lot of solitary old men in Munich, living in the private world of their memories, dark, horrible memories for those old enough to have lived through the war and the Nazi period. I thought I recognized Cornelius several times, waiting for the bus or nursing a weiss beer alone in a Brauhaus late in the morning, but they were other pale, frail, old white-haired men who looked just like him. Nobody had given Cornelius a second glance, but now he was a celebrity.

 

Storming the Castle

 After Allied bombers obliterated the center of Dresden, in February 1945, it was clear that the Third Reich was finished. Hildebrand had a Nazi colleague, Baron Gerhard von Pölnitz, who had helped him and another art dealer, Karl Haberstock, put deals together when von Pölnitz was in the Luftwaffe and stationed in Paris. Von Pölnitz invited the two of them to bring their personal collections and take refuge in his picturesque castle in Aschbach, in northern Bavaria.

On April 14, 1945, with Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s surrender only weeks away, Allied troops entered Aschbach. They found Haberstock and his collection and Gurlitt, with 47 crates of “art objects,” in the castle. The “Monuments Men”—approximately 345 men and women with fine-arts expertise who were charged with protecting Europe’s monuments and cultural treasures, and the subject of the George Clooney film—were brought in. Two men, a captain and a private, were assigned to investigate the works in Aschbach Castle. Haberstock was described on the O.S.S.’s red-flag name list as “the leading Nazi art dealer,” “the most prolific German buyer in Paris,” and “regarded in all quarters as the most important German art figure.” He had been involved in the campaign against Degenerate Art from 1933 to 1939 and in 1936 had become Hitler’s personal dealer. Hildebrand Gurlitt was described as “an art dealer from Hamburg with connections within high-level Nazi circles” who was “one of the official agents for Linz” but who, being partly Jewish, had problems with the party and used Theo Hermssen—a well-known figure in the Nazi art world—as a front until Hermssen died in 1944.

Haberstock was taken into custody and his collection was impounded, and Hildebrand was placed under house arrest in the castle, which was not lifted until 1948. His works were taken away for processing. Hildebrand explained that they were legitimately his. Most of them came from his father, an avid collector of modern art, he said. He listed how each of them had come into his possession, and, according to Der Spiegel, falsified the provenance of the ones that were stolen or acquired under duress. For instance, there was a painting by the Bulgarian artist Jules Pascin. Hildebrand claimed that he had inherited it from his father, but he had actually bought it for far less than it was worth in 1935 from Julius Ferdinand Wollf, the Jewish editor of one of Dresden’s major newspapers. (Wollf had been removed from his post in 1933 and would commit suicide with his wife and brother in 1942 as they were about to be shipped to concentration camps.) The detailed documentation for the works, Hildebrand claimed, had been in his house in Dresden, which had been reduced to rubble during the Allied bombing. Fortunately, he and his wife, Helene, had been offered refuge in Aschbach Castle by Baron von Pölnitz and had managed to get out of Dresden with these works just before the bombing. He claimed that the rest of his collection had to be left behind and was also destroyed.

Hildebrand persuaded the Monuments Men that he was a victim of the Nazis. They had fired him from two museums. They called him a “mongrel” because of his Jewish grandmother. He was doing what he could to save these wonderful and important maligned pictures, which would otherwise have been burned by the SS. He assured them he never bought a painting that wasn’t offered voluntarily.

Later in 1945, Baron von Pölnitz was arrested and the Gurlitts were joined by more than 140 emaciated, traumatized survivors of the concentration camps, most of them under 20. Aschbach Castle had been made into a displaced-persons camp.

The Monuments Men eventually returned 165 of Hildebrand’s pieces but kept the rest, which clearly had been stolen, and their investigation of his wartime activities and his art collection was closed. What they didn’t know was that Hildebrand had lied about his collection having been destroyed in Dresden—much of it had actually been hidden in a Franconia water mill and in another secret location, in Saxony.

After the war, with his collection largely intact, Hildebrand moved to Düsseldorf, where he continued to deal in artworks. His reputation sufficiently rehabilitated, he was elected the director of the Kunstverein, the city’s venerable art institution. What he had had to do in the war was becoming more and more a fading memory. In 1956, Hildebrand was killed in a car crash.

In 1960, Helene sold four paintings from her late husband’s collection, one of them a portrait of Bertolt Brecht by Rudolf Schlichter, and bought two apartments in an expensive new building in Munich.

Not much is known about Cornelius’s upbringing. When the Allies came to the castle, Cornelius was 12, and he and his sister, Benita, were soon sent off to boarding school. Cornelius was an extremely sensitive, desperately shy boy. He studied art history at the University of Cologne and took courses in music theory and philosophy, but for unknown reasons he broke off his studies. He seemed content to be alone, a reclusive artist in Salzburg, his sister reported to a friend in 1962. Six years later, their mother died. Since then, Cornelius has divided his time between Salzburg and Munich and appears to have been spending increasing amounts of time in the Schwabing apartment with his pictures. For the last 45 years, he seems to have had almost no contact with anybody, apart from his sister, until her death, two years ago, and his doctor, reportedly in Würzburg, a small city three hours from Munich by train, whom he went to see every three months.