My grandfather's art
Seventy years ago last month, in March, 1945, my grandfather, Carl Heumann,
was killed when an Allied bomb directly hit his house in Chemnitz, Germany. The
story is told that he died because he went into his cellar to protect his
beloved art collection rather than to the air raid shelter. A German Jew, Carl
had already lost so much in the war. His job as the co-director of a local bank
had been stripped from him years before, and more recently, in January of
1944, his non-Jewish wife had died suddenly of a brain tumor. Irmgard, by her
sheer existence, had kept Carl from the death camps and now, suddenly, she was
gone. Once she was gone, all hell broke loose for Carl.
Carl’s half-Jewish (“Mischlinge”) children were gone, too. They were still
alive – as far as Carl knew, at least. Rainer, the oldest, had moved to Munich
with the intent of attending university, but as a half-Jew he was not allowed to
continue his education. My father, Thomas, had been summoned to the train
station, from where he was taken to a labor camp. It was not a death camp, but
the work could kill a man already weakened by years of malnutrition. Ulli, the
youngest and the only girl, had been sent to live with Irmgard’s brother and his
family. Ironically, Heinz was a ranking German officer, but to Ulli he was
simply Onkel Heinz.
Seventy years later, my siblings and cousins still ask my father how Carl, a
full-Jew in Germany during WWII, could have still been living in his own home in
March, 1945, just a month before the war ended, when almost every other Jew in
Chemnitz had been “relocated.” There is no logical answer. But there are some
theories – which are for another post. This post is about Carl as an
avid and prominent art collector – a Jewish art collector in WWII
Germany.
It is through my grandfather’s art collecting that I have come to know him at
all. As my brothers and I grew up, my father often told us stories about
Carl from the perspective of an adoring – and adored – son who lost his father
far too soon. But I never knew Carl from any other perspective than my
father’s – until, that is, I began to learn about him as a passionate collector
of German art.
At any one time, my grandfather’s collection contained many hundreds of
sketches and paintings from some of Germany’s most admired and beloved artists.
Like any art collector, Carl bought and sold art on a regular basis. Once he had
been forced from his job and could no longer make a living, but still had a
family to support (and taxes levied on Jews to pay), did Carl sell more art? Did
he sell it cheaper, to pay for living expenses?
Did Carl sell his art to Nazis under duress, simply to stay alive? There is
some evidence that points strongly to that possibility – and finding out more
has become a passion of mine!
I saw “Woman in Gold”
today. Although the story of Maria Altmann’s family is far more dramatic than
that of my family, the theme is the same: in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the
Nazis came to possess pieces of art that once belonged to German and Austrian
Jews – millions of pieces of art! Much of it has already been returned to its
owners or heirs, the result of governments that are finally intent on making
reparations to those wronged so many years ago, but many thousands of pieces of
ill-gotten art have yet to be returned -- and some of Carl’s pieces are very
likely included in the missing art or the specific pieces being researched for
possible reparation.
There’s a book here somewhere…
