六、慕城幽灵 [The Ghost]
《焦点》周刊出版的几个小时，全世界的媒体都相继报道了康纳利斯和他的亿万藏画。他每次踏出大楼，都被麦克风和摄影机重重包围。自从在街上被狗仔队围追后，他整整十天独守空房足不出户。根据《镜报》的报道，康纳利斯最后一次看电影是1967年，最后一次看电视是1963年。他看报纸听广播，大略了解外部世界，可是亲身经历甚为有限。他极少旅行，好多年前他和妹妹去过一次巴黎。他说他从来没有恋爱过，这些画就是他的一切。现在这一切全都没了。在这一年半的时间里，他在空空如也的公寓里所啃噬的痛失和哀伤势必难以想象。康纳利斯唯一接受的独家采访来自《镜报》的记者奥兹莱·葛泽。他说失去藏画对他的打击比父母过世和2012年妹妹因癌症去世更大。他责怪母亲带他们在慕尼黑扎根，从1923年希特勒的啤酒馆政变未遂开始，这里一直是祸害之源。他坚称父亲当年与纳粹同流合污是为了保护这些珍贵的艺术品，他自己的所做所为是继父亲的英勇后尘。渐渐地，这些作品成为他生命的全部，在这恐惧、激情、美丽与狂想共存的宇宙里，他是观众。康纳利斯就像俄国小说中的人物，紧张、痴迷、孤独、且与现实渐行渐远。
慕尼黑有许多像康纳利斯这样独居的老人，他们生活在自己的记忆里，那记忆黑暗、恐怖，只有经历过战争和纳粹的人才有。曾经几次，在街上等公车的人群里，或是在午间的啤酒屋里小酌一杯的饮客中，我以为我见到了康纳利斯，其实那不过是另一个苍白虚弱、满头银发的慕尼黑老人。康纳利斯毫不起眼，可他现在却成了名人。
七、古堡风暴 [Storming the Castle]
1945年2月盟军轰炸德累斯顿后，第三帝国完蛋的局势已经明了。希德布兰有一个纳粹同僚，葛哈德·冯·普尼兹男爵，以前他在空军巴黎基地时曾经帮过希德布兰和另一个画商卡尔·海伯斯多克撮合过几单生意。这时普尼兹邀请他们两位带着自己的个人收藏，在他位于巴伐利亚北边风景如画的阿什巴赫城堡避难。
1945年4月14日，希特勒自尽，德国投降在即，盟军进入阿什巴赫城堡。他们发现了海伯斯多克和他的藏品，还有希德布兰和他的四十七箱艺术品。“护碑人”也被派前来。所谓“护碑人”，是345名被委派保护欧洲碑宇和文化珍品的男女艺术学者，乔治·克鲁尼拍的同名电影讲的就是他们的故事。被派到阿什巴赫城堡的护碑人是两位男士，一个是队长，一个是士兵。海伯斯多克在党卫军介绍上被描述为“纳粹画商的领头人物、德国在巴黎最大的买主、被视为德国艺术界多方面最重要的人物”。1933到1939年间他参与打击堕落派艺术的运动，1936年成为希特勒私人画商。希德布兰则被描述为“跟纳粹高层相交的汉堡画商、未来林兹博物馆的指定经纪人”但因其犹太血统，与帝党有分歧，他一直以纳粹艺术界知名人士西奥·赫姆森的名义做掩护进行交易，直到1944年赫姆森过世。
海伯斯多克从城堡里被带走，其全部收藏予以查收，而希德布兰则就地软禁，到1948年予以释放。他的收藏品被带走进行处理。希德布兰解释说这些收藏合法归他所有，大部分来自于热衷收藏现代艺术的父亲。根据《镜报》的报道，希德布兰列举了他收藏每幅作品的过程，对那些偷来的或强买的作品则编造谎言述说来历。比如其中一幅出自保加利亚画家朱利斯·派辛的作品。希德布兰声称这幅画是他从父亲那里继承的，实际上他是1935年以超低价从裘利斯·弗地南德·沃夫手中买得。（沃夫是德累斯顿当地一家大报纸的犹太裔编辑，1933年他被撤职，1942年在被即将运往集中营时与妻子、弟弟一同自杀。）希德布兰声称，有关所有收藏的详细记录保存在德累斯顿家中，在盟军轰炸期间化为灰烬，他和妻子侥幸受普尼兹男爵所邀，带着这些收藏品在轰炸开始前撤离至阿什巴赫城堡避难。他说他其它的收藏已经全部毁于一烬。
希德布兰令“护碑人”相信他是纳粹的受害人。纳粹将他从两所博物馆开除，因为他祖母是犹太人而叫他“杂种”，他只是尽其所能保护这些精美杰出的作品不被党卫军烧毁。他发誓他从来没有强买强卖过任何一幅作品。
1945年底，普尼兹公爵被捕，另外140名面黄肌瘦、受尽摧残的幸存者从集中营里转送到希德布兰所在的城堡，他们大多是不到二十岁的青年。阿什巴赫城堡一时成为流散人员居留地。
“护碑人”最终将165幅还给了希德布兰，将剩余明显是偷盗所得的作品予以没收，至此对希德布兰的战时活动和其收藏品的来源调查划上句号。殊不知希德布兰骗过了“护碑人”，他把德累斯顿的收藏一部分藏在了弗兰克尼亚的一个水车下，另一半则放在撒克索尼的一个秘密地点。
战后的希德布兰搬到杜塞尔多夫，继续他的画作交易，他的收藏品几乎是毫发无损。他的名誉也基本恢复，被当选为该市热门的艺术协会会长。战时的一切逐渐变成遥远的记忆。1956年，希德布兰死于车祸。
1960年，海伦娜卖掉亡夫的四幅画作，在慕尼黑买了两间价格不菲的新公寓。其中的一幅画，是出自鲁道夫·施里克特之手的作家贝尔托·布莱希特的肖像画。
无人知晓康纳利斯的成长经历。当盟军接管城堡时他12岁，不久他和妹妹就被送往寄宿学校读书。康纳利斯天性极为敏感害羞。他在科隆大学主修艺术史，后来选修乐理及哲学，之后辍学，原因不明。1962年时他的妹妹跟一位友人提到，说哥哥在邵兹堡，乐于独处，是个深居简出的艺术家。六年后他们的母亲去世，康纳利斯就来往于邵兹堡和慕尼黑两处家中，不过呆在公寓里对画独处的时间变得越来越久。在过去的四十五年里，除了跟两年前去世的妹妹，以及每三个月搭三小时火车去沃尔兹堡见医生，康纳利斯几乎跟任何人都没有接触。
图1：康纳利斯在邵兹堡的家
图2：1945年4月,一名美国士兵守卫在一所教堂内发现的纳粹劫掠品窝藏
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.
