The Suitcase

Dear grandchildren,

My father didn’t tell us many stories about his life during and just after the war when I was young, but this one was told fairly often – and a re-telling was always immediately requested.

Here is an example of how one quick moment in history and one blatant misunderstanding can have a huge impact on the future.

The suitcases mentioned in this entry have histories of their own, beginning in the dusty bank vault in Russian- occupied Burgstädt and traveling across oceans and through time. When Dad emigrated to America in April, 1953, he had very few possessions or money to his name, but he did have one piece of luggage – the suitcase! (I have no idea what happened to the other one). 

Since 1953, this suitcase lived under Dad’s bed in every house in which he’s lived. I don’t remember him ever sharing its contents with anyone, but in 2014 he proudly pulled the large black suitcase out from under the bed to show it to Julia Essl, Provenance Researcher for the Albertina Museum in Vienna who had come to Ashland, Oregon to meet my father in person and learn more about his perspective and knowledge of his father’s art collection.

And a few years later, just weeks before he died, Dad shared the contents of the suitcase with his beloved granddaughter, my daughter Elisabeth.

Since dad’s death, some of the art from the suitcase has found its way back to Chemnitz in a loving donation from my father to the Chemnitz art museum, where his father Carl once sat on the board, some of it was bequeathed to the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and some of it is now with his children.

Here is Thomas’ description of what happened on that late summer day  in Burgstädt.

In summer, 1945, Burgstädt, just 25 km from the sooty industrial city of Chemnitz, wasn’t much of a town - just a neglected jumble of old houses clustered around a small Marktplatz, unscathed by war, and a bit smudgy from neglect and the passage of time. The town’s industry centered on cotton and linen textiles, with just enough commerce to justify a small branch of Father’s bank consisting of one teller, two tiny offices, and a miniature vault.

Of all places in Germany accessible to Carl Heumann near the end of the war, Burgstädt seemed to be the most unlikely hamlet to become a bombing target, and thus the safest spot to hide his most loved possessions - two specially made suitcases filled with drawings, watercolors, paintings, and etchings of German Romanticists. It was a collection that was more complete than any other in Germany, except perhaps for those in the large museums of Dresden and Berlin. Carl had a special personal relationship with each of the hundreds of pictures in the suitcases. He had a deep aesthetic appreciation of the art itself, made deeper and more tangible by his own research into the artists’ lives, into each painter’s style, and into each artist’s connection to other artists of the time, and to the world in which they lived. It was this research and Carl Heumann’s keen perception that had kept him sane and even reasonably fulfilled during the years of his “internal emigration” when he had to curtail his communication with the real world until he barely lived in it. He breathed the 100- or 200-year-old air of the pictures and, in a strange untimely way, regarded the artists as friends. As a result of his passion and the small world imposed upon him in which he was confined to his house and his own thoughts, he became the expert of the period of the artists and their thinking. He was respected for knowing his art inside and out and for understanding each piece’s relation to other art forms that had preceded it and that stemmed from it.

This mini-vault in the mini-bank in the mini-town in Saxony, like the factories and anything else that could be moved, unscrewed, pried off, and shipped east as war reparations, had been confiscated and locked up by the Red Army. It was Rainer’s mission that October day to rescue a piece of German “Kultur” from the paws of the Russian Bear.

Rainer returned home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand.

We couldn't believe it! “How in the hell, Rainer?!”

“It wasn’t easy, and I did a lot of fast talking,” Rainer began. “First, I found out that the private bank had been closed down, of course, and that everything from the safe had been moved to the Russian commander’s office. I finally found the Russian in charge. He was a middle-aged, low-ranking officer with the face of a village blacksmith. He spoke only a few words of German and gave me a blank stare most of the time while I tried to explain and plead and beg. I tried to tell him that our father was a Jew, that he had been persecuted by the Nazis, that we had been in camps, that our parents were dead, that our father had been a well-known art historian, not a bad capitalist, not a Junker (a noble landowner, very much looked down upon by the Russians), and that we were poor now.”

Rainer continued. “He took me to a dank, poorly lit basement where the contents of the bank’s safe deposit boxes had been dumped onto a table. There, I saw some of Mother’s jewelry and pointed out three or four pieces I recognized. But I didn’t want to wear out his patience with Mother’s jewelry because there, in a corner, were Father’s two collection suitcases! I pointed to them and insisted that these pictures were all the memories we had now, but he gave me the same blank stare. He then began to get a little impatient. He opened the cases and thumbed through the pictures and actually studied some of them with a rather thoughtful expression. I guess they looked harmless enough to him, nothing subversive, militaristic, or capitalistic here - just bucolic landscapes, peasants, portraits, nudes, and animals. He looked at a drawing of a horse for a long time, and even put it aside as though he wanted to keep it for himself, but I told him that this was a very dear horse which meant a great deal to a cousin of mine. He said something in Russian, but all I understood was ‘nyet.’”

“I kept talking,” Rainer explained, “saying the same things over and over again, slower and simpler, but I could tell I wasn’t getting through to him.

Then, suddenly his face lit up, his eyes and his mouth opened, and he summoned all his knowledge of German and said, ‘Papa tot?’“ sliding his finger across his neck, the international sign for ‘dead.’

“‘Papa machen?”he asked, as he made a painting motion with his hand, asking wordlessly if our father was a painter!”

“I just nodded. Then he nodded in response for a long time, obviously thinking, weighing his official socialist responsibility against his human instinct. “Papa tot (Papa is dead),’” he said again. “Papa malen!” (“Papa paints!”) and he shut the suitcase, pushed it toward me and almost smiled. I think he even felt good about what he had just done.”

Our father was never a painter – and even if he were, he could have never created the exquisite works of art that were laid out in front of this Russian and Rainer in that damp old bank vault. But “Papa malt!” was close enough for both of them at that moment, and Rainer came home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand!

    

        -----

The Russian occupation force was very much in control of everything that happened in Chemnitz in 1945. The major thrust at the time was land reform, which meant taking the land of the rich aristocratic “Junkers” and giving it to peasants, who would then live on the property in a collective farm, Soviet style.

The Russians were also most particular to remove anyone with a Nazi history and eventually anyone of the bourgeoise class. We expected that as people who had been persecuted by the Nazis we would at least be tolerated in the new society, but we saw signs that the opposite was beginning to develop. Not only were we of the bourgeois class and had gone to a bourgeois high school, but we were also partly of Jewish descent. The Russians had no love for either group.

In 1945, we still thought we were credible witnesses, unlike our uncle Heinz who had been a Luftwaffe officer and thus clearly suspect to the denazification apparatus. On Heinz’s request, Rainer wrote an exonerating testimonial for him:

“Chemnitz, 26 September 1945

“We confirm by our signature below that Heinrich Buddecke and his wife, residing in Adelsberg near Chemnitz, have housed and educated our sister Ulrike Heumann after the death of our mother Irmgard Heumann, née Buddecke immediately following the her death  in early January 1944. This effort occurred in full agreement of our father Carl Heumann in Chemnitz who was a banker and Portuguese Consul, and is now deceased. Our father was <ethnically> Jewish and was very happy that through this accommodation his daughter, as a “half-Jew,” was protected from difficulties with the then governing Nazis. This protection could credibly be assumed since my uncle was a member of the Nazi party.

As we know from repeated visits, and from statements from our father, the Buddecke couple assumed that task with great care and in full approval by our father. Our father has mentioned repeatedly that he was grateful for the help his relatives provided for his child.

Herr Buddecke contacted us immediately after the death of our father, and has been particularly helped with a dignified burial and with salvaging of existing estate property on our account.

The Buddecke couple continued to care for our sister Ulrike after the death of our father in the same manner as just described. We are taking her with us to Munich because we are in the process of establishing our own household there.

Signed: Rainer Heumann

Note: The back of this contains the notarization by attorney Gerhard Thierig.

Source: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Chemnitz

under # 30182, Notary Gerhard Thierig, Chemnitz.

Unfortunately, some of this is patently untrue, particularly the next-to-last paragraph. Heinz wasn’t anywhere near us to inform us of, let alone help us with, the death and burial of our father. Nor, to my knowledge, did he have anything to do with “salvaging Estate property.” This notarized document is an example of how one typically stretched the truth in the interest of family solidarity at the time of “denazification.” This is not to say that Heinz and Gert did not go out of their way to take in Ulli at the time. They did, and we have always been grateful.