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.

Carl, Thomas, and I are featured guests for the Third International Day of Provenance Research, 2021!

Dearest grandchildren,

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for the International Day of Provenance Research which highlights the social and academic relevance of provenance research on an international scale. In that interview, I spoke about your great-grandfather, Thomas (my father) and your great-great grandfather, Carl (my grandfather), whose art collection is still quite relevant today.

The article (in German), along with the audio file of my interview (in English) can be found HERE:

https://www.lenbachhaus.de/blog/erinnerung-leben-der-kunstsammler-carl-heumann-und-seine-familie-heute

Here is an English translation (with thanks to Google Translate and apologies to my mother, your great-Omi, who was a dedicated German teacher and is turning in her grave; she would have asked me to translate it myself! Apologies, too, for the bizarre formatting – attempting to fix it just made it all worse!):

 

LIVING MEMORY - The art collector Carl Heumann and his family today. A conversation with Carl’s granddaughter, Carol Heumann Snider

Several German museums are currently researching the art collector Carl Heumann (1886–1945), who created an important collection of German and Austrian art from the 18th and 19th centuries with a focus on Romanticism in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of his Jewish origins, he was persecuted under the National Socialist regime. In recognition of the fate of his persecution, the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München turned to the descendants of Carl Heumann to jointly find a just and fair solution regarding the Find works of art from his collection.

In a conversation on the "Day of Provenance Research" on April 14, 2021 with provenance researchers Dr. Katja Lindenau (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) and Melanie Wittchow (Lenbachhaus) Carol Heumann Snider, the granddaughter of the art collector Carl Heumann, discusses her grandfather and her father Thomas Heumann. She describes how she preserves the stories of the two of them and their memories for their children and grandchildren. She gives a deep insight into the life of her family and shows how the fate of both ancestors affects all family members to this day and what possible restitutions mean to them.

The interview was conducted in English on March 19, 2021, the 135th birthday of Carl Heumann, recorded and reproduced here in written form in German. You can listen to the original interview here:

(Go to original link, above, and click on the audio file.)

Melanie Wittchow (MW): Hello and welcome to our conversation "Living memories: The art collector Carl Heumann and his family today.” My name is Melanie Wittchow. I am a provenance researcher at the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

Since 2019, we have recognized Provenance Research Day on the second Wednesday in April. This year we are also celebrating »1700 years of Jewish life in Germany«. On this occasion, we would like to talk about how provenance research helps keep memories alive.

We warmly welcome Carol Heumann Snider to this interview. She is the granddaughter of the art collector Carl Heumann from Chemnitz, Germany. We want to talk about him and his family today. Carol, thank you for joining us from Gig Harbor, Washington, USA. It's so nice to have you here today!

A warm welcome also to Katja Lindenau. She is a provenance researcher at the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. I am very pleased that you are here today for our conversation about the art collector Carl Heumann.

More than two years ago, the museum in Dresden, together with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, called on those museums whose holdings include objects from the Carl Heumann art collection to recognize the fate of the art collector and his family and to work with the heirs of the family to get in touch. The aim is to find just and fair solutions with them regarding the works of art from the Carl Heumann collection.

Katja, you are one of the researchers in Germany who initiated this. Can you explain how and why it came about?

(The participants in the conversation on March 19, 2021 clockwise from top left to bottom right: Robin Knapp (technical support), Dr. Katja Lindenau (SKD), Carol Heumann Snider (granddaughter of Carl Heumann), Melanie Wittchow (Lenbachhaus)

Katja Lindenau (KL): With pleasure. In my work as a provenance researcher, I check the holdings of our museum for unlawful acquisition. One focus is on the years 1933 to 1945, when the National Socialists were in power in Germany and many works of art changed hands during this time. Much of it has been confiscated by the authorities or the owners have been forced to sell them. A few years ago, colleagues from other museums in Germany and Austria made me aware of the collection of the art collector and patron Carl Heumann.

While looking through our collection, I found two watercolor drawings by the Austrian artist Peter Fendi and an oil-on-paper drawing by Jakob Gensler showing a girl with a parrot. All three works were bought in 1944 by the art dealer C.G. Acquired Boerner in Leipzig. Bit by bit, I tried to find out more about the fate of the previous owner and how these works of art disappeared from his collection. In the end, we knew that Carl Heumann had not voluntarily sold these works, due to his Jewish origins, and we began to contact other museums and the heirs of Carl Heumann.

MW: That's how Katja and I came into contact, and I was able to find out that the Lenbachhaus had also acquired a work of art from Carl Heumann's private collection, namely the drawing "Fischerweide" by the artist Albert Emil Kirchner.

Albert Emil Kirchner, Fischerweide, 1854, pencil drawing, washed, 30.5 x 28.7 cm, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich

KL: Carol, we spent months trying to put Carl Heumann's biography together. How and when did you find out about the fate of your grandfather Carl Heumann and your father Thomas Heumann? Did you talk about it in your family?

Carol Heumann Snider (CHS): When I was a child, we talked about my father's childhood. Since it was such a traumatic childhood, I think my father tried to protect us from the trauma he experienced himself. Paintings and watercolors hung on our walls. We knew where they came from. We knew that they came from his father, whom we of course never met. But we didn't know what my father was feeling and thought we just knew that they were from his homeland. Briefly about the background: It was obvious that my parents were immigrants. I knew my father was talking about a suitcase that he had with him when he came to the United States on the ship.

When we talked about his childhood it was mostly in situations where he couldn't escape us, and by that I mean, we were sitting in the car going to Lake Tahoe, for example, which was a four hour drive. We asked him to tell us stories. And he told us these charming stories, like when he and his brother nearly blew up the garage because they had misused their chemistry kit. Or how her little sister took a nap and they took a gingerbread cookie out of the oven and they said, "Oh, we burned your doll." I mean really funny little stories like these that every sibling does would tell.

But he never said, "I went and found my father's body and dug his grave."

These were things that we didn't find out until much later. It only started when I was going to college and my father suddenly felt the need to tell us more. He began to write his first book The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer. I think it was easier for him to talk about his trauma in the third person and give himself a pseudonym so as not to have to use the pronoun "I.”.

Most of my childhood he just wanted to protect us. But that changed later.

Thomas Heumann with his four children, Carol Heumann Snider in the middle, 2008, photo: Ulli Heumann Hanley

MW: Can you tell us when and how you first found out that works of art from your grandfather's collection are in Austrian and German museums? How did the collaboration with the provenance researchers develop?

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about Julia Eßl's visit to the USA in 2014?

CSH: Yes, it was a very special day. I think it was January 22nd, 2014. I won't forget it. I woke up, checked my e-mail, and there was a message from a woman named Julia Eßl.She said she was a provenance researcher in Austria and she thinks she had found some works from my grandfather's collection, and asked if I would be willing to speak to her. It was very exciting for me because I had never met my grandfather and only heard stories about him. And now here was someone who seemed to know something about him. So, as a granddaughter interested in her family history, I picked it up straight away.

This was also preceded by a meeting that my father had organized for our family, at which he came into contact with his children, his nieces, his nephews and of course his sister Ulli, who lives in California. He wanted us all to come together because he wanted to leave us things from his past, as he put it "with warm hands,” before he dies.

(Thomas Heumann (left outside) with his sister Ulli (3rd from left) and her family, February 2017, Photo: Claudia Bilbao (Ulli's daughter)

CHS: Among them were some official documents such as my grandfather's Jewish “ID card” and his identity card with the “J” on it. Or a document that said he had been persecuted and that he had been in a labor camp.

He passed all these things on to his family members. It was just amazing to me, it really touched me, and I wanted to know who this person was.

So that was before Julia's email. When this email came my family was planning a trip to Germany and Austria. All six of us - we have four children.

And I said to Julia that we would be in Austria in a few months and asked if we could meet.

The most important thing that stuck in my memory when I met Julia Eßl in the Albertina in Vienna was that she took me to her office and there were three or four very wide binders on a bookshelf with "Carl Heumann" on the spine.

My first thought was, "How is it possible that someone, whom I don't know, knows my grandfather so well that entire binders can be filled with information about him?"

That just aroused the curiosity and excitement regarding my grandfather between Julia and me. We got along really well and became fast friends. After our visit in Vienna, she wrote to me and asked: “What do you think about a visit from me? And that was just the beginning of an absolutely wonderful time.”

When Julia first contacted me and said she had the opportunity to come to America, my father blocked it. But then he gave in and said, "Okay, well, I'll talk to her."

Julia came and spent three or four days with my father. They were best friends. My father couldn't show her enough things. He found a document here and another document there, they spoke German and they became dear, dear friends. When it was time for her to leave there were tears everywhere, including my father. So it was a 180 degree turn.

KL: Thank you, Carol, for this lively report on Julia Eßl's visit and the relationship between Julia and you and your father. We are both very grateful to Julia Eßl in Vienna and Hanna Strzoda in Berlin, who did a lot of research and thankfully shared their findings with us.

At the moment, three museums in Berlin, Dresden and Munich want to return works of art in the near future. Carol, you are the representative of the heirs. That means you speak for all the rightful heirs of your grandfather and regulate the communication between the members of your family and the museums regarding the restitution process. Can you tell us a little bit about what it means for your family to get back the works of art that were confiscated from your grandfather 80 years ago through persecution? We are particularly interested in what the younger generation thinks about it.

CHS: That's a really good question. In fact, as a family, we are grappling with this issue. First of all, the fact that part of the art is being restituted means everything to us because of our connection to our grandfather. This is a man we have never known, but whom we have heard of all our lives. My father spoke of him with great reverence and instilled that in us too, so we knew Carl was a wonderful man. We were sad that we didn't get to know him. This little thread of a connection from Carl to his grandchildren, to his great-grandchildren, means everything to us.

Restitution is a strange thing because it has this very strong emotional aspect. Then there is this logistical aspect. There may also be a financial aspect that we don't want to emphasize at all. But it always finds a way in.

I was the executor of my father's estate, which means that after his death, I took care of everything related to his estate. So I became the main point of contact. I brought his direct descendants, that is six people in the direct line, together. That's a very manageable amount of people to work with. But if you add the next generation, with all of our children, that number goes up to 23. So we kept it pretty small and made decisions together. We met digitally last year, but before that we visited each other.

 

(Thomas Heumann with Carol Heumann Snider's four children, 2012, photo: Carol Snider Heumann)

CHS: About two weeks ago my 30-year-old son came to visit. He is very interested in history and speaks fluent German. He asked how everything was going and I said, “Well, there are some pieces that are being returned to us and we'd like some of them because we'd like to see them on our walls. We would like to see others stay in Germany so that they can be appreciated by the people there. And maybe we want to sell one or two of them. We do not know yet."

My son, who is a very strong personality, replied, “Mom, I would like to be asked to come to the table when these things are discussed. I am also a heir to Carl. He's important to me too, and I think I'm speaking for my cousins ​​when I say please don't make any decisions without us. "

Right now our challenge is how to deal with this issue. How can we respect the opinion of our adult children without turning it into a crazy situation? Perhaps we will talk to our children each time, get their opinion, and come back with a general opinion for our family. It's really important for us to include everyone, but it's not easy. This is where we are right now.

MW: Let's go back to your two blogs that you mentioned earlier. I always love it when someone says it's important to keep memories alive. But you're not just saying that, you're living this idea.

In your two blogs "Northwestladybug" and "Letters from Omi" you tell the story of your grandfather and your father. I especially like your blog Letters from Omi because I love the idea that the blog is aimed at your grandchildren. Each contribution begins with "Dear Grandchildren" and then you tell about family members who, of course, have never met them. This is a great thing to keep memories for the future.

Let's go back to the past one more time. Your grandfather, Carl Heumann was born on March 19, 1886 in Cologne to Jewish parents. He converted to Protestantism in 1917 when he met and married your grandmother,Irmgard, who was a Protestant. Nevertheless, Carl Heumann was regarded by the Nazis as a ”full Jew.” At first he was protected by his so-called privileged mixed marriage, but in 1938 he lost his job in his own bank, he had to pay the "Jewish property tax," and was not allowed to manage his own financial affairs. In short, he was persecuted by the National Socialist system. After the death of his wife  in January 1944, he was even more vulnerable. Tragically, he was killed in the bomb attack on Chemnitz on March 5, 1945.

(Carl Heumann (middle) with his wife Irmgard and the children Thomas (left outside), Ulli (middle) and Rainer (right outside) in the Reichsstraße in Chemnitz, around 1940, anonym)

MW: Your father, Thomas Heumann, survived the Second World War. He left Germany in 1953 and went to the USA. He was also persecuted under National Socialism because of his status as a “Mischling, a so-called half-Jew.

Many Jewish people do not consider themselves religious, but define themselves by their Jewish origin. Can you tell us what role your Jewish origins played in your father's life? Are there any Jewish traditions or rituals that have been kept alive in your family to this day?

CHS: To be honest, I wish they existed. It's kind of strange for me to be the descendant of someone for whom his Jewish heritage played such a tragic role. It didn't kill him directly, but in some ways everything changed for my grandfather because of his Judaism.

When I was a child, I wanted to have a menorah for Christmas. We had one, but there was nothing behind it. Perhaps my father could have made some of the Jewish heritage his own. I think he could have done more research on his Jewish heritage and shared some of it with his children. But maybe I'm too hard on my dad because I think he had a great trauma and I think when he came to the US he wanted to leave it all behind. So the short answer is no. We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. We never really celebrated anything related to Jewish heritage.

MW: Thank you Carol for giving us these insights into your family history. That’s so valuable. In our work as provenance researchers, it is wonderful to come into contact with the families and the heirs of the works of art. It is such a pleasant working relationship with you and your family. Thank you very much.

CHS: Thank you very much too! I really like working with both of you and everyone who has contacted us. If we can travel again, we would like to come to Germany, and it would be wonderful to meet everyone in person.

MW / KL: Yes, we'd love that too.

KL: I would also like to thank you, Carol, for your continued support in this very long process of research and restitution.

Through the posts in your blog, we got to know you and your family very well and also learned a lot more about Carl Heumann. But as I said, without the support of the other provenance researchers we would not have come this far, so once again a big thank you to the others who have supported us.

CHS: Yes, also from me. You have all been absolutely wonderful and some friendships have formed.

I would like to tell about another friendship. There was a man named Waldemar Ballerstedt in Chemnitz, who we think could have been a protector of my grandfather. You can read about it on my blog.

His grandson's wife just emailed me - I recently had an operation and she wrote to me, "Carol, we're thinking of you, get well."

So two or three generations later, there is a friendship between the descendants of a Nazi, who may have been my grandfather's protectorate, and the descendants of a persecuted German Jew.

It's just so heartwarming to me that we can forgive, forget and move on.

MW: Yes, that's great to hear. Really very touching.

KL: Nice! Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

CHS: I would like to tell you one more story.

I have a grandson, Leo, who is almost two years old. When he was very young, we showed him the picture of Sophia, a painting by Joseph Hauber from my grandfather's collection that had hung in my childhood home, and then in my parents’ houses, until my father’s death in 2017.

(Leo, the great-great-grandson of Carl Heumann in front of the painting "Sophia" from the Carl Heumann Collection, Chemnitz, 2021, photo: Carol Heumann Snider)

CHS: Leo looked at the picture and waved when he was just eight months old. It then became a tradition that when he slept in our house and woke up in the morning, the first thing he wanted to do was to say good morning to Sophia. And in the evening he insisted on saying good night to Sophia.

When Leo comes to visit now, the first thing he does is go to Sophia to say hello. To me, it's just the essence of everything we try to do to keep Carl's memory and story alive for future generations. Just seeing Leo look up while Sophia looks down at him - there is just this love bond that I can't explain. But the first few times it happened, I teared up. In my will, I will state that my grandson Leo gets the picture of Sophia so that he can have it on his walls when he grows up.

MW: Thank you for this wonderful story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Heumann’s art collection -- and those who keep it alive

Grandchildren dearest,

Let’s take a break from my father’s book, The Rim of the Volcano, and talk about something that has happened since he wrote that book.

I grew up with my grandfather’s art on our walls, but as a child I was oblivious about the history of those pieces and the journey they went through to find their way from war-torn Germany to our homes in Berkeley and Atherton, California – and some of them even on to our current home in Gig Harbor, Washington.

    

(“Sophia” in our Berkeley, CA house in 1957 and in our current Gig Harbor, WA home.)

Even with war raging all around him, Carl refused to remove his very favorite pieces from the walls of his home in Chemnitz, insisting that one cannot live in fear and that removing those beloved pieces was, in a way, giving up. As a Jew, he had already been relegated to his home and, even as those walls seemed to increasingly close in on him, he was determined to at least cover them with the art that gave him comfort and provided some hope for the future.

     

 

     

Here is just a small sample of art from my grandfather’s collection:

Eduard Bendemann (1811-1889): "Junger Mann, Trauernd" (Young Man in Mourning) Bequeathed by my father to the Kunnstsammlung Chemnitz.

Bonaventura Ginelli, 1814, Portrait of Hans Christiam Ginelli, uncle of the artist. Now at my brother, Stephan’s home.

Friedrich Salathe, Italian Landscape with Trees, 1815. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unfortunately, Carl’s most beloved pieces were destroyed along with Carl’s house – and Carl himself – when Allied bombs destroyed much of Chemnitz on March 5, 1945.

Fortunately, Carl kept most of his art collection in safe boxes away from the city. And fortunately, when the Nurnberg Laws declared that Jews were no longer allowed to own property - and certainly not “good German art”! –Carl was able to transfer ownership of the collection to his non-Jewish wife. (I do not know how Carl’s art collection escaped Nazi seizure during the year between Irmgard’s death in January, 1944 and Carl’s death in March, 1945. Hmmmm – this is something I’ll need to research!)

Family lore tells the story that, amid the chaos of post-war Germany, Rainer went to retrieve his father’s art from the vault of a bank that was now occupied by Russian guards. Piled high on the concrete floor were stacks of valuables – jewelry over here, paintings over there, sculptures in that corner, everything else tossed carelessly into the far corner.

Rainer located paintings, drawings, and sketches that he recognized from his father’s collection and attempted to persuade the guard to let him take them.

“These paintings… my father…dead… I take?” Rainer spoke no Russian and the guard spoke no German. The guard didn’t understand Rainer and seemed annoyed by the inquiry.

Rainer tried again. “My father… paint… draw… dead… I take? Yes?”

The guard suddenly smiled. “Your father… he was arteeeest? He paint? Hmmmmm…” Yes, Rainer nodded. The guard looked at the paintings and drawings. He was unimpressed. He shrugged his shoulder and drew heavily from his coveted cigarette.

“You take.” So Rainer did.

That’s the story, anyway. As my grandfather’s collection was large, containing hundreds of pieces of art, from very large to very small, I have my doubts that this is exactly how it happened. But it makes a good story, and I know of no other explanation for how my grandfather’s art collection – at least what survived of it – made its way out of what had become Russian occupied East Germany to Munich, where all three Heumann kids lived after the war.

Most of Carl’s art collection was sold at auction in Stuttgart, coincidentaly on my first birthday – November 29, 1957.

     

But Rainer, Thomas, and Ulli kept some pieces for themselves. When Thomas finally emigrated to the US in April, 1953, he took with him a large suitcase filled with art from his father’s collection. He had very little else to his name.

Now – fast-forward 61 years, to January, 24, 2014, when I received this email.

Dear Carol,

My name is Julia. I am a provenance researcher at the Albertina Museum in Vienna on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.

My job is to inspect all collective objects which became part of the collection from 1933 until present in regard to their provenance and previous owners. In questionable or disputable cases, dossiers are being compiled. The reports will be presented to the Art Restitution Advisory Board which gives recommendations to the Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture regarding a potential restitution.

During my research in 2013, I discovered  that Carl Heumann sold drawings via the Kunstantiquariat C.G. Boerner between 1936 and 1943. The Albertina bought some of the drawings that once belonged to Carl Heumann. So I tried to search out what happened to him and his family. I got much information from archives in Germany, and today I also got the hint from a colleague to your blog.

I have already collected much information from different archives and literature, but nothing is so valuable than the memories and documents from contemporary witness.

I was so overwhelmed to read the letters your father wrote your sons....all the memories of this tragic time in his life and the documents he still has...

Carol, it would be a great pleasure and help for me if you and your family would be willing to support me in finalizing my report on the collection of Carl Heumann.

In hopes of hearing from you and best regards,

Julia

How exciting! I immediately forwarded Julia’s email to my father, who was… well, not excited.

Dad had already chastised me numerous times for “putting everything on the internet” (referring to my Northwestladybug blog) and he didn’t like the idea that his father’s name was now “out there” too, for “just anyone” to find.

Dad would later eat his words, but at that point in 2014, he was livid, saying in an email to me (with his sister Ulli cc’d), when I asked about posting more about Carl…

“Carol --

NO, NO, and NO again! The real reason is privacy, even if you don't want to understand what privacy is.  What I wrote was written to very specific people, not to the world, which your blog is. Yes, your friends on the blog may all be "good people," but what I wrote was not written to them, and is nobody's business. NOBODY'S!  In this day and age we are losing so much of our privacy.  I will not be part of it.  What I wrote there -- it even has names in it! ABSOLUTELY NOT TO BE PUT ON YOUR BLOG, even if what is there is public knowledge.  Our names are not.

If you want to write a novel, with all changed names, and not traceable to my family, that's your business. You can even make your novel very generally about "Privileged Mixed Marriages under the Nazis in Germany," but you have to have a lot of information about other such marriages.

Love, in spite of disagreements -

Dad” 

Just reading that again now makes me feel like a child being punished. Can you see why the prospect of writing a book about Carl and his family, even when my father asked me specifically to do so shortly before his death, was so difficult for me? 

Again, generational trauma…

Eventually I did write back to Julia (copying my father and aunt, to stay out of trouble):

“Dear Julia,

I will, coincidentally, be traveling in Europe this coming May and would like to briefly visit with you at the Albertina, if at all possible.  We are hoping to visit the museum anyway, so if there's anything that can be learned via an in-person meeting, I would be very happy and honored to do so. My husband and I will be in Vienna on May 9th.

Although my father and aunt are the keepers of the memories, I am very interested in my grandfather's life and experiences, so this would potentially be quite interesting for me.

Please let me know if an in-person meeting is a possibility for you.  If your schedule is too busy, I totally understand!

Thanks!

Carol”

Three months later, Julia and I did meet at the Albertina Museum in Vienna.

I will never forget the moment when Julia brought me into her office and there, on her bookshelf were three large binders with the words “Carl Heumann” running down the spine. Who on earth knew enough about my grandfather to fill three binders? Julia, it turns out, was that person! In my broken German, I asked Julia question after question, and in her broken (but much better) English, she answered me.

(On Julia’s bookshelf: My father’s book, The Rim of the Volcano, which he gave to her after they met in person - read on - along with four binders full of information about my grandfather and his art collection.)

That meeting with Julia changed my life.

I suddenly wanted to know everything about my grandfather and about his life as a German Jew married to a non-Jew, with Mischlinge children, during WWII. Ironically, my father had been writing about his family experiences for years, even completing two books, The Longest year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer and The Rim of the Volcano, both of which I devoured. But Dad made it clear that his books were only for the eyes of his own family. Was it more than just the desire for privacy that led my father to be so protective of his family’s information? Could it have also been fear? Once persecuted and violated, as the Nazis had done to my father’s family, I can only imagine that the terror doesn’t go away – even 60 years later.

Now someone from outside the family was interested and I was determined not to be silenced. This would be my experience and my story. Carl was my family, too, and I was determined to follow this new lead where ever it would take me. Putting my life “out there” on my blog had reaped only great things – new friendships, new knowledge, and new information and, unlike Dad, I welcomed it.

After out trip to Vienna, Julia and I stayed in touch and my father and Julia began corresponding. At first, Dad was dubious, but within a few weeks he and Julia were enthusiastically exchanging information via email. Could it be that Dad’s attitude about “our information being put out there” was changing?!  Within a few months of my trip to Vienna, I got this email from Julia:

“Carol, there is something I want to consult with you about. Since you wrote me that there are further documents, especially on the collection, I hit on an idea! What do you think if I'll come to your (your fathers) place, officially?

Provided that your father agrees and I can see the documents and use them for my report? In addition the director of the Bureau of the Commission for Provenance Research gives his consent.

So, Carol, please be honest. Crazy idea!?!

Warm regards,

Julia”

It was Julia’s job to research as much as she could about my family in order to provide information to the Art Restitution Advisory Board which provides recommendations to the Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture regarding a potential restitution. In other words, the Albertina Museum was in possession of some pieces from Carl’s collection and they might be required to restitute those pieces back to us, his heirs.

If you’ve seen Woman in Gold, our story is similar – but with art worth nowhere near as much as the Altman family’s art.

In September, 2014, Julia did come to the US – first to Seattle, where she stayed with my family for a few days…

                  

… and then to Ashland, Oregon, where Julia and Dad GOT TO WORK!

     

That suitcase that Dad brought with him when he emigrated to America in 1953 has lived under the bed in all of my father’s homes since. Watching him share the contents with Julia was such an emotional experience!

   

Whereas just a few months previous, I was being admonished for putting pieces of our family’s information on the internet, the flood gates had now been opened and Dad was suddenly ready to share information with the others outside the family who were interested in his story. In fact, Dad had come to really enjoy meeting and working with Julia and he, too, had come to regard her as a new friend.

It was a turning point. After Julia’s visit, Dad’s attitude completely changed and, within a year, Dad was asking me to “tell my story when I’m gone.” Not just to tell his story to his descendants, but to tell his story to the world!

Thanks, Julia!

My father had hoped to see Julia again, but unfortunately he died before that could happen. I would see Julia again in Chemnitz in February, 2018 when the mayor invited heirs of Carl and Thomas to come to the opening of an art exhibit in their honor, and Julia traveled to Chemnitz to join us in the celebration.

(My daughter, Kat and son, Peter, and my cousin Claudia, with Julia to her left.)

(Julia with Jürgen Nitsche, expert on Jews in Chemnitz. My father wanted so much to meet Jürgen after years of corresponding with him, but unfortunately they’d never have a chance to meet.)

The Austrian Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture were unable to come to a unanimous decision about restitution of Carl’s art at The Albertina. Finally, in March 2018, after four years of deliberation, the board decided not to restitute the works to our family because “although Carl Heumann was undoubtedly persecuted, the sales in question were not motivated by the situation of persecution, but by his interest as a collector.” I was neither surprised nor disappointed. By that point, the most important result of our relationship with the Austrian board – a friendship with wonderful Julia – had already happened and for that, we continue to be so grateful.

In the years since, I have been contacted by museums in Berlin, Munich, and Dresden. Art from Carl’s collection with suspect provenance (in other words, the art that was ill-begotten by Nazis during the war) were discovered in their vaults. Unlike the Austrian board, ALL the German museum boards have decided to restitute art back to Carl’s heirs. Once this damn pandemic is over, my brothers and cousins and our families plan to travel to Germany to pick up these pieces:

Albert Kirchner, Fischerwiede, 1854.

Jacob Gensler, Maedchen mit Papagai

Jacob Schiller, Devil’s Bridge at Midnight, 1800

We’ve been told that more art from Carl’s collection will likely be found in other museums in Europe. Our biggest hope is to somehow create a book of high-resolution copies of all the art from Carl’s collection that we can find. This way, we can keep Carl’s love of art alive for future generations of his descendants.

The Rim of the Volcano–Chapter List and Forward

My dearest grandchildren,

My father, your great-grandfather, left me hundreds – no, thousands – of pages of his writings, from journals, to essays, to emails, to complete books. In addition, he left me many large binders full of his research findings. The enormity of it all is what kept me from writing “his” book. Where would I begin? Should I re-trace his steps and re-do his research, or is that just an immense waste of time? (It is.)

I’ve considered simply editing Dad’s book The Rim of the Volcano for clarity, self-publishing it, and calling it good. But I have associated personal experiences that add to the story. Experiences like meeting provenance researcher, Julia Essl at the Albertina Museum in Vienna and seeing on her office shelves binder after binder labeled “Carl Heumann. Experiences like being invited by the mayor of Chemnitz to participate in the museum exhibit honoring my father and grandfather almost 75 years after Carl’s death. Experiences like sleuthing, locating, and contacting the descendants of the man who I suspect was my grandfather’s protectorate and the reason that he was the only Jew left in Chemnitz in March, 1945, the month of his death. And experiences like what I’m immersed in and coordinating now – working with a variety of German museums that have identified art originally from Carl’s collection that are deemed to have been sold by Carl under duress and so are now being offered as restitution to his heirs.

This story spans many generations. Adele Kattwinkel, my great-grandmother (your great-great-great grandmother) and her daughter, Irmgard  - Carl’s wife and the Aryan partner of a Jew in WWII Germany - corresponded often, and those letters (over 600 pages of them!) helped my father better understand his mother, who he never knew as an adult.

Fifty years after my grandmother’s death, my father wrote down his memories for his children and grandchildren and now I’m writing (well, blogging) my own related experiences for my children and you, my grandchildren.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do. Since most of my father’s material culminated in his writing of the Rim book, I’m going to post portions of that book separately and sequentially, “interrupting” now and then to add my own opinions, experiences, and  perspectives. That should allow both Dad and I to have a voice – though the louder, more prominent voice will definitely (and appropriately)  be his.

Today’s post: Chapter List and Forward to The Rim of the Volcano.

(It’s a title I never liked, by the way. I know what Dad was going for – as a Mischling, he looked into the fire and felt its heat, but he was never actually thrown into the volcano – but I think it’s confusing. I would have named it something simpler, like Mischling, Ersten Grades – Growing Up as a Half-Jew in Nazi Germany, but it’s Dad’s book.)

 Here’s the Chapter List:

And here’s the Forward:

This is a fictional narration, but it’s based on my own research and experiences. What you read here is essentially true — "essentially" and not "completely" because some events had to be left out, others were changed slightly in time sequence, or simplified to make the story less confusing (yes, it was in reality even more tumultuous than it is told here!). But practically all of the personal events are based on my own experiences. A very few are from hearsay, but probably happened about as described. Names in general are not changed.

Living for more than half a century in a different world (27 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, 31 years in Ashland, Oregon) can play funny tricks on someone's memory, but that may not be altogether bad. In the process of evaporating details, the mind distills out the essence of a period, the main thing I am trying to convey.

The sources I used for research are rather limited, compared to what a historian would use. I am not a historian, nor is any of this written by or for historians. Events are my own interpretations, including my admitted prejudices. German documents and laws were mostly translated by me.

The Nazis were Germans, with a German leaning toward classifying people and actions into pigeon holes. For this, they found the cooperation of a bourgeois bureaucracy. One of the most frightening aspects of Nazi rule was its reliance on average people who were given the “legitimacy” of decrees (they called them laws) to do whatever the government directed. Most of the execution of the Nazi policies was utterly and terribly middle-class.

There were many secularized Jews in Germany who had been completely absorbed in German society to the point of being in no way different from those around them. They felt “German” long before they ever felt “Jewish.” Four years after the Nürnberg Laws had set the stage, Goering created the category of “Privileged Mixed Marriages.” These Jews were treated and harassed almost as badly as other Jews, but generally without being deported. There were tens of thousands of such families. Of course, the Nazis created that pigeon hole, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but to control them easier through bureaucracy.

The existence of the very phenomenon of “Privileged Mixed Marriages” is little known in this country, yet it is a part of history. In no way should what I say here be taken as an excuse for the horrors the Nazis brought upon Jews in general. For political reasons, they left areas of grey in their malice. Most of the 28,000 Jews who survived the Nazis in Germany were “Privileged.” 

To understand this narrative, one has to examine and understand the timeline. Looking at my entire lifetime, the twelve years of Nazi rule (shown bold) were really only a small fraction of my entire life span, but war is the most impressionable time in anybody's life, so those years influenced me much beyond the actual length of time.

Look at it:

1886 Carl Heumann born, first child in a Jewish family

1894 Irmgard Buddecke born

pre-1914 Carl Heumann is baptized Protestant-Lutheran

1914-1918 World War I, Carl in German Army (Medal: “EK II”)

1919 My parents get married

1923 Rainer is born

1928 I am born in Chemnitz

1932 Ulrike is born

1933 Nazis come to power

1934 I enter grade school

1935 The "Nürnberg Laws" define and restrict Jews

1938 I enter High School (“Gymnasium”)

1939 World War II starts in Europe

1942 The Wannsee Conference implements "The Final Solution"

1943 I am dismissed from Gymnasium

1944 Jan: My mother dies of a brain tumor

         Nov: I enter Slave Labor Camp

1945 Feb: Last Transport of Jews to Theresienstadt from Chemnitz

         Mar: My father dies in air raid on Chemnitz, our house is destroyed

         Apr: I am freed from Labor Camp

         May: Germany capitulates

         Dec: Left Russian Zone of Germany for München in US Zone

1946 Gymnasium in Ingolstadt

1947 Abitur ( High School graduation)

1947-1952 Technical University Munich

1951 Married Edith Reiss

1952 Michael born

1953 We emigrate to US

↑

58 years!

↓

2011 Today

I see my past as having had six lives. This narrative covers my first and second lives, possibly the most important ones. Lives 3 and 4 each would merit a whole book all by themselves, and lives 5 and 6 would make another one. What a rich life I’ve had!

First life: Childhood: birth to age to 16, 1928 to 1944 Protected life in Chemnitz

Second life: Youth: age 16-19, 1944-1947. Labor Camp, Gisela, Nora, Ingrid

Third life: College Years: age 19-23, 1948-1951: Gisela, Ruth. Hilde, Uschi, Chris. Hans/Muttchen.

Fourth life; Married Life: age 23-52, 1951-1980: Edith, Emigration, Kids, America,

Engineering Profession.

Fifth life: Retirement: age 52-76, 1980-2004: Ashland, Grandkids, Video Production,

B&B, Edith’s death.

Sixth life: After Edith: from age 76 on: Chris, Barbara, Jennifer.

Marriage and new life with Lou.

In the Fall of 2010, Dr. Nitsche sent me some very interesting papers that were supposed to shed some light on the history of my family under Nazi rule. Dr. Nitsche is a historian who wrote a book "Jews in Chemnitz" and is now researching aspects of Jewish history in my home town. The papers he sent me were rather informative for me personally, so I sent copies to all of you and to Ulrike (Ulli) in Berkeley, assuming they would be interesting to everyone else. Wrong! They were interesting alright, but more importantly they raised a lot more questions in you than they answered. I am so thankful that you asked some of those questions!

The process of writing this book was both revealing and troubling to me. Your questions showed me that I had been very negligent while you were growing up. I never really told you in any meaningful way about what it was like to grow up in Germany, raised by parents with German values and habits, and fenced out from society at large under Nazi restrictions and oppressions against a “Jewish family.” But mainly I have not told you (or your own descendants!) enough of what life in general was like at that time and at that place, what schools were like, my relationship to my parents, and how we were existing without many of today's normal conveniences (like cars), let alone unthinkable technological developments (like cell phones). This writing is supposed to make up somehow for some of my failure to tell you over the years, including how a Fascist dictatorship and a war literally influenced any and all daily activities, choices, and relationships. I will also tell you about some choices I made, but I leave it to you to judge whether the decisions were good ones, and what -- if anything -- one can learn from them.

To give the reader a concept of the contemporary events, three perspectives will be used.

Each chapter will be preceded by a summary of what I understand the political and public situation to be at the time, based on my own knowledge and the research I have done myself.

That will be followed by an interpretation of some of the almost 2,000 decrees and “laws” the Nazis issued during that time for the single purpose of dealing with “the Jewish Question,” based on a collection by Joseph Walk, called Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS Staat^[1] (1981).

Only then will I give a narrative of my and my family’s life at the same period. We grew up very protected. The contrast between what really went on on the outside and our awareness of it, is often dramatic.

The “Peter Bauer” story I wrote earlier is being incorporated.

The one omission I regret most is that I didn’t ask my father, while he was still alive, about his family, his parents, his childhood, and life at the time. He never volunteered to talk about any of that. Rainer didn’t know much more, nor did he want to talk at all about his own life, and neither did my cousin Edith in Zürich. Their common answer to any question was a dismissive “Ach ja ...” -- period. All of them are dead now, nobody is left to ask any more.

Writing today about myself and my youth is not strictly an egocentric exercise, I’m also trying to be a good ancestor now. I am writing this now because I think my children and descendants need to know and remember their history, to be aware of what society must never be allowed to repeat.

This narrative essentially ends with my admission to the TH (Technische Hochschule) in München in 1947. What comes after is a whole different story to be added some other time -- possibly..

Roger Rosenblatt of NPR said the reasons why we write are:

to make suffering endurable,

to make evil intelligible,

to make justice desirable, and

to make love possible.

I’ll try to be true to all four of those.

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