I've had this book for a while and for some reason the first time I tried reading it a couple of years ago I just couldn't connect with it and put it away after the first 20 or 30 pages. But I was going to give it another try on the plane to Vienna before my trip got canceled and so while I indulged in an impromptu, involuntary home retreat I decided to read it anyway. It was a bit hard at first to get over the fact that I was supposed to be in Vienna and visit all the museums I'd been dreaming to see (the Belvedere and the Albertina and the Kunsthistorisches Museum and all the paintings by great Austrian artists like Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka). I was one day and a half away from going when all hell broke loose and I really wanted to go on that trip. But I'll go some other time and soon enough I was engrossed in the story.
I have to admit I remembered nothing of my first attempt at reading the book, and now I found myself amazed at the feistiness and personality of Adele Bloch-Bauer in Part One, captivated by the lost world of cultivated, artistic Vienna in Part Two, heartbroken at the fate of Jewish art collectors oblivious to the threat of Nazism until it was far too late, and appalled by the greed and evil of all the people who stole from them, including the staff of Viennese museums who knew very well the paintings had bee taken under duress. Part Three has been recounted in the Hollywood movie Woman in Gold (2015) with Helen Mirren and Ryan Gosling, which leaves out all the information of Part One and Part Two that really grabs the reader's heart and instead glosses over the deep questions this raises over human nature and prefers the happy-ending story of the legal battle that handed a victory to the now elderly Maria Altmann, whose family had owned the painting back in Vienna. (Altmann sold the painting in 2006 to Ronald Lauder and died in 2011.) I remember seeing the painting when it was exhibited at the (Lauder-owned) Neue Galerie in New York. Seeing the picture in a book really doesn't do it justice: it is a very large painting and there is a lot of gold.
The atrocities of Part Two resonated the most with me. Part Three (the legal victory and restitution) was only possible after enough time had passed. The museum curators knew where to find the incriminating paperwork and they all remained silent for decades. While that story has a happy ending, I think it says something profound about the depraved, jealous nature of many people in society when others have things they want for themselves without working hard for it. The war just created a set of circumstances that made this impossible to ignore, when enormous atrocities were committed at the national level in Germany and its annexed countries. But I think that the same instincts lurk in many people today who are not happy with their lives and jealous of the people who have shown the talent, discipline and intelligence to succeed in their chosen endeavor. This book illuminates an aspect of human nature we would rather forget, and should not, lest the fate of families like the Altmanns' one day happens to us.
Comments