The Perils of Pauline

The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon

Interest in French Anti-Semitism and the Nazi occupation (1940-1944) never seems to abate. This year was no exception. There was the exhibition at the mahJ (Museum of the Art and History of Judaism) about all those Jewish artists in Paris when the Nazis arrived. Some got it together and got out in time. Some waited too long and either went into hiding and then into trains headed for the death camps or skipped the hiding part and went straight to the camps (via Drancy, see below).

An exhibition now on at the Musée Nissim Camondo is the first ever temporary exhibition at that beautiful shrine to a son who died fighting for France and a daughter who died for being Jewish in France. A family annihilated whose art and objets filled home stands as silent testament to the assimilation they sought but failed to achieve.

Even exhibitions that don’t have either Anti-Semitism or Nazi concentration camps as their subject, can’t avoid them. The current exhibition about Picasso at the Musée de l’Immigration for example, has a section on Picasso’s dear friend, Max Jacob. Whose conversion to Catholicism was a matter of faith rather than hope. By which I mean he didn’t convert as Beatrice de Camondo and so many others did, hoping to avoid being identified as Jews. They evidently hadn’t read the complicated charts the Nazis devised for determining degrees of Jewishness. Very methodical, those Nazis. Jacob was picked up by the Gestapo at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. Luckily I suppose, he died at Drancy, the internment camp just outside Paris from which Jews were taken on French trains to Nazi death camps.

Of course Anti-Semitism wasn’t invented by the Nazis. The Picasso exhibition begins by telling us that Picasso arrived in Paris when the country was still torn apart by the Dreyfus affair. Those who believed that the highest ranking Jewish military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was a traitor, passing military secrets to the Germans. And those who believed that the charges against Dreyfus were trumped up and rooted in anti-Semitism. (Not so) Fun fact: Degas wasn’t only a misogynist, he was a rabid Anti Semite. How disappointing that must have been for his old friend, Camille Pissarro.

With that sober introduction, let’s talk about The Vanished Collection, by Pauline Baer de Perignon. The book reminded me (and it will remind you, too) of a film based on a book based on actual events. The herculean efforts of a young American lawyer in American and Austrian courts to have the fabulous painting, Lady in Gold, by Gustav Klimt (Figure 1) returned to its rightful owners. The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese /Jewish socialite had been taken by the Nazis in 1941 and found its way to the Belvedere Gallery, Vienna. I have seen the painting in New York at the Neue Gallery. Perhaps you have, too. When I was at the Belvedere, in Vienna, there was a wall of notes where the painting had hung, written by Viennese children, wishing the painting, the Vienna Mona Lisa, a bon voyage and a happy life in her new home in New York.

Figure 1. Adele Bloch-Bauer with portrait called Woman (Lady) in Gold, Gustav Klimt, 1907

In The Vanished Collection, Pauline Baer de Perignon recounts her efforts to find and have returned to his heirs, some of the paintings in her great grandfather’s art collection. Jules Strauss was a wealthy Jewish banker/art collector from Frankfurt who lived his adult life in Paris. (Figure 2) Although his life was spared, nearly everything he owned was gradually confiscated by the Nazis during the Occupation. (Figure 3)

Figure 2. Jules and Marie-Louise Strauss

Figure 3. Jules Strauss home, 60 Avenue Foch, Paris

Unlike Marie Altman (the niece and heir in the Lady in Gold), Pauline Baer never lived the life of opulence that her great grandparents enjoyed. She had no first hand memory of what had been lost. So this detective story, this memoir, is one for our time. It begins at a concert of Brazilian music in Paris, where, by chance, Pauline sees her cousin Andrew Strauss. Born and raised in England, he now works for Sothebys in Paris. He tells her about a long ago sale of their great-grandfather’s paintings. But the music is too loud and he is too caught up in the concert to explain. So she meets up with him a few days later at his office. This time he scribbles a list of paintings, “three by Degas, four Renoirs, two Sisleys, two Monets” that their great grandfather had owned. Paintings he had been forced to sell. Sales, he tells her that can be contested.

Next we meet Nadine, Jules Strauss’s granddaughter, Pauline’s aunt, the sister of Pauline’s deceased father. She is the only living link Pauline has with her great grandfather. Nadine was born in 1925 so she knew the paintings that hung on the walls, the furniture and objects that decorated the elegant home on Avenue Foch. Nadine is in her 90s as the story unfolds. Pauline tries to learn as much as she can about her great grandparents’ lives. Asking questions that Nadine either avoids or answers in ways that don’t invite further questions. Pauline must balance wanting to learn more with trying not to upset her aunt whose constant companions now are age related infirmities and financial worries.

Attempting to recover the lost paintings is a challenge Pauline accepts but one she feels woefully inadequate to perform. Hers is a steep learning curve. She meets with art historians and curators who mostly want to help and bureaucrats who mostly want to hinder her efforts. She visits archives and repositories, at times with such little preparation, the art historian in me wanted to shake her and tell her to do her homework first. And she gradually gets better, more knowledgable, more at ease.

Sometimes Pauline pursues her goal confidently. Other times, she despairs. Pauline is not the first in her family to attempt the recovery of her patrimony. After the war, Marie-Louise, Jules Strauss’s widow had tried to get her stuff back. Armed with two notebooks filled with annotations in her husband’s hand, documenting paintings he had owned. She enlisted the help of a lawyer. Who, according to Aunt Nadine, had been that perfect combination of expensive and useless. Marie-Louise’s efforts failed. The losses suffered during the war were compounded by the frustration and humiliation of losing the battle to reclaim her possessions. For Nadine, it was best to forget all of it. To let it go, to keep a lid on the memories.

There is cycle in these sorts of quests. One begins, certain of the facts, hopeful of the outcome. But then, the inevitable roadblocks. Museums don’t want to give up paintings in their collections. Government bureaucracies don’t want to admit fault. Nothing goes as planned. Exhausted, the effort is put aside as one tries to get on with one’s life. That stage is followed by a forgetting, by a willful amnesia. And then for some reason, one (or someone else) tries again. It is a pattern that plays out in this book as it did in the The Lady in Gold.

We met Pauline’s cousin Andrew at the beginning of the story. Later on, we learn about Andrew's father, Jules Strauss’s grandson, Michel. He spent a lot of time with his grandmother when he was young. Visiting museums, touching paintings. He had inherited the art appreciation gene, as has his son. He retired as head of Sothebys Impressionist and Modern Art department. He died a few weeks ago. In his obituary I learned that he invented phone-in bids for publicity shy bidders.

I couldn’t help but ask myself why Andrew and Michel hadn’t tried to track down Jules Strauss’s paintings themselves. Why hadn’t they pursued the leads Andrew gave to Pauline. They know the art world, indeed, from their vantage points at Sothebys, they were/are part of what controls the art world.

I’m no psychologist but I think that neither Michel, who had inherited his grandfather’s notebooks, nor Andrew, wanted to be labeled as whatever one is labeled for seeking compensation. It simply isn’t tasteful to complain. It isn’t the done thing. The world of auction houses and great wealth are insular enough. Why risk it. And so, they put it aside. Until Andrew’s chance meeting with Pauline. His career was flourishing. Her career (she tells us repeatedly) was floundering. What would be the fallout for them if she tried and failed. Which I imagine they imagined might well happen. Keeping their distance, they wouldn’t be implicated.

There is a sort of Jewish anti-semitism that runs through the book. It reminded me of Bernard Berenson’s responses to his benefactors’ and friends’ Jewish slurs. He wasn’t offended. He couldn’t afford to be. He joined in. Nadine didn’t want to be Jewish either. She tells Pauline about going to a bar mitzvah as a child and asking for a ham sandwich. You don’t have to be Jewish to know that Jews don’t eat ham, well at least not in a synagogue after a bar mitzvah. But she wanted the waiters to know that she wasn’t that kind of Jew. And Pauline tells us she hadn’t really thought about being Jewish before this quest. Which seems almost unbelievable to me. But okay.

There are lots of funny passages in the book. Pauline often feels that Jules is with her, urging her on. So she goes to see a medium she has visited before. The medium doesn’t recognize Pauline. It strikes Pauline as funny, me too. Pauline doesn’t want to tell the medium too much, doesn’t want to make her work too easy. But the medium says enough that Pauline is encouraged to continue her pursuit.

In another funny passage Pauline goes to an archive in Koblenz, Germany. When she contacts the owner of the Airbnb she has booked, the owner tells her that there was a mistake, someone else is already staying there. I wish she had asked me, Airbnb has a toll free number for those sorts of mix-ups. The only thing Pauline remembers from her couple days in Koblenz is a restaurant which served mostly egg noodles and pretzels. It reminded me of a book I have reviewed in which the author talked about a bar in Germany and a group of Alpha Germans and their pretzel fight.

But there were some decidedly not funny moments. Pauline sees a retired curator whenever she is at a particular museum’s archive. He mutters under his breath when she approaches. Finally she asks the woman in charge of the archives what is going on. Apparently this curator knew of her great grandfather, whom he considered an amateur. Never mind that because of Jules Strauss, many Renaissance paintings at the Louvre now have frames of their period, donated by Strauss. Then Pauline discovers that it was this curator who had not responded to a museum’s inquiry about the provenance of a particular painting in their collection. Which happens to be a painting her grandfather had owned. She explains this to the woman. Who shrugs. What can she do. Surely she can do something. Here is a man loose in the archives who is maybe hiding, maybe destroying documents. Evidence that Pauline’s family or another family could use to substantiate their claims for restitution.

And then, here is Patrick Modiano, the Nobel Prize winner (Literature 2014) who lives in her neighborhood and who Pauline encounters (not really) by chance. If you don’t know his books, try to find them. Easy vocabulary in French, most translated into English. His focus is France during the Occupation. His themes include personal and group identities, memory and loss. He shares information about Jules Strauss with Pauline. Modiano’s father, also Jewish, had survived the war in Paris. He knows lots of secrets.

Figure 4. Shepherd, drawing by Tiepolo, Strauss Collection, formerly Louvre, Paris

Toward the end of the book, Pauline’s 17 year old son asks her why she doesn’t get paid for her work. Her explanation for his question made me uneasy. By the end of the book Pauline has successfully secured the return of a print by Tiepolo (Figure 4 - I’m not sure what happened to it) from the Louvre and a painting by the 18th century French master, Nicolas de Largillière, Portrait of a lady as Pomona, (Figure 5) from the Dresden Art Museum. The painting goes up for auction at Sothebys this month. Described in their catalogue as: ‘Property from the collection of Jules Strauss, recently restituted to his heirs.’ The estimated price is between 1 million - 1.5 million dollars. To be shared by 20 heirs. After lawyer’s and auction house fees. Pauline needs to focus her efforts on those Impressionist paintings on Andrew’s list. And she really needs to get paid for her work. Should you read this book? Absolutely. I am guessing volume 2 is on the way. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Figure 5. Portrait of a lady as Pomona, Nicolas de Largillière, 1714, Strauss Collection, formerly Dresden Museum of Art

Copyright © 2021 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved

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