The Lady in Gold (18 page)

Maria was still a gangly girl of ten, with a swaying walk that earned her the nickname “Duckling.” She was disappointed to learn her role: Therese wanted Maria to pull a toy donkey cart filled with bouquets, and “whinny like a horse.” When the guests arrived, servants passed them little flutes of champagne. Maria obediently neighed and trotted by the elegantly attired guests. The glamorous Baron Gutmann smiled indulgently, and Maria felt the first stirrings of self-consciousness and humiliation. She was not a little girl anymore! But she dutifully pulled the cart, handing out bouquets.

Suddenly Luise appeared in the doorway, in a sleek gown.

Even the chamber musicians stopped to stare at her. Then they struck up the first notes of a waltz. Baron Gutmann put down his champagne glass and took Luise by the hand to lead her through the first dance. Maria set down her cart and watched as Viktor and Luise glided away, her slender arm on his shoulder, his hand barely touching the small of her back. Baron Gutmann casually put his lips to Luise's ear to tell her something that made her throw her head back with laughter as they whirled around the room.

It was no surprise when Luise and Viktor announced their engagement. In contrast to his nineteen-year-old fiancée, Viktor was a well-traveled
man of thirty-four who had known many women. Viktor had a roving eye, something that Luise, accustomed to being the center of attention, found maddening. Her first taste of jealousy was a disconcerting surprise. Their engagement was stormy, passionate, and brief. A few months after her debutante ball, Luise stepped into the ornate, gilded Stadt Temple in an ivory silk wedding gown. She wore simple white pearls and an intricate handmade lace veil that fell rakishly over her eyes.

Therese ordered Maria, now eleven, to carry the long train of Luise's gown. Maria was to pull carefully, so Luise would sally forth regally. “Hold back, so she strides like a queen,” Therese whispered to Maria, just before her “Duckling” walked into the synagogue behind Luise. Maria tugged on Luise's dress as hard as she could, while Luise beamed radiantly at the upturned, admiring faces. Maria must have pulled too tightly, because as Luise strode down the aisle, smiling blandly, she hissed irritatedly to her sister: “
Trottel—
Idiot! Walk faster!” Maria's face burned with shame.

Luise's wedding banquet featured a printed menu with course after course of French dishes, each with its own wine. There was
potage à la crème d'orange
with Château 1916 Coutet.
Truites au bleu sauce mayonnaise
with Niernsteiner Kranzberg 1917.
Selle de chevreuil rôtie à la Cumberland
and
fonds d'artichauds aux pointes d'asperges,
with Pommery Sec. Dessert was
crème aux fraises de la saison,
with Château Grand la Cagune 1914 and French cheese, Viennese pastry, and fresh fruit.

For her wedding photo, Luise stared up seductively, like the floating faces of Klimt's sirens.

As Maria grew toward adolescence, she was the mirthful, loyal sister; Luise was the poised beauty of society pages.
Even as a married woman, Luise mingled with a cosmopolitan crowd, peopled by actors, singers, and aristocrats.

Luise told Maria titillating stories. Like the time a married friend left her husband in the opera box for a breathtaking sexual tryst with her lover in a dark, velvet-curtained niche of the
Vienna State Opera, while Luise made excuses until her friend returned.

To sheltered Maria, it was a thrill when, at sixteen, a boy she had a tremendous crush on pulled her into his arms for her first real kiss, on a boat on Lake Attersee. He pressed his body against hers, and Maria was so surprised she almost tipped the boat over. She told her best friend, Christl, believing the kiss a prelude to a courtship. But when Maria saw the boy at
a party, he greeted her casually and moved on to speak to another teenage girl. Maria was crushed.

Not all her contemporaries were so naïve.
Christl was already having a very adult affair with
Anton Felsovanyi, a scion of the prominent, titled family that owned the distinguished Loew Sanatorium, where
Gustav Mahler had died. Felsovanyi, like other young men of the upper class, attended Vienna's Theresianum, a castlelike military school that took up an entire block near the Belvedere Palace. The Theresianum's love affair with the past was nearly necrophiliac: in the library, two crumbling mummies—the gift of an Egyptian prince whose sons had studied there—lay in a glass case, along with a crocodile that appeared to be rotting.

Christl and Anton took Maria to a basement wine bar near Vienna's old city hall, where Anton invited his rakish school friends to flirt with Maria.

Anton's grandfather, Dr.
Anton Loew, had been a friend of Adele. But his less approving mother,
Gertrud Felsovanyi, characterized Adele as a “
flaming socialist.” At Anton's elegant family mansion on Pelikangasse, he showed Maria the Klimt portrait of his mother in a white gown, an ethereally untouched maiden—so unlike the sultry gold portrait of Adele that Ferdinand kept in his shrine. To Maria, Anton was a bit of a philistine. His mother bought him orchestra seats for
Richard Wagner's masterpiece,
Die Walküre,
and he described it as “Torture. Hours and hours of those women, shrieking.”

Maria and Christl had played together since they were children, in the little plaza off the Ringstrasse that honored
Karl Lueger, the former Viennese mayor who famously pronounced that “I decide who is a Jew.”

Settling this question was more difficult than ever after generations of intermarriage in Vienna. Christl's father, a good-looking, dull blond bureaucrat, was Catholic; her mother a
baptized Jew. Families like Christl's had become common. Christl grew into a spirited young woman, whose self-confidence was the envy of Maria.
Anton Felsovanyi conquered Christl with all the weapons in his privileged arsenal. He took her to dine at absurdly extravagant restaurants. He arranged private carriage rides in the Vienna Woods. Soon, Christl was telling Maria how Anton kissed and caressed her until she was incapable of resisting him. He gave her an expensive gold necklace and a puppy to walk. He told her he wanted to marry her.

Anton did want to marry Christl. He went to her house regularly to chat with her father, who told Anton of his admiration for Adolf Hitler. Christl rolled her eyes and complained that her father was “
a big Nazi,” a
member of Vienna's secret illegal fraternity. Hans, the fiancé of Christl's sister, was also a Nazi Party member. Over beers, Hans told Anton his dream of the unification of all German peoples, of the National Socialism that would provide jobs and restore Austria to greatness. Anton had been an activist in a competing Austrian fascist group, the Heimwehr, or Home Defence. Anton loved its parties, hosted by the Heimwehr leader
Prince Starhemberg, and he had vied to dance with leggy young
Hedy Kiesler, who would soon be better known as
Hedy Lamarr.

Christl was hardly Anton's first affair. Wealthy young men like Anton did as they pleased. Felsovanyi's mother was said to be the child of her own mother's affair with a Hungarian general. Anton's mother usually ignored her son's indiscretions. But with Christl she intervened. She didn't raise her son to marry the daughter of a petty civil servant. Gertrud paid a discreet visit to Christl's father.
She quietly explained that Christl's relationship with Anton was growing far too
serious
for his daughter's own good. The conservative patriarch immediately understood. Christl wept. Anton consoled himself by quickly overwhelming the innocence of an adoring aristocratic girl whose pedigree impressed his mother. Maria was offended. How could Gertrud Felsovanyi reject Christl when her son wasted his time at nightclubs and parties?

The Bloch-Bauer residence on the Stubenbastei embodied the glamour of Old Vienna for
Gustav Rinesch, a tall, handsome rake who, as one of Vienna's most eligible bachelors, was certain he could win the heart of Maria Bloch-Bauer.

His spirits never failed to rise when he turned down the lovely walking street that marked the onetime Stuben Bastion of walled Vienna. Rinesch found Maria's world on Stubenbastei, with its inside jokes, cultured visitors, and endless family intrigues, a seductive place indeed.

Rinesch was one of a growing number of Catholic attorneys in Vienna who worked for a Jewish law firm. Jewish firms offered some of the best opportunities.
Jews, just 2.8 percent of the population of Austria, made up
more than half of Austria's lawyers, doctors, and dentists, and their firms and factories now employed many non-Jewish Austrians in top positions. Rinesch relished the entrée his job gave him into Vienna high society.

The Jewish intelligentsia was for Rinesch “the
spirit of the town.” He considered the Jewish elite “very humanistic” and admired “Jewish humor,” the way “they can laugh at themselves very easily.” In fact, the laughter and conversation at Stubenbastei was robbing his bachelor freedom of its appeal.

Rinesch was a regular at the Friday-night gatherings at Stubenbastei, where Gustav Bloch-Bauer played cello with his quartet. Here Rinesch rubbed shoulders with dapper composer
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, with the librettist
Franz Lehar, with Alma Mahler.

Maria was pining for
Fritz Altmann, “
an aspiring opera singer with a mediocre baritone.” But Rinesch knew her infatuation with this glib ladies' man would run its course. For now, he bided his time, carousing around Vienna with Maria's brother Robert, “a real womanizer” who spent his time cultivating good-looking women, “mostly from non-Jewish society, who always fell immediately into the bed of his rented pied-à-terre.”

Therese approved of Rinesch, who had a saucy grin but a proper air of respect. Therese hoped Maria would take Rinesch more seriously when they returned from their summer at Ischl.

But as the family prepared to leave Vienna that summer of 1937, Gustav received an unexpected caller.
Bernhard Altmann swept into the house, sporting a well-cut suit and a hearty, affectionate air. Bernhard greeted Maria with fatherly warmth, as she smiled up at him with the amusement that melted his tough reserve. Bernhard liked strong women, from his mother and sister to his wife and mistress. But he was disarmed by Maria's sweetness. Gustav made no secret of his admiration for Bernhard. He invited him to sit down in one of the leather chairs of his book-lined study and closed the doors. The only thing to emerge was the scent of fine cigars, the murmur of men's voices, and deep laughter.

Maria soon learned the reason for the visit: Bernhard wanted to know if the Bloch-Bauers would accept an Altmann into the family. Bernhard was impatient with Fritz's affair with the married woman. He was a close friend of the woman's husband, and felt it was time to put a stop to it. Gustav didn't know Fritz well, though he knew Fritz shared his love for music. But Maria's indulgent father was inclined to give his blessing to a match with
Fritz, if that was his daughter's wish. The Altmanns were
nouveau
and only Bernhard was
riche.
But they had come a long way from hardscrabble Galicia and the cramped Leopoldstadt apartment of their Yiddish-speaking parents.

When Fritz found out about Bernhard's visit, he was furious. Yes, he found Maria very charming. You'd have to be blind not to see she was beautiful. But Fritz was deeply smitten with his mistress. Fritz appealed directly to Maria. He sent Maria a fine porcelain bowl, hand-painted with tiny flowers, that cradled a blooming orchid.

Maria eagerly opened the ivory envelope, anticipating her long-awaited romantic letter from Fritz. Finally.

“
If I were a prince and you were a princess, and a fairy godmother could put you to sleep for a year, it would work,” Fritz wrote. “But this is real life. So I must say goodbye. It will be a year before you hear from me.”

Bernhard Altmann, the tough Galician who turned a family cottage industry into an international textile brand, ca. 1937. (
Illustration Credit 24.1
)

Maria was crushed.

Soon Maria and her parents were on the train to Bad Ischl in Austria's Salzkammergut, the old Celtic salt-mining region that was once the exclusive retreat of emperors. A place where snowcapped mountains cupped deep blue lakes, and freezing streams rushed madly into valleys and villages where salt miners still turned up Celtic spears and knives. Summer stretched before Maria, with rides down country roads in horse-drawn fiacres and walks in high mountain meadows filled with edelweiss. But Maria couldn't have been more miserable.