1913 (48 page)

On 20 November, Franz Kafka notes in his diary: ‘Went to the cinema. Wept.’

Emotional overload in the cinema brings the youth protection officers out in force. The pedagogue Adolf Sellman writes in the foreword to his book
Cinema and School:

In Fulda the German Episcopal Conference draws up special guidelines for the clergy to protect against the negative effects of visiting the
cinema. No longer was anyone to weep at trashy tales! The demand is made that children under the age of six should not be allowed into the cinema. And adults should also avoid morally inferior films.

That is what is known as a pious wish.

What a lovely name: Albert Duke Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein. Thanks to the marriage of one of his ancestors to a princess of Sachsen-Coburg long ago in the nineteenth century, Albert Mensdorff, known as Duke Ali, was related to almost all the courts of Europe, a fact that delighted him anew every day. The cousin of the British king, and Imperial Ambassador in London, pulls off his masterstroke in November 1913. King George V writes to him, hoping that the archduke and duchess will be able to come to Windsor in November for a few days’ shooting. Can they? It’s the first official invitation to the successor to the Austrian throne and his wife, Countess Sophie, hitherto subjected to an endless series of official humiliations. Duke von Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein knows what he has succeeded in doing, and therefore writes to Archduke Franz Ferdinand: ‘As you know, such official occasions, with dinners, toasts, receptions, theatres etc. etc., where one becomes half sick and plagued to death, have always been a horror to me.’ It is a bad joke, because the duke is really the biggest party animal in the world of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy – he keeps the menu from each of his dinners and the next morning draws a seating plan, marking on it who was sitting next to him. His reason for denouncing the social aspect of the archduke’s visit has entirely to do with the fact that he and the successor to the throne cordially dislike one another. But the archduke couldn’t care less. He is enjoying making his first official trip abroad with his wife. And he is enjoying the fact that barely two weeks after the hunt with Kaiser Wilhelm he is now able to go pheasant shooting with King George V near Windsor Castle. Franz Ferdinand and the king are accompanied by three English earls, while the ladies chat in Windsor Castle and listen to concerts. On Tuesday 18 November a thousand
pheasants and 450 wild ducks are brought down by the marksmen after being driven into the line of fire by beaters. On Wednesday 19 November, in the loveliest sunshine, they shoot 1,700 pheasants. On Thursday they shoot about 1,000. And then on Friday, with rain lashing the faces of the royal hunting party, 800 pheasants and 800 wild ducks are slaughtered. A bloodbath.

Everything is open: the future, and the lips of beautiful women. Kasimir Malevich paints a black square. Robert Musil finds Germany to be very dark. The
Mona Lisa
is found in Florence and becomes the most important painting in the world. Rainer Maria Rilke would like to be a hedgehog. Thomas Mann makes one thing clear: ‘I’m not writing
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,
but
The Magic Mountain!’
Emil Nolde finds only disturbed people in his South Pacific paradise, while Karl Kraus finds happiness in Janowitz. Ernst Jünger is found in Africa and celebrates Christmas in Bad Rehburg. And what do the stars tell us?

(
illustration credits 12.1
)

In December 1913 the first ‘ready-made’, the bicycle wheel on the wooden stool, is turning at the hand of Marcel Duchamp in Paris, while the first ‘Black Square’ comes into being in Moscow – the twin starting-points of modern art.

At the 1913 Futurist Congress in Uusikirkko, in Finland, Malevich introduces the term ‘Suprematism’, which for him represents ‘the beginning of a new civilisation’. He throws aside the burden of representational art, which still held even Cubism under its spell. He wants to move forward, and to a place where nothing is needed: no reality and no colours. In December 1913 he presents thirty-five of his latest works at the ‘0,10’ exhibition in St Petersburg, including his
Suprematist Manifesto
and even his unprecedented painting
Black Square on a White Background
. The picture is an all-out provocation, and a revelation. For Malevich the square embodies the ‘zero state’, the experience of pure abstraction. And the elementary contrast between white and black creates a universal energy for him. It is an end-point for art – and yet, at the same time, the beginning of something completely new. It is the rejection of all demands made on artists and art – and, in the process, one of the greatest self-assertions of artistic autonomy. We should always think of the
Black Square
when we think of 1913.

The second masterpiece that defines 1913 is 400 years old and painted on a 77cm by 53cm wood panel made from Lombard white poplar. The
Mona Lisa
, by Leonardo da Vinci. There has been no trace of her since she was stolen from the Louvre two years ago.

But at the beginning of December the Florentine art dealer Alfredo Geri receives a letter. This portly, broad-shouldered and gregarious gentleman caters to Florence’s upper classes from his antiques shop
in Via Borgo Ognissanti. His clients include Eleonora Duse, known as ‘La Duse’ for short, and her lover, Gabriele d’Annunzio. The letter he is holding in his hands disturbs him. Is it the truth, or simply a letter from a lunatic? He reads it again: ‘The stolen painting by Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It is quite clear that it belongs to Italy, because the painter was Italian. It is my desire to give this masterpiece back to the country it came from and by which it was inspired. Leonardo.’

Geri manages to arrange a meeting with the ominous sender for 22 December in Milan. But on 10 December, when Geri is about to close up his shop at half-past eight in the evening, a man comes up to him from among the last customers: ‘My name is Leonardo.’ Geri looks at the man, aghast: he has a dark complexion, pomade-black hair and, all in all, makes quite a greasy impression with his twirly little walrus moustache. He had, the man told Geri, come a little earlier after all, and was staying at the Albergo Tripoli-Italia in Via Panzani under the name of Leonardo Vincenzo. In other words, just one block away from Borgo San Lorenzo, where, 400 years previously, Lisa del Giocondo had sat and modelled for Leonardo.

Leonardo went on to say that Signore Geri could come to see the
Mona Lisa
in the guest house at three in the afternoon the following day. Geri subsequently alerts the director of the Uffizi Gallery, Giovanni Poggi, and the three of them go from the antiques shop to the run-down guest house. As they walk through the streets, Geri and Leonardo agree that he will receive 500,000 Lire if the painting is genuine. That would be nice, Leonardo says, but it really isn’t about the money; he just wants to bring Italy’s stolen art treasure back home. Poggi and Geri look at each other, confused.

The gentlemen climb up the steep steps to the Albergo Tripoli-Italia, where Leonardo’s shabby single room is situated on the second floor. He fetches a trunk out from under the bed, throwing its entire contents – underwear, work tools and his shaving things – onto the mattress. Then he opens a false bottom inside the trunk and takes out a board wrapped in red silk: ‘Before our eyes, the divine Gioconda appeared, unharmed and in magnificent condition. We
carried her over to the window for comparison with a photograph we had brought along with us. Poggi inspected her’, as Geri later explained. There is no doubt; the inventory number from the Louvre is even on the back. But despite their excitement, Geri and Poggi keep their nerve – they tell Leonardo that the painting may be the one everybody’s looking for, but that they have to make further enquiries. Leonardo, exhausted from the long journey and with the 500,000 Lire in his sights, hangs the picture on his bedroom wall and lies down for an afternoon nap.

Poggi immediately informs the police – when the Carabinieri open the door, Leonardo is still asleep, and the entire contents of his trunk are on the floor next to the bed. He does not resist arrest. The
Mona Lisa
is taken to the Uffizi under police protection. Then, aware of the significance of his find, Poggi doesn’t just call the Culture Minister, Corrado Ricci, in Rome, and the French Ambassador, Camille Barrère, but even has his calls put through to King Vittorio Emmanuele and Pope Pius X.

In the Italian parliament two representatives are exchanging blows when someone runs into the plenary hall and cries out:
‘La Gioconda è trovata.’
The Gioconda is back! The message is immediately understood. The two adversaries embrace and kiss each other through sheer excitement.

From this moment on the whole of Italy is overcome by
Mona Lisa
Fever. And Leonardo? Leonardo’s real name was Vincenzo Peruggia, he was thirty-two years old and had been working as a temporary glazier in the Louvre at the time of the theft. It was he who had put the
Mona Lisa
in the controversial glass frame. And because he had put her there, he also knew how to get her out. He hid himself one evening so that he would be locked in, took the painting out, wrapped it in linen and then walked out of the Louvre the next morning in broad daylight. The guards, who knew him well, nodded to him in greeting.

The whole story was absurd. The police had taken fingerprints from everyone, every cleaning woman, every art historian, every archivist in the Louvre in order to catch the thief, because he had
left prints on the picture’s frame. But they forgot the temporary glazier Vincenzo Peruggia. During their search for the
Mona Lisa
the police had even visited him at home in his shabby little room at 5 Rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, just like they had every other Louvre staff member. But the policemen didn’t look under the bed.