Edward Engelberg: Our Mona Lisa and Kristallnacht

by Edward Engelberg

In my living room wall hangs an oil painting of a strikingly beautiful young woman. My father knew the artist, who perhaps as a gesture of friendship gave our family two portraits of his wife. While we have one of these twin gifts, the fate of the other remains a mystery.

One evening, sitting on my couch, from where I could easily see the painting, I shined the ceiling spotlight on her. Although I have looked at this portrait for a lifetime, I was suddenly struck by her Mona Lisa pose, that famous hesitant smile, that slight tilt of the head. Our Mona Lisa sits against a background of plant foliage (Da Vinci’s features hills and trees). The hands in both paintings are almost identically positioned, except the painter’s wife holds an open book. Her gaze is outward, contemplative; was her reading interrupted? The colors are delicate. It appears as if a thin silk veil covers her dress, but close up brush strokes are visible. Her cheeks seem slightly blushed, and her lips are small and lipsticked red, and her hair almost disappears in subtle paint on her right side (from the viewer’s perspective).

The painter’s signature is illegible, but detective work has assigned the painting to Otto Theodor W. Stein (1877-1958). Belonging to a group of Jewish painters, he was known and respected. One assumes that the painting was acquired in Chemnitz, Germany, where my father began married life. In Munich (to which we moved approximately in 1932-33), Stein was part of “brotherhood” of Jewish artists. One does not know how or where he survived the war. An artist who gives a gift of two large paintings of his wife in addition to a sketch of two women inscribed to “Herr Engelberg” with a readable signature must have some relationship to the recipient. Or were they bought? Alas, all the principals are no longer alive, and so the circumstance of the acquisitions forever lies in that vast realm of lost memories. In his lifetime, Stein was exhibited; a sketch is in the Los Angeles County Museum, and some of his work is still in auction.

Still, it is the sister portrait, missing for more than seven decades, that now stirs my memories.

We live in the center of Munich. It is the night of November 9th, 1938 (Kristallnacht, in English known as “The Night of Broken Glass”). The assassination of a Nazi diplomat in Paris carried out by a young Jew a few days earlier triggers a so-called “spontaneous” destruction of Jewish property, home invasions, and lives lost all over Germany and Austria. Early that morning, with no one aware of what is happening, I go off to school. I am 9 years old. When I arrive, my school is burning, along with the adjoining synagogue. I head home, on the run. Shortly after I reach the safety of home, two plain clothed Gestapo men ring the bell and, very politely, arrest my father. He is taken to nearby Dachau -- Germany’s first concentration camp – and incarcerated for two weeks. One of Otto Stein’s paintings will play a major role in his release two weeks later.

We soon realize that there is no “safety” at home. My mother, sister and I go into hiding for several days and nights, one cold night huddling with others in the courtyard of the Polish consulate. Though he holds no citizenship (he is “stateless”), his Polish birth is our entry pass to the courtyard. When the destruction subsides some days later, we return home. There is one hope for my father’s release: an entry visa to another country. We discover relatives in Zurich, Switzerland, who vouch for us. The visa is now in the hands of the Swiss Consul: he will decide a matter of life and death.

Carefully my mother removes the sister painting, rolls it up, somehow covers it and is off to the Swiss consulate. I cannot know what happens, but it works. A miracle! We are granted a visa. Was it a bribe? A gift? A bureaucrat’s appreciation of a beautiful painting? On the 25th of November my father is released with the stipulation that he exit Germany within days. My sister and I board the train to Zurich with him, while my mother remains to oversee our eventual emigration to America, valuables laid out on the living room table, as ordered.

The missing portrait has saved not only our lives but, as my oldest son likes to remind me, it fostered the creation of an extended family (counting my sister’s and mine) adding up to thirty souls. No wonder we treasure the Mona Lisa look-alike on the wall. She embodies a poignant reminder for me and all those affected -- a somber yet also joyous memory. Yet the mystery persists. I often wonder what happened to that other image of the painter’s wife, which my mother so bravely and surreptitiously carried to the Swiss consulate? Where is it now? Zurich, Basel, Geneva? Could she, by chance, be hanging in my namesake ski resort, Engelberg, on a winter chalet’s wooden log wall? More likely she hangs in a spacious city apartment, with balconies and geranium plants, parquet floors and Oriental rugs, and Swedish -- modern furnishings. Sister painting, wherefore art though? On someone’s wall, ignorant of what you accomplished, what joy you engendered.

Edward Engelberg is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and European Cultural Studies at Brandeis University.