1913 (49 page)

There, just a kilometre away from the Louvre as the crow flies, the most-hunted art work in the world lay for two whole years. The story was a shock: for the Louvre and for the Parisian police. But at the same time it is also a wonderful Christmas message filled with joy. Locked up in his cell, Peruggia receives innumerable thank-you letters, sweets and presents from grateful Italians.

Gabriele d’Annunzio wrote the following: ‘He who dreamed of fame and honour, he, the avenger of the thefts of Napoleon, brought her over the border back to Florence. Only a poet, a great poet, can dream such a dream.’

By 13 October the French government officials and art historians had arrived in Florence to check the authenticity of the
Mona Lisa
. The Italian Culture Minister, Ricci, said these wonderful words: ‘I just wish the French had declared the picture to be a copy, for then
Mona Lisa
would have stayed in Italy.’ But even the French declared the painting to be the original.

Alfredo Geri was given a reward by the Louvre and the rosette of the Légion d’Honneur by the French state. Leonardo, otherwise known as Vincenzo Peruggia, was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment.

On 14 December, watched over by a unique international honour guard consisting of Gendarmes and Carabinieri in parade uniform, the
Mona Lisa
was hung in the Uffizi, carried through the walkways in an elaborate gilded walnut frame as if part of a procession. Thirty thousand people saw her; Italian children even got a day off school to go to Florence and admire the national shrine. Then, on 20 December, the painting was taken to King Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome, in a saloon carriage filled with guests of honour. The next day he handed it over in the French Embassy, the Palazzo Farnese, as part of a symbolic act. Over Christmas 1913 the painting was on display
in the Villa Borghese once more – the Culture Minister himself sat next to it during the opening hours; he had promised not to let it out of his sight for a second. At night a dozen police officers stood guard. Next, the
Mona Lisa
was taken to Milan in a saloon carriage – under strict security precautions, the painting was then on display in the Brera Museum for two days.
Mona Lisa
’s journey through Italy was an unparalleled victory parade. Whenever the carriage passed a train station, people would cheer and wave. From Milan onwards the
Mona Lisa
was given a private carriage in the express train from Milan to Paris. She was treated like a queen. Late in the evening of 31 December the
Mona Lisa
crossed the French border. She had left the Louvre as a painting but was returning as an enigma.

The December edition of the
Neue Rundschau
prints a short notice from Oscar Bie, who had recently visited Thomas Mann at his home: he reports that Mann is working on a new novel entitled ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. Bie’s handwriting was so indecipherable that even he sometimes had problems decoding it. So Thomas Mann ends up spending December putting straight all the friends and acquaintances who write to him about it: ‘You won’t believe it, but (the novel) is finished. And by the way, it’s called
The Magic Mountain
(Bie misread his own handwriting).’

On 15 December, Ezra Pound, the great poet and one of London’s most important and proactive cultural mediators, sends a letter to James Joyce in Trieste. He asks the poverty-stricken English teacher for some of his newest poems for the magazine
The Egoist
. ‘Dear Sir!’ this friendly letter begins, and it ends: ‘From what Yeats says I imagine we have a hate or two in common.’ This letter has the effect of making Joyce feel as if he has been raised from the dead. Soon Pound sends a second letter from his Kensington home, saying that Yeats
has sent him the poem ‘I Hear an Army’, and that he liked it very much. So emboldened is James Joyce that he sits down that very day and corrects his two manuscripts. After two weeks the first chapter of
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
and his short stories
Dubliners
are ready, and he sends them by express train to Ezra Pound in London. A star is born.

Dr. Med. Alfred Döblin, the writer and neurologist, and collaborator on Herwath Walden’s magazine
Der Sturm
, spends nights on end in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s new studio in Körnerstrasse. Döblin wrote again and again about men and women and their relationships, about the battle of the sexes. He wrote this, for example, after one of his lovers gave birth to his son: ‘Marriage isn’t a shop specialising in sexuality. Equally foolish is the insistence on fulfilling all sexual relations within the framework of the marriage, as if one could predict that you would only be hungry at mealtimes and in certain places.’ Kirchner liked that a lot. Back in the summer he had done the etchings for Döblin’s novella
The Canoness and Death
, which was published in November by A. R. Meyer’s small Wilmersdorf publishing house. The very same publishing house which issued Gottfried Benn’s
Morgue
in 1912 and his new volume of poetry,
Sons
, in 1913.

In December, Kirchner starts work on illustrations for Döblin’s one-act play
Countess Mizi
, a play about the coquettes Kirchner devoured so hungrily with his painter’s eye on their forays along Friedrichstrasse and around the outskirts of Potsdamer Platz. Döblin said this of the ladies of the night: ‘Their sexual organs are machine parts.’ That is the theory behind the practice painted by Kirchner. This December he tries time and again to transfer the fascination and coldness of Potsdamer Platz into art. The coquettes’ fur collars, their pink faces against the pale, icy delirium of the collars, the glaring green feather boas – and alongside them the faceless, hunted men. Kirchner sketches and sketches, and once even writes these words in his sketchbook: ‘Coquette = the momentary mistress.’

Christmas Eve in Berlin’s Klopstockstrasse, at Lovis Corinth’s place.

His life’s work has become another year richer. It was mainly in the Tyrol that Corinth expanded his palette, finding the tone for the mountains that he would then fully master in his portraits of Lake Walchen. But he isn’t on top form yet. Once the Christmas dinner is finally over and the handing out of presents is due to begin, Papa Corinth asks the children for just a moment’s patience. He fetches his easel, a stretcher frame and his paints. Charlotte also slips out of the room, telling the children she’s keeping an eye out for Father Christmas. But it’s really so she can dress up as Father Christmas herself. The children, Thomas and Wilhelmine, wait with eager anticipation. Then Father Christmas – in actual fact Mother Christmas – arrives, and the giving of presents can begin. But Lovis Corinth leaves his untouched; he only has eyes for his canvas – and with just a few energetic brushstrokes he depicts the Christmas tree with its glowing red candles. Next to it in the painting is Thomas, completely immersed in looking at his new red-curtained puppet theatre. Little Wilhelmine, in a white dress, has just unwrapped a puppet and is already moving on to the next present. Charlotte, on the left, still has her Father Christmas costume on. In the foreground of the picture, to the left-hand side, is the still uncut marzipan cake. But once Corinth has painted it in the most beautiful shades of brown, he wipes his fingers on a cloth and cuts himself a piece.

Meanwhile, Josef Stalin is freezing in his Siberian exile.

Ernst Jünger has finally arrived in Africa. A newly recruited legionnaire in the Foreign Legion, he is in a dusty tent with his comrades in North Africa, near Sidi bel Abbès. Instead of endless freedom, all he
finds are endless drills. In the blazing heat they are forced to carry out military training exercises, manoeuvres and endurance runs. What on earth made him commit himself to five years straight? So Jünger tries to run away again, this time
from
the Foreign Legion. He hides out in Morocco. But he is caught and sentenced to a week’s imprisonment in the garrison prison. Somehow he had imagined Africa would be completely different. On 13 December a messenger brings the following telegram: ‘SENT FROM REHBURG CITY, 12:06. THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT HAS GRANTED YOUR RELEASE HAVE PICTURE TAKEN JÜNGER.’ After diplomatic intervention Jünger’s father has managed to secure his release and transport home. On 20 December he leaves the Foreign Legion’s North African barracks with the following grounds for his discharge written on the release form: ‘Father’s appeal due to soldier being under-age.’ Deeply tanned, deeply ashamed and deeply confused, Jünger sets off by train on the long journey from Marseille to Bad Rehburg. He arrives at his parents’ home just in time for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, therefore, he is sitting not under a starry African sky but under a Christmas tree that was chopped down a few days earlier in the Rehburg Forest. There is carp for dinner. Jünger promises his father he will now study hard for his
Abitur
. Then he excuses himself and goes to bed. This time, however, he doesn’t read
Secrets of the Dark Continent
before going to sleep.