Rudolph Just: Chatwin's Utz

The art collection featured in Bruce Chatwin's 1989 novel Utz is to go under the hammer.

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Q. What collection

A. A famous collection of more than 300 pieces, ranging from Meissen porcelain figures, crystal, gold coins and rare busts of Habsburg emperors, is to be auctioned by Sotheby's on 11 December 2001. A description of his tiny flat in Prague in the late 1960s lists among other things 18th-century engravings, 19th-century Bohemian paintings, plates, Roman glass, silver and early Meissen figurines.

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Q. Meissen

A. The name of the factory which produced the first real porcelain in Europe in the 1720s. The figurines, often of Commedia dell'Arte characters, are very popular with collectors.

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Q. And

A. Once thought lost for ever, the collection has reappeared, proving once again that fact can be stranger than fiction.

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Q. How so

A. Because the collection and its owner, Rudolph Just, provided the inspiration for Chatwin's tale of obsession.

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Q. What happens in the book

A. Joachim Utz, a Czech living in Prague during the Communist era, appears to destroy his own pieces to avoid them falling into the hands of the authorities. The narrator of the story is in Prague to study the nature of obsessive collectors. Chatwin himself apparently met the real-life Rudolph Just in the 1960s and used this encounter along with his knowledge of the art world - Chatwin had worked at Sotheby's for a number of years - as the background for Utz.

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Q. But Just didn't attempt to destroy his collection, did he

A. No. He managed to keep hold of his treasure during the Nazi occupation and the post-war Communist periods.

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Q. What happened to Just in the war

A. Although a native German-speaker, he was caught in a round-up in 1944 and sent to a forced labour camp run by the infamous Organisation Todt.

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Q. Organisation Todt

A. Named after its founder, Dr Fritz Todt, this was an organisation in Nazi Germany for large-scale construction, particularly for the military. By 1944, it employed 1,360,000 workers, including thousands of concentration camp inmates and criminals. Todt was responsible for building the Autobahnen in the 1930s and became the Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunitions in 1940.

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Q. Back to Just

A. He escaped and made his way back to Prague, where his collection had been looked after by a family friend.

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Q. So, it was safe

A. Not really. When the Communists took over after the war Just declared his collection, and was allowed to keep it. During the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a regular contributor to scholarly magazines in Switzerland and Germany, and became well-known in the art world.

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But in 1962 a jealous neighbour denounced him for 'speculating', a crime that carried a heavy penalty under Communist rule. Just proved his innocence in court, but, alarmed by the whole affair, he went to ground.

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Q. Why so secretive

A. Collectors in communist Czechoslovakia tended to be pretty secretive. Just kept his collection in his apartment, in one room, to which only trusted friends were admitted. All his past experience had taught him to be wary.

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Q. What happened to Rudolph Just after the court case

A. He stopped writing articles and no longer had much contact with the art world. After his death in 1972 his family completely severed any remaining links. People wondered what had happened to the collection.

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Q. What did happen to it

A. The collection stayed a secret, even after the Velvet Revolution, kept by Just's second wife Ludmila up to her death in 1992.

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Then came an awful postscript to the story. Just's grandson moved into the flat, but was murdered by thieves who broke in and stole some of the items. It is something the family still cannot bear to talk about.

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They decided to move the collection to a place where no-one would dream of looking: a tiny 13th-floor flat they held on a sprawling housing estate in Bratislava, Slovakia. It was here the collection finally re-surfaced.

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Q. How much is it worth

A. It is now expected to raise about �1m at auction but its real value lies elsewhere, because it is the last example of a central European tradition of collecting which has now more or less disappeared. This tradition was characterised by highly eclectic tastes, mixing glass, porcelain, pottery and painting rather than specialising in a particular field..

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Sotheby's, who will be running the auction at Olympia, expect there to be greater interest than usual for such an event because of the connection with Chatwin.

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By Simon Smith