Raubkunst: Fun Summer in Vienna - See The Stolen Schieles at the Albertina and the Leopold

If you would like to show your children beautiful blond men and women enjoying the fruits of what they stole from Jews murdered in concentration camps, then Vienna, Austria is just the spot for you.  And Klaus Albrecht Schroeder's the cute-as-pie curator at the Albertina who'll give you all you're looking for.

Top of your list should be the Albertina and Leopold Museums.  Leopold will be standing criminal trial this summer in the SDNY for trafficking in the stolen Schiele Portrait of Wally, which has been locked in a warehouse in Long Island City for the last decade.  But you too can enjoy the exquisite joy of looking at stolen art because in Austria, this art is proudly displayed.

Although Article 26 of the Austrian State Treaty required that Austria return all property stolen from Jews (this is a continuing obligation under their equivalent of a constitution written in conjunction with the four occupying Allied forces), since the Allies left Austria in 1955, Austria has flipped the bird at the United States and the poor despoiled Jews who have spend generations dying while the Austrians stuffed themselves on Sacher tortes.  A series of fake restitution laws were enacted and allowed to expire.  But when your Constitution mandates that you give everything back, how can an expired law deprive a Jew of a remedy without being unconstitutional?

But no one seems to care very much these days.  Holocaust survivors will all soon be dead. So go to Vienna this summer, here is a preview of some of the works stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, who was murdered at Dachau.

11 years ago Austria set up a provenance commission to investigate the provenance of Egon Schiele's Dead City, which was stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, and the other stolen artworks in the Albertina Museum.

11 years later, still no report.   Just waiting for more Jews to die, enjoying the weather and the Mozart.  Oh yes, and the Sacher torte.

Raubkunst - Stolen Schieles at the Albertina and Leopold Museums Vienna

 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here  

Lovely Strudel from Demel: Austria's Continuing Extortion of Jews Dispossed of Artworks

Austrian Cultural Forum (thin gray building third from the left) image here.

On March 4-5 the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City held a forum on "Art Restitution in Austria".  I previously wrote about stolen Schieles in Austria's Leopold and Albertina collections here.   You can listen to my presentation at Yad Vashem on the problems of proving the Holocaust in a U.S. court of law and view the corresponding Powerpoint here.

The ACF event was clearly envisioned as a propaganda exercise by the Austrian government.   Here is the press release from the Austrian Embassy in Washington.   For no apparent reason, Austria used an image of Klimt's The Kiss to illustrate its press release.  Morton Maneker's Art Market Monitor covers the event here.

I attended and distributed a document titled "Fritz Grunbaum's Schieles:  Stolen Artworks in the Albertina and Leopold Museums."   You can find the document (a Powerpoint) here.   I asked why the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum had not received a response to their claims in 11 years, despite having been told by the Austrian Commission that a report would be issued - we were told to be patient.   We were also told that there is no legal recourse when decisions don't issue, no judicial oversight of the process, and no right of appeal.

We were served lovely coffee and dainty treats from Demel, for which we were all thankful.

When moderator Marc Masurovsky asked Christoph Bazil whether there was any right of appeal to Austria's decisions not to return stolen art, Bazil had a choking fit.  The choking fit recurred anytime the Leopold Foundation was discussed.

Bazil was utterly confused when Prof. Ed Gaffney suggested that Austria pass a law giving compensation to Jews who'd lost property and had it withheld for decades. Gaffney also suggested passing a law providing for attorneys fees for successful claimants.

A highlight:

Christoph Bazil "No one owns the Leopold Collection"

Andreas Stadler  "Austria purchased the Leopold Collection"

I explained that District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized Fritz Grunbaum's Dead City as stolen in 1998 and asked why the Austrians didn't just send in a prosecutor and the police to grab the stolen works and give them back.

I got no understandable answer.   If an Austrian's car is stolen, the police get it back.  If a Jew's painting is stolen, there are no police.

It is clear that Austria continues to do everything in its power to frustrate the rights of Jews to property stolen from them during the Holocaust.  Instead of sending the police into the museums to investigate allegations of stolen property and take sworn statements, Austria has set up a Kafkaesque system of provenance researchers who are counting every artwork in every museum and creating lots of files.   This response is akin to someone saying that every grain of sand on the beach must be counted before returning a stolen diamond ring that was found on the beach.   Fritz Grunbaum's stolen Schieles should have been returned long ago.

Austria's position is that if there is property stolen from Jews in private hands, there is no legal remedy.  A Dorotheum representative explained that when the Dorotheum finds stolen property coming up for auction, the Dorotheum explains to the Jews who have been looted that since they have no rights, they must come to a "just and fair solution".   She explained that this makes no one happy, but everyone must reach a compromise.   Imagine the unhappiness of the poor ex-Nazis and their children learning that they can't keep their stolen loot!

Making someone give up their property rights by telling them that if they don't accept they will have no legal recourse is simple extortion.

Privatizing the Dorotheum and institutionalizing this form of coercion just means that Austria has privatized its continuing extortion of Jews, rather than honoring Article 26 of the Austrian State Treaty which requires Austria to give back all such stolen property.   U.S. museums and private collectors routinely extort Jews in similar ways (relying on statutes of limitations and laches defenses), which has led the U.S. State Department to support the creation of a U.S. Art Restitution Commission.

Minister Claudia Schmid should take immediate and serious measures to return all stolen artworks and to promulgate laws permitting Jews to recover stolen artworks now in private hands.

Owners of stolen art will not be content with apfelstrudel from Demel and a pat on the head.

The program below:

Art Restitution in Austria


(Restitutions from the Federal Collections)

Conference

(March 4-5, 2010, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York)

DAY 1, THURSDAY, MARCH 4: 10.00 A.M. – 5.00 P.M. – SPECIAL EVENT FOR EXPERTS IN THE FIELD OF ART RESTITUTION

9.30 a.m. Welcome Table

9.45 a.m. Introduction by Andreas Stadler, Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York

10.00 a.m. – 10.45 a.m.

Looting of art during the Nazi era in Austria (1938-1945) - Historical and political outline

Presentation by Michael John, Historian and Political Scientist, University of Linz

Followed by Discussion and Q&A (Moderator: Marc Masurovsky, Historian)

11.15 a.m. – 12.00 a.m.

The Austrian Art Restitution Law (”Kunstrückgabegesetz 1998”) as the legal basis of art restitution from the Federal Collections against the background of private and international law. The origins of this bill as well as its amendment in 2009

Presentation by Georg Graf, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies

Followed by a Discussion and Q&A (Moderator: Marc Masurovsky, Historian)

Lunchbreak

2.00 p.m. – 2.45 p.m.

The Commission for Provenance Research – its activities since 1998: from its origin to an established research facility

Presentation by Leonhard Weidinger, Historian, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (MAK)

2.45 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.

The Art Restitution Advisory Board – outline of its functions and decisions

Presentation by Christoph Bazil, Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK)

Coffee Break

4.00 p.m.

Panel Discussion

“Austrian Art Restitution”; Marc Masurovsky in conversation with Michael John, Georg Graf, Leonhard Weidinger, Christoph Bazil, Steven Beller.

Christoph Bazil studied law in Vienna and has worked for the Austrian Federal Ministry for Culture since 1994. He was Deputy Head of the Department for Cultural Heritage, before becoming Head of the Department of Restitution in 2008. He is also administrative Co-Chair of the Commission for Provenance Research. Steven Beller was born in London and educated in Cambridge, England. He currently works in Washington DC as an independent scholar. He has written on various topics of modern Central European and modern Jewish history, including books on “Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History” (1989); “Herzl” (1991); and “Francis Joseph” (1996). He also edited and introduced “Rethinking Vienna 1900” (2001). His book “A Concise History of Austria” was published by Cambridge University Press, followed by his book “Antisemitism” in 2007. Georg Graf has been Professor for Private Law at the University of Salzburg since 2001; he is Head of the Department for Private Law. From 1999 to 2003, he was a member of the Austrian Historical Commission with the mandate to investigate and report on the whole complex of expropriations in Austria during the Nazi era and on restitution and/or compensation (including other financial or social benefits) after 1945 by the Republic of Austria. Since 2009, he has been the chairman of the board of directors of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. Michael John studied History and Political Science at the University of Vienna. He worked as a historian in Vienna, and is since 2001 Professor of Social and Economic History at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. His research interests include: migration and ethnicity in Austria, biographical research, oral/video history, history of minorities, and Jewish history. He has served as director of the projects “Jews in Upper Austria” and „Aryanization and Restitution in Upper Austria, Salzburg and Burgenland” as part of the Historical Commission of the Republic of Austria (2000-2004) and was the head of the Commission for Provenance Research of Art Objects of the Regional Government of Upper Austria (2000 – 2007). He is the author of six books, five editions, and numerous contributions to scientific journals, anthologies, books, including several articles on “looted art”. He was guest professor at the University of Salzburg, and lecturer at the Central European University, Budapest, the University of Nova Gorica and the Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Marc Masurovsky has investigated and studied since 1980 the thefts and outflows of assets looted during the Holocaust and World War II. In September 1997, he co-founded the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) and served as its Director of Research. In 1999 and 2000, he spent 15 months as Director of Research for Monetary Gold at the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. Masurovsky produced an unpublished final report on the wartime and post-war fate of gold bars and coins looted by the Nazis. From 2001 to 2004, he worked on a pilot project to create a database focused on the spoliated Jewish community of Vienna, Austria, based in part on the records of the Bundesdenkmalamt in Vienna. From 2004 to 2006, he oversaw the design, construction, and execution of a looted art database for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference). Its exclusive focus centered on the estimated 20,000 highly-prized works and objets d'art removed by the Nazis from leading Jewish and non-Jewish families and businesses in France and Belgium. In the fall of 2006, he co-authored in French a book on the economic plunder of France during the Vichy years. Masurovsky is currently finishing a book in French with Fabrizio Calvi on the Holocaust, the mechanics of the art market, and the destruction of Europe's Jewish artists, scheduled for publication in 2011. Leonhard Weidinger is a historian and multimedia producer. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research and oversees the collection of the Austrian Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK). He was Co-Producer of a video documentary about the concentration camp Steyr-Muenichholz, Co-Editor of the volume "… wesentlich mehr Faelle als angenommen”, which presents the first ten years of the work of the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research, and author of the upcoming book “Schneidern und Sammeln”, a study of the Viennese Rothberger family.

DAY 2, FRIDAY, MARCH 5: 10.00 A.M. – 1.00 P.M. – PUBLIC EVENT “AUSTRIAN ART RESTITUTION”

Presenters: Christoph Bazil, Leonhard Weidinger

The meeting aims to inform about the Republic of Austria’s actions and measures. After an overview about looting of art during the Nazi era in Austria (1938-1945) and the art restitution since 1945 there will be a focus on the art restitution law of 1998, on its origins as well as on its amendment in 2009. The experts will inform about the work of the Commission for Provenance Research whose members inspect systematically and consistently the Austrian federal museums and collections and about the Art Restitution Advisory Board and its functions and decisions. The practice of art restitution in Austria will be shown with recent examples. Christoph Bazil studied law in Vienna and has worked for the Austrian Federal Ministry for Culture since 1994. He was Deputy Head of the Department for Cultural Heritage, before becoming Head of the Department of Restitution in 2008. He is also administrative Co-Chair of the Commission for Provenance Research. Leonhard Weidinger is a historian and multimedia producer. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research and oversees the collection of the Austrian Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK). He was Co-Producer of a video documentary about the concentration camp Steyr-Muenichholz, Co-Editor of the volume "… wesentlich mehr Faelle als angenommen”, which presents the first ten years of the work of the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research, and author of the upcoming book “Schneidern und Sammeln”, a study of the Viennese Rothberger family.

Coffeebreak

Followed by a Discussion and Q&A

RSVP please to Alexander Bogner for reservations: alexander.bogner@bmeia.gv.at – limited seats available!

Audio Recording and Powerpoint of Nazi Art Looting Presentation at Yad Vashem

Egon Schiele's Self-Seers - Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum and Still Missing

Last week I gave a lecture at Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem.   I dealt with the problems faced by attorneys who need to prove that the Holocaust happened and to prove that transactions involving Nazi persecutees during the period 1933-1945 were presumptively duress transactions.

If you would like to listen to my presentation, the link is here.   The Powerpoint presentation that illustrates the audio is here.  The invitation reproduced below.

The International Institute for Holocaust Research-Yad Vashem


cordially invites you to attend the lecture

Egon Schiele's Dead City

Current Issues In Nazi Art Looting and Recovery
Raymond Dowd, Esq.

Partner - Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller LLP New York

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

10:00-12:00

Lecture Hall, Room 223, Administration and Research Building

Yad Vashem, Mount of Remembrance

In 1998, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized Egon Schiele's Dead City and Portrait of Wally at New York's Museum of Modern Art, creating a scandal that changed the legal landscape of Europe and the United States for victims of Nazi persecution and their survivors. Ray Dowd represents the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Fritz's wife Lily died in the Minsk Death Camp. Grunbaum's art collection surfaced in Switzerland in 1956 under disputed circumstances, and in the first Holocaust-era art recovery trial in U.S. history, Bakalar v. Vavra, the District Court found that passing the artwork through Switzerland gave it clean title. The case is on appeal. Many of Fritz's artworks are in the Leopold Museum and the Albertina Museum in Austria. In over ten years, Austria has not even bothered to respond to the heirs' claims.

Austria and Fritz Grunbaum's Stolen Schieles at the Albertina Museum

In 1955, Austria signed a treaty with the United States promising to give back all of the property it stole from Jews during the period of Nazi "occupation" of Austria.   Ever since, Austria has treated this obligation largely as a joke, thumbing its nose at Jews who attempted to get their property back.  Only in the 1990's through a combination of class action lawsuits and the actions of the Clinton Administration spearheaded by Amb. Stuart Eizenstat, did Austria instead agree to pay pittances to Jewish persecutees in lieu of giving them their property back.   The sad tale is well told in Eizenstat's book Imperfect Justice.

But the class action settlements did not cover stolen artworks in Austria.  In 1998, in reaction to D.A. Morgenthau's seizure of Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally and Dead City (Dead City belonged to Fritz Grunbaum), Austria passed an Art Restitution Law that permitted claims to be made against artworks in Austria's federal museum collections.  On April 13, 1999, the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum made claims to the following works by Egon Schiele that were stolen from Grunbaum while he was in the Dachau Concentration Camp:

Egon Schiele, Female Nude Seated on Red Drape, Back View
Sitzender weiblicher Rückenakt mit rotem Rock

Jane Kallir: Egon Schiele, The Complete Works 1998, New York №:1504
Gouache, watercolor, and pencil. Signed and dated, lower right. (48.2 x 31.8 cm).
Gutekunst & Klipstein, Nov. 24, 1955, lot 107 1

Exhibitions: London, 1964, no. 67, ill.; Hamburg, 1981, no. 214, ill.
Inventorylist Albertina: 39.931

Jane Kallier: Egon Schiele, The Complete Works 1998, New York №:1797: Heinrich Rieger; Gutekunst & Klipstein, Bern; Galerie St. Etienne, New York; Rudolf Leopold;

Provenance as per Catalog: "Egon Schiele" Würthle Gallery, Vienna 1925:
"Mutter und Kind", sign Egon Schiele 1915 Sammlung Fritz Grünbaum
Austria never responded to the claims of Fritz Grunbaum's heirs.  From 2000 through 2009, Austria claimed that it was "investigating" the status of the works.  In 2006, Mag. Eva Blimlinger was called in to oversee the investigation together with Mag. Annaliese Schallmeiner.


 Blimlinger is a respected Austrian historian and oversaw the Austrian Historian Commission's report found at http://www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/    The Blimlinger and Schallmeiner Report, which was supposed to have issued in the fall of 2009, never has seen the light of day, apparently the victim of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.   Why was that report killed and what did it say?
 
In the summer of 2009, at the Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, Minister Claudia Schmid promised Congressman Wexler that she would investigate the status of the Grunbaum works at the Albertina.  I spoke to Dr. Christophe Bazil and Dr. Thomas Baier, who reassured me that they would investigate the issue and be in contact.   I wrote to them and never got any response.
 
In February, a client alerted me to a forum to take place in New York on Austrian Restitution.  The program is here.    I was rather shocked that the very Austrian officials who had promised to look into the Grunbaum affair and who did not have the time to answer my communications were to be speaking in New York City.
 
By failing to return property belonging to Jews, Austria has breached its obligations under the Austrian State Treaty of 1955.  This treaty was a condition of Austria's existence, like our Constitution.  The Allies - Russians, French, British and Americans - pulled out of Austria on the promise that all property would be returned to Jews.   Instead, Austrians continue to live in homes stolen from Jews, operate businesses stolen from Jews, and to buy, sell and enjoy art stolen from Jews.
 
Since the Allies left Austria, Austria has enacted successively a system of inadequate and insulting postwar laws that failed to restore property to Jews.   To understand Austria's obligations clearly (the treaty is written in plain English), we look to the actual writing. Article 26 of the 1955 Austrian State Treaty states as follows:

PROPERTY, RIGHTS AND INTERESTS OF MINORITY GROUPS IN AUSTRIA

1. In so far as such action has not already been taken, Austria undertakes that, in all cases where property, legal rights or interests in Austria have since 13th March, 1938, been subject of forced transfer or measures of sequestration, confiscation or control on account of the racial origin or religion of the owner, the said property shall be returned and the said legal rights and interests shall be restored together with their accessories. Where return or restoration is impossible, compensation shall be granted for losses incurred by reason of such measures to the same extent as is, or may be, given to Austrian nationals generally in respect of war damage.

The full text of the Austria is found here, courtesy Wikipedia.  You will see that there are no "if's" ands or "buts" in the Treaty.  Its language is unconditional and does not depend on enabling legislation.  Indeed, any enabling legislation that fell short of the absolute terms of the Treaty would be unconstitutional in Austria.

It is to be hoped that the U.S. State Department will assist the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum in obtaining a copy of the Blimlinger/Schallmeiner Report and in facilitating conversations through the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, consistent with the Washington Principles on Holocaust-Era Assets.   It is to be hoped that President Obama's Ambassador to Austria, Amb. William Eacho will take a personal interest in the plight of Jews dispossessed in the Holocaust.