Art Litigation: Holocaust for Dummies - The Murder and Spoliation of Fritz Grunbaum at Dachau

Holocaust for Dummies: Murder and Spoliation of Fritz Grunbaum at Dachau

Austria's Leopold Museum has refused to return artworks stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, a famous Jewish cabaret performer.   Grunbaum was arrested in Vienna by the Gestapo on March 22, 1938.   He died penniless in Dachau never having left Nazi custody on January 14, 1941.   His wife Lily was murdered at Minsk - Maly Trostinec after Fritz's death.

Austria is not alone in denying the Holocaust and the return of stolen artworks.   Oberlin College has Egon Schiele's Girl With Black Hair, which was stolen from Fritz Grunbaum. 

Oberlin's Allen Memorial Art Museum has refused to share its research with the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum or to permit on campus discussions of the work's provenance.  This is a shameful violation of Oberlin's academic mission.   If Oberlin has any Jewish alumni who care about undergraduate studies, I recommend teaching a course there on Fritz Grunbaum studies and demanding that anyone working at the Allen Museum or in the art history department be fired for incompetence.    US museums agreed to research their collections and publish the results under the Washington Principles.  Oberlin's failure to do so is a disgrace.

To assist everyone in understanding how the Holocaust worked and how Fritz Grunbaum's artworks were stolen from him, we have prepared the summary attached in the link above, you can also click here.   

More on Fritz Grunbaum at Art Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum.

More on Fritz Grunbaum here.

 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Watch Boston College Law School Video! Nazi Art Looting - Stolen Art in US Museums and How It Got There

Girl With Black Hair -  Stolen From Fritz Grunbaum, Now At Oberlin College 

Here is a link to my lecture at the Boston College School of Law on April 22, 2010.  The URL is http://echo360.bc.edu:8080/ess/echo/presentation/20714145-29f6-4eb8-b72e-aadd6e794ad1.

Assoc. Dean Filippa Anzalone and her terrific Art Law students gave me a great welcome and asked lots of tough questions.  Dean Anzalone wrote me a lovely letter and kindly gave me permission to reprint:

Dear Ray:

Thank you again for your wonderful presentation for the Art Law Seminar on April 22nd. The students and other attendees were literally on the edge of their seats as they listened to your lawyerly and thorough discussion. Your excellent lecture, coupled with your slides made the presentation on Bakalar v. Vavra and Egon Schiele’s Dead City: Stolen art from Europe (1933-1945) in American museums and how it got there one of the most memorable classes of the semester. In fact, we discussed your presentation at the following week’s class and it was difficult to turn the discussion back to the topic scheduled for that week!

The thoroughness with which you presented the diabolically methodical process that the Third Reich used to despoil Jews of their property kept the class riveted during your lecture. The horror of the Nazi art looting came to life for the audience as you presented the evidentiary issues and the legal problems associated with restitution litigation for holocaust victims and families.

Since your presentation, many of the attendees have contacted me and commented on how astonished they were after your lecture. It is chilling to realize how methodical and relentless the Third Reich was in their pillaging operations. The cold, non-violent theft of Jewish property, including land, art and household objects, and even life insurance policies , by the Nazis is harrowing to say the least. Many of the attendees have told me that they appreciated understanding the issues of the Nazi thefts from your very carefully articulated legal perspective.

Your program was a real success; superseded only by your generosity of time and energy. We thank you for the printed copies of your slides, and your great kindness in talking with students and answering questions. We want you to know how very much your work was appreciated by me, my class, and the Boston College Law community. Thank you so much, Ray. May your good work continue and prosper.

Peace,

Filippa Marullo Anzalone
Professor of Law
Associate Dean for Library & Technology Services

Watch and Listen! Powerpoint and Audio of Schiele's Dead City: Nazi Art Looting at Sotheby's Institute/New York State Bar Association

Egon Schiele's Dead City - Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum

You can WATCH and LISTEN to my Powerpoint presentation with audio is now available here  from the presentation I gave at Sotheby's Institute on March 24, 2010 in a program sponsored by the New York State Bar Association's Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section, chaired by Prof. Judith Prowda.

More material on artworks stolen from Fritz Grunbaum while he was in the Dachau Concentration Camp can be found at  http://artstolenfromfritzgrunbaum.wordpress.com/.

Egon Schiele's Girl With Black Hair - Experts Agree Stolen From Fritz Grunbaum

Falsified Provenance Published by Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum

Watch and listen to my Sotheby's Institute presentation and learn about why Oberlin College's provenance of Girl With Black Hair, found here, is false.

A summary of the evidence that Oberlin College has concealed below:

Below:  the cover of the 1956 Gutekunst & Klipstein (aka Galerie Kornfeld) - Eberhard Kornfeld testified that all of the artworks in this catalog belonged to Fritz Grunbaum.  Dead City was the only artwork pictured that listed Fritz Grunbaum as the prior owner.

Oberlin has never put Fritz Grunbaum's ownership of Girl With Black Hair in the provenance even though evidence of experts concluding that Fritz Grunbaum owned Girl With Black Hair was reported by Steven Litt of The Plain Dealer

Prewar catalogs show that Fritz Grunbaum owned Girl With Black Hair - Oberlin refuses to list these catalogs in its provenance of Girl With Black Hair

G.   Girl With Black Hair, according to Eberhard Kornfeld, spent 147 days in Switzerland before being sold to Otto Kallir on September 18, 1956.

Otto Kallir was Fritz Grunbaum's art dealer in Vienna.  Kallir had catalogued Dead City as being in Fritz Grunbaum's collection in 1930 when he wrote a catalogue raisonne of Schiele's oils.   As Otto Kallir's grand-daughter, Jane Kallir, testified at trial:  Fritz Grunbaum owned Girl With Black Hair.

So why does Oberlin's President Marvin Krislov refuse to admit Fritz Grunbaum's ownership?

Invitation: February 11 Lecture at Cincinnati Museum Center on Recovery of Nazi Looted Art

Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal

invites you to an evening with

Raymond J. Dowd, Esquire
Partner, Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller LLP
Thursday, February 11, 2010
6 p.m.

Heavy appetizers and cash bar

7:30 p.m.

Insights Lecture Series

Murder, Mystery, and The Dead City

Mr. Dowd will speak about the battles to recover art stolen from Jewish Holocaust victims, the undisclosed role of the Swiss in laundering looted art for the Nazis, and the implications for U.S. museums holding artworks of European origin.

$25 per person for reception includes parking.

Lecture open to the public. Parking $4.

Reception reservations requested to Sarah McManus

by Monday, February 8, 2010

(513) 287-7074 or smcmanus@cincymuseum.org
In partnership with

Co-sponsored by Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law and

the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.

Looting and Exploitation in Nazi-Occupied Europe by Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos

Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos delivered a lecture on Nazi art looting in Vienna last fall, focusing on the case studies of art dealers Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir, both of whom moved large quantities of artworks from Nazi Germany into the United States during and after World War II.   A link to Dr. Petropoulos' lecture on video is here at the Art Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum blog.

Dr. Petropoulos' studies on Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir are extremely important for those trying to track artworks looted by the Nazis that are now in museums and private collections in the United States and abroad.

According to a newly-released study prepared for the Swiss government by Laurie Stein, former founding director of the Pulitzer Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the largest recipient of artworks from Curt Valentin.   Other than Dr. Petropoulos, art historians have completely ignored Curt Valentin, whose clients included a Who's Who of American art museums, colleges and wealthy collectors who snapped up modern artworks as the Nazi terror forced Jews to sell the works at fire-sale prices.   Alfred Barr, the MoMA's first director, was said to be in Curt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street on a weekly basis.

Above is an image of Egon Schiele's Girl with Black Hair, you can see her image at Oberlin College's website here.  In 1998, Oberlin College's then-President Nancy Dye promised the Cleveland Plain Dealer that she would investigate Schiele expert Rudolph Leopold's claim that Girl with Black Hair, along with sixteen other Schieles in American museums, belonged to Fritz Grunbaum.  Dye never published any results from her research.  In 2009, the Cleveland Jewish News reported evidence of Grunbaum's prior ownership, the article is here. 

Art catalogues show that this artwork was in the collection of Fritz Grunbaum before he died at the Dachau Concentration Camp.  The work is at the Allen Museum at Oberlin College, which refuses to document or share its research into the work's provenance prior to its acquisition in Switzerland in 1956 by Otto Kallir.  Kallir purchased it from Gutekunst & Klipstein, a clearinghouse for Nazi-looted art in Berne, Switzerland.  Oberlin's President Marvin Krislov has refused to permit me to meet with Oberlin's art historians to discuss the matter on campus.

Oberlin College has both music and Jewish studies programs.  It is shameful that they do not study the life, career, and art collection of Fritz Grunbaum, considered Austria's greatest cabaret performer and comedian of all time, celebrated by the Viennese with Karl Farkas as inventors of the "Doppelconference" a sort of Abbot & Costello routine.

As one account of Fritz's death at Dachau has it:

It was on New Year’s Eve, 1940, that Grünbaum gave his last performance. Gravely ill with tuberculosis, he decided to put on a show for the entertainment of prisoners in the camp infirmary. Despite his sickly appearance, one of the prisoners recognised him from his glory days in Vienna. Grünbaum pleaded:


I beg of you, Fritz Grünbaum is not performing for you, but instead it is the number [and recited his camp number], who just wants to spread a little happiness on the last day of the year.

Soon after this final show he attempted suicide, but was 'saved' by the SS officers. Just two weeks later, on 14 January 1941, a death certificate was made up for him. He had succumbed, according to the Nazis, to a weak heart.

Nazi Looted Art at Oberlin College and Other U.S. Museums: Prague Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets

In late June I was invited to speak on a panel of legal experts on artwork looted by the Nazis. My topic was legal obstacles to the recovery of stolen artworks.

The image you see here is of an artwork by the artist Egon Schiele called Girl with Black Hair. Every major Schiele expert in the world - Jane Kallir, Eberhard Kornfeld and Rudolph Leopold - has said that this artwork came from Fritz Grunbaum's collection. Yet Oberlin College refuses to return it - or even to share their research or conclusions about where they believe it came from. Oberlin's website shows that the work mysteriously surfaced in Switzerland in 1956 - and stops there.

U.S. museums and liberal arts institutions concealing the origins of their artworks is one of the biggest obstacles to researchers being able to restitute artworks to the Jews and other Nazi persecutees from whom they were stolen. As Holocaust victims and their descendants die, U.S. museums simply wait, knowing that they have stolen artworks in their collections. In his 2006 testimony to Congress, AAMD Director James Cuno estimated the number of potentially Nazi-looted works in U.S. museums at "tens of thousands".
It is astonishing that U.S. museums can engage in this Holocaust denial and feel no backlash. Shame on Oberlin College. Its Dean should be tossed out on his ear.
Amb. Stuart Eizenstat supports a U.S. Art Restitution Commission. Good for him, and not a moment too soon.
You can find my full speech in Prague at the link below.

http://artstolenfromfritzgrunbaum.wordpress.com/category/speech-at-holocaust-conference/live-recorded/
Disclosure: I represent the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz.