The heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret artist murdered on the Dachau focus camp, have filed swimsuit in New York to recuperate 12 works by Egon Schiele from the Albertina and Leopold museums in Vienna.
Among the many works claimed is the 1911 oil portray Useless Metropolis III, which was seized in 1998 by Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district lawyer, whereas it was on mortgage to New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork and was returned to the Leopold Museum two years later. Different works embody Self-Portrait With Grimace (1910), Standing Man in Pink Scarf (1913), Seated Lady With Yellow Fabric (1913) and Standing Lady With Orange Stockings (1914).
Grünbaum had a set of greater than 440 works, together with greater than 80 by Schiele. As a vocal critic of the Nazi regime, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and imprisoned in Dachau. He was compelled to signal an influence of lawyer to his spouse, who was beneath directions to liquidate the gathering and provides the income to the Nazis, in accordance with the heirs.
Grünbaum was murdered in 1941 and his spouse, Elisabeth, was deported to a loss of life camp in Minsk in 1942 and murdered virtually instantly. The Austrian museums and different holders of works from the Grünbaum assortment have maintained that the gathering was not offered till after their deaths, by Elisabeth’s sister, Mathilde Lukacs. The heirs say this story is a fabrication.
The heirs filed their criticism in opposition to the 2 museums and the Republic of Austria on the US District Courtroom of the Southern District of New York in December 2022 to reap the benefits of the 2016 Holocaust Expropriated Artwork Restoration Act, which prolonged the statute of limitations on such circumstances to 6 years from the date of discovery of a piece or six years from December 2016. They filed an amended criticism in September.
The problem for the heirs’ lawyer, Raymond Dowd, might be to show {that a} US courtroom has jurisdiction over the 12 works in Vienna and that Austrian sovereign immunity doesn’t apply. Different restitution circumstances in opposition to international museums fought in US courts have failed on jurisdiction grounds.
The courtroom case in opposition to the Austrian museums follows a collection of restitutions to the Grünbaum heirs within the US. In 2018, the New York State Supreme Courtroom dominated within the heirs’ favour, saying Grünbaum by no means misplaced title to the works. “A signature at gunpoint can not result in a sound conveyance,” the decide wrote in his ruling.
In September, Manhattan prosecutors seized additional Grünbaum works from US museums. Seven works by Schiele from three museums have been handed to the heirs in a ceremony that month. Two extra museums have since stated they’ll return Schiele works to the Grünbaum heirs.
The Austrian museums have to date resisted the heirs’ claims. In 2011, a authorities panel suggested in opposition to restitution of the 2 works on the Albertina on the idea that there was no proof Grünbaum’s artwork assortment was confiscated.
In a press release on its web site, the Leopold Museum says it’s “at current unable to touch upon the Causa Grünbaum attributable to a lawsuit that has been filed within the US”, and quotes earlier provenance studies from the Austrian panel.
“The artworks have been offered within the second half of the Fifties by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law to or by way of the Swiss artwork supplier Eberhard W. Kornfeld,” the assertion says.
However in 2019, a New York appeals courtroom stated it rejected “the notion that an individual who indicators an influence of lawyer in a loss of life camp could be stated to have executed the doc voluntarily”. The judges added that “even when Mathilde had possession of Grünbaum’s artwork assortment, possession will not be equal to authorized title”.
