A federal pass judgement on in Manhattan has quickly halted a case introduced through the heirs of a Holocaust sufferer searching for to recuperate works through Egon Schiele from the federal government of Austria and two museums in Vienna.
The case used to be first filed in December 2022 through Timothy Reif, Leon Fraenkel and Milos Vavra—descendants of Austrian Jewish performer Fritz Grünbaum, who used to be murdered on the Dachau focus camp in 1941—in opposition to the Albertina Museum, the Leopold Museum and the federal government of Austria.
The plaintiffs just lately submitted a 67-page amended grievance that provides prison justifications for his or her claims to recuperate the works. In general, the circle of relatives is looking for to restitute 12 works, together with Dead City III, Self-Portrait With Grimace (1910), Standing Man in Red Shawl (1913), and Standing Girl With Orange Stockings (1914).
The Austrian executive has waived its sovereign immunity through consenting to the lawsuit. Representatives of the Leopold Museum have gave the impression prior to the U.S. courtroom, shifting to push aside the case in opposition to it. But, consistent with the newest paperwork, Grünbaum’s descendants have had issue serving the Albertina Museum with their grievance, which might save you the case from proceeding thru U.S. federal courtroom.
Claudia G. Jaffe, a legal professional for the heirs, ultimate month despatched a letter to the pass judgement on offering an replace on their efforts. She famous that the courtroom had granted a movement to hunt “letters rogatory,” a form of formal request to a international courtroom for judicial help, made during the U.S. State Department.
“We have been in communication with the United States Department of State for a status update on efforts to serve the Albertina Museum but as of this writing, have not received any indication that service of process on the Albertina Museum has taken place,” Jaffe wrote. “We therefore believe service of process on the Albertina has not been completed.”
The keep, a six-month pause within the case, used to be ordered through U.S. District Judge John Koeltl on October 16, giving the plaintiffs that point to procedure their lawsuit in opposition to the Albertina Museum.
Egon Schiele, Red Blouse (1913). Photo: courtesy of U.S. District Court for The Southern District of New York.
Before his demise at Dachau 1941, Grünbaum gathered a massive artwork selection of a minimum of 440 works. Among them had been some 80 items through Schiele that his spouse, Elisabeth, used to be allegedly pressured at hand over to Nazi government when he used to be imprisoned. The circle of relatives has spent just about twenty years looking to recuperate the works.
In 2005, the circle of relatives contested the sale of a Schiele drawing, Seated Woman With a Bent Left Leg (Torso) (1917), through the gallery Richard Nagy, however misplaced the case in 2012 when the Art Dealers Association of America and the Society of London Art Dealers lobbied in want of the artwork broker.
Three years later, in 2015, Reif and Fraenkel filed a lawsuit in opposition to Nagy in Manhattan Supreme Court over Schiele’s Woman in a Black Pinafore and Woman Hiding Her Face. At the time, the pass judgement on halted any gross sales till the grievance might be reviewed. “This is not a case of Nazi theft,” Nagy insisted on the time.
Attempts at retrieving works from Grünbaum’s assortment have received momentum through the years, culminating in a flurry of recent proceedings filed starting in December 2022.
In addition to the case in opposition to the federal government of Austria, Grünbaum’s heirs filed others in opposition to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California, adopted through proceedings in opposition to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio. The U.S. museum court cases had been later consolidated into one case overseen through Judge Koeltl. The case in opposition to the Austrian establishments stays separate.
In September, the workplace of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg restituted seven works to the circle of relatives, who had approached his workplace for lend a hand, together with those housed at MoMA and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Other works grew to become over to government come with items held through the Morgan Library & Museum, billionaire Ronald Lauder and two from collector Serge Sabarsky. Four of the ones works had been bought at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale last week for a total of more than $18 million.
Meanwhile, Bragg’s workplace has seized different works through Schiele together with 3 housed on the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum.
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Grimace (1910) is indexed in courtroom paperwork as a part of Grünbaum’s assortment. It now hangs within the Leopold Museum.
The case in opposition to the Viennese museums is exclusive as it comes to prime ranges of international relations between the United States and Austria, which has resisted previous efforts to restitute works housed on the Albertina.
The attorneys for Grünbaum’s descendants assert that the Austrian executive is certain through a choice of U.S. regulations, in addition to the 1955 treaty that gave Austria its independence from the career of Allied powers after World War II, to go back the works.
“Despite due demand, and despite overwhelming evidence that the artworks were stolen from Grünbaum by the Nazi regime in violation of international law, Austria has refused to return the artworks,” the heirs’ amended lawsuit reads.
“Austrian courts have effectively slammed the courthouse doors shut by imposing impossible financial barriers to claimants and imposing impossible burdens of proof,” attorneys for the circle of relatives wrote. That burden of evidence relates to the efforts through the heirs to determine provenance and a prison justification for his or her declare of possession, which is what resulted in the amended lawsuit.
Evidence now submitted within the case comes to masses of pages of supporting paperwork, together with: a 1925 Würthle Gallery catalogue that paperwork Grünbaum’s possession of a minimum of 22 works of art through Schiele; a 1930 catalogue raisonné of Schiele’s oils authored through broker Otto Kallir, documenting Grünbaum’s possession of extra works together with Dead City III (1911); and a Nazi stock that lists 81 works through Schiele owned through Grünbaum.
Robert Morgenthau, the previous district legal professional in Manhattan, in the past seized Dead City III in 1998 whilst it used to be on mortgage to the Museum of Modern Art, however it used to be returned to the Leopold Museum two years later.
As for the jurisdiction, the attorneys wrote that, “because most of the artworks were trafficked through New York at a time that they belonged to the Grünbaum heirs residing in New York, New York’s long-arm statute also provides for jurisdiction and a remedy under New York law.”
The Leopold Museum, in a statement on its web page noting it could now not remark additional, claimed that there is not any proof the works in query had been confiscated through the Nazis, and that a committee shaped to analyze restitution claims concluded in November 2010 that the Schiele works “were federal property”.
“The artworks were sold in the second half of the 1950s by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Mathilde Lukacs to or via the Swiss art dealer Eberhard W. Kornfeld (Galerie Klipstein & Kornfeld),” the observation mentioned.
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