Seven works of art returned to the heirs of a Jewish collector killed by the Nazis

Formalized during a ceremony at the Manhattan prosecutor's office in New York, the restitution of the drawings of Egon Schiele (1890-1918), a figure of Austrian expressionism, represents an important victory for the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, who have been fighting for years to regain possession of his works.

"Thank you for putting yourself on the right side of history. What you have done is historic," said one of them, Judge Timothy Reif, congratulating the authorities for "solving crimes committed more than 80 years ago".

Schiele's drawings, watercolors or pencil on paper, such as "I love Antithesis", "Femme debout", or "Portrait d'un garçon", were in prestigious collections, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), at the Morgan Library in New York, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (California), in the Ronald Lauder Collection and in the Vally Sabarsky Trust, named after the art dealer Serge Sabarsky, who died in 1996.

cabaret

President of the World Jewish Congress, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics group and founder with Serge Sabarsky of the Neue Galerie in New York, Ronald Lauder was himself an advocate for the restitution of works looted by the Nazis.

According to the Manhattan prosecutor's office, the drawings, with a total value exceeding $9 million, were "voluntarily" returned by the institutions that held them, "once evidence of their theft by the Nazis had been presented to them."

Fritz Grünbaum was an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, a great art collector who owned more than 80 drawings by Schiele. This critic of the Nazi regime had been arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died in 1941.

The American justice has taken up one of the key arguments of his heirs. Grünbaum had been forced to sign a power of attorney in Dachau in favour of his wife, Elisabeth. She herself was then forced to hand over the entire collection to the Nazi authorities, before being deported and killed at the Maly Trostinec concentration camp, near Minsk, in present-day Belarus.

The painting "I Love Antithesis" by Egon Schiele stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian Jewish artist murdered by the Nazis, in New York on September 20, 2023 © - / New York US Attorneys office / AFP

"These priceless works of art hold a story we cannot ignore and tell the realities experienced by millions of people during the Holocaust," Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York, said at the ceremony.

"Fritz Grünbaum and his wife, Elisabeth, never had the opportunity to find their precious art objects before their untimely death, but their legacy will live on," he added.

'Under threat'

The works had reappeared on the art market in the 1950s, first in Switzerland, then resold on the New York square.

A New York magistrate had already ruled in favour of the Grünbaum heirs in 2018, ordering the return of two works by Schiele, writing in his judgment that "a signature at gunpoint" could have no value.

The subject of restitution remains topical in other countries.

In France, parliament passed a framework law in July to facilitate the return by public collections of cultural property looted by Jews under Nazi Germany.

According to figures published at an international conference in Terezin, Czech Republic in 2009, about 100,000 out of 650,000 stolen works had still not been returned at the time.

The quest for the Grünbaum heirs is not over. Last week, three other drawings by Egon Schiele that they claim ownership of were seized by the courts, including at the Art Institute of Chicago.

© 2023 AFP