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| Stealing Klimt |
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A film by Martin Smith and Jane Chablani
Produced by Films of Record
England | 2006 | 89' | 52' |
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Klimt works taken down in Vienna: Five paintings looted by Nazis were packed for shipment to owners
William Kole, with file by Vancouver Sun reporter John Mackie, Associated Press
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
VIENNA -- This city's Belvedere Gallery took down five Gustav Klimt paintings Monday and packed them for return to a California woman and her Vancouver relatives whose family owned the works when they were stolen by the Nazis.
But the lawyer for the woman, Maria Altmann, said that Austria took down the paintings on its own and the family had no immediate plans to move the paintings.
"On their own the Austrians decided to pack them up," said E. Randol Schoenberg from Los Angeles.
"We didn't ask them or tell them to do anything, they're just doing it."
About 10,000 people had lined up for hours during the weekend for a final glimpse of the cherished paintings, that have hung for decades at the gallery in Belvedere Castle and are considered national treasures.
Last month, an arbitration court ruled that the paintings must be returned to several descendants of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish businessman from Austria who died in Switzerland in 1945.
The lawsuit was spearheaded by the 89-year-old Altmann, a retired boutique owner who lives in Beverly Hills. Altmann has 25- per-cent ownership of the paintings, as does Nelly Auersperg of Vancouver and Francis Gutmann of Montreal. Trevor Mantle of Vancouver and former Vancouverite George Bentley own 121/2 per cent each.
Vancouver businessman Peter Bentley is also related to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, but did not participate in the lawsuit for the Klimt paintings.
Austria had hoped to find a way to buy back the paintings, but officials conceded last week they could not afford the $300-million US price tag.
Austria's decision to give up the artworks represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis. The cultural property return law was enacted in 1998.
Gallery director Gerbert Frodl noted with a touch of irony that Monday was the 88th anniversary of Klimt's death. Frodl said the museum's restorers were conducting a routine examination of the paintings to ensure everything was in order before they were packed for shipping.
Although Altmann waged a seven-year legal battle to recover the paintings, after she won the lawsuit she made clear that she preferred the works to remain on public display rather than disappear into a private collection.
Among the Klimt works is the gold-flecked Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which has been widely replicated on souvenirs. Adele was Ferdinand's wife.
The other paintings are a lesser-known Bloch-Bauer portrait, as well as Apfelbaum (Apple Tree), Buchenwald/Birkenwald (Beech Forest/Birch Forest) and Haeuser in Unterach am Attersee (Houses in Unterach on Attersee Lake).
The five paintings remained in the family's possession after Adele Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, but the Nazis seized them when they took over Austria in 1938 and Ferdinand fled to Switzerland. The Belvedere gallery was made the formal owner.
Austria was among the most fervent supporters of Adolf Hitler. Vienna was home to a vibrant Jewish community of some 200,000 before the Second World War; today, it numbers about 7,000.
Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said Austria has returned more than 5,000 artworks to their rightful owners in recent years, including 16 other Klimt works restored to Altmann or her relatives.
The country also has begun paying compensation to Nazi victims from a $210-million fund endowed by the federal government, the city of Vienna and Austrian industries.
The Netherlands also is deciding whether to give a major art collection to the descendants of a Jewish art dealer whose holdings also were taken by the Nazis, a family spokesman has said.
Jacques Goudstikker, the Netherlands' biggest art dealer before the Second World War, fled the country at the start of the war with his wife and son, losing an estimated 1,300 artworks. He died after falling through a trap door on a ship heading to South America.
About 800 of his artworks were seized by Hitler's right-hand man, Field Marshall Hermann Goering, and 300, mostly by Dutch artists, were returned to the Netherlands' government after the war.
A few were sold at auction, but 267 artworks worth tens of millions of dollars -- including masterpieces by Jan Steen and Salomon van Ruysdael -- remain in museums around the Netherlands, including the national Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Some decorate Dutch government offices and overseas embassies.
Other works that Goering took -- including pieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Goya, Rubens, Brueghel, Titian and Tintoretto -- remain lost. A handful have been returned by buyers who later realized the paintings were Goudstikker's.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
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