A total of seven artworks by Austrian Expressionist Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele once owned by Franz Friedrich 'Fritz' Grünbaum will be handed over in a public ceremony livestreamed today from  the office of the New York District Attorney's Office in Manhattan at 15:00 EST.

Each of the artworks were voluntarily relinquished by the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library in New York, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (California) and the legal representatives for the private collections of Ronald Lauder and the estate of the late Serge Sabarsky.

The artworks being returned to the collector's heirs are:

 Prostitute, 1912 by Egon Schiele
Watercolor and pencil on paper

Sold via Gutekunst & Klipstein, Bern to Galerie St. Etienne in New York
Lastly with the Museum of Modern Art 

 Portrait of a Boy (Herbert Reiner), 1910 by Egon Schiele

Guache, watercolor, and pencil on paper

Sold as per Kallir: Gutekunst & Klipstein

Galerie St. Etienne, New York

as per S.S.G. records: John Herring Inc., New York, until February 1993 

Serge Sabarsky Gallery, New York since February 1993

Lastly on display at the Neue Galerie, from the estate of the late Serge Sabarsky

I Love Antitheses, 1912 by Egon Schiele
Watercolor and pencil on paper

Lastly from the private collection of Ronald Lauder

All seven of the artworks were relinquished following investigations by the Manhattan prosecutor's office.  A process to recover Grünbaum's art collection  began as early as 1998 when former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized “Dead City III”, an oil on wood painting by Schiele which Timothy Reif's, family claimed.  At the time, the Reif claim was weaker than Lea Bondi's claim for the Portrait of Wally, and Dead City III went back to Austria to the Leopold Museum.

Fast forward to 2018, and working from the basis of the civil court ruling by Judge Charles V. Ramos in the case of Reif v. Nagy in New York County Supreme Court, we finally have some justice for the family.  In his ruling Ramos concurred that the power of attorney signed on/around 20 July 1938 by the artworks' owner, Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, song writer, and actor, Franz Friedrich 'Fritz' Grünbaum, while imprisoned at Dachau Concentration Camp, and signed under extreme duress gunpoint did not represent a valid conveyance.

In making his 2018 ruling Judge Ramos also cited the introduction of the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act of 2016 and ruled that Grünbaum’s descendants rightfully owned two other Schiele works named in the civil proceedings, “Woman in a Black Pinafore” and “Woman Hiding Her Face.”

Grünbaum was murdered on 14 January 1941 at Dachau Concentration Camp.

As mentioned in an earlier article this month, much of Grünbaum’s extraordinary 449-piece art collection was sold through Eberhard Kornfeld, a Swiss auctioneer, and art dealer based in Bern.

Given that all seven of these Schiele artworks had been in circulation via New York  dealers, the New York District Attorney's Office held jurisdiction and could build a case for their (and other) restitutions on the basis that pursuant to a criminal investigation into Nazi looted art, by being the property of Fritz Grünbaum’s heirs: David Fraenkel, Timothy Reif, and Milos Vavra, the artworks from his collection, which have been sold onward, each constitute stolen property from the claimants according to New York state law.  

Remembering the artwork's original owner, it is said that Fritz Grünbaum never stopped entertaining people. Even as death approached at Dachau, he mocked the Nazis and found levity in the grim absurdities of life in a death camp. One former inmate remembered Fritz comforting the other inmates by arguing that absolute deprivation and systematic starvation were the best defence against diabetes.

By:  Lynda Albertson

Fritz Grünbaum's prisoner registry card at Dachau Concentration Camp

On Wednesday, the New York District Attorney's Office in Manhattan executed  search warrants at three US museums, seizing three artworks by Austrian Expressionist Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele.

The Schiele works are: 

Russian War Prisoner, 1916, a watercolour and pencil on paper hand drawing seized at the Art Institute of Chicago; 

Portrait of a Man, 1917, a pencil on paper drawing seized at the Carnegie Museum of Art; 

Girl With Black Hair, 1911), a watercolor and graphite pencil on paper hand drawing seized at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.

According to the warrants and Manhattan prosecutors,  “there is reasonable cause to believe” that the works constitute stolen property taken from Franz Friedrich 'Fritz' Grünbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, operetta and popular song writer, actor, killed during World War II.  Grünbaum’s extraordinary 449-piece art collection was stolen by the Nazis only to have much of it sold through Eberhard Kornfeld, a Swiss auctioneer, and art dealer based in Bern, without the collector's heir's consent. 

A World War II tragedy, like so many others. 

After the Anschluss, (the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich forming a "Greater Germany"), Fritz Grünbaum and his wife Elisabeth "Lilly" (nee Herzl) Grünbaum try unsuccessfully to escape to Czechoslovakia. 

Apprehended and arrested Fritz Grünbaum remained imprisoned in various concentration camps until his murder. On 16 July 1938 while Fritz Grünbaum was imprisoned at Dachau, the Nazis forced him to execute a power of attorney in favour of his wife Lilly. 

Shortly thereafter, and acting pursuant to her husband's under duress power of attorney Elisabeth Grünbaum is compelled to permit Austrian art historian and art dealer Franz Kieslinger, who was a member of the Nazi party, to inventory Grünbaum's property, including his art collection of over 400 pieces to be valued at 5,791 Reichsmarks (RM).  In this collection were 81 pieces by Schiele. 

Kieslinger inventory documented Grünbaum's Schiele artworks: 

Grünbaum's collection also included French watercolours and pieces by French Impressionist Edgar Degas, the German artist Albrecht Dürer, Dutch Golden Age artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, known as Rembrandt, and French sculptor François Auguste René Rodin.  All of the latter were identified by name in the Kieslinger inventory. 

Sometime following Kieslinger's inventorying, the Grünbaum's entire art collection was deposited with Schenker & Co., A.G., a Nazi-controlled shipping company, with the firm the applying for an export license on behalf of collector "Lilly Grünbaum" in November 1938.  Gruesomely, Lilly's address is listed as "formerly Vienna . . . now Buchenwalde," the Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany.

On January 14, 1941 Fritz Grünbaum was murdered at Dachau in southern Germany. His wife then signed a declaration before an Austrian notary in connection with obtaining her husband's death certificate, stating: 

"[T]here is nothing left," in other words, there is no estate. Therefore, "[b]ecause of a lack of goods or property, there [was no] estate proceeding for inheritance" before the Dachau Probate Court.

She in turn, is murdered four months later, on October 5 1942 at Maly Trostenets death camp near Minsk in Belarus. 

By the early 1950s some 25% of the Grünbaum's collection, including the three seized artworks, was in circulation on the art market through Bern, Switzerland dealer Eberhard Kornfeld.

Seized in place, prosecutors say 3 seized artworks belong to the three living heirs of Fritz Grünbaum and will be transported to New York at a later date.

By:  Lynda Albertson