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

Over the last year, as museums were forced to grapple with the question of how to to handle illicit antiquities in their collections, this year we see some of the more interesting pieces beginning to make their way home.  One of which is the 500 kilogram Late Period (747-332 BCE) "green sarcophagus" of a priest named Ankhenmaat, which was received by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in a formal handover ceremony in Cairo on January 2nd.  

Acquired by the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas in 2013, the artefact was looted, likely from a shaft tomb, at the Memphis necropolis at Abusir Al Malaq in Egypt, an archaeological locality on the western bank of the Nile River, approximately 25 kilometers southwest of Cairo.  Investigations overseen by the New York District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan determined that the sarcophagus had been illicitly exported out of Egypt and subsequently smuggled into Germany before eventually passing onward to the United States in 2008. 

January 2, 2023 ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted handing over the "green sarcophagus" to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities after it was recovered in the United States.

2023 may also be the year where some of the same museums which grappled with their illicit antiquities in 2022 also begin, this year, come to terms with their acquisition of Nazi-stolen art or art sold by members of the Jewish community under Nazi duress.

In the last week of 2022 Judith Silver, her sister Deborah Silver, and seven other individuals from Los Angeles, Seattle and Israel, named in a lawsuit as the surviving heirs of Jewish collector Hedwig Stern, filed a claim in the Northern District of California District Court, against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Athens-based Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation.  

Their lawsuit, surrounding the museum's deaccessioning of Van Gogh's "Olive Picking, 1889, contends that the Met's (then) chief curator Theodore Rousseau, “knew or consciously disregarded that the painting had been looted from Hedwig Stern by the Nazis” but still approved the Van Gogh painting's purchase and its later deaccessioning and sale. 

The painting's World War II era owner, Hedwig Stern, escaped Germany in December 1936 leaving behind a collection of artworks, which a Nazi-appointed trustee then sold onward.  The painting named in the lawsuit was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 and after a series of transactions is now part of the collection of the Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art, an Athens museum run by the family foundation of the late Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise Goulandris.   The lawsuit further contends that the Foundation continues to hold the painting despite its known provenance problems. 

Not counting this deaccessioned work, the Metropolitan Museum of Art reported that it has identified 53 works in its collection as having been seized or sold under duress during the Nazi era, excluding Picasso's painting “The Actor.”

Elsewhere, Timothy Reif and David Fraenkel, heirs of another collector persecuted during the Nazi regime, Fritz Grünbaum, have also filed lawsuits against the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California seeking to recover a 1912 painting and 1915 pencil drawing, by Egon Schiele, each of which depict a woman. Grünbaum's art collection was looted by Nazis before he died on January 14, 1941 while held at Dachau Concentration Camp.

On the side of building capacity and advancing knowledge, later this month on January 18, 2023, at 5:00 pm, London time The Institute of Art and Law will host its next instalment of The Restitution Dialogues conference series.  This event will take place in the form of an online seminar investigating the Vatican Archives and its holdings of Indigenous items, including questions of returning items to communities of origin.

"The panel will discuss items such as the broader impact of the contemporary ‘restitution revolution’, the nature and provenance of Indigenous material in the Vatican collection, institutional best practices in restitution and repatriation, and the cultural impact of return and renewal."

The webinar is free for to anyone who registers.

January also marks the month when the Association for Research into Crimes against Art will accept general applications for admission to its 2023 Postgraduate Certificate program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.  Back in 2009, ARCA started the very first interdisciplinary program designed to study art crimes holistically, in a structured and academically diverse format which includes eleven interconnected courses focusing on important theoretical and practical elements related to identifying, combatting, and studying art and heritage crime. 

Taught in Italy, over the course of one summer, the General Applications Period runs through 30 January 2023.  Late applications will be considered after, subject to remaining census availability. 

ARCA will also post information later this month regarding its annual Amelia Conference (and its call for presenters).  This event will be held the weekend of June 23- 25, 2023 in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, the seat of ARCA’s summer-long PG Cert program. 

The Jewish Museum’s current exhibition Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is dedicated to the art objects coveted by some of history’s greatest villains: the Nazi regime. Walking into the museum lobby on a cloudy Saturday afternoon (admission is free on the Jewish Sabbath), I found myself at the end of a long line awaiting entry into the exhibition space.  Surrounded by groups of all ages and backgrounds, we waited in an orderly fashion, taunted by the glimpse of a large Franz Marc canvas hanging just beyond the glass doors.

Image Credit: Jewish Museum

Once granted entry into the exhibition space, the dramatically lit gallery introduces viewers to the idea of an artwork’s biography, not just its creator, but the journey the physical item takes throughout its existence from creation to owners, to looters, to restitution. Following the trajectory of curation, visitors are given a preliminary introduction to the destruction and sacrifice that arose from the Nazi’s systematic plunder of cultural objects. The wall texts and audio guide address topics ranging from the experiences of “degenerate” artist’s to Rose Valland’s valiant efforts working for the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume to the Jewish Museum’s own role in safeguarding the orphaned Judaica of the Danzig Collection. 

In support of this narrative, many of the artworks on display are presented with wall texts that offer a paragraph of art historical analysis followed by a brief description of how the artwork was looted and restituted. Other items on display, such as August Sander’s photographic portraits of his Jewish neighbors seeking to escape persecution, and a concentration camp ledger recording the names of thousands who perished at the hands of the Nazis.  This sobering reminder of the context of this exhibition adds an extra layer of gravitas to the exhibited art objects.  Of the 3478 human beings recorded in this single ledger, only 11 survived. Viewers are not just reading fantastical stories or art historical analyses. They are witnessing the afterlife of the attempted annihilation of Jewish culture and faith. 

Max Pechstein’s Landscape (Nudes in a Landscape), 1912

The exhibition culminates with a display of contemporary works by artists Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guex, and Lisa Oppenheim. Each of the aforementioned artists seeks to shed light on the enduring legacy and ramifications of Nazi plundering while simultaneously shedding light on restitution efforts. Maria Eichhorn even put together a dossier of philosopher Hannah Arendt’s field reports, memoranda, and other primary documents from her time as an emissary for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. (JCR). This dossier offers a documented view into the restitution efforts that took place in the wake of the Second World War. Visitors are encouraged to take a copy of the dossier with them. The unassuming booklet serves as a tangible record of plunder to take with them back into the real world.  

Image Credit: Aubrey Catrone

* Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is on view at the Jewish Museum in New York until 9 January 2022

Press Contacts:  

In Washington, DC: Marc Masurovsky, (00) 1 202 255 1602 , plunderedart@gmail.com

In New York, NY: Pierre Ciric (00) 1 212 260 6090, pciric@ciriclawfirm.com

New York, NY USA – October 29, 2020

On October 28, 2020, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi, filed, through its counsel, Pierre Ciric, Esq., an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in the so-called “Guelph Treasure” case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This case involves the Welfenschatz, or Guelph trove, currently in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (“the Foundation”) and has been claimed by successors of art dealers who were fleeing the Holocaust. These objects were originally housed in the cathedral in Braunschweig, owned by the House of Guelph. In the 1920s, the pieces were sold to a consortium of Frankfurt art dealers. Later in 1935, the Prussian state, led by Hermann Goering, “bought” the treasure from those art dealers. Following a 2014 rejection of the dealers’ heirs claims by the German so-called “Limbach Commission,” suit was brought against the Foundation and Germany in the U.S. 

In siding with the German defendants, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) argued that Germany was immune from suit because “domestic takings” by foreign governments do not fall under the expropriation exception to the immunity rules.

HARP’s amicus brief argues that the DOJ’s defense is baseless because of legal precedents, is contrary to multiple U.S. statutes promulgated by the U.S. Congress and to the long-standing U.S. policy regarding restitution of Nazi-looted artworks claimed by Holocaust survivors.  Finally, the brief argues that the DOJ’s position would raise significant due process concerns by distinguishing heirs of German Jews from heirs of Jews stripped of their citizenship during the Holocaust.

According to Ori Z. Soltes, HARP’s chairman, “it is simply disheartening to see our own government arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Holocaust does not qualify as a genocidal enterprise worthy of being recognized as a ‘violation of international law.’  If the Holocaust does not fall squarely in this definition, then nothing else does!  The Court should reject this baseless argument and ensure that the U.S. remains a proper forum for claimants to seek redress from the genocidal enterprise of looting cultural assets from Jews during World War II.”

The Ciric Law Firm, PLLC is a New York law firm specialized in cultural heritage law and in commercial litigation services for businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals.

HARP is a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of looted artworks requiring detailed research and analysis of public and private archives in North America. HARP has worked for 22 years on the restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi regime. 

The case is Philipp v. Fed. Republic of Germany, 894 F.3d 406 (D.C. Cir. 2018), cert. granted, No. 19-351 (U.S. July 2, 2020).