by Catherine Schofield Sezgin,
ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief
In June, 1908, Klimt unveiled his
gold portrait of the 26-year-old Adele, making her an ‘instant celebrity’
(O’Connor):
‘Klimt embedded
Adele in a luminous field of real gold leaf, giving her the appearance of a
religious icon, which art historians would compare to the mosaic portrait of
Empress Theodora in Ravenna.’
Three years later, a
syphilis-ridden Klimt visits the Bloch-Bauer castle in Czechloslovakia to work
on a second portrait of Adele that he shows in 1912:
‘It was a very different work. Her expression was mature, direct, and
anything but seductive. This was
an older Adele, with world-weary eyes and cigarette-stained teeth, a painting
some would call evidence of the end of the affair.’ (O’Connor)
Adele and her husband would also
own four Klimt landscapes, including the 1912 “Apple Tree”.
In 1913, Hitler left Vienna. The following year, an anarchist shot
the Archduke Franz Ferdinand outside of his residence at the Belvedere Palace,
a random act that would lead to The Great War, and the death of millions of
young men.
Klimt dies of Spanish influenza
in 1918 at the age of fifty-five, a few months before Armistice Day which
reduces the Habsburg’s empire from 60 million to a tenth of that population and
squeezed into a debt-ridden new state.
Until Adele’s death of meningitis
in her early 40s, she lives a prominent cultural life filled with
intellectuals, Viennese composers and artists. In 1923, Adele wrote in a short will: “I ask my husband
after his death, to leave my two portraits and the four landscapes by Gustav
Klimt to the Austrian Gallery in Vienna.” (O’Connor) In another strange
parallel, it is the same year Hitler writes “Mein Kampf (My Struggle)”, ‘the
bestseller he wrote from prison after his failed uprising in 1923’ (O’Connor).
Within 15 years, when Ferdinand
Bloch-Bauer flees Austria to his summer home in Czechloslovakia prior to the
unification of Germany and Austria, the Vienna Adele knew is
unrecognizable. Members of the
extended family are arrested, jailed and tortured until valuable assets are
signed over to the Nazi government.
Relatives pay a “flight tax” to escape to Canada ahead of deportation to
concentration camps. Ferdinand
Bloch-Bauer is accused of financial crimes, his assets are ‘illegally taxed in
Vienna and his entire estate was confiscated’ as he will write in his will in
1942. Ferdinand dies in November
of 1945 in Zurich. He was unable
to recovery any of his property.
His estate is left to three of his nieces and nephews, including 25% to
Maria Altmann who will lead the family’s fight for the legal return of the
stolen Klimt paintings.
After the war, as some say, many
Nazis exchanged their uniforms for suits and went to work to rebuilding
Austria. New legislation
discouraged Jews from returning to reclaim stolen property. Export licenses for ‘masterpieces’ were
withheld, Jewish owners had to pay to get what was left of their
businesses. O’Connor describes how
Nazis in plainclothes entered Maria Altmann’s home, took her valuables, and
imprisoned her husband at the infamous concentration camp, Dachau, until the
family completed the paperwork required to Aryanize their property and
businesses.
Maria, her husband Fritz, and
other family members escape the Nazis and rebuild their lives, frustrated that
the Bloch-Bauer Klimt paintings hang at Belvedere Palace with no mention of
their Jewish patronage. Then the
District Attorney of New York City impounds a painting borrowed for an exhibit
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from an Austrian Art Institution (see review
of the film “Portrait of Wally”).
Maria Altmann, now a widow in her 80s and living in Los Angeles,
contacts “Randy” the lawyer son of a family friend. Randal Schoenberg spends years beating the odds with legal
arguments, working his way into arbitration with the Austrian government who
eventually agrees to return to the paintings to the family. O’Connor explains why Schoenberg was
successful, how Maria Altmann helped the case, and why the family ended up
selling the paintings. It’s a
story that will hopefully encourage more Jewish families to pursue their own
claims for looted art.