Top of your list should be the Albertina and Leopold Museums. Leopold will be standing criminal trial this summer in the SDNY for trafficking in the stolen Schiele Portrait of Wally, which has been locked in a warehouse in Long Island City for the last decade. But you too can enjoy the exquisite joy of looking at stolen art because in Austria, this art is proudly displayed.
Although Article 26 of the Austrian State Treaty required that Austria return all property stolen from Jews (this is a continuing obligation under their equivalent of a constitution written in conjunction with the four occupying Allied forces), since the Allies left Austria in 1955, Austria has flipped the bird at the United States and the poor despoiled Jews who have spend generations dying while the Austrians stuffed themselves on Sacher tortes. A series of fake restitution laws were enacted and allowed to expire. But when your Constitution mandates that you give everything back, how can an expired law deprive a Jew of a remedy without being unconstitutional?
But no one seems to care very much these days. Holocaust survivors will all soon be dead. So go to Vienna this summer, here is a preview of some of the works stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, who was murdered at Dachau.
11 years ago Austria set up a provenance commission to investigate the provenance of Egon Schiele's Dead City, which was stolen from Fritz Grunbaum, and the other stolen artworks in the Albertina Museum.
11 years later, still no report. Just waiting for more Jews to die, enjoying the weather and the Mozart. Oh yes, and the Sacher torte.
Raubkunst - Stolen Schieles at the Albertina and Leopold Museums Vienna
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1 comment:
Thank you for the article !
HG/Vienna
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