Can A Jewish Man Imprisoned In Dachau Concentration Camp Transfer Valid Legal Title To A Schiele Painting?

Egon Schiele's Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (1917)

 

 

On October 31, the family of Fritz Grunbaum gathered at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial To The Holocaust to thank former District Attorney Robert Morgenthau for his efforts to recover Egon Schiele's Dead City III, an artwork he seized on behalf of Grunbaum's family at the MoMA in 1998.

Mr. Morgenthau, referring to the above drawing, read the following from a concurrence written by Judge Edward Korman when he sat by designation on  a case called Bakalar v. Vavra at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals:

Grunbaum was arrested while attempting to flee from the Nazis. After his arrest, he never again had physical possession of any of his artwork, including the Drawing. The power of attorney, which he was forced to execute while in the Dachau concentration camp, divested him of his legal control over the Drawing. Such an involuntary divestiture of possession and legal control rendered any subsequent transfer void.

Bakalar v. Vavra, 619 F.3d 136, 148 (2d. Cir. 2010)(concurrence).   The three judges on the Second Circuit panel in this published, precedential opinion found that the record suggested evidence that Nazis had looted Fritz Grunbaum's art collection and remanded to the trial court to reconsider the evidence.

Yet, despite what Judge Korman wrote, this week Sotheby's is planning to auction the Drawing without mentioning the Dachau power of attorney that Fritz was forced to execute, without mentioning Schenker, the Nazi looting entity that held the Drawing, and without mentioning Ludwig Rochlitzer, the Aryan trustee appointed to liquidate the Grunbaum's assets in January 1939.

To understand some of the facts relating to the Drawing's provenance, some explanation is necessary.

 

On March 22, 1938 Fritz Grunbaum was arrested by the Gestapo in Vienna and imprisoned in Dachau, where he died penniless.  Shortly after his arrest, a Nazi named Kieslinger inventoried Grunbaum's art collection.  Kieslinger counted 81 Schieles.  Five oils listed by name, including Dead City III.  The remaining 76 Schiele drawings and watercolors were not listed by title.

 

On April 26, 1938, the Nazis passed a decree requiring all Jews to declare their assets over 5,000RM.  According to the law, these Jewish assets were to be available to the Reich at the pleasure of Reichsmarshall Goering.  Each Jew was to declare the assets until the assets were gone or until the Jew had left the Reich.  On June 30, 1938, while in the Dachau Concentration Camp, Fritz was forced to execute a power of attorney (Vollmacht) permitting his wife to liquidate his assets.   Shortly thereafter under Nazi pressure and with her husband in a concentration camp, Fritz's wife Lily filed Jewish Property Declarations declaring Fritz's property, including the art collection with the Kieslinger inventory.  

 

Following Kristallnacht, the Nazis passed a decree forbidding Jews to buy or sell property and requiring the appointment of Aryan trustees to liquidate their property.  On January 1939, attorney Ludwig Rochlitzer wrote to Elisabeth Grunbaum, stating that the Nazis had appointed him to be the guardian of the "whole property" of the Grunbaums.

Thus, as of January 1939, Fritz and Elisabeth had lost control of their property as a matter of Nazi law.

 

The last Grunbaum Jewish property declaration was filed in June 1939.   Nazi-era export records show that a Nazi-controlled freight forwarding company named Schenker had possession of Fritz's art collection.  However, a lack of customs stamps on the export application showed that the art collection never left Vienna while the Nazis were in control.

 

Fritz died in January 1941.  In Nazi-era probate proceedings following Fritz's death, Elisabeth declared, under penalty of perjury, that Fritz had no property at the time of his death.  Elisabeth was deported to Maly-Trostinec, a death camp in Minsk in October of 1942.   She lasted so long because she had real property in Slovakia, and this took some time to sell.  The Nazis waited until a Jewish person had sold every last bit of property, including life insurance policies, before murdering them.

 

In the provenance of the Drawing, Schenker's possession is critically important, because it is the last place the Drawing was before it surfaced in Switzerland in 1956.  From court filings, an excerpt from a Schenker company history below in German with English translation following:

 

 

Schenker Company History - Nazi Looted Artworks By Egon Schiele

 

On September 18, 1956, art dealer Otto Kallir bought Dead City III and 18 other artworks by Egon Schiele, including the drawing above from a Swiss art dealer named Eberhard Kornfeld.   Kallir knew that Dead City III belonged to Grunbaum because he'd catalogued Grunbaum as the owner when he wrote a catalogue raisonee of Schiele's oils in 1930.    Even Eberhard Kornfeld's 1956 catalog listed Fritz Grunbaum as the immediate prior owner of Dead City III.

In 1928, Kallir borrowed 22 Schieles from Fritz Grunbaum for an exhibition at the Hagenbund commemorating the 10th anniversary of Schiele's death.   Many of those drawings were in the batch of Schieles Kallir purchased on September 18, 1956.   Kallir knew Fritz Grunbaum well and knew that Fritz was a famous cabaret performer who had been murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp.   Thus, Kallir knew when he bought this batch of Schieles that they had been stolen by the Nazis from a concentration camp victim.

In 1998, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally and Dead City III when those works were on loan from Austria to the Museum of Modern Art.  Because Austria successfully questioned the standing of the claimants to Dead City III, the work was returned to Austria where it remains - although stolen from Fritz Grunbaum - in the Leopold Museum today.

In 1998, in the wake of the seizure of Dead City III by Morgenthau, Eberhard Kornfeld was asked where he'd gotten Dead City III and the other Schieles.  For the first time he claimed that he'd bought them in 1956 from Fritz Grunbaum's sister-in-law (despite his 1956 catalogue saying he'd gotten Dead City III from Fritz Grunbaum)  The only problem was that he never produced any invoice from his gallery to Lukacs that included the Drawing.  He produced a mess of obviously forged documents that handwriting experts expressed "massive doubts" as to their authenticity.  I have included a link to the report below.   To produce a final handwriting expert report, the experts needed to see the originals in Berne Switzerland.  However, Bakalar's lawyers and Kornfeld obstructed the experts from independently viewing the documents until court deadlines for discovery had expired.  Thus, no competent handwriting expert has yet been able to conduct a scientifically reliable comparison and thus to prove that the documents Kornfeld produced were forged.   But even among the documents that Kornfeld produced, there was no mention of the Drawing, and thus no documentary reason to include Lukacs in the Drawing's provenance.  Indeed, even assuming the forgeries to accurately list the artworks he acquired, Kornfeld did NOT acquire a 1917 drawing of a headless woman from Mathilde Lukacs.
 

Handwriting Expert Report Regarding Forgeries of Mathilde Lukacs Signatures

 

 

In early 2008, Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos, a Ph.d from Harvard in history and one of the world's experts on Nazi art looting put together a report on the Drawing's provenance.  The report concluded that the Drawing was stolen.  The report concluded that the Mathilde Lukacs story was untrue.  The report can be found here:
http://artstolenfromfritzgrunbaum.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/dbm-005862-5966-petropoulos-expert-report-03-25-20082.pdf   Bakalar put in no expert report, but moved to exclude the report because it was filed after a court deadline.  The trial judge granted Bakalar's motion.

Thus, the trial court in Bakalar v. Vavra never dealt with the substance of the Petropoulos Report and with the proffered expert testimony demonstrating that the Nazis had looted the Drawing and that Mathilde Lukacs never had possesson of the Drawing.

Only time will tell whether Dr. Petropoulos' view of the Drawing's provenance will prevail as the view that is historiographically sound.   Only when handwriting experts gain access to Kornfeld's original documents and examine them with a stereoscopic miscroscope will we have scientifically sound proof of the forgeries.

But as a legal matter, Judge Korman's view of New York law would appear to be the one that the New York Court of Appeals would adopt, following its precedents in Menzel v. List, Guggenheim v. Lubbell, and Matter of Flamenbaum.  New York's Dead Man's statute bars as incompetent testimony relating to a transaction with a deceased, so Kornfeld's self-serving testimony is ordinarily inadmissible under New York law.   Since Kornfeld's own business records contradict the claim that he got the Drawing from Mathilde Lukacs, a New York court might well take the view, based on documentary evidence, that Mathilde Lukacs does not belong in the Drawing's provenance.  But see Bakalar v. Vavra 500 Fed.Appx. 6 2d. Cir. 2012 (unpublished summary order).

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Boston Globe: Museum Fine Arts Boston Refuses To Release Research on Kokoschka Stolen From Oskar Reichel

Stolen Kokoschka at MFA Boston: Court Rules Claimants Too Late for Justice

The Boston Globe, in a piece here by veteran reporter Geoff Edgers who has reported on many Nazi art looting scandals involving the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, reports in a rather soft and indirect way that the museum is continuing to conceal its research on how a work by Oskar Kokoschka got from the Jewish Viennese dentist Oskar Reichel in February 1939 to the art dealer Otto Kallir.   Earlier coverage of the case here.

Otto Kallir was profiled in an article Dealer with the Devil by the New York Observer here.

In February 1939, Jews had declared their property to the Nazi Reich.  Vienna was in the grips of Adolph Eichmann, who was systematically despoiling them of all property.

The Boston Globe article states as follows:
She [Reed] does defend the MFA, which she says shares the results of all its Nazi-era provenance research on its website, on gallery labels, and in gallery talks. The only exception is when there is a legal matter that includes correspondence that is privileged.

Her understated approach is typical of Reed. She wants the evidence from her research to speak for itself without telling her boss, MFA deputy director Katherine Getchell, how to respond.
That makes perfect sense to Getchell.

“Her job is not to be a policymaker or decision maker,’’ said Getchell. “We want her focused on research and analysis and looking at the different options.’’

But the Boston Globe has glossed the point.  Victoria Reed has presented no evidence, only the most conclusory "results" of her alleged research.  The Museum of Fine Arts website states as follows here:

Provenance Research
Following this March 2007 claim [to the Kokoschka], the MFA thoroughly reviewed the claim to Two Nudes (Lovers) in accordance with its own Acquisitions Policy as well as the guidelines set forth by the American Association of Museums (AAM), the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and the Washington Principles of 1998 on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The Museum is committed to determining, on an ongoing basis, whether any work of art in its collection has ever been stolen, confiscated, looted, or otherwise unlawfully appropriated as a result of Nazi persecution without subsequent restitution. A leader in provenance research, the MFA makes ownership information available to the public through its website, mfa.org. During the past decade, the Museum has restituted a number of works of art to their rightful owners based on provenance research.

None of this research has been made public.  Instead, the Museum has published a five paragraph summary of the 'results' of its alleged research.  A sample of this conclusory "research" follows below:

By 1924, Reichel had developed a business relationship with Otto Kallir (b. 1894 - d. 1978), a Jewish art dealer who opened the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1923. Reichel consigned Two Nudes (Lovers), along with other paintings by Kokoschka, for sale through Kallir in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1938, Kallir fled Vienna and turned the Neue Galerie over to his non-Jewish secretary. He opened a new gallery, the Galerie St. Etienne, in Paris. In February 1939, Reichel transferred ownership of five Kokoschka paintings—including Two Nudes (Lovers) —to Kallir, who exhibited them in his Paris gallery that spring. Later that year, Kallir emigrated to New York and opened a branch of the Galerie St. Etienne there. He exhibited Two Nudes (Lovers) frequently between 1940 and 1945, both in his New York gallery and in traveling exhibitions throughout the United States. From New York, Kallir sent money for the five Kokoschka paintings to Oskar Reichel’s two sons, Raimund and Hans, with whom he was in communication; they were living in South America and the United States, respectively.

Oskar Reichel was a Jew in Adolph Eichmann's Vienna.  His assets were logged and registered with the Nazis.  Nazi law prohibited Jews from making any transfers, and if any transfers were authorized, all of the proceeds went to the Reich.  How on earth could Reichel have tranferred ownership these assets to Kallir?    And even if he did, the 1946 Nullification Act, which voided transactions in property of Nazi persecutees, should have applied.  

Why has the MFA's researcher Victoria Reed failed to present her scholarship for peer review?  Historians are ethically mandated to do so.   Here is an excerpt from the American Historical Association's Statement on Professional Conduct

Professional integrity in the practice of history requires awareness of one's own biases and a readiness to follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead.Historians should document their findings and be prepared to make available their sources, evidence, and data, including any documentation they develop through interviews. Historians should not misrepresent their sources. They should report their findings as accurately as possible and not omit evidence that runs counter to their own interpretation. They should not commit plagiarism. They should oppose false or erroneous use of evidence, along with any efforts to ignore or conceal such false or erroneous use.
Historians should acknowledge the receipt of any financial support, sponsorship, or unique privileges (including special access to research material) related to their research, especially when such privileges could bias their research findings. They should always acknowledge assistance received from colleagues, students, research assistants, and others, and give due credit to collaborators.

Historians should work to preserve the historical record, and support institutions that perform this crucial service. Historians favor free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory access to archival, library, and museum collections wherever possible. They should be careful to avoid any actions that might prejudice access for future historians. Although they recognize the legitimacy of restricting access to some sources for national security, proprietary, and privacy reasons, they have a professional interest in opposing unnecessary restrictions whenever appropriate.

For another great example of museums professing to publish research, but in reality concealing it, please check out William D. Cohan's MoMA's Problematic Provenances in this month's ArtNews here

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Art Law: Boston Museum of Fine Arts: Sues Heirs of Jews To Keep Stolen Property, Hides Evidence



Two Nudes (Lovers)

1913

Kokoschka, Oskar, Austrian, 1886–1980

163.2 x 97.5 cm (64 1/4 x 38 3/8 in.)

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Apparently there is some confusion about the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Victoria Reed's role in laundering Nazi-looted art by getting a federal court to shield the MFA from discovery into its provenance research. 
 
Let's make it clear:  just because a federal judge says heirs have no legal rights to obtain the return of property because the claims are time-barred, doesn't mean property wasn't stolen.   To unpack that double-negative, if a judge says heirs can't find out and prove that a painting was stolen because their claims are time-barred, the museum is granted a windfall: a potentially-stolen artwork that no one can reclaim.
 
By pulling this scam, the MFA violates the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art
 
So the MFA bringing a "declaration of title" action is completely stupid, immoral and unethical because it just means that the MFA has potentially stolen art in its collection that heirs cannot retrieve.   Not to mention, an enormous expenditure of resources on legal fees.
 
The end result is that the children of Boston can gawk at a work stolen from a Jew and never know the truth.  And the MFA wants to keep it that way.  Nice Brahmin values.
 
From the First Circuit's opinion:
 
Because she did not make a demand on the MFA until March 12, 2007, more than three years after her causes of action accrued, summary judgment was properly granted on the MFA's limitations defense.


So the Museum of Fine Arts avoided discovery and inquiry into whether the object was stolen by invoking a statute of limitations defense.   But the statute of limitations merely affects the REMEDY.  It does not give the MFA title, since under the common law, no one can ever take good title from a thief.
So the First Circuit's decision simply means that the MFA can thumb its nose at Holocaust victims and try to rewrite the history of Vienna in February 1939 to pretend that the Kokoschka was not stolen from Reichel.

This is a use of the law in the service of an evil purpose, it is unethical, immoral and it violates the charitable charter of the MFA, an entity that is subsidized by taxpayer largesse.

To clarify: here's an excerpt from the First Circuit opinion, decide for yourself whether the MFA has laundered this piece of stolen art, keeping in mind that Adolph Eichmann had the property of Vienna's Jews in his grasp in February 1939.
 
Note that the First Circuit, by inserting the entirely irrelevant fact that Otto Kallir, the alleged "purchaser" from Reichel was Jewish, tries to make the transaction innocuous.  However, many historians have documented the fact that the Nazis used a network of Jewish art dealers to launder the proceeds of stolen art:
 
 

Egon Schiele:  Portrait of Dr. Oskar Reichel



Conditions for Dr. Reichel and other Austrian Jews rapidly deteriorated following the Anschluss -- the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938. Pursuant to Nazi regulations, Dr. Reichel was forced to file a declaration in June 1938 listing all of the valuable property he owned. One expert witness described the declaration as a "prelude to the formal Nazi confiscation and seizure of all Jewish-owned property in Austria and Germany." Proceeds from the sale of declared property had to be deposited into a Nazi-controlled account and could be withdrawn only in limited amounts. In his 1938 property declaration, Dr. Reichel stated that he owned the Painting and four other Kokoschka works. He declared the combined value of the Painting and another work to be 250 Reichsmark.

Egon Schiele- Portrait of Dr. Oskar Reichel - Head

Around the same time, Kallir, who was also Jewish, transferred ownership of his gallery to his non-Jewish secretary and moved to Paris. While Kallir was in Paris, Dr. Reichel agreed to transfer his remaining five Kokoschka works, including the Painting, to Kallir. The details of this transaction are sketchy. It is not clear whether Dr. Reichel received any consideration for the works at the time. Two contemporaneous notes indicate that Kallir agreed to purchase the five paintings for a total of 800 Swiss francs. However, Dr. Reichel's son Raimund later said that his father arranged for Kallir to send the proceeds of the transaction to another son, Hans, who had already immigrated to the United States. According to Raimund, Kallir sent Hans $250 for the five paintings in 1940 or 1941, and Hans forwarded half that sum to Raimund. The five Kokoschkas, including the Painting, were transferred from Dr. Reichel to a shipping company in Vienna, then exported to Paris.
Dr. Reichel and his wife Malvine suffered at the hands of the Nazis. They were forced to close the business Dr. Reichel had founded and to give up their family home and another property. Their eldest son was deported to Lodz, Poland, where he was killed. Malvine was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, and Dr. Reichel died of natural causes that same year. The two younger sons had emigrated by that time -- Hans to the United States and Raimund to Argentina. Malvine survived the war and eventually joined Hans in the United States.

Meanwhile, Kallir had settled in New York, where he opened the Galerie St. Etienne. He brought the Painting with him and sold it to the Nierendorf Gallery for $1,500 in 1945. The Nierendorf Gallery then sold the Painting to the E.A. Silberman Galleries, which in turn sold the Painting to Sarah Reed Blodgett in 1947 or 1948. Blodgett kept the painting for many years, lending it out for exhibitions from time to time. She eventually bequeathed the Painting to the MFA, which acquired possession in 1973.*fn4 The Painting has been on almost continuous display at the MFA since then, though it has been loaned out many times for exhibitions in the United States and around the world.
Raimund moved back to Vienna in 1982. He executed a will in 1989, in which he designated Seger-Thomschitz as his sole heir. It is not clear how Raimund and Seger-Thomschitz knew each other. She is described in one document as his "select-niece," but they are not blood relatives. When Raimund died in 1997, Seger-Thomschitz became the sole surviving heir of Dr. Reichel.*fn5
Seger-Thomschitz says that she "first learned that the Nazis confiscated artworks from Oskar Reichel in the Fall of 2003 when the Museums of Vienna contacted her concerning their intent to return to her as the sole heir of Oskar Reichel four artworks in their collection by the artist Anton Romako . . . ." The restitution of the Romako works was pursuant to a municipal resolution that Vienna had passed in 1999, which in turn implemented a 1998 national art restitution law. One municipal document notes that "it seemed quite proper" to return the works to Seger-Thomschitz because Dr. Reichel "had to sell [them] due to his persecution as a Jew." Notably, Dr. Reichel appears to have sold the Romako works around the same time that he sold the Painting, and under similar circumstances. He sold three of the four Romakos to the Neue Gallery in 1939 "for only small equivalent amounts," and he sold the fourth to the Neue Gallery in 1942. The gallery, by then under the direction of Otto Kallir's former secretary, subsequently sold the Romakos to the city.
Following her correspondence with the Museums of Vienna, Seger-Thomschitz retained a Viennese attorney, Erich Unterer -- who had also been Raimund Reichel's attorney -- "for purposes of handling the restitution of any artworks that Oskar Reichel may have lost due to Nazi persecution." Seger-Thomschitz and Unterer initially thought that all of the artwork Dr. Reichel lost during the Nazi era had been returned. In 2006, however, an American attorney "began a colloquy" with Seger-Thomschitz and alerted her to the possibility that other works formerly owned by Dr. Reichel might be located outside Austria. Seger-Thomschitz retained the attorney, whose firm then sent a letter to the MFA on March 12, 2007, demanding the return of the Painting.


When confronted with Seger-Thomschitz's claim to the Painting, the MFA undertook "an exhaustive effort to research and document the provenance of the Painting in order to ascertain whether the claim . . . appeared valid or not." An MFA curator and an independent provenance researcher spent eighteen months researching the Painting's history, during which time they visited approximately ten museums and governmental archives around the world and corresponded with numerous other museums and archives. Based on that research, the MFA concluded that the original transfer of the Painting from Dr. Reichel to Kallir was valid and that it would retain the Painting in its collection. It commenced an action against Seger-Thomschitz in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on January 22, 2008, seeking a declaratory judgment to "confirm its rightful ownership of the painting." Seger-Thomschitz answered the complaint in May of that same year and asserted counterclaims for conversion, replevin, and other state law causes of action.

As reported by ArtInfo here:

The MFA declined to allow Victoria Reed, the museum's curatorial research fellow for provenance who conducted the nine-month study of the history of the Kokoschka painting, to comment. It also would not release detailed materials from her report, saying, "The results of the museum's research are clearly outlined in its legal filing, which is publicly available and was shared with the Boston Globe."
###

What museum conducts eighteen months of research into a provenance that allegedly clears its title and then HIDES THE EVIDENCE?  

More on MFA's misdeeds here.
Not content to remain under her rock, Reed seems now to crave media attention for her occult activities.  A creepy puff piece where Reed brags of her furtive investigations and unpublished research here.   The writer refers to the MFA's payment (in lieu of returning the stolen work) as "rare preemptive compensation".

That's double-talk.  When the Austrians did it to Jews post-WWII to keep valuable pieces in Austrian museums, we have rightly deemed it extortion.

When the MFA does it, it is called "rare preemptive compensation".
More on Oskar Reichel here.

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Art Litigation: Egon Schiele's Prison Converted To A Museum, Image At Center of Stolen Art Controversy

Egon Schiele's "I Love Antitheses" 1912 (Estee Lauder Trust)

Artkabinett has an article Schiele Prison Attracts Collectors on the prison that housed Egon Schiele in Austria when he was imprisoned for scandalizing public morals.   Today the prison is a museum dedicated to Schiele's works.  Above is an image of one of the works that Schiele created while in prison.  According to Schiele expert Jane Kallir, "I Love Antitheses" was part of the collection of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who was murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp.  Jane Kallir testified at trial that "I Love Antitheses" was one of the few works that Schiele himself titled, and that the work is documented as belonging to Fritz Grunbaum by a 1925 Wurthle Catalog and a 1928 Hagenbund - Neue Galerie catalog.  Today it is held in an Estee Lauder trust.

Neue Galerie was the name of Otto Kallir's art gallery in Vienna that organized a 1928 exhibition to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Schiele's death.  Otto Kallir borrowed 22 works from Fritz Grunbaum's collection to include in the 1928 exhibition.  The 1928 correspondence shows that Otto Kallir had full access to Fritz Grunbaum's Schiele collection and selected the works that he wanted to borrow.

Grunbaum's collection was stolen by the Nazis and surfaced in Switzerland in 1956 where some of it was sold off by Eberhard Kornfeld of Galerie Kornfeld to Otto Kallir.  Kallir bought 20 of Fritz Grunbaum's Schieles from Kornfeld, including Dead City III. 

Kornfeld shipped the Grunbaum Schieles to New York and sold them through the Galerie St. Etienne, the gallery today owned by Jane Kallir and named after St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom)  in Vienna.  Otto Kallir knew that the works had belonged to Fritz Grunbaum and was aware that Fritz and his wife had been murdered by the Nazis.   In the period Kallir was selling the stolen artworks from his gallery on 57th Street in New York, the U.S. State Department had issued warnings to art dealers, museums and collectors not to acquire artworks from Europe that did not have a clear provenance.   Schiele was unknown outside Austria prior to World War II and many of Schiele's top collectors were murdered Jews such as Heinrich Reiger,  Oskar Reichel,  Karl Maylander and Fritz Grunbaum.

Galerie St. Etienne's Inspiration  -  Stefansdom - Vienna - Image from Wikipedia

Dead City III was seized as stolen property by D.A. Robert Morgenthau in 1998. After Morgenthau's subpoena was quashed, MoMA gave Dead City III to Rudolph Leopold.

A lawsuit alleging that Fritz Grunbaum's art dealer, Otto Kallir (and for a time monarchist supporting the restoration of the Hapsburgs) laundered the Grunbaum collection through Switzerland is still pending. See New York Observer, Dealer with the Devil.   The heirs of Fritz Grunbaum have been battling to regain the artworks stolen from him.  More information at Art Stolen From Fritz Grunbaum.   Museums and private collectors who purchased the stolen works have not returned them and the issue on appeal now to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is whether the 147 days that the stolen artworks passed through Switzerland was sufficient to apply Swiss law to "launder" the title to these stolen works.  Massachusetts collector David Bakalar sued Fritz Grunbaum's heirs to obtain a declaration of title to one of the stolen artworks.   My firm represents Fritz Grunbaum's heirs in the litigation and I was lead trial counsel in the action in the Southern District of New York, story here.

Along with Dead City III in the September 1956 of artworks from Eberhard Kornfeld was the work "I Love Antitheses" and "Girl With Black Hair" that is now at Oberlin College.   Oberlin's Allen Museum has refused to share its research or to publish a full provenance of "Girl With Black Hair" with Fritz Grunbaum's heirs in violation of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.   The earliest provenance given of Girl with Black Hair by Oberlin College is Switzerland, 1956.

Artkabinett also has a story Infamous Collector Leopold Dies at 85 on Rudolph Leopold, the art collector who amassed a number of stolen artworks that Austria has never returned to the Jewish families from whom they were stolen.

Related:   Will Austria Return Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally?  and David D'Arcy's Settlement close on Portrait of Wally case

Work stolen from Fritz Grunbaum at Oberlin College here.  More on the battles over Fritz Grunbaum's collection and Oberlin's falsification of the provenance of Girl With Black Hair here.

Watch the Boston College video here.

More information and coverage of the 1928 Hagenbund/Neu Galerie correspondence in the following Powerpoint:

Federal Bar Association ND Ohio IP Crimes Seminar on Nazi Art Looting

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Looting and Exploitation in Nazi-Occupied Europe by Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos

Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos delivered a lecture on Nazi art looting in Vienna last fall, focusing on the case studies of art dealers Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir, both of whom moved large quantities of artworks from Nazi Germany into the United States during and after World War II.   A link to Dr. Petropoulos' lecture on video is here at the Art Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum blog.

Dr. Petropoulos' studies on Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir are extremely important for those trying to track artworks looted by the Nazis that are now in museums and private collections in the United States and abroad.

According to a newly-released study prepared for the Swiss government by Laurie Stein, former founding director of the Pulitzer Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the largest recipient of artworks from Curt Valentin.   Other than Dr. Petropoulos, art historians have completely ignored Curt Valentin, whose clients included a Who's Who of American art museums, colleges and wealthy collectors who snapped up modern artworks as the Nazi terror forced Jews to sell the works at fire-sale prices.   Alfred Barr, the MoMA's first director, was said to be in Curt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street on a weekly basis.

Above is an image of Egon Schiele's Girl with Black Hair, you can see her image at Oberlin College's website here.  In 1998, Oberlin College's then-President Nancy Dye promised the Cleveland Plain Dealer that she would investigate Schiele expert Rudolph Leopold's claim that Girl with Black Hair, along with sixteen other Schieles in American museums, belonged to Fritz Grunbaum.  Dye never published any results from her research.  In 2009, the Cleveland Jewish News reported evidence of Grunbaum's prior ownership, the article is here. 

Art catalogues show that this artwork was in the collection of Fritz Grunbaum before he died at the Dachau Concentration Camp.  The work is at the Allen Museum at Oberlin College, which refuses to document or share its research into the work's provenance prior to its acquisition in Switzerland in 1956 by Otto Kallir.  Kallir purchased it from Gutekunst & Klipstein, a clearinghouse for Nazi-looted art in Berne, Switzerland.  Oberlin's President Marvin Krislov has refused to permit me to meet with Oberlin's art historians to discuss the matter on campus.

Oberlin College has both music and Jewish studies programs.  It is shameful that they do not study the life, career, and art collection of Fritz Grunbaum, considered Austria's greatest cabaret performer and comedian of all time, celebrated by the Viennese with Karl Farkas as inventors of the "Doppelconference" a sort of Abbot & Costello routine.

As one account of Fritz's death at Dachau has it:

It was on New Year’s Eve, 1940, that Grünbaum gave his last performance. Gravely ill with tuberculosis, he decided to put on a show for the entertainment of prisoners in the camp infirmary. Despite his sickly appearance, one of the prisoners recognised him from his glory days in Vienna. Grünbaum pleaded:


I beg of you, Fritz Grünbaum is not performing for you, but instead it is the number [and recited his camp number], who just wants to spread a little happiness on the last day of the year.

Soon after this final show he attempted suicide, but was 'saved' by the SS officers. Just two weeks later, on 14 January 1941, a death certificate was made up for him. He had succumbed, according to the Nazis, to a weak heart.