Seven works by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele will be turned over Wednesday to the heirs of the Viennese cabaret artist who owned them before his murder by the Nazis, Manhattan prosecutors said. This marks a major turning point in one of the art world’s longest-running Holocaust restitution cases.
The ceremony to return the artworks to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, who was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941, was scheduled to take place in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, who was investigating the case.
“This is of enormous importance in our world,” said one of the Grünbaum heirs, Timothy Reif, referring to the descendants of Holocaust victims who have demanded the return of looted property nearly 80 years after the end of World War II. “It sets the tone and agenda for all future cases.”
For more than a quarter of a century, the Grünbaum heirs have been striving for the return of various Schiele; Her claims, which led to civil lawsuits in state and federal courts, were closely watched in the art world.
The dispute over the collection sparked an international incident in 1998 after a Schiele that Grünbaum had owned was loaned from an Austrian museum to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Robert M. Morgenthau, then the Manhattan District Attorney, issued a subpoena in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent his and another controversial Schiele’s return to Austria.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office became involved in the case again in December after a New York civil court ruled in 2018 that Mr. Grünbaum had never sold or given away any of his works before his death, making his heirs their true owners. Prosecutors found evidence that the seven works had ended up in the hands of a Manhattan dealer, which they said gave them jurisdiction. This time it was different: several museums and collectors agreed to hand over the Schiele’s to the heirs at the request of the public prosecutor’s office after his office informed them that they had stolen property.
“Fritz Grünbaum was a man of incredible depth and spirit, and his memory lives on through the works of art that will finally be returned to his relatives,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement. “I hope this moment can serve as a reminder that despite the terrible death and destruction caused by the Nazis, it is never too late to restore some of what was lost.”
The seven voluntarily returned works were in the hands of three museums – the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, both in New York, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California – and two collectors, Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and long-time advocate of Holocaust restitution, and the estate of Serge Sabarsky, a well-known art collector. (An eighth work, owned by the Sabarsky estate, was previously returned separately to the heirs.)
Mr. Grünbaum, a celebrated Jewish cabaret artist and arts patron known for his harsh remarks against Nazism, was arrested in 1938 and sent to the Dachau death camp in Germany.
During his incarceration, prosecutors say, he was forced to issue a power of attorney on behalf of his wife, Elisabeth, who was later forced to hand over his art collection – including 81 Schiele paintings – to Nazi officials. Prosecutors said the collection was inventoried in 1938 and then confiscated from a Nazi-controlled warehouse and that the works by Schiele, who had been declared a degenerate artist, were auctioned or sold abroad to finance the Nazi Party.
Mr. Grünbaum was killed in 1941 and his wife, who was also sent to an extermination camp, in 1942.
In the 1950s, many Schiele’s and other works from his collection appeared on the art market in the possession of the Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld. They were later sold to an American dealer, Otto Kallir, who had a gallery in New York, before being resold to various buyers and dispersed widely.
In the 2018 case, the heirs went to a New York state court and won two Schiele’s – “Woman in a Black Pinafore” (1911) and “Woman Hiding Her Face” (1912) – scheduled back by a collector, Richard Nagy, to sell them. The ruling found that Mr. Grünbaum had owned the works before the war and could not have voluntarily given up the title during his stay in Dachau. Judge Charles V. Ramos wrote that “a signature at gunpoint cannot result in a valid transfer.” of someone’s property.
Bolstered by that verdict, the heirs contacted the Manhattan district attorney’s office in December, asking them to investigate whether Schieles, which were once in Mr. Grünbaum’s possession and were in New York or had passed through Mr. Kallir’s hands, could be considered stolen property under New York law, Mr. Reif and investigators said.
Matthew Bogdanos, the assistant district attorney who heads the city’s antiques trafficking unit, said he was persuaded by the heirs to investigate the case as a criminal case and that this had led to new evidence tracing the paintings’ trail in New York could.
The museums and collectors who agreed to release the Schiele’s all signed agreements with prosecutors declaring that they waived all claims to the works “as part of a criminal investigation” into “Nazi-looted art.”
Mr. Lauder declined an interview but said in a statement: “I am pleased and honored to be able to help the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum continue their laudable efforts to restore his legacy.”
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art said in a statement that based on the new information, its director and board “have determined that the drawing should be returned.” The Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan declined to comment ahead of the ceremony.
At least six of the returned Schiele’s are scheduled to be auctioned at Christie’s in New York this year. Marc Porter, Christie’s head of restitution, said the sales would include a commemoration of Mr. Grünbaum’s life. The proceeds, Mr. Reif said, would fund the newly formed Grünbaum Fischer Foundation to establish a scholarship program for young musicians in Fritz Grünbaum’s name. So far, he said, the charity has been funded by the $2.5 million sale of the two works in November, which it recovered in the 2018 state lawsuit.
In addition to Mr. Reif, 64, a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade, the heirs also include David Fraenkel, a co-executor of Mr. Grünbaum’s estate, and Milos Vavra. Mr. Reif said Mr. Gruenbaum was his paternal grandfather’s first cousin.
The seven works of art returned on Wednesday had also been the subject of civil lawsuits filed in New York Supreme Court in 2022. According to Raymond Dowd, the heirs’ attorney, those cases were dismissed. But referring to other works by Mr. Grünbaum that are either in New York or may have passed through the city, Mr. Dowd said: “We have asked prosecutors to investigate all works of art sold through New York, and we believe that “Many more works will appear.”
The returned works were each valued between $780,000 and $2.75 million. Two were given to the Museum of Modern Art: “Prostitute” (1912), a watercolor and pencil on paper, and “Girl Putting on Shoe” (1910), a watercolor and charcoal on paper. “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Edith” (1915), a pencil on paper was donated by the Santa Barbara Museum and “Self-Portrait” (1910), black chalk and watercolor on brown paper, by the Morgan.
Mr. Lauder published “I Love Antithesis” (1912), a Watercolor and pencil on paper. The Sabarsky estate gave Portrait of a Boy (Herbert Reiner) (1910), a gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, and Seated Woman (1911), a gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper valued at 1,250,000 US dollars back.
Manhattan prosecutors said they are conducting an overall investigation into at least a dozen Schiele works that they say were looted by the Nazis and smuggled through New York at some point.
Last week, investigators confiscated three additional Schiele from three out-of-state museums, saying those works had also been stolen and rightfully belonged to Mr. Grünbaum’s heirs.
Those three institutions — the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio — are facing lawsuits from heirs in federal court and have indicated they believe they have good title have in their works. These works still need to be transported to New York.
Mr Reif said the prospect of getting the artwork back filled him with gratitude.
“Each one is exquisite to me,” he said. “I love these works because by restoring them I can honor the memory of this man.”