Reposted from NYTimes

Several museums and collectors have surrendered artworks by Egon Schiele
to investigators who say they were looted. But others are asserting that
the evidence is inconclusive.For decades, several important museums and collectors ignored suggestions
that the works they owned by the Austrian master Egon Schiele had been
stolen by the Nazis from a Viennese cabaret performer, Fritz Grünbaum.
 
Instead, many embraced an alternative account told by a Swiss gallerist. He
said that in 1956, 15 years after Grünbaum’s death in the Dachau
concentration camp, he had come into possession of dozens of Grünbaum’s
Schieles.
The gallerist, Eberhard Kornfeld, said Grünbaum’s sister-in-law had
approached him, looking to sell a bunch of the Schiele artworks. Kornfeld
said he bought most of the 81 Grünbaum Schieles from her and put 65 of them
up for sale, an event that eventually led to more sales and resales and
caused the Grünbaum Schieles to end up in collections around the world.
But a New York civil court ruling several years ago and, more recently, the
findings of investigators working for the Manhattan District Attorney have
undermined the credibility of Kornfeld ’s account. The New York civil court
held that Grünbaum never willingly soldor
surrendered any of his works. In recent weeks the New York City prosecutors
were able to persuade several museums and collectors to surrender nine
Schiele works, valued at more than $10 million, to Grünbaum’s heirs.
 
Now the heirs, Timothy Reif, David Fraenkel and Milos Vavra, are pursuing
legal claims in New York that seek the return of 13 additional works by
Schiele held by three museums, the Albertina and the Leopold in Austria,
and the Art Institute of Chicago. The heirs argue in court papers that
these works, which include a well-known painting, “Dead City III,” held by
the Leopold, were also stolen from Grünbaum and were never in the
possession of his sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs.
Raymond Dowd, the heir’s lawyer, wrote in a federal suit filed in December
against the two Austrian museums that the Lukacs story has long been
derided by Holocaust scholars “as implausible because Lukacs was herself
imprisoned in Belgium during World War II after escaping Vienna.”
Kornfeld’s account was first publicly aired in 1998 when “Dead City III,” a
moody 1911 portrait of the Czech town of Cesky Krumlov where Schiele lived
in 1910, was briefly seized as looted in New York by then Manhattan
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. The work was ultimately returned to
the Leopold museum in Austria.
Grünbaum was taken away by the Nazis, but some holders of art work he once
owned do not agree that his collection was also confiscated.Credit...Getty
Images William Charron, the lawyer who represents the Leopold Museum, declined to be interviewed. But in its court filings, the museum has argued that the plaintiffs are too late in making their claim and that the federal court in
Manhattan where the heirs filed their lawsuits does not have jurisdiction.
 
The museum said in its legal filing that it is also relying on a federal
court decision in which the judge ruled against the Grünbaum heirs in a
dispute over another Schiele. That judge found that the lawsuit was also
filed too late and that documents provided by Kornfeld supported his
account of having bought the works from the sister-in-law, Lukacs. (The
heirs have challenged the authenticity of those documents, which include a
receipt said to have been signed by Lukacs.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds the Schiele drawing “Russian
Prisoner of War,” and is being sued separately by the Grünbaum heirs, has
also argued that the claim is time-barred and that the earlier federal case
decided that the Nazis had never seized the collection. The drawing in
Chicago is also the subject of a seizure order by the Manhattan district
attorney’s office, which the museum is contesting. The Art Institute has
countersued the Grünbaum heirs for “a declaration of title” to the artwork.
Spokesmen for the Leopold and Albertina museums, which are owned by the
government of Austria, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
A spokesman for the Art Institute wrote in an email, “We are confident in
our legal acquisition and lawful possession of this work.”
 
So far, Reif, a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade, and
Fraenkel, a former commercial banker, have secured the return of more than
a dozen Schieles they argue were taken from Grünbaum. (Vavra is retired and
lives in the Czech Republic.)
The return of seven Schieles was announced in late September by
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, whose office convinced three
museums and two collectors to surrender the works. The Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library in New York were among the group that returned
works, as was the art collector and former U.S. ambassador to Austria,
Ronald Lauder. He gave back a watercolor, “I Love Antithesis,” a
self-portrait of the artist created in 1912. In an interview, Reif said the seven Schieles will be sold by Christie’s, in two sales this month, with the proceeds going to the Grünbaum Fischer Foundation, which supports underrepresented artists. More recently, three additional institutions, the Carnegie Museums, in
Pittsburgh; the Allen Memorial Art Museum, at Oberlin College; and the
Vally Sabarsky Trust in New York have agreed to surrender Schiele artworks formerly owned by Grünbaum.
 
Grünbaum assembled his collection of Schiele after the artist’s death in
1918 from the Spanish flu. The New York investigators have agreed with the
plaintiffs that Grünbaum’s wife was forced to turn over his art collection
to Nazi officials when her husband was imprisoned in 1938. Investigators
say there is evidence that the Nazis, who viewed Schiele’s work as
degenerate and thus disposable, put it in a warehouse in Austria. The
investigators have not addressed specifically how they believe Kornfeld
obtained the Schieles, if not from Lukacs. But in a press statement they
pointed to a longstanding business relationship Kornfeld had with the son
of the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlittwhom the Nazis assigned the task of selling off “degenerate art.” Kornfeld, however, has said that, instead of being diffused in multiple sales, that most of the Grünbaum Schieles were maintained as a collection, one ultimately held by Grünbaum ’s sister-in-law who was herself persecuted by the Nazis and fled Vienna for Brussels in 1941. By Kornfeld’s account, the Schiele works escaped with her.

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