Austria to return stolen art by Nazis

AUSTRIA’S culture minister yesterday agreed to abide by a court ruling and give up ownership of five Gustav Klimt paintings worth over €125 million to a Californian woman whose family had them stolen by the Nazis.

But the country’s Culture Minister Elizabeth Gehrer proposed her country be allowed to continue displaying the best-known works as national treasures.

Ms Gehrer said Austria would comply with the arbitration court’s decision on Monday that the country is obligated to give the paintings to Maria Altmann under laws mandating the restitution of art objects to Holocaust victims.

Ms Altmann, 89, a retired Beverly Hills clothing boutique operator, was one of the heirs of the Jewish family who owned the paintings before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.

Yesterday, Ms Gehrer said her ministry was exploring ways to be able to keep at least two of the best known pictures on display in Austria but ruled out buying them, saying there was no money for such a solution.

Austria’s decision to give up the artworks that have been displayed for decades in Vienna’s ornate Belvedere castle represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis.

But for Klimt lovers, at least one of the disputed paintings - the oil and gold-encrusted portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I - is priceless. Stylistically similar to Klimt’s world-renowned The Kiss, the painting is replicated on T-shirts, cups and other souvenirs.

Jane Kallir, co-director of New York City’s Galerie St Etienne, which introduced Klimt to the US in 1959, calls the 1907 portrait “literally priceless”.

Ms Altmann is the niece of Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925. The subject’s family commissioned her famous portrait and owned it, along with the four other Klimt paintings disputed in the case.

Ms Altmann has insisted the paintings should remain on public display and not in a private collection.

Bloch-Bauer represented the cream of Viennese society - a Jugendstil “Mona Lisa” with her shock of black hair, full lips, strong hands and expressive brown eyes set against Klimt’s gold and gilt framework.

Lawyers for the two sides have fought since 1998 over rights to the famed portrait and four other paintings.

After Bloch-Bauer died, the five pictures remained in her family’s possession. Her husband fled to Switzerland after the Nazis took over Austria. The pictures were then taken by the Nazis.

Austria was among the most fervent supporters of Adolf Hitler, a native of the country. Vienna was home to a Jewish community of some 200,000 before World War Two. Today, it numbers about 7,000.