A New York court on Friday returned another drawing by Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) that had been stolen from a Jewish collector by the Nazis and held for decades by another Austrian Jewish family who had taken refuge in the United States.
As part of a policy of returning thousands of works of art to some thirty countries and to heirs — illegally held by American and European museums and collectors — the Manhattan prosecutor’s office of Alvin Bragg has returned ten pencil and watercolor drawings by Egon Schiele since 2023.
In an emotional ceremony at the New York courthouse, attended by members of the two families of Austrian Jewish origin, Mr. Bragg announced the restitution of Seated nude woman, front view (1918).
“The story behind the art stolen by the Nazis is atrocious and tragic and its consequences are still felt today by the victims and their families,” the magistrate denounced. He praised the cooperation between the two Jewish families, the Grünbaums and the Papaneks.
Forced to give away his collection
It must be said that their story is exceptional. Fritz Grünbaum was an Austrian Jewish art collector and cabaret artist who owned more than 400 works, including 81 by the famous expressionist Schiele, before being arrested by the Nazis in 1938 and murdered in Dachau in 1941.
Before he died in the Holocaust, he had to sign a power of attorney for his wife, who was then forced to give the entire collection to the Nazis before being deported and killed in the Maly Trostinec concentration camp near Minsk.
The stolen Schiele works then circulated for decades among collectors in Switzerland, Austria and the United States, where the Austrian Jewish Papanek family had fled the war in 1940.
Seated nude woman, front view was purchased in 1961 in New York by Ernst and Helene Papanek who gave it to their son Gustav, who kept it until his death in 2022, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office said.
“We believe that returning the drawing was the right thing to do […] “The experience of both our families should remind us of the extent to which the Nazi regime embodied evil and violence,” the Papanek family wrote in a statement.
To which Timothy Reif of the Grünbaum family responded that it “sends a message to the world: crime does not pay and New York authorities have never forgotten the darkest lessons of World War II.”