Austria to relinquish Klimt paintings

In a dramatic conclusion to a nearly eight-year-long legal struggle that, along the way, has involved the Austrian government, the U.S. Supreme Court and murky doings in Nazi-occupied Vienna, an Austrian arbitration court ruled in January that five paintings by Gustav Klimt are the rightful property of Maria Altmann, a 90-year-old resident of Los Angeles. Altmann's claim to the paintings rests on the fact that she is the sole heir of the paintings' original owners, her aunt and uncle Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. The most important of the five paintings is Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907), a grand, alluring, gold-leaf-adorned depiction of the woman who made a significant contribution to early 20th-century Viennese culture through her artistic patronage and vibrant salon.

Since 1998, Altmann has sought via Austrian and U.S. courts to wrest the paintings away from the Austrian Gallery in Vienna's Belvedere Castle, where they have hung since the Nazis seized them in 1939; following the German annexation of Austria in 1938, the art collections of many Austrian Jews were stolen. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a cornerstone of the Austrian Gallery's collection, is widely recognized as one of Klimt's most important paintings. Immediately after the war, the Austrian government pressured the Bloch-Bauer family to relinquish ownership of the Klimts in exchange for permission to take other works out of the country. The passage of a new Austrian law in 1998 obliging the country's museums to restitute Nazi-looted art gave Altmann renewed hope that she might recover the paintings, but her initial efforts to sue in Austrian courts were stymied by the requirement that she pay $2 million in filing fees.

Altmann then brought a lawsuit in U.S. courts. The Austrian government countered that American courts had no jurisdiction over the matter, an argument that was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, thus clearing the way for Altmann's suit. At this point, the Austrian government agreed with the proposal by Altmann and her lawyer Randol Schoenberg to have the case submitted to an Austrian arbitration court. The alternative would have been a lengthy series of trials and appeals that could easily have outlasted the elderly Altmann.

While the recent ruling isn't binding, Austria, despite its earlier strenuous rejection of Altmann's claims, will apparently honor it. "It goes without saying that the Republic of Austria will abide by the arbitration award," reads a statement on the Austrian Gallery's Web site. Altmann has said that while she intends to sell the paintings, she prefers that they go to museums, so that they will be on public view. As this issue went to press, the Austrian Gallery broke off negotiations to buy some or all of the works, which are estimated to be worth as much as $300 million.

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