Art stolen by Nazis to be returned to family heir

updated 5:27 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2006

VIENNA, Austria - It was a seven-year legal struggle with dazzling stakes — five precious paintings by Austrian icon Gustav Klimt that a California woman says were stolen from her Jewish family by the Nazis.

Now, a court ruling made public on Monday will likely resolve the high-profile case against Austria’s government in her favor.

The Austrian arbitration court determined the country is legally obligated to give the paintings to Maria Altmann, the heir of the family who owned them before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Altmann said she was awakened by a telephone call from her attorney at 7:30 a.m. Monday with the good news.

“I tell you, frankly, I had a very good feeling the last few days. I had a very positive feeling thinking things will go all right,” said Altmann, reached by telephone at her home in Los Angeles. “I’m thrilled that it came to this end.”

Though the court’s ruling is nonbinding, both parties have previously said they will abide by it, and Austria’s government is expected to give up the works of art that have been displayed for decades in Vienna’s ornate Belvedere castle.

Paintings estimated at $150 million
That would represent the costliest concession since Austria began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis. The pictures have been estimated to be worth at least $150 million.

But for lovers of Klimt, at least one of the disputed paintings — the oil and gold-encrusted portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” — is priceless. Altmann is the 90-year-old 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.

Jane Kallir, co-director of New York City’s Galerie St. Etienne, which introduced Klimt to the United States in 1959, calls the 1907 portrait “literally priceless.” Stylistically similar to Klimt’s world-renowned “The Kiss,” the painting is replicated on T-shirts, cups and other souvenirs.

Austria considers the paintings part of its national heritage. Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession art movement that for many became synonymous with Jugendstil, the German and central European version of Art Nouveau.

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. As early as 1908, a Vienna art critic described it as the portrait of “an idol in a golden shrine.”

Lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg, who represents Altmann, said the court’s decision fulfilled all her hopes and expectations.”

“It will make Mrs. Altmann ... very happy,” he told the Austria Press Agency.

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