New York justice returns two drawings by Egon Schiele stolen by the Nazis

New York justice announced Friday the restitution of two drawings by Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) which were stolen by Nazi Germany and exhibited in museums in the United States. Girl with Black Hair (1911), pencil drawing held by the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin University in Ohio and estimated at $1.5 million, and Portrait of a Man (1917) which was at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, worth $1 million, have been returned to the heirs of Austrian Jewish art collector and cabaret performer Fritz Grünbaum, who was murdered by the Nazis. “This is a victory for justice and the memory of a courageous artist, an art collector and an opponent of fascism,” Timothy Reif, a member of the Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office, said in a statement. from the family of Grünbaum, killed in Dachau in 1941.

Also read: Ten works by Egon Schiele returned to the heirs of a Jewish collector

On September 20, the New York State Prosecutor's Office for the Manhattan district of prosecutor Alvin Bragg announced that the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Morgan Library in New York, the Museum of art of Santa Barbara (California), the Ronald Lauder collection and the Vally Sabarsky Fund in Manhattan had returned seven works by Schiele, a figure of Austrian expressionism. An eighth was returned directly to the Grünbaum family by collector Michael Lesh in October, recalls a press release from Mr. Bragg. Six drawings, including watercolors, were sold at auction in November at Christie's in New York.

Prosecutor Bragg was delighted that his prosecution, which has been fighting for years against the theft and trafficking of works of art from around the world, was able in a few months to “return ten pieces stolen by the Nazis” to Fritz Grünbaum in Austria in 1938 and then resold to finance part of the German war machine. The heirs of Grünbaum, an Austrian cabaret artist and great art collector, have been fighting in court for decades to regain possession of his works, especially Schiele's drawings.

Grünbaum was forced to sign a power of attorney for his wife, Elisabeth. The latter was then forced to hand over the entire collection to the Nazis before being deported and killed at the Maly Trostinec concentration camp, near Minsk, in Belarus. The heirs had failed several times in court in the United States, but after the adoption of the “Hear” law by Congress in 2016, they won their case in New York for two first works rendered in 2018.