Subject: Will Austria Part With Hitler's Vermeer?
From: "E. Randol Schoenberg" <[email-masked]>
To: "E. Randol Schoenberg" <[email-masked]>
Cc: Art and Law People <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:47:50 -0700

http://www.laopus.com/2011/03/will-austria-part-with-hitlers-vermeer_16.html

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Will Austria Part With Hitler's Vermeer?

By E. Randol Schoenberg. Esq.

If only Adolf Hitler had been accepted to art school, the old joke goes, he
never would have felt the need to conquer the world. Unable to fulfill his
dream of becoming an artist, Hitler rampaged through Europe looting and
pillaging its great treasures. One of his trophies, Jan Vermeer¹s ³Artist in
his Studio², is again at the center of controversy, as Austria¹s art
restitution advisory board considers on March 18 whether it should be
returned to the heirs of its prior owner.

Austria came into possession of the Vermeer by nationalizing the painting at
the end of World War II. It currently hangs in Vienna¹s famed
Kunsthistorisches Museum. Hitler had obtained it in 1940 and planned to have
it as the centerpiece of his museum in his hometown of Linz, Austria. The
museum was never built.

Prior to World War II, the Vermeer was owned for many years by the
aristocratic Czernin family. Count Jaromir Czernin-Morzin inherited the
painting. He considered selling it. The American industrialist Andrew Mellon
offered to pay $1 million, which would have made it the most expensive
painting in the world. But the Austrian authorities wouldn¹t allow the
painting to leave the country, and so Czernin held onto it.

When Hitler marched into Austria in March 1938, Czernin was put in a
difficult position. His new wife, Alix-May, was the granddaughter of a
famous Jewish banker named Oppenheim. As a result, she and her former
husband, Roland Faber-Castell, had been subjected to vicious anti-Semitic
attacks in the popular Nazi tabloid, Der Stürmer. Czernin¹s sister was also
married to Hitler¹s chief opponent in Austria, former chancellor Kurt
Schuschnigg, who was kept imprisoned from 1938-1945. Czernin had to be
careful not to run afoul of the new Nazi bosses.

In 1939, a cigarette manufacturer from Hamburg, Philipp Reemtsma, who was
also a close friend of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, offered to purchase
the Vermeer for RM 1.8 million (about $720,000). Although Göring gave his
support to the deal, Austrian officials managed to block it by begging
Hitler to intervene. Hitler¹s secretary sent a telegram declaring that the
painting could not be moved without Hitler¹s approval.

Jaromir¹s wife was still suffering anti-Semitic attacks. In February 1940,
the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) intervened in her child custody dispute
with her former husband, stating that she was unfit to be a mother. Later
that year, she was officially declared ³Jewish and an enemy of the State²
and her passport was ordered to be taken away.

Hitler had his heart set on obtaining the Vermeer. In September, he set his
henchmen in motion. Hitler¹s private secretary, Martin Bormann, asked around
if any outstanding taxes could be used to take the painting away. Hans
Posse, Hitler¹s special envoy in charge of obtaining artworks for the
planned museum in Linz, was dispatched to Czernin¹s home to negotiate the
purchase of the painting at Hitler¹s price. Posse told Czernin he might as
well sell, because Hitler would get the painting ³one way or another.²
Hitler set the price at RM 1.65 million, or about $660,000 and Czernin had
no choice but to agree.

Even after selling the painting to Hitler, Czernin and his wife did not
escape persecution. Alix-May was driven from their home in Bohemia in 1942
and Czernin was forced out a year later. In 1944, Czernin was arrested by
the Gestapo. He was held in prison and forced to do manual labor, but was
never charged with any crime.

After the war, Czernin sought to recover his painting. But the Austrians,
having nationalized the painting, balked at returning it. They claimed that
Czernin and his wife could not have been persecuted because Alix-May had
only been one quarter Jewish. The restitution tribunal determined that
Czernin had ³freely chosen² to sell to Hitler. Czernin¹s appeals fell on
deaf ears, and, betrayed by his own country, he died a broken man.

This Friday, the case of Hitler¹s Vermeer will once again be reviewed by an
advisory committee appointed by the Austrian government. Over the past 12
years, this committee has returned hundreds of works from Austrian museums
to persecuted families, but not without controversy. The committee famously
refused to return the Klimt paintings taken from the Bloch-Bauer family,
valued at over $300 million, and those were recovered only after eight years
of litigation ended with an arbitration ruling overturning the committee¹s
decision. Will the committee once again struggle to hold on to a valuable
painting, notwithstanding its Nazi taint? Or will Austria finally come to
terms with its Nazi past and clear its museums of their ill-gotten
treasures?
----ooooo----

E. Randol Schoenberg is an attorney in Los Angeles, California. He
represents Helga Conrad, the step-daughter of Jaromir Czernin-Morzin. During
the past decade, he has litigated several prominent Nazi-looted art cases,
including Republic of Austria v. Altmann, which resulted in the return of
five paintings by Gustav Klimt valued at over $300 million.

For a detailed analysis see http://www.bslaw.com/Vermeer/VermeerAnalysis.pdf

http://kurier.at/kultur/2082098.php

Restitution: Was wird aus Vermeer-Werk?
Die Erben von Vermeers "Malkunst" bringen neue Beweise vor, die untermauern,
dass der Besitzer von den Nazis verfolgt wurde.

Letztes Update am 16.03.2011, 16:37

Eineinhalb Jahre haben zwei Provenienzforscherinnen damit verbracht, die
Geschichte von Jan Vermeers Bild "Die Malkunst" aus dem Kunsthistorischen
Museum (KHM) zu durchleuchten. Morgen, Freitag, soll nun der Rückgabebeirat
des Bundes über eine Restitution des wohl wertvollsten Gemäldes, das in
einem österreichischen Museum hängt, befinden.

Ein aktuelles Gutachten des US-Anwalts Randol Schoenberg, das dem KURIER
vorliegt, zeigt, dass Vertreter der Erben einiges neues Material
zusammengetragen haben, um zu untermauern, dass der einstige Besitzer
Jaromir Czernin der Verfolgung durch die Nazis ausgesetzt war. Czernin hatte
"Die Malkunst" 1940 um 1,65 Millionen Reichsmark an Adolf Hitler verkauft.
Zuvor waren zwei Versuche, das Bild zu veräußern, gescheitert - einmal an
einem Ausfuhrverbot, einmal an einer Intervention Hitlers.

Ungerecht?

Nach dem Krieg bemühte sich Czernin um eine Rückgabe - ohne Erfolg. Im
bisher letzten Urteil (1960) hielt der Verwaltungsgerichtshof fest, dass
weder Czernin noch seine damalige Frau Alix-May NS-Verfolgte waren. Diesen
Beschluss hält Schoenberg für "extrem ungerecht". Besonders Alix-May, die
aus dem Bankiershaus Oppenheim stammte und einen jüdischen Großvater hatte,
sei schon 1933 antisemitischer Hetze im Blatt Der Stürmer ausgesetzt
gewesen.
Laut Nürnberger Gesetzen war Alix-May "Mischling 2. Grades". In einem
Bericht des Rassenpolitischen Amtes fand sich im Oktober 1940, zur Zeit des
Verkaufs, jedoch die Notiz: "Laut Anordnung der Geheimen Staatspolizei ist
die oben genannte als Jude und staatsfeindlich zu führen und ist ihr, wenn
noch nicht geschehen der Pass abzunehmen."

Hitler habe gewusst, dass Czernin "jüdisch versippt" und zudem ein Schwager
des Ständestaat-Kanzlers Schuschnigg gewesen sei, argumentiert Schoenberg
unter Berufung auf eine Aussage des Hitler-Freunds Heinrich Hoffmann von
1950. Es sei an der Republik, zu beweisen, dass der Verkauf ohne Zwang
abgelaufen sei und ohne die NS-Machtergreifung unter gleichen Konditionen
passiert wäre.

Die Koordinatorin der Kommission für Provenienzforschung, Eva Blimlinger,
betont, dass Gutachten von Erben-Vertretern nicht die Entscheidungsgrundlage
des Beirats sind. Die Forschungen der Kommission kommentiert sie nicht.
Allerdings lässt sie durchblicken, dass der Beirat diskutieren muss, ob ein
unschuldiger Handel mit Hitler überhaupt denkbar war: "So wie Schoenberg das
thematisiert, ließe sich die Frage anschließen, ob irgendetwas, das man an
Hitler verkaufte, ein ,nicht durch den Nationalsozialismus durchdrungenes
Rechtsgeschäft' war."

Vermeer: Kampf um ein Meisterwerk

"Die Malkunst": Jan Vermeer van Delft schuf das Gemälde 1666-1668. Im
November 1945 kam es ins KHM.

Die Erben: Neben Czernins direkten Nachfahren bemüht sich Helga Conrad,
Tochter von Jaromir Czernins späterer Frau Gertrude, um die Rückgabe.

E. Randol Schoenberg, Of Counsel
Burris, Schoenberg & Walden, LLP
12121 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 800
Los Angeles, California 90025-1168
Tel: (310) 442-5559
Fax: (310) 442-0353
eFax: (425) 740-0483
E-mail: [email-masked]
http://www.bslaw.net