Two More Egon Schiele Works Are Returned to the Grünbaum Estate

By Mia Hart

In one of the art world’s longest-running Holocaust repatriation cases, two more Egon Schiele works have been returned to the estate of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian-Jewish performer and art collector. During his incarceration in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941, Grünbaum was coerced into signing over his prolific art collection to the Nazis, leading to its dissemination through sales in Switzerland and New York.

Fritz Grünbaum led a theatrical life as a successful cabaret performer in Vienna, often staging political performances which overtly derided and mocked the Nazi regime. Alongside this, Grünbaum was a keen art collector, amassing over 400 works by artists from Rodin to Rembrandt, 80 of which were by the Viennese expressionist Egon Schiele, a protegee of Gustav Klimt.

The two latest retrieved works are Portrait of a Man (1917), a pencil on paper valued at $1 million, surrendered by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and Girl with Black Hair (1911), an early watercolour valued at $1.5 million, from the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Ohio. This takes the total number of returned works to ten, another progression in the battle of the family estate to reclaim the looted artworks.

Egon Schiele, *Girl with Black Hair,* 1911

After the German invasion of Austria in March 1938, Grünbaum attempted to escape into Czechoslovakia but was turned away at the border. He was arrested by the Nazis in Vienna, and eventually killed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. During this time, he was coerced into executing a power of attorney in favour of his wife, Elizabeth Grünbaum who had to give his entire art collection to the Nazi party, evidence of which was produced in a recent trial. This forced looting of Jewish property was part of a systematic campaign by the Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who instructed dealers to liquidate the assets in overseas locations and transfer the profits back to contribute to the Nazi war effort. The Nazi’s confiscated 50,000 works of art from between 1933-45, mostly from Jewish families like Grünbaum who were sent to concentration camps. A quarter of Grünbaum’s collection entered the international market via a Swiss art dealer in the 1950s.

Goebbels also spearheaded the purging of modern art from German culture which was considered “degenerate”, associated with democracy and pacifism. Nearly 15,500 modern artworks were purged from German museums; the collections from the Expressionist movement, including works by Schiele, were particularly targeted.

In 2018, the Grünbaum heirs filed a court case against the British collector Richard Nagy over the return of two Schiele pieces. This was ruled in their favour on the basis that it was improbable that Mr Grünbaum willingly donated the artworks whilst in Dachau. This victory bolstered their effort to retrieve more pieces, as they escalated their case to the Manhattan district attorney to locate other Schiele pieces from Grünbaum’s collection. Seven other artworks by Schiele were returned to the Grünbaum heirs during a ceremony in September 2023, led by the Manhattan District Attorney. They had been held by the Museum of Modern Art, Morgan Library and Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and two private collectors.

Indeed, the co-operation of the cultural institutions in voluntarily returning the artworks will have reverberations within the art world, setting a new precedent for the application of criminal law to Nazi-looted artworks. The two works have been consigned to Christies and will be auctioned later this month. Marc Porter, Christie’s chairman for the US has said “it is of enormous personal satisfaction to me that we can continue to tell the story of Fritz Grünbaum and do the important work of preserving the history and deepening the understanding of forced art sales during the Nazi era.”

Bibliography

Adam Schrader. “Two More Nazi Looted Egon Schiele Works have Been Returned to the Heirs of a Jewish Collector.” Artnet News. January 19, 2024.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/two-egon-schiele-works-returned-grunbaum-2421063

Shweta Sharma. “’History’s greatest robbery’: Jewish cabaret star’s heirs get back artwork stolen by Nazis.” The Independent. September 2023. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nazi-stolen-artwork-return-fritz-grunbaum-b2415586.html

“Who was Fritz Grünbaum?.” Collection Grünbaum https://www.collectiongruenbaum.com/who-was-fritz-grunbaum/