The film Woman in Gold, directed by Simon Curtis, was about the recovery of Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I 1907.
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Woman in Gold, by Klimt. 1907 (top photo) Adele Bloch-Bauer (lower photo)
The film showed how Maria Altmann first tried to reclaim some of her family's art in 1998, aged 82! Restitution across Europe was improving; Swiss banks had agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement after being sued by Holocaust survivors, to return assets deposited during the war. The Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art was signed in Dec 1998 by 44 countries, including Austria. And the Austrian Parliament passed its own law requiring museums to allow researchers to explore their stolen items archives.
In 1999, Schoenberg and Maria sought to sue the Austrian government in an Austrian court. But under Austrian law, the filing fee for lawsuits was determined as a percentage of the recoverable amount. The five paintings were then estimated at cUS$135 million, making the filing fee $1.5+ million - too much for Altmann, so she dropped her case. In any case, Altmann heard that the country's minister was unwilling to part with the iconic painting, which they felt had become part of Austria’s national identity.Randol then filed in Aug 2000 in the Californian District Court, using a narrow rule of law in which an art restitution law was retroactively applied. A Republic of Austria v Altmann appeal went to the American Supreme Court where the court ruled in Altmann's favour.
The American Supreme Court cleared the way to sue the Austrian government. In order to avoid a lengthy and expensive court battle, she agreed to binding arbitration in Austria, given her advanced age.
In front of three arbiters, the panel heard the case over four months. Schoenberg asked the arbitration panel to see the injustice to the families who were deported or forcibly separated from their treasures by the Nazis. The arbitration panel ruled in favour of Altmann, returning 5 of her 6 works!
Yes the Bloch-Bauer art collection was looted by Nazi authorities in Vienna, and yes Austria fought aggressively to avoid returning it, given that the iconic paintings were seen as part of Austria’s identity. So of course the painting's departure was a significant loss to Austria. But hey.. after 8 years of struggle to reclaim the paintings (1998-2006), Maria grabbed the works and took them back to the USA!
The film didn’t discuss the heirs' decision to sell off the family paintings, valued at $325 million, but I personally found it problematic. Were the Bloch-Bauer heirs simply cashing in on a booming art market, rather than pursuing justice? What other memories would they have of their parents and grandparents? The main painting was sold to cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder (son of Estée Lauder) in 2006 for a record $135 million.
Lauder promised to display the painting at his Neue Galerie New York permanently. Plus he planned a fine exhibition called Klimt and the Women of Vienna's Golden Age 1900-18, held at the Neue Galleries New York until Jan 2017. Naturally the two Bloch-Bauer portraits were the star presentations.
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Gustav Klimt 1862-1918 (Moritz Bleibtreu)’s finished portrait painting, made of gorgeous oil, silver and gold, took three years to complete. His 1907 painting, commission by the husband, had originally been titled Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. It was the first of 2 portraits that Klimt painted of Adele; then Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II in 1912.
When Adele died in 1925, her 6 paintings by Klimt were not left to Austria. She specified in her will that the paintings were to be left to her husband and asked that he donate them to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death, to be put on display in the prestigious Belvedere Palace. However Adele's husband, wealthy sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's own will stated that his estate, including the Klimt paintings, was to go to his heirs.
But Ferdinand did not die until WW2, and by that time the paintings had already been stolen by the Nazis. A German lawyer administered their sale, and in 1941, the Austrian State Gallery won the Klimt works. The Nazi curator at the Austrian Gallery first changed the painting’s name to hide the fact that the model was Jewish.
Dame Helen Mirren played the late Maria Altmann (nee Bloch Bauer 1916-2011), niece of Adele, very well. I don’t like docu-dramas, especially when English-speaking actors have to put on fake German accents while speaking in English. But I love Vienna’s early C20th Golden Era, its art, music and cultural salons, and was keen to see the film.
The story was seen through two streams, the first located recently, and the second via flashbacks to the 1930s. We saw the cultivated life of the Bloch-Bauer family, a Jewish business family in Vienna. Adele (1881-1924) hosted a chic cultural salon where Klimt and other artists met their patrons and bonded with them. Maria Altmann recalled the arrival of Nazi forces in Vienna, oppression of the Jewish community and Nazi looting of art treasures. Nazis raided the family-home and took jewellery, her father's Stradivarius and paintings.
Anne-Marie O'Connor's book Lady in Gold: Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece said Ferdinand Altmann had been arrested by the Nazis and held at Dachau concentration camp for two months. Later the couple tried to escape 3 times before the country was completely shut off; eventually they succeeded, boarding a plane to Cologne. While Altmann and her brand new husband were successful in escaping, she was forced to abandon her parents in Vienna. From the UK, the young couple made their way across Holland and then to Liverpool. But as the British were growing more suspicious of Axis citizens living in Britain, they travelled to America.
Then the film jumped to the 1990s when an elderly and widowed Altmann was attending her sister’s funeral in Los Angeles. She discovered her sister’s late 1940s letters which wanted to recover family artwork that had been stolen by the Nazis.
Altmann hired lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to get her art back via the Restitution Board in Austria. Note that grandpa Arnold Schoenberg’s music had been defined as Degenerate by the Nazi Party's cultural authorities. After being warned to get out, Arnold fled via Paris to America in 1933, teaching at the University of Southern California.
When Adele died in 1925, her 6 paintings by Klimt were not left to Austria. She specified in her will that the paintings were to be left to her husband and asked that he donate them to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death, to be put on display in the prestigious Belvedere Palace. However Adele's husband, wealthy sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's own will stated that his estate, including the Klimt paintings, was to go to his heirs.
But Ferdinand did not die until WW2, and by that time the paintings had already been stolen by the Nazis. A German lawyer administered their sale, and in 1941, the Austrian State Gallery won the Klimt works. The Nazi curator at the Austrian Gallery first changed the painting’s name to hide the fact that the model was Jewish.
Dame Helen Mirren played the late Maria Altmann (nee Bloch Bauer 1916-2011), niece of Adele, very well. I don’t like docu-dramas, especially when English-speaking actors have to put on fake German accents while speaking in English. But I love Vienna’s early C20th Golden Era, its art, music and cultural salons, and was keen to see the film.
The story was seen through two streams, the first located recently, and the second via flashbacks to the 1930s. We saw the cultivated life of the Bloch-Bauer family, a Jewish business family in Vienna. Adele (1881-1924) hosted a chic cultural salon where Klimt and other artists met their patrons and bonded with them. Maria Altmann recalled the arrival of Nazi forces in Vienna, oppression of the Jewish community and Nazi looting of art treasures. Nazis raided the family-home and took jewellery, her father's Stradivarius and paintings.
Anne-Marie O'Connor's book Lady in Gold: Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece said Ferdinand Altmann had been arrested by the Nazis and held at Dachau concentration camp for two months. Later the couple tried to escape 3 times before the country was completely shut off; eventually they succeeded, boarding a plane to Cologne. While Altmann and her brand new husband were successful in escaping, she was forced to abandon her parents in Vienna. From the UK, the young couple made their way across Holland and then to Liverpool. But as the British were growing more suspicious of Axis citizens living in Britain, they travelled to America.
Then the film jumped to the 1990s when an elderly and widowed Altmann was attending her sister’s funeral in Los Angeles. She discovered her sister’s late 1940s letters which wanted to recover family artwork that had been stolen by the Nazis.
Altmann hired lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to get her art back via the Restitution Board in Austria. Note that grandpa Arnold Schoenberg’s music had been defined as Degenerate by the Nazi Party's cultural authorities. After being warned to get out, Arnold fled via Paris to America in 1933, teaching at the University of Southern California.
The film showed how Maria Altmann first tried to reclaim some of her family's art in 1998, aged 82! Restitution across Europe was improving; Swiss banks had agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement after being sued by Holocaust survivors, to return assets deposited during the war. The Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art was signed in Dec 1998 by 44 countries, including Austria. And the Austrian Parliament passed its own law requiring museums to allow researchers to explore their stolen items archives.
By opening the Ministry of Culture archives for the first time, the new law enabled Austrian lawyer and investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Bruhl) to discover that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had NEVER donated the paintings to the state museum. [Czernin eventually traced thousands of Nazi-looted works of art to Austria’s national museums] .
In 1999, Schoenberg and Maria sought to sue the Austrian government in an Austrian court. But under Austrian law, the filing fee for lawsuits was determined as a percentage of the recoverable amount. The five paintings were then estimated at cUS$135 million, making the filing fee $1.5+ million - too much for Altmann, so she dropped her case. In any case, Altmann heard that the country's minister was unwilling to part with the iconic painting, which they felt had become part of Austria’s national identity.Randol then filed in Aug 2000 in the Californian District Court, using a narrow rule of law in which an art restitution law was retroactively applied. A Republic of Austria v Altmann appeal went to the American Supreme Court where the court ruled in Altmann's favour.
The American Supreme Court cleared the way to sue the Austrian government. In order to avoid a lengthy and expensive court battle, she agreed to binding arbitration in Austria, given her advanced age.
In front of three arbiters, the panel heard the case over four months. Schoenberg asked the arbitration panel to see the injustice to the families who were deported or forcibly separated from their treasures by the Nazis. The arbitration panel ruled in favour of Altmann, returning 5 of her 6 works!
Yes the Bloch-Bauer art collection was looted by Nazi authorities in Vienna, and yes Austria fought aggressively to avoid returning it, given that the iconic paintings were seen as part of Austria’s identity. So of course the painting's departure was a significant loss to Austria. But hey.. after 8 years of struggle to reclaim the paintings (1998-2006), Maria grabbed the works and took them back to the USA!
The film didn’t discuss the heirs' decision to sell off the family paintings, valued at $325 million, but I personally found it problematic. Were the Bloch-Bauer heirs simply cashing in on a booming art market, rather than pursuing justice? What other memories would they have of their parents and grandparents? The main painting was sold to cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder (son of Estée Lauder) in 2006 for a record $135 million.
Lauder promised to display the painting at his Neue Galerie New York permanently. Plus he planned a fine exhibition called Klimt and the Women of Vienna's Golden Age 1900-18, held at the Neue Galleries New York until Jan 2017. Naturally the two Bloch-Bauer portraits were the star presentations.
Gustav Klimt