Seventy years after the Viennese owner of a Schiele painting now hanging in an Austrian museum was sent to Dachau, half a century after it resurfaced in Switzerland, and ten years after it was seized from the Museum of Modern Art, new details about the work’s provenance are emerging, raising questions about who its legitimate owners really are UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF ‘Dead City’ TEN YEARS AFTER Manhattan district attor- New York maintains that the painting belongs to the heirs of ney Robert Morgenthau seized two Egon Schiele paintings its prewar owner, Lea Bondi Jaray, a Jewish Viennese art from a loan exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the dealer. The U.S. government became involved in the Wally repercussions continue to roil the art world. case in September 1999, after the New York State Court of The paintings, Portrait of Wally (1912) and Dead City III Appeals quashed the Morgenthau subpoenas and ordered the (1911), were featured in “Egon Schiele: two paintings returned to the Leopold The Leopold Collection, Vienna,” a 1997 BY WILLIAM D. COHAN Museum. Instead of returning Wally, exhibition of more than 150 works that though, Mary Jo White, then U.S. attor- had been owned by Dr. Rudolf Leopold, a Viennese oph- ney for the Southern District of New York, seized it again and thalmologist who amassed one of the world’s finest Schiele initiated the lawsuit in Judge Preska’s collections after World War II. In 1994 Leopold sold his courtroom. OPPOSITE Egon collection of 5,400 works, including 250 Schieles, for about Meanwhile, Dead City, an eerie and Schiele’s Dead $175 million to the Austrian government, which has since claustrophobic rendering of the quaint City III, 1911. New built the Leopold Museum, in Vienna’s museum district, and Czech town of Cesky Krumlov, where details about its installed Leopold as director for life. The Austrian govern- Schiele lived in 1910, was returned to history have ment also indemnified the museum against restitution claims. the Leopold Museum. emerged. When Morgenthau seized the paintings, on January 7, 1998, Now, thanks to another Schiele resti- he argued that the Nazis had stolen them from their prewar tution case, David Bakalar v. Milos Vavra and Leon Fischer, owners through Aryanization, the forcible taking of property new details are emerging about the provenance of Dead City from Jews with little or no compensation. that raise serious questions about both the legitimacy of the The fate of Portrait of Wally will be decided in the Manhat- tan courtroom of Federal Judge Loretta A. Preska, where William D. Cohan is the author of The Last Tycoons: The Leopold argues that the painting should be returned to his Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., which won the museum and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2007. OPPOSITE: IMAGNO/ARTOTHEK 114 A PRIL 2008/ARTNEWS ARTNEWS/APRIL 2008 115 Leopold Museum’s ownership and the wisdom of the U.S. office in the Southern District, said that the department’s poli- government’s decision not to seize it as well in 1999. cies prevent discussion of such decisions. Erika Jakubovits, executive director of the Jewish Com- Bakalar began on March 25, 2005, when Evan Barr, the for- munity Organization of Vienna, said in an interview with mer chief of the Major Crimes Unit in the Southern District and ARTnews that the decision to return Dead City was a mistake. now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, filed a complaint in the “It’s absolutely clear that Dead City was Aryanized by the Southern District on behalf of David Bakalar, a prominent Nazis and never restituted,” Jakubovits said. “It is clear this Massachusetts businessman, artist, and philanthropist who is painting was stolen and should be returned to its heirs, wher- also Jewish, seeking a declaration of his rightful ownership of a ever they are.” Ariel Muzicant, president of the Jewish Com- Schiele drawing, Seated Woman with Bent Left Leg (Torso). munity Organization, recently called for the closing of the The suit contends that Grunbaum’s heirs, Milos Vavra and Leopold Museum, citing the inclusion of 14 paintings al- Leon Fischer, unlawfully blocked Bakalar’s February 2005 legedly looted by the Nazis in the current Albin LEFT Postcard portrait sale of Seated Woman at Sotheby’s London for Egger-Lienz exhibition. of Fritz Grunbaum, £400,000 ($744,000). After they questioned the Schiele expert Jane Kallir, director of Galerie ca. 1935. RIGHT Otto drawing’s provenance, Sotheby’s rescinded the St. Etienne in New York, disagrees. “I presume Kallir, ca. 1949. sale. Barr said that “attorney-client privilege” pre- that if the federal government had thought that vents him from explaining why Bakalar has since there was sufficient evidence to keep Dead City in this coun- replaced him with James Janowitz, a partner at Pryor Cashman. try, they would have contacted on both paintings,” she said in Vavra, a retired Czech insurance clerk who is a descendant her May 2007 Bakalar deposition. “I consider it significant of Grunbaum’s sister, and Fischer, a New York stamp dealer that they chose not to.” whose grandfather was the brother of Grunbaum’s widow, Why White made a distinction between the two paintings have filed a counterclaim. has for years preoccupied art-restitution and Schiele scholars, Because many of the facts about what allegedly happened as well as the heirs of Dead City’s prewar owner, Fritz Grun- to Dead City and Seated Woman are similar, the discovery baum, a famous Jewish Viennese cabaret star and comedian. process in Bakalar has provided new information about Dead White, now a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, did not re- City’s provenance and shed light on the Grunbaum heirs’ turn calls from ARTnews about her decision. Both Sharon claim to it and other artworks from Grunbaum’s collection. Levin, the chief U.S. attorney in charge of asset forfeiture and the lead prosecuting attorney in the Portrait of Wally case, WITH THE HELP of Otto Nirenstein, a Viennese and Jane A. Levine, formerly an assistant U.S. attorney and Jewish art dealer, Fritz Grunbaum began collecting Schiele’s now Sotheby’s worldwide director of compliance, helped works after the artist’s death, at 28, in 1918. By 1925 Grun- make the decision not to seize Dead City. Neither returned baum’s collection of 81 works, including Dead City, was calls. Yusill Scribner, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s largely assembled. In September 1928 Nirenstein borrowed LEFT: COURTESY THE REIF FAMILY; RIGHT: KRETSCHY/COURTESY GALERIE ST. ETIENNE, NEW YORK 116 A PRIL 2008/ARTNEWS the Schieles for an exhibition commemorating the tenth not obtained until October 1962, he died of a “heart attack” in anniversary of the artist’s death and listed Dead City in the Dachau on January 14, 1941, at the age of 60. On June 11, catalogue as being from the “Fritz Grunbaum Collection.” 1941, Lilly, his sole heir, wrote on an official form that “there In 1930 Nirenstein published the first Schiele catalogue is nothing left” of their estate. Both she and a notary signed raisonné. The provenance of Dead City was listed as: Fritz the statement. On October 5, 1942, Lilly was deported “for Grunbaum, Dr. Alfred Spitzer, Arthur Roessler, and a “private racial reasons” from Vienna to a “work camp” in Minsk. Her collector” who first bought the painting from Schiele. In the ’30s, Nirenstein changed his name—it means “kidney stone” in German, and he found it “borderline offensive,” according to his grand- daughter, Jane—to Kallir. The Kallirs were permitted to emigrate, first to Paris and then to New York, where Otto Kallir opened Galerie St. Etienne, named after the Vienna cathedral. Grunbaum was not al- lowed to escape Austria. After the German An- schluss, in March 1938, he was sent to Dachau. From Dachau, on July 16, he granted his wife, Lilly, power of attorney to com- pile his Jewish Property Declaration and to make payments to the regime. These payments, for taxes levied against Jews, were their desperate, unsuccess- ful attempts to get out of harm’s way. On July 20 the prominent art historian Franz Kies- linger, an expert for the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna, made an “ap- praisal” of the art and other property inside the Grun- baums’ Vienna apartment before its seizure. He val- ued the art collection at 5,791 reichsmarks. Dead City was valued at 25 reichsmarks. The same day, Lilly Grunbaum was kicked out of the apartment. On September 8, for un- known reasons, the Nazi- controlled Vienna shipping firm Schenker & Egon Schiele, Seated date of death is unknown. She was declared offi- Company applied for a three-month export li- Woman with Bent Left cially dead in June 1963. cense for Lilly. Her signature is not on the appli- Leg (Torso), 1917. There is no evidence that the Grunbaum collec- cation. Some 422 works from the Grunbaum tion had been removed from the Schenker collection, including 21 oil paintings, were deposited at premises at the time of Lilly’s deportation to Minsk or after- Schenker for “export.” On December 8 the permit expired. ward. The company has not permitted any examination of its PRIVATE COLLECTION/COURTESY GALERIE ST. ETIENNE, NEW YORK According to Fritz Grunbaum’s death certificate, which was records. In an e-mail response to ARTnews, Gerhard Lipowec, ARTNEWS/APRIL 2008 117 Schenker’s general counsel, said that Allied bombing raids Charlottenburg Court in Berlin declared two brothers, Paul during World War II destroyed the company’s headquarters and Francis Reif, to be Grunbaum’s heirs, an erroneous ruling and warehouses.