Maria Altmann

Maria Altmann (born 18 February 1916), was a refugee of Nazi Austria, living in the Netherlands briefly before moving permanently to Hollywood, California in the United States.

Born Maria Bloch-Bauer, in Vienna, she married Fritz Altmann in 1937. Fritz Altman was arrested in Vienna in 1938 and held hostage at Dachau to force his brother Bernhard, by then safely in France, to transfer the B. Altmann textile factory into German hands. Fritz was released and the couple fled to America via England in 1940, leaving behind most of their property, including jewelry that later found its way into the hands of Hermann Göring. Maria was naturalized an American citizen in 1945; the couple had four children.

Maria Altmann is a niece of Czech sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch, who owned a small collection of artworks by the Austrian master Gustav Klimt, including two portraits of his wife Adele Bloch-Bauer. During the Nazi Anschluss of 1938, these paintings were looted. Bloch died in 1946, soon after World War II, leaving his estate to a nephew and two nieces, including Altmann. By this time, after the paintings had changed hands a number of times, five of these paintings were in the possession of the Austrian Government.

In 1999 she sued the government of Austria in an Austrian court. Under Austrian law, the filing fee for such a lawsuit is determined as a percentage of the recoverable amount. At the time, the five paintings were estimated to be worth approximately US$135 million, making the filing fee over US$1.5 million. The courts later reduced this amount to $350,000, however this was still considered too costly, and Altmann dropped the case.

In 2000 she filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California, a US federal district court in the Ninth Circuit, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The case, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, ended up in the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 2004 that Austria was not immune from such a lawsuit.

After this decision, Altmann and Austria entered non-binding arbitration. On 16 January 2006, the arbitration court ruled that Austria is legally required to return the art to Altmann. Because both sides agreed to abide by the ruling of the arbitrator, Austria has returned the works.

The works in contention are:

They are now currently estimated to be collectively worth at least US$150 million. In monetary terms it represents the largest single return of Nazi-looted art in Austria. The paintings left Austria in March 2006 and were flown to Los Angeles, where they are on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until June 30, 2006. There were attempts by Austrians to buy some of the works back.

On June 19, 2006, the New York Times announced the sale of the painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) to cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting. The painting will be displayed in Lauder's Neue Galerie art museum in New York from July 13 to September 18 along with the other four works by Klimt.

References

Hubertus Czernin. Die Fälschung: Der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2006. ISBN 3-7076-0000-9

External links

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