Hubertus Czernin
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Hubertus Czernin (more fully, Hubertus Alexander Felix Franz Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz) (17 January 1956 - 10 June 2006) was an Austrian investigative journalist.
Born in Vienna to Felix Theobald Paul Anton Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz (1902–1968) and his wife Franziska née von Mayer-Gunthof (1926–1987), he helped expose the Nazi past of former United Nations Secretary-General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim.
Career
He wrote initially for the news weekly Wochenpresse. In 1984 he was hired by the Viennese magazine Profil, eventually becoming its editor.
Czernin's investigation of Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer revealed that he had had sex with over 2,000 young men,[1] starting in the 1950s and ending in the 1990s.
Czernin was the first journalist to gain access to records at the Austrian Gallery in Vienna and, in 1998, published a series of articles about the ownership of five famous paintings from artist Gustav Klimt, proving that claims by Austria they had been donated to the gallery by Ferdinand or Adele Bloch-Bauer were false. The articles led to the passage of Austria's Art Restitution Law, which allowed the family of Maria Altmann, the niece of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, along with Altmann's lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg, to pursue claims successfully to the Klimt paintings that had been looted from her uncle during World War II (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann). A United States Supreme Court ruling allowed Altmann to sue the Austrian government for ownership of the multimillion dollar Klimt paintings. Hundreds of families had looted art restored to them, or restitution made, under the new law.
Views on Czernin
Altmann's Attorney E. Randol Schoenberg stated "Hubertus Czernin was a hero to me. He committed his life to exposing unspoken truths about Austria and its Nazi past."
Schoenberg's client Maria Altmann stated "Without Hubertus, there would have been nothing."[2]
"Believing in justice for Maria Altmann kept Czernin alive," an obituary in Der Standard noted shortly after Czernin's untimely death in 2006.[3]
Personal life
Czernin was married twice, first to Cristina Teresa Szapáry de Muraszombath Széchysziget et Szapár in 1979, ending in divorce in 1981. By his second marriage, to Valerie von Baratta-Dragona, in 1984, he became the father of three daughters.
He died in Vienna of mastocytosis.
Works
- Hubertus Czernin. Die Fälschung: Der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2006. ISBN 3-7076-0000-9
References
- ^ "Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer". The Independent. London. 27 March 2003.
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/15/local/me-czernin15
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/15/local/me-czernin15
Anne-Marie O'Connor. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2012, ISBN 0-307-26564-1