Posted on 02/02/2006 8:38:49 AM PST by NormsRevenge
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Austria's government said Thursday it cannot afford to buy back five Gustav Klimt paintings that a court has ordered returned to a California woman who says the Nazis stole them from her Jewish family.
Elisabeth Gehrer, Austria's minister in charge of education and culture, said the government wanted to acquire the masterpieces but decided it could not afford the $300 million pricetag. Last month, an arbitration court awarded the paintings to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, who says they were looted from her family by the Nazis.
"Therefore the paintings are immediately available for her to inherit," Gehrer said in statement. She said the government's Council of Ministers could not find the cash in its budget to keep the paintings in Austria, where they are widely considered to be national treasures.
Gehrer said the government would inform Altmann's attorneys that it has no more interest in negotiating a purchase.
"We're simply unable" to buy the paintings, Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said. "Further negotiations are pointless."
Gehrer had proposed after the Jan. 16 court ruling that Austria be allowed to continue displaying at least two of the best-known works as national treasures. Even then, however, she acknowledged that there was not enough money to buy them and Austria was obligated to return them under laws mandating the restitution of art objects to Holocaust victims.
Altmann, 89, a retired Beverly Hills clothing boutique operator, was one of the heirs of the family that owned the paintings before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.
Although she waged a seven-year legal battle to recover them, she had also made clear that she preferred the works to remain on public display rather than disappear into a private collection.
Austria's decision to give up the artworks that have been displayed for decades in Vienna's ornate Belvedere castle represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis.
Among the works is "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," which is stylistically similar to Klimt's world-renowned "The Kiss" and has been widely replicated on T-shirts, cups and other souvenirs.
Austria considers the paintings part of its national heritage. Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession art movement that for many became synonymous with Jugendstil, the German and central European version of Art Nouveau.
Altmann is the niece of Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925. The subject's family commissioned her famous portrait and owned it, along with the four other Klimt paintings disputed in the case.
After Bloch-Bauer died, the paintings remained in her family's possession. Her husband fled to Switzerland after the Nazis took over Austria. The Nazis then took the paintings and the Belvedere gallery was made the formal owner.
Austria was among the most fervent supporters of Adolf Hitler. Vienna was home to a vibrant Jewish community of some 200,000 before World War II; today, it numbers about 7,000.
The country has also begun paying compensation to Nazi victims from a $210 million fund endowed by the federal government, the city of Vienna and Austrian industries.
Count me in as one of those folks who never would have heard of Klimt, had it not been for "Back to School."
Have a wonderful time in beautiful Austria and musical, waltzy Vienna.
"Ist Wien, ist Wien, mein Wien"
Leni
Wrong.
You jumped to the wrong conclusion about me.
I go the other way. I like the OLDER art.
Let me provide you with a "clue" ~ BUY A BRAIN!
Leni:
Thank you, I will!
Natürlich gehen wir nach Salzburg.
Vienna is one of my very favorite cities in the world....and I've been to MANY.
P.S. There are many, many, many, many paintings and artists who are MUCH worse than Klimt. I just prefer more classical art.
Thanks for the link. Klimt is a favorite.
I'm going on a tour to see Prague. I have wanted to see Prague for a long time. I also have some Bohemian blood in me, on my mother's side. The name in the Bible was Janecek. Pretty common, I understand, lol, like me.
The tour includes Vienna and Salzburg, two places I plan to revisit again and again. It also includes München, another city for repeated visits.
The tour includes Budapest, which I saw in the early 1980's. It was very nice way back when, considering it was communist. I guess I'll see it again.
Budapest must have SOME heckofa tourist bureau or something. I dunno. They get included in EVERY tour, no matter where it starts or end. Are you going to the moon? Well, first there's a stop in Frankfurt, then one in Budapest. That's the deal. Lol.
"Natürlich gehen wir nach Salzburg."
If your looking for a great place to stay, try the "Goldener Hirsch".
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/luxury/search/hotel_detail.html?propertyID=98&localeoverwrite=
Klimt is an interesting painter. One glance, and you recognize his style. But it's not worth hundreds of millions.
The art markets are unbalanced. Old masters go for less than impressionists and modernists. Important as some of the latter are, the old masters should be worth more.
Let the Getty acquire these if someone wants to put up the money. They will still be available for people to see.
NPR did a piece on this a week or two ago. The woman has had for years a print of the painting of her aunt hanging in her living room and said she had no plans to replace it with the original even if she prevailed. She feels strongly that the paintings should be in a museum so that the public can see and appreciate them (or not appreciate them, as the case may be).
I like Medieval cartoons myself.
Good for Mrs. Altmann. The painting will grace the wall of a museum in the United States or Israel, two countries that took in refugees created by Austrian Nazis.
Austrians have no desire to have Jews living in their country, yet they're desperate to hang on to a painting of one. Too bad, so sad.
Not "of one", but "owned by one". It gives Austrians some sort of thrill to know they have succeeded in stealing things from Jews.
Wasn't Adele Bloch-Bauer Jewish?
I gather she was since her husband was Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. He is identified in several sites as a Jewish industrialist. The Austrians stole all his stuff.
Art ping.
Let Sam Cree, Woofie, or me know if you want on or off this art ping list.
A sure sign of socialism when the government considers private property to be a national treasure.
FINALLY! A post you wrote that I actually agree with! :)
Socialism has to do with a belief in who/what should OWN stuff. By now you should have figured out that Socialists don't particularly care what anything is worth, or what value it might have to society. They are concerned only with power.
Private property has problems in socialist countries, you may have noticed it. Other than that, while socialism does concentrate power and is totalitarian, it is most certainly concerned with the disposition and value of property, labor and everything else under the sun. What it is not concerned with is a free market.
But to the subject at hand, in my view, when a property is referred to as a national treasure, that's getting close to an assertation of ownership by the people (state) rather than the individual. Which is what socialism does, assigns ownership of lots of things to the people instead of the individual.
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