“Seated Nude Woman,” a drawing by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, was returned on Friday to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector and Viennese cabaret performer who was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The drawing had been held by the heirs of a Jewish couple who fled the Nazis just before World War II and later unknowingly bought the work, which investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office say was among dozens looted from Grünbaum by the Third Reich.
The return took place at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan. The grandchildren of the couple, Ernst and Helene Papanek, said in a statement that relinquishing the work was “the right thing to do” in the face of evidence it had been looted.
Since September, five museums and four private owners have handed back 11 works once owned by Grünbaum in what has become the largest Holocaust art restitution case in the United States.
One museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, has challenged an order from investigators to turn over a 12th Schiele, “Russian War Prisoner,” that was once owned by Grünbaum, who died in a concentration camp in 1941. The museum has contested the evidence cited by investigators and a legal battle over the work is proceeding in New York State Supreme Court.
A Grünbaum descendant, Timothy Reif, responded to Friday’s return in a statement that said the recovery of the work sends a message “that crime does not pay and that the law enforcement community in New York has not forgotten the dark lessons of World War II.”
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said in a statement that he found it “inspiring to see both the Grünbaum and Papanek families join together to reflect on their shared history and preserve the legacy of Fritz Grünbaum.”
Ernst and Helene Papanek, both doctors, fled Austria for France with their son, Gustav, when the Nazis took control there in 1938. The Papaneks emigrated to New York in 1940, after the fall of France, where Helene later bought the charcoal work for $4,000 from Otto Kallir, owner of Galerie St. Etienne. Investigators have said the Schiele was one of many works once owned by Grünbaum that were bought by the gallery from a man who came to possess artwork looted by the Nazis.
The Art Institute of Chicago has argued that the Grünbaum works sold by Galerie St. Etienne had been legally transferred to Grünbaum’s sister-in-law who later sold them after the war.
But the grandchildren of the Papaneks, Tom Papanek, a medical engineer in Illinois, and Joanne Papanek Orlando, a retired Unitarian minister in Connecticut, decided to follow the lead of the other collectors who have returned Schieles once owned by Grünbaum.
Papanek Orlando said she found it profoundly ironic that a persecuted Jewish family like the Papaneks “would end up unknowingly owning” a suspected piece of Nazi loot.
“Our parents spent much of their childhood running from the Nazis,” she said, adding: “The experience of the two families serves as yet another reminder of the evil and brutality of the Nazi regime.”
