New York authorities announced Wednesday the return of seven works of art valued at more than $9 million stolen by the Nazi regime from the family of Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret performer murdered in the Holocaust.
The drawings, all by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, were “voluntarily surrendered by the institutions and properties that owned them,” including New York’s famed Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), “after being presented with evidence that they were stolen for the nazis“the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement.
The decision is a victory for Grunbaum’s heirs, who have been fighting for the return of the works for years.
Grunbaum died in the Dachau concentration camp (Germany) in 1941.
“I hope this moment serves as a reminder that, despite the horrible death and destruction caused by the nazis“It is never too late to recover some of what we lost (and) honor the victims,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
Timothy Reif, a judge and Grunbaum’s relative, thanked authorities for having “managed to solve crimes perpetrated more than 80 years ago.”
The seven drawings were seized by the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit earlier this year, coming from MoMA, the Ronald Lauder Collection, the Morgan Library and the Vally Sabarsky trust in Manhattan, as well as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Barbara, in California.
The prosecutor’s office estimated its total value at more than $9 million.
2023-09-20 22:08:00
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