
Vienna’s leading art institutions, including the Albertina, the Austrian National Library (ÖNB), and the Museum of Military History (HGM), are set to return several artworks and objects as part of efforts to compensate victims of Nazi art theft.
Albertina
On Friday, Austria’s Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the return of three drawings held by the Albertina – works by Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Johann Christian Klengel, and a piece attributed to Antonio Gionima. These are believed to have been confiscated from art collector Wilhelm König. The board advises their restitution to König’s legal heirs.
In 1938, König fled Vienna with his wife to escape Nazi persecution. The Gestapo seized the contents of his flat, which were later auctioned off by the Dorotheum auction house. In total, nine works bearing König’s mark were acquired by the Albertina between 1938 and 2012. However, for six other drawings, including a study by Gustav Klimt, one of Austria’s most celebrated painters, there is evidence König had sold them in the 1920s.
Austrian National Library (ÖNB)
At the ÖNB, nine annotated music scores and manuscripts trace back to cellist Josefine Donat, who left her cello and sheet music to her nephew, Erwin Rosenthal, after her death in 1936. Rosenthal lost his job following the Anschluss in 1938 – the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany – and fled to Britain. His mother, Elisabeth Rosenthal, was likely murdered in either Sobibor or Belzec extermination camps. The advisory board recommends the return of the sheet music, which was marked with Gestapo confiscation codes in 1941 and 1942.
Museum of Military History (HGM)
In 1938 and 1939, the then Army Museum, now HGM, acquired 42 items, including photographs, uniform pieces, weapons, stirrups, and two oil paintings by Stephan Poglayen-Neuwall. Labelled a “first-degree half-breed” by the Nazis, Poglayen-Neuwall lost his job and moved to Italy. A recognised victim of Nazi persecution, the restitution board recommends the return of his items – though half are currently missing.
However, the board does not recommend restitution for a set of cutlery designed by Josef Hoffmann and made by the Wiener Werkstätte for Lili and Fritz Waerndorfer in 1904, later acquired by the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in 1967. Though Waerndorfer’s son-in-law, Ernst Bunzl, was persecuted for being Jewish and survived in exile, there is no evidence the cutlery was ever in his possession.