Klimt Stolen by Gestapo Returned to Victims’ Heir

April 26, 2011

Salzburg’s Museum of Modern Art is returning a famous Klimt painting stolen by the Gestapo in 1941. According to the provincial government, Litzlberg on the Attersee is one of Klimts’s best and most valuable works. While the Austrian government finds it hard part with such masterpieces, having given up other Klimt works as recently as 2006, it refuses to be a “beneficiary of a criminal regime.”

The painting belonged to Amalie Redlich who was deported to Poland in 1941 and murdered. Her heir and grandson, Georges Jorisch of Salzburg, will receive the painting. Austria is one of 44 countries that agreed to non-binding principles to return Nazi-looted art in public collections to the prewar owners and their heirs.

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