Vienna Jews Praise Museum Chief’s Resignation Over Nazi Looted Artwork
Tobias Natter
Austrian Jews have praised a Viennese former museum director who resigned because of board members’ ties to an art collection which belonged to a pro-Nazi film director.
“The resignation of the director of the Leopold Museum, Tobi G. Natter, is a bold step,” the Jewish Community of Vienna, or IKG, wrote in a statement.
Tobias Natter
Natter resigned that day to protest ties between board members from his museum – home to one of the largest collections of modern Austrian art – and a new foundation set up to manage a Nazi film director’s collection of Gustav Klimt paintings.
The collection managed by The Gustav Klimt Wien 1900 Foundation, which was established in September, used to belong to Gustav Ucicky, Klimt’s son, who produced pro-Nazi propaganda during World War II.
Board members include Peter Weinhaeupl, the business director of the Leopold Museum; his partner Sandra Tretter; his brother; and the lawyer Andreas Noedl, also on the board of the Leopold Museum, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
The Klimt Foundation said their collection was currently the subject of a single unresolved restitution claim: “Portrait of Gertrud Loew,” which is undergoing provenance research in agreement with the heirs of the Felsovany family, a Jewish family of Hungarian origins.
Other works lost by Jewish collectors due to Nazi persecution and purchased by Ucicky have been restored to the original owners, the foundation told Bloomberg.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
