28. Ferdinand died on November 13, 1945 in Zurich, Switzerland, several months after the War ended, having taken preliminary steps to retrieve his stolen property. In his last will, dated October 22, 1945, he revoked all prior wills and left his entire estate to two nieces (including plaintiff ALTMANN) and one nephew. He made no bequest to the AUSTRIAN GALLERY.
29. The government of Austria in the post-War period after 1945 was extremely hostile to restitution claims by exiled Jews. For example, at the end of the War, in April 1945, Dr. Karl Renner, a noted legal scholar, chancellor and post-war president of Austria, wrote:
Restitution of property stolen from Jews, this [should be] not to the individual victims, but to a collective restitution fund. The establishment of such and the following foreseeable arrangements is necessary in order to prevent a massive, sudden flood of returning exiles. A circumstance, that for many reasons must be paid very close attention to. . . . The restitution to the victims cannot follow naturally. As soon as the property of the fund, which shall serve to compensate collectively all of the robbed individuals, is established, shares will be given out, for each pro rata based on the suffered damages -- not by the measure of whether a person's property is completely, partially or not at all recoverable; this collective procedure naturally provides that claims can only be satisfied in relation to the recovered property and only after the completion of investigation, prosecution and return of valuables (that is after years!). . . . Basically the entire nation should be made not liable for damages to Jews.
30. This overwhelming hostility to the claims of Jews on the part of the Austrian government carried over from the Nazi period into the post-War period and placed every Jewish family with claims against the government in a very precarious position. If a claimant was to have any success at all, deals had to be made to assuage the government ministers and their cohorts, who in many cases were as anti-Semitic as their Nazi predecessors.
31. On May 15, 1946, the REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA enacted a law declaring that all transactions which were motivated by discriminatory Nazi ideology were to be deemed null and void. In effect, this law should have nullified all of the transactions entered into by Dr. Führer during the liquidation and expropriation of Ferdinand's estate. Although the law appeared satisfactory on its face, in practice restitution was far from simple. The REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA frequently put up legal roadblocks to restitution, such as demanding repayment of the purchase price before returning property to its Jewish owners, even though, as in Ferdinand’s case, the Jewish owners had never received the payment. The restitution process in Austria after the War was imperfect, to say the least.
32. Under the law of Austria, artworks which were deemed to be important to Austria's cultural heritage could not be exported from the country, and no artworks could be exported without the permission of the Austrian Federal Monument Agency (Bundesdenkmalamt). ALTMANN alleges that the application of this law to Jews who were forced to flee Austria, or to their heirs who were attempting after the War to recover property left in Austria, was discriminatory and in violation of international law.
33. After the War, it was the practice of the AUSTRIAN GALLERY and the Federal Monument Agency to use the export permit laws to force Jews to donate or trade valuable artworks to the museum in exchange for export permits for other works. This practice has recently been declared to have been illegal, unethical and immoral extortion by the REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA. ALTMANN alleges that this practice itself violated international law, and was an act in furtherance of the expropriations in violation of international law committed by the Nazis.
34. The Allies unwittingly facilitated the REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA’s extortionate practices. They had collected looted artworks and held them in the Art Collecting Point in Munich, Germany. However, individual applicants were not permitted to retrieve their property directly. Rather, the artworks would only be returned to their country of origin, which was then responsible for determining whether the artworks should be restituted. The REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA used this procedure and laws against exporting cultural items to obtain and hold Nazi-looted artworks hostage. The Austrian Federal Monument Office routinely demanded donations to federal museums before it would permit any artworks to be returned and exported to their former owners, most of whom remained outside Austria. Ferdinand’s heirs were victims of this illicit practice.
