Legal fight to reclaim art stolen by Nazis
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 26/02/2004)


An elderly Jewish woman yesterday asked the United States Supreme Court to
help her recover six Klimt paintings worth £80 million, stolen by the Nazis
from her family during World War Two and now regarded as one of the jewels
in Austria's national art collection.

Maria Altmann, 88, turned to America's highest court after officials in
Vienna argued that a 1952 American law shields certain countries, among them
Austria, from lawsuits brought by individual US citizens.

The Austrian government has taken a twin-track approach to keeping the
paintings, which have been seen by millions of visitors to the Austrian
Gallery in Vienna. Two are portraits of the original owner of the works,
Adele Bloch-Bauer, wife of a Jewish sugar magnate.

Austria claims the paintings were bequeathed to the state by Adele and her
husband, Ferdinand. It also argues that Mrs Altmann, who lives in Los
Angeles, has left it too late to sue.

Documents show that Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925, merely requested
that her husband - who owned the paintings - give them to the state on his
death. In 1936, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer donated one of the works, a landscape.
The other five were in his home when he fled the country in 1938, and were
looted along with the rest of his art collection.

Before Mr Bloch-Bauer died in Switzerland in 1945, he wrote a new will,
leaving his estate to his nephews and nieces.