Political Pressure

 Schoenberg wrote to Gehrer to inform her of the committee’s grave error and the denial of due process to Ferdinand’s heirs.  He recommended an arbitration process to resolve the dispute over the legal significance of Adele’s will.  Gehrer rejected this approach, stating that if the heirs believed the decision was wrong, their only remedy was to go to court. Gehrer also stated, contrary to all the facts that were available to her and in clear denial of what had transpired during the Nazi era, that ”The paintings were not stolen from Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.”

Clearly, even the one government minister who had proposed the new law, now found it politically impossible to continue. Her party, the conservative People’s Party, faced difficult elections in October, where her party eventually came in third, behind even the far-right Freedom Party led by Jörg Haider, known for praising Nazi SS leaders as ”men of character,” and referring to Nazi death camps as ”penal institutions.” By rejecting the Bloch-Bauer’s claims to the Klimt paintings, Gehrer joined in the Holocaust denial and revisionism that has reigned in certain circles in Austria since the end of the war.  It is no surprise that she was rewarded for her ”loyalty” and reappointed as a prominent minister in Austria’s new right wing coalition government.