Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Austria Won’t Return Klimt ‘Beethoven Frieze’ to Jewish Heirs

One of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings will not be returned to the heirs of its Jewish former owner in a case that has tested Austria’s laws on restitution of looted art.

The law, which is often applied in cases linked to the country’s Nazi past, was updated in 2009 to include works which were sold rather than stolen, but whose owners had been put under pressure to part with their property.

The 34-meter long Beethoven Frieze, completed in 1902 as a homage to the German composer’s Ninth Symphony, used to belong to the Lederer family, but was seized when they fled to Switzerland after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.

Erich Lederer got the masterpiece back after World War Two, but he was not allowed to export his many other artworks unless he sold the painting to the Austrian state at a discount, the family’s lawyers say.

He eventually sold it for $750,000 in the 1970s and it now hangs on public display in Vienna’s Secession Building.

Austria’s government, which returned several works by Klimt’s near contemporary Egon Schiele to Lederer’s heirs in 1999, said it would follow an expert panel’s decision on Friday that the painting was lawfully sold to the state.

One of the lawyer’s representing some of Lederer’s heirs said he rejected Friday’s decision and planned to take the case to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg or a court in the United States.

Swiss-based lawyer Marc Weber said the decision-making process regarding Austria’s restitution law was not transparent for the heirs of former owners.

Alfred Noll, another lawyer representing a group of Lederer’s heirs, echoed Weber’s criticism, but said he would not take further action, according to the APA news agency.

Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer said he was glad the frieze would remain on show for people in Austria to visit.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.