Klimt Lost

As part of renovation work in 2009, a basic survey was conducted by Austria's Federal Monuments Authority. After over 80 years being used for different purposes, no original furniture was left in the house. Only this bathtub was found and dated as pre-1918. Whether it was in the house during Gustav Klimt's lifetime, or whether it was even used by him, one of his models, or a later inhabitant, remains uncertain. The bathtub has been taken out of context and now only invites historical speculation.

In 1923, Tina and Felix Klein had a Neo-Baroque villa built over the top of the studio building. The studio rooms on the ground floor remained structurally intact, and a new floor was added along with a large staircase. The Jewish couple were interested in arts and culture, maintained contact with artists and those engaged in the cultural sector, and even surrounded themselves with art and design in the villa. The Kleins managed to flee the country before the onset of National Socialism. They found refuge in France and Monaco. Their property fell victim to Nazi looting.

In May 1939, the Klein family's entire assets were valued as part of the Nazi raid. A short time later, Iranian-Austrian couple Nato and Magdalena Emin bought the villa for 76,000 Reichsmarks. The couple lived there until 1947. The house was finally returned to the Kleins in 1950. Tina and Felix Klein came back to Austria in 1955, but not to Feldmühlgasse.

Serena Lederer in her salon, the "Wally," "Goldener Apfelbaum" (Golden Apple Tree), and "Bildnis Serena Lederer" (Portrait of Serena Lederer) paintings hanging on the wall, and a stone head designed by Klimt on the floor.
August and Serena Lederer's private Klimt collection was one of the most signficant, and was on display to the public from 1921. Gustav Klimt was often associated with his patrons in his private life. The Lederer couple enjoyed a close friendship with the artist.

Friederike Beer-Monti, like other Klimt patrons, had her apartment decorated with Wiener Werkstätte furniture. Beer-Monti, who even described herself as a "walking advertisement" for the Wiener Werkstätte, is a further example of the similarity in taste among Klimt's patrons, collectors, models, and the artist himself. The carpet shown in the photograph also lay in the reception room of Klimt's studio in Hietzing.

Robbery

The Nazis recognized the quality and value of Klimt's work. His works were either taken from their Jewish owners, auctioned off and added to state collections, or put in storage after they had been plundered. If the pieces didn't fall victim to institutionalized robbery by the Nazis, they ended up in the hands of private "Aryanizers" and profiteers. In 1943, right in the middle of the war, a comprehensive Klimt retrospective was displayed in the former Secession building.

The owners of the stolen works of art were no longer named in the catalog. The titles of some of the pieces had also been changed to remove any references to the subjects of the portraits, since they were persecuted as Jews in line with the Nazis' racial laws. The portrait of Charlotte Pulitzer was described as "Portrait of an Old Lady" in the exhibition catalog, for example.

Serena Lederer was one of the involuntary "lenders" to the exhibit in 1943. In this show, the painting entitled "Die Freundinnen" (The Friends) was merely listed as being "privately owned." Serena Lederer herself had been in exile in Hungary since 1939 and attempted to retain her art collection from afar. Her efforts were in vain. Up until her death in 1943, she had no influence whatsoever over how her collection was preserved, sold, or stored.

Schloss Immendorf

Owned by the Freudenthal family from 1886, Schloss Immendorf was used by the Nazis as a storage depot for works of art and cultural assets from 1942 onwards. In addition to a number of Gustav Klimt paintings from the Lederer collection that had been confiscated and "aryanized," other dispossessed works of art and objects from the Bondy and Lanckoroński collections were also stored in the castle. At the beginning of May 1945, a fire was started at the castle, and it burned to the ground. Apart from two carpets, all the artworks and cultural assets stored there were destroyed by the fire. Fifteen of Gustav Klimt's works were burned, including the scandalous Faculty Paintings created for the University of Vienna.

The rightful owners of the collections and possessions stored at Immendorf were forced to flee due to their Jewish heritage. Around 30 percent of Austria's Jewish population did not manage to escape the Nazi terror regime. Dozens of collectors of Gustav Klimt's paintings were victims of the Holocaust. The "Klimt Lost" online exhibit is intended to acknowledge all those who lost their belongings, were robbed of their home environments, and lost their lives during the Nazi extermination campaign.

The 900 m² castle, which had a total of 40 rooms, was completely destroyed during the fires that burned from May 8‒11, 1945. According to reports at the time, the fire was started by an SS demolition squad as they withdrew before the arrival of the advancing Red Army. The perpetrators have not been investigated to this day, and the motive for the fire is effectively unresolved.

After the fire at Schloss Immendorf, the Freudenthal family did not rebuild it. Today, the ruins are overgrown with greenery. Only the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the parkland remains. Immendorf is primarily etched in cultural history for the irreparable loss of works of art, rather than the fates of the Klimt collectors who were associated with them.

Alongside the painting "Gartenweg mit Hühnern" (Garden Path with Chickens), the following works by Gustav Klimt were destroyed in the fire at Schloss Immendorf:
- "Malcesine am Gardasee" (Malcesine on Lake Garda), 1913
- "Die Freundinnen II" (The Friends II), 1916/17
- "Philosophie" (Philosophy), 1900–07
- "Bauerngarten mit Kruzifix" (Farm Garden with Crucifix), 1912
- "Wally," 1916
- "Jurisprudenz" (Jurisprudence, composition piece), 1897/98
- "Schubert am Klavier" (Schubert at the Piano), 1899
- "Goldener Apfelbaum" (Golden Apple Tree), 1903
- "Jurisprudenz" (Jurisprudence), 1903 (final version, 1907)
- "Philosophie" (Philosophy, composition piece), 1898
- "Die Musik" (The Music), 1897/98
- "Aus dem Reich des Todes (Zug der Toten)" (From the Empire of Death (Procession of the Dead)), 1903
- "Leda," 1917
- "Medizin" (Medicine), 1900–07

Although Klimt's works of art are significant worldwide, the story of how they were collected is still relatively unknown to the wider public. Two thirds of his works are now located in museums, and 15 percent are thought to be missing.

The fates of collectors who were persecuted by the Nazis and the provenance of so many pieces can only be discovered by engaging with their past. The fate of Nora Stiasny and her family is typical of those who collected Gustav Klimt's works and were killed in the Holocaust. The loss of life far outweighs that of the paintings, yet in this context, the fate of Klimt's collectors has long since faded out.

On April 9, 1942, Nora Stiasny was transported to the Izbica ghetto and murdered along with her mother Amalie Zuckerkandl and 998 others. Between April 9 and June 5, 1942, 4,000 Jewish women, men, and children were transported to Izbica from Vienna's Aspang railway station alone. Her husband Paul and her son Otto initially managed to escape to Prague. Both were transported separately to Theresienstadt in 1942. Otto Stiasny was murdered at Auschwitz in October 1942, and Paul Stiasny in September 1943.

As part of his journalistic work around Nazi-confiscated art and restitution, Hubertus Czernin carried out pioneering scientific research. He gathered his research in countless folders and organized it by case. The contents of the folders formed the basis of a series of newspaper articles and books, as well as being an important resource for disputes on the restitutions themselves. Folder no. 33 contains a fax from Maria Altmann, the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who in the end managed to recover the portrait of her aunt.

With an almost 60-year delay, the Nazi raids finally lead to comprehensive research into the provenance of artwork, on behalf of both the heirs and the Republic. A huge amount of literature was published on the topic. The book by Sophie Lillie entitled What Once Was (Was einmal war)—a handbook of Vienna's dispossessed art collections—became one of the standard works on the topic.

In 1998, the Commission for Provenance Research was established in order to document looted objects currently housed in the Republic's collections. The results of the research are handed over to an advisory body, which provides recommendations to the ministers responsible regarding restitution. Over 300 recommendations have been submitted to date, the majority of which advocated for restitution.

After the death of his mother, Anne Gallia, in 2003, the Australian lawyer and historian, Tim Bonyhady, started to write a book about his family's history. Originally from Silesia, the author's great-grandparents, Moriz and Hermine Gallia, managed to rise to the upper echelons of Viennese society within one generation on the back of their gas lamp business. The book, which tells the story of the rise and fall of a Jewish family, and was described as a "sociogram of a lost world," was a great success thanks to its painstaking research and a generational portrait spanning the entire 20th century.

Right after the November pogrom (Nazi attacks on Jews and Jewish neighborhoods) in 1938, Käthe and Gretl Gallia were forced to flee from the Nazis along with Gretl's 16-year-old daughter Annelore. Unlike many other Jewish refugees, they managed to take the majority of their transportable belongings—such as furniture by Josef Hoffman and Klimt's portrait of their mother Hermine—along with them to their new home in Australia. Käthe and Gretl Gallia never returned to Austria.

After a long trip to Europe with her sons Bruce and Tim, Annelore Gallia (née Bonyhady) sold the portrait of her grandmother in order to care for her mother and aunt, who were in poor health. The painting was bought by London art dealers Harry and Wolfgang Fischer for 20,000 guineas (around 21,000 pounds) at Christie's auctionhouse in London.

In January 2006, a decision by a court of arbitration ruled that the golden portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was to be returned by the Belvedere Museum in Vienna to the heirs of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, along with other works by Klimt. This legal battle received more international interest and publicity in the Austria media than any other.

Since June 2006, the golden portrait has been on permanent display at New York's Neue Galerie. The painting ended up in the place where many of those who fled Austria in 1938 found their new home.