Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl
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| Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl |
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| Gustav Klimt , 1916-18 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 128 × 128 cm |
| Austrian Gallery Belvedere |
The portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl is an oil painting by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). It has remained unfinished and is also known as the “portrait of a murdered woman” because the sitter was killed during the Shoah .
The restitution was refused. The painting belongs to the inventory of the Vienna Belvedere .
Amalie Zuckerkandl
Amalie Schlesinger (1869–1942) married the doctor Otto Zuckerkandl (1861–1921) on July 7, 1895 . For his sake, she had previously converted to Judaism . The couple had three children: Victor, Eleonore and Hermione. Otto Zuckerkandl was a fellow student and long-time friend of Arthur Schnitzler . The two men's wives were also close friends. The well-known journalist Bertha Zuckerkandl , a sister-in-law of Otto and Amalie, was considered a confidante of Gustav Klimt. The ORF suspects that this is why Otto Zuckerkandl might have come up with the idea of having Klimt portray his wife. The contact could also have come about through Otto's brother Victor and his wife Paula, who were among Klimt's greatest collectors. At that time, Amalie Zuckerkandl, commonly known as Frau Professor , was a respected figure in the elegant Viennese society, well connected and - as Schnitzler reported - occasionally surrounded by young officers. Continuous descent followed.
In 1919 the couple divorced, Otto Zuckerkandl died on July 1, 1921. After the divorce, Amalie Zuckerkandl lived in modest circumstances in Purkersdorf near Vienna. After the divorce, she often ran into financial difficulties. An ex-brother-in-law had given her the right to live in Sanatorium West . At the end of the 1920s she was forced to sell the painting to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer , a friend of the family, for a small pension . According to her daughter Hermine, Amalie Zuckerkandl is said to have sold the painting to Bloch-Bauer twice in the 1920s. After the annexation of Austria , the sanatorium was quickly “ Aryanized ” and she had to move out. A friend, Mathilde Szeps, widow of the publisher Julius Szeps , took her into her apartment. In July 1938, she told the property transfer office that she was receiving a pension of 800 RM per year from the Israelite Religious Community “as a mercy” and “from friends” - Bloch-Bauer was meant - support of 133.33 RM per month. This monthly payment ended in the summer of 1941. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had returned the portrait and fled to Zurich , where he died impoverished on November 13, 1945. In November 1941, the now 72-year-old Amalie Zuckerkandl and her daughter Eleonore had to move to a collective flat in Vienna's 9th district , Grundlgasse 1/2. On April 9, 1942, the women were arrested and deported to Izbica . They were subsequently murdered, presumably in the Belzec extermination camp . Their property fell to the German Reich . Eleonore's husband and their son Otto were also murdered by the Nazi regime.
Two of Amalie Zuckerkandl's children were able to survive the Holocaust : Viktor (1896–1965), a musicologist, fled to the USA in 1938. Hermine (1902–2000) and her husband, the painter Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann , survived under a false identity in Bavaria .
Structure, degree of completion
If the dating of a study for the painting is correct with 1914, Klimt worked on the painting for four years. The lesson is in the possession of the Albertina Graphic Collection .
The painting was left unfinished. Klimt suffered a stroke in early 1918 and died four weeks later, on February 6, 1918.
Provenance
Klimt's painting was first in the possession of the client, Otto Zuckerkandl. After the divorce it came into the possession of the sitter. The latter sold it once or twice to the industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer , Adele Bloch-Bauer's widower and client of two Klimt portraits of his wife, a family friend. On March 13, 1938, an important cut-off date for any restitution claims, the painting was in his possession and custody. Bloch-Bauer fled first to Czechoslovakia, then to Switzerland. From Zurich, Bloch-Bauer found a way that this painting could be withdrawn from confiscation and returned to Amalie Zuckerkandl's family.
In an emergency, the Klimt family sold Amalie portrait for 1,600 Reichsmarks to Vita Künstler , who had taken over the Neue Galerie from Otto Kallir . Hermine Zuckerkandl needed 7,000 Reichsmarks for a so-called “Kinship Certificate”, which, however, identified her as “half-Jewish” and was therefore worthless. Vita's husband, also an art historian, “fell so in love” with the painting that he bought it from his wife for 2,000 Reichsmarks. However, the picture had an insurance value of RM 10,000. The painting first hung in the office of Gustav Künstler (1902–1974) at Berglandverlag on Schwarzenbergplatz , and later in the marital apartment.
In her will, Vita Künstler ordered the picture to be donated to the Austrian Gallery in Belvedere Palace after her death . The daughter Hermine Müller-Hofmann commented on the donation in a letter from 1965: "I am quite satisfied with it". This rate later had a detrimental effect on the heirs when they requested the return. The donation was finally brought forward, Vita Künstler handed over the picture in 1988. She died in 2001. The name Hermine Müller-Hofmann is still in the provenance list of the Belvedere , who presumably never heard the picture.
“The artist is likely to have been aware of the historically burdened provenance of the portrait: Jane Kallir , granddaughter of Otto Kallir , sees this as the reason why her lifelong acquaintance never sold the painting despite numerous offers. With the donation to the Austrian Gallery, Vita Künstler wanted to free himself from the moral dilemma, according to Kallir. "
Litigation
In January 2006, a three-person arbitral tribunal decided that five Gustav Klimt paintings from the estate of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer must be returned to his heir, including the famous portraits of his wife, Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Adele Bloch-Bauer II . The works were in the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere in Vienna.
The same arbitral tribunal considered the requirements for a return of the painting Amalie Zuckerkandl to the group of heirs after Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer or Hermine Müller-Hofmann according to the Art Restitution Act 1998 as not fulfilled. The Supreme Court dismissed the extraordinary reviews in April 2008 and upheld the award. The Belvedere Collection has been the legal owner since then. In 2013 the painting was shown on loan at the National Gallery in London ; the special exhibition was entitled Facing the Modern .
The picture is currently (as of June 2020) not shown.
literature
- Sophie Lillie : What once was - Handbook of the expropriated art collections of Vienna , Vienna 2003, pp. 202–208 (Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer collection) and 1256–1258 (Paul and Nora Stiasny collection)
Web links
- The portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl , ORF article
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arne Karsten : The Fall of the World from Yesterday: Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 1911-1919 , CH Beck 2019, footnote 47
- ↑ Der Standard (Vienna): Dispute between groups of heirs over "Amalie Zuckerkandl" , May 8, 2006
- ↑ Nathalie Beer: The life and work of the journalist Moriz Szeps (1834-1902) - A contribution to the history of Viennese Jewry in the 19th century , master's thesis at the University of Vienna, 2013, p. 147
- ↑ Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance : Search Zuckerkandl Amalie , accessed on February 2, 2020
- ↑ Jewish collectors and art dealers (victims of National Socialist persecution and expropriation) , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ↑ holocaust.cz: Otto Stiasný , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ^ Wilhelm Müller - Hofmann , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ^ Ö1 : The portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ↑ Kulturpool - Austria's portal to art, culture and education: Seated people with hands clasped (study for the portrait "Amalie Zuckerkandl") , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ^ Wilhelm Müller - Hofmann , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ↑ Thomas Trenkler : The portrait of a murdered woman - Amalie Zuckerkandl , Der Standard , Vienna, March 16, 2006
- ↑ Belvedere Collection: Amalie Zuckerkandl , accessed on June 23, 2020
- ^ Legal information system of the Republic of Austria : Decision of the Supreme Court of April 1 , 2008 , accessed on June 22, 2020
- ^ Die Presse (Vienna): Klimt Restitution: Old Cases and a Witness , October 23, 2013