Rudolf Leopold

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Memorial plaque for Rudolf Leopold in Leogang

Rudolf Leopold (born March 1, 1925 in Vienna ; † June 29, 2010 ibid) was an Austrian ophthalmologist and art collector and the museological director of the Leopold Museum named after him in the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna.

Live and act

Rudolf Leopold studied after graduating from high school in 1943 at the University of Vienna ophthalmology and in 1953 for Dr. med. univ. doctorate ; then he worked as an ophthalmologist . At that time, however, he was already interested in art ; During his studies he also attended lectures on art history and collected pictures and art objects, mainly by the expressionist painter Egon Schiele, who was then already forgotten .

In 1955 he presented a highly regarded exhibition of modern Austrian art in Amsterdam , through which Schiele first became known to a larger audience. After this success, Leopold organized further Schiele exhibitions in Innsbruck, London (1963), Vienna (1968) and New York.

In 1972, Rudolf Leopold published his large Schiele monograph as a critical catalog raisonné with precise references to the subject. From 1989 to 1991 the show “Egon Schiele and His Time” was shown with great success in Zurich, Vienna, Munich, Wuppertal and London. Numerous exhibitions in Tübingen, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, Graz, New York and Barcelona followed. Schiele's pictures were also on view at the Expo 2000 in Hanover.

In 1994, with the help of the Republic of Austria and the Oesterreichische Nationalbank , Rudolf Leopold brought his collection to the Leopold Museum Private Foundation , which today houses 5289 works of art. Leopold received around a third of the estimated value for this, but was appointed museological director for life. The Leopold Museum was opened in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier in 2001, and this important collection of Austrian Classical Modernism has been on permanent display ever since.

In 1997 Rudolf Leopold was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class , for his commitment .

Leopold died on 29 June 2010 and was on 6 July 2010 at the Grinzinger Cemetery in the 19th Vienna district Döbling , in an honorary grave dedicated Half of the City of Vienna buried (Group 4, paragraph 43).

His wife Elisabeth Leopold, an ophthalmologist by profession, supported him as an art collector. For these services she received the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the State of Vienna in 2017 .

Discussion of restitution

With the opening of the museum, discussions began about “ Aryanized ” works of art in the collection. In 1998, the two Egon Schiele paintings Portrait of Wally (from the former property of Lea Bondi-Jaray ) and Dead City III (from the property of Fritz Grünbaum) were confiscated in New York . Dead City III was returned to the museum in 1999 because the plaintiffs were not the legal heirs to Fritz Grünbaum .

The legal dispute over the portrait of Wally concerned that Rudolf Leopold had exchanged the painting with the Austrian Gallery Belvedere for the painting Rainerbub (Egon Schiele), although he is said to have known that the painting belonged to the art dealer Lea Bondi (who at the beginning in the 1950s asked for help in reclaiming the painting, which was "Aryanized" by Friedrich Welz in 1938 ). This legal dispute ended in July 2010 with a settlement: the civil law enforcement action was dismissed, the picture remains in the property of the Leopold Museum Private Foundation in exchange for a payment of 19 million US dollars (almost 15 million euros) to the estate of Lea Bondi-Jaray. In addition, a jointly formulated accompanying text is intended to inform future museum visitors about the eventful history of the picture and its previous owners.

In 2000, a Canadian citizen sued for the publication of the painting Der Dengler by Albin Egger-Lienz . This lawsuit was dismissed in all instances, including the Supreme Court in Vienna in 2003.

Finally, there is a (partly open) demand from the heirs for Jenny Steiner for the return of Egon Schiele's painting “Houses by the Sea”. On May 11, 2011, the Leopold Museum Privatstiftung reached a settlement with Jenny Steiner's granddaughter.

The Leopold Museum is the only museum in Austria to have its provenance database accessible on the Internet, but only partially mentions the questionable origins. However, there are numerous questionable works of art in the collection from the former property of people persecuted by the Nazi regime: Oskar Reichel, Fritz Grünbaum, Heinrich Rieger, Karl Mayländer, Jenny Steiner and others. As a private foundation, the Leopold Museum is not subject to the Austrian Restitution Act (Federal Law Gazette 181/1998). However, the “Wally” case, confiscated from the Leopold Collection in New York in 1998, was one of the triggers of a restitution discussion as well as this law. The Restitution Act empowers the responsible Federal Minister to restitute works of art from the federal museums .

In 2008 there was a scandal surrounding the Albin Egger-Lienz exhibition at the Leopold Museum, as 14 of the pictures on display (12 of which were on loan from various Austrian museums) were suspected of having been stolen during the Nazi era. The Leopold Museum Private Foundation has meanwhile approved the proposal of the Ministry of Education to appoint two provenance researchers who are independent from the museum and who are paid for by the Republic of Austria. On December 21, 2009, these researchers submitted 11 reports on 17 works of art. As of December 2011, 45 dossiers were published on the Leopold Museum Privatstiftung website.

literature

  • Diethard Leopold: Rudolf Leopold. Art collector . Verlag Holzhausen, Vienna 2003. ISBN 3-85493-064-X

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Leopold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Almuth Spiegler: Discoverer Egon Schiele - On the death of the art collector Rudolf Leopold . in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of June 30, 2010
  2. ^ Rudolf Leopold buried in Grinzing (ORF Vienna, July 6, 2010)
  3. ↑ Elisabeth Leopold receives the gold medal for services to the State of Vienna in the Standard of February 15, 2017, accessed on February 20, 2017.
  4. ↑ Restitution: Who Owns Klimt & Co? (Falter, January 17, 2003) ( Memento from May 31, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Restitutions so far: Only the Overture ( Der Standard , March 31, 2008)
  6. ^ "Wally": Foundation Leopold confirms agreement. In: oesterreich.orf.at. July 21, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2017 .
  7. ^ Leopold Museum: Positive conclusion in settlement negotiations. In: leopoldmuseum.org. web.archive.org, 2016, archived from the original on June 6, 2016 ; accessed on January 26, 2019 (press release).
  8. ↑ faz.net - ignorance, ignorance or provocation?
  9. ^ Leopold Museum: Hearing with five possible provenance researchers (Der Standard, May 9, 2008)
  10. ↑ Dossiers on works of art from the Leopold Museum Private Foundation on the BMUKK website
  11. ^ Leopold Museum - Provenance Research - Dossiers
personal data
SURNAME Leopold, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art collector and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 2010
Place of death Vienna