Company director

Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand

Susanne Hehenberger — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:14:45 +0000

Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand Susanne Hehenberger Fri, 06/03/2022 - 12:32

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

16 July 1864 Jungbunzlau / Mladá Boleslav, Bohemia – 13 November 1945 Zurich
until 1917 Ferdinand Bloch

Ferdinand Bloch was the youngest of six children of the sugar factory owner and banker David Bloch and his wife Marie, née Straschnow. He attended the Handelsakademie in Prague and joined the family business in 1881. He became director of the company in 1892 and developed it into one of the largest European company in its segment. He held consultant, managerial and supervisory functions in other companies. After the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 he was successfully involved in Austrian and Czechoslovakian companies, banks and lobby groups. In 1899 he married Adele Bauer, born 9 August 1881 as the seventh child of Moritz Bauer, director of the Wiener Bankverein, and his wife Jeanette, née Honig. The marriage was childless. After living in Prague and Elbekosteletz / Kostelec nad Labem, the couple moved to Schwindgasse 10 in Vienna's 4th district. As prominent members of Viennese society they met with politicians and artists and collected paintings, sculptures and Classicist Viennese porcelain. Gustav Klimt painted several portraits of Adele Bloch. The couple also shared an enthusiasm for hunting. In 1909 Ferdinand Bloch acquired a castle in Jungfernbreschan / Panenské Břežany north of Prague, where the couple spent time and stored some of their art collection. On 9 February 1917 Ferdinand and Adele Bloch, and Ferdinand's elder brother and his wife Therese, Adele's older sister, changed their surname to Bloch-Bauer. After the First World War Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer decided to take Czechoslovakian citizenship. They lived alternately in Jungfernbreschan castle and at Gusshausstraße 9 in Vienna's 4th district, until Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer acquired the house at Elisabethstraße 18 in the 1st district, where they occupied an apartment. Adele Bloch-Bauer died on 24 January 1925 at the age of just 43. For the Klimt memorial exhibition in the Secession in 1928, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer loaned seven paintings, including two portraits of his wife from 1907 and 1912. In May and June 1937 the exhibition marking Oskar Kokoschka's fiftieth birthday was shown with a year's delay at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry with the financial support of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and the loan of a portrait of him painted in 1936. Three paintings by Klimt, three by Waldmüller and one by Pettenkofen from the Bloch-Bauer collection were shown along with porcelain items at the Exposition d’Art Autrichien that took place at the same time at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris parallel to the 1937 World's Fair.

After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was persecuted on account of his Jewish origins but also as a supporter of the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime, his assets in Austria were secured and he was charged with tax evasion. Bloch-Bauer fled first to Czechoslovakia and then to Switzerland. After the establishment of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 16 March 1939, the Nazi regime expropriated Jungfernbreschan castle, which was used by Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath and in 1941 and 1942 by the deputy Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. Bloch-Bauer's assets in Austria were "disposed of". The Österreichische Galerie (ÖG) acquired four Klimt paintings between 1941 and 1943. Six pictures, a sculpture and a tapestry were handed over to the Sonderauftrag Linz for the planned "Führermuseum". The porcelain collection, valued at 500,000 Reichsmarks, was auctioned in June 1941 at the Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" in Vienna. The extensive catalogue was based on Richard Ernst's publication Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus: Die Sammlung Bloch-Bauer from 1925. Prior to the auction, Ernst, now director of the State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna, acquired thirty-four porcelain items for his museum. The assets were liquidated by the lawyer Erich Führer, a member of the NSDAP and the SS.

After the Second World War, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, now living in Switzerland, commissioned his Vienna lawyer Gustav Rinesch to seek restitution of the expropriated assets. Bloch-Bauer did not live to see any of his possessions restituted, however, as he died on 13 November 1945 in Zurich. In 1949 at least one private collector returned porcelain items acquired at the 1941 auction to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer against reimbursement of the purchase price. Taking advantage of the Export Prohibition Act, Richard Ernst also ensured that year that all thirty-four porcelain items acquired in 1941 remained in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts as "donations" or in exchange for other items. At the 1941 auction, the Städtische Sammlungen Wien had acquired thirty-one porcelain objects, of which sixteen were lost at the end of the war and fourteen were returned to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer in 1949 and 1954 against reimbursement of the purchase price. A cup and saucer found in 1979 were not restituted until 1999. The Klimt painting Birch Forest/Beech Forest, purchased by the Städtische Sammlungen in 1942 from the lawyer Erich Führer was acquired in 1948 by the ÖG. The eight works taken over by the Sonderauftrag Linz were restituted in 1949/50. The Albertina accepted sixteen Klimt drawings as "donations" in the course of an export application.

In 1999 the Art Restitution Advisory Board considered the Bloch-Bauer collection for the first time and recommended the restitution of sixteen drawings by Gustav Klimt from the Albertina and twenty-four porcelain items from the MAK. The objects were returned that same year. It did not recommend restitution of the porcelain in the MAK exchanged in 1949 as part of a restitution settlement, the watercolour Portal of the Church of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg by Rudolf von Alt, which had remained in the Albertina in 1949/50 after the refusal to grant export authorization, and the Klimt paintings in the ÖG. The Advisory Board established that in her last will and testament in 1923 Adele Bloch-Bauer had bequeathed them to the State. Maria Altmann, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's niece and one of his heirs refused to accept the Board's recommendation regarding the Klimt paintings. With the assistance of the lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg she instigated court proceedings in the USA. In May 2005 Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's heirs reached an agreement with the Republic of Austria to send the matter to arbitration. The three-person arbitration court concluded on 15 January 2006 that the paintings should be returned to the heirs. As attempts by the Republic of Austria to repurchase the paintings came to nothing, they were restituted. The most famous painting, The Woman in Gold (Adele Bloch-Bauer I), was acquired by Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie in New York. In 2004 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended that Kneeling Boys, two marble sculptures by George Minne, should not be restituted from the ÖG as it was not clear whether they came from the Bloch-Bauer collection. After further research established that they had indeed been owned by Bloch-Bauer, the Board recommended their restitution in 2007. In 2013 the Board recommended the return of the watercolour Portal of the Church of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg on condition that the legal successors of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer returned the watercolour Courtyard of the Doge's Palace in Venice by Rudolf von Alt or its equivalent value. In 2015 the Board recommended the return of the remaining fifteen porcelain items from the MAK, again on the condition that the heirs return the porcelain received in return or its equivalent value.

Keywords

Company director

Art collector

Nazi persecutee

Nazi asset expropriation

Entrepreneur

Leonhard Weidinger

20 December 2021

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 28.6.1999, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_1999-06-28.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 25.11.2004, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2004-11-25.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 1.6.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2007-06-01.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 6.12.2013, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2013-12-06.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 17.4.2015, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2015-04-17.pdf (6.11.2021).

Schiedsspruch des Schiedsgerichts, 15.1.2006, URL: bslaw.com/altmann/Klimt/award.pdf (6.11.2021).

Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3a), Wien 1999.

Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3b), Wien 1999.

Richard Ernst, Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus. Die Sammlung Bloch-Bauer, Wien 1925.

Werner Kohl/Susanna Steiger-Moser (Hg.), Die österreichische Zuckerindustrie und ihre Geschichte(n) 1750–2013, Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014.

Stephan Koja/Andreas Kugler, "Ich glaube aber, es dem Andenken meines treuen Freundes Klimt schuldig zu sein ...". Die beiden Portraits der Adele Bloch von Gustav Klimt, in: Belvedere. Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Sonderband Gustav Klimt, Wien 2007, 168–191.

Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war. Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens (= Bibliothek des Raubes 8), Wien 2003.

Sophie Lillie/Georg Gaugusch, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, New York 2007.

Monika Mayer, Museen und Mäzene. "Jüdisches" Mäzenatentum und die Österreichische Galerie 1903 bis 1938, in: Eva Blimlinger/Monika Mayer (Hg.), Kunst sammeln, Kunst handeln. Beiträge des internationalen Symposiums in Wien (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 3), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2012, 19–35, URL: www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/epdf/10.7767/boehlau.9783205791997.19.

Melissa Müller, Adele (1881–1925) und Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (1864–1945), Wien, in: Melissa Müller/Monika Tatzkow, Verlorene Bilder – verlorene Leben. Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde. Unter Mitarbeit von Thomas Blubacher und Gunnar Schnabel, München 2009, 154–169.

Jiří Novotný/Jiří Šouša, Bloch-Bauer Ferdinand 16.7.1864–19.11.1945, in: Biografický slovník, URL: biography.hiu.cas.cz/Personal/index.php/BLOCH-BAUER_Ferdinand_16.7.1864-19.11.1945 (6.11.2021).

Gloria Sultano/Patrick Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka. Kunst und Politik 1937–1950, Wien-Köln-Weimar 2003.

Presseberichte:

N. N., Sportnachrichten. Prager Geweihausstellung, in: Prager Abendblatt, 18.2.1913, 4, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=pab&datum=19130228&seite=4 (3.12.2020).

N. N., Prager Geweihausstellung, in: Oesterreichische Forst- und Jagd-Zeitung 31 (4.4.1913) 14, 128, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=ftz&datum=19130404&seite=6 (3.12.2020).

Ausstellungskataloge:

K. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Hg.), Ausstellung von Alt-Wiener Porzellan. März bis Mai 1904. Katalog und Einleitung. Wien 1904.

Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession (Hg.), XCIX. Ausstellung der Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession. Klimt-Gedächtnis-Ausstellung. Secession, 27. Juni – 31. Juli 1928, Wien 1928.

Alfred Stix (Hg.), Exposition d’Art Autrichien. Musée du Jeu de Paume. Mai – Juin 1937, Paris 1937.

Der Neue Werkbund Österreichs (Hg.), Oskar Kokoschka Ausstellung im Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Mai und Juni 1937, Wien 1937.

Auktionskataloge:

Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" (Hg.), Kunstauktion Porzellan des Klassizismus Sammlung B.-B. Wien. Versteigerung am 23., 24. und 25. Juni 1941, Wien 1941, URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7289.

Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" (Hg.), Kunstauktion. Alt-Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus Sammlung B.-B., Wien. Steirische Privatsammlung Silber, Gläser, Porzellan u. a. Alte und neue Bilder, Graphik, Möbel, Kunstgewerbe. Versteigerung vom 8. bis 10. Dezember 1941, Wien 1941, URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15107.

Archives

Albertina-Archiv, Zl. 543/1948, 1061/1948, 298/1949, 510/1949, 1045/1949, 190/1950, 300/1950.

Archiv der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere Wien, Zl. 483/1936, 410/1940, 399/1941, 135/1945, 251/1947, 189/1948, 568/1948, 67/1949, 69/1949, 5/1950.

BDA-Archiv, Restitutionsmaterialien, K. 8, K. 8/1, K. 10, K. 12/1, K. 13/ 1, K. 32, K. 60, Sicherstellungskartei, Bloch-Bauer.

BDA-Ausfuhr, Zl. 60/1942, Ausfuhrbewilligungen 1948–1950.

MAK-Archiv, Hauptaktenzahlen 874-1940, 26-1941, 588-1941, 619-1945, 105-1948, 675-1949.

Museen der Stadt Wien (Städtische Sammlungen, MA 10), GZ 5670/1947 und GZ 1017/1948.

GND: 122136853

VIAF: 55374110

Wikidata: Q1280247

Egger, Ernst

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:45 +0000

Egger, Ernst Konstantin Ferihumer Wed, 11/18/2020 - 12:57

Ernst Egger

18 November 1866 Vienna – 9 December 1944 Theresienstadt ghetto / Terezín

Ernst Egger was born in Vienna as the son of the industrialist Bernhard (Bela) Egger (1831–1910). He worked for some time in the USA as a building engineer and later became president of Vereinigte Glühlampen und Elektrizitäts-Aktiengesellschaft (Tungsram) in Ujpest, Hungary, a company founded by his father. Egger was also vice-president of N.Ö. Eskomptegesellschaft and from 1934 member of the board of its successor company Österreichische Industriekredit AG, Am Hof 2, in Vienna's 1st district. Within the Bund der österreichischen Industriellen (Federation of Austrian Industrialists), he chaired the Verband der Gaswerke (Gasworks Association) and was a member of the board of the Fachverband der Elektrizitäts-, Gas- und Wasserwerke (Professional Association of Electricity, Gas and Waterworks). His brother Adolf Egger (1874–1964) founded Fiat Werke Aktiengesellschaft in Vienna in 1907. From 1933 until at least 1936, Egger was a member of the management of the Verein zur Förderung des Technischen Museums Wien (Association for Promotion of the Technisches Museum Wien). His name was deleted from the membership list in 1938 with the comment "Jew". The Österreichisches Forschungsinstitut für Geschichte der Technik (Austrian Research Institute for the History of Technology) in the Technisches Museum was commissioned and paid by Ernst Egger to write a biography of his father. After the annexation, the Institute ceased this work on account of Bela Egger's Jewish origins. The Institute director, Ludwig Erhard, advised Egger to publish "this life story as a family chronicle" himself. Although baptized a Protestant, Egger was persecuted by the Nazi regime as a Jew under the Nuremberg Laws. He was registered until May 1944 in his apartment at Mommsengasse 25 in Vienna's 4th district. On 28 June 1944 he was deported to Theresienstadt, where he perished on 9 December 1944. His wife was arrested and died in June 1944 in the prison at Rossauerlände 7–9. The two daughters were also deported. While Elisabeth Ilka Egger was murdered in Auschwitz, her sister Marianne survived Theresienstadt.

Ernst Egger had already donated objects to the Technisches Museum Wien before 1938 and continued to do so after the annexation. In autumn 1938, for example, he gave the museum an Edison tube, four glass plate negatives and a benchtop scale, the only one of these items to be found in the depot in the Museum's general inventory. In 2006 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of the letter balance to the heirs.

Keywords

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ernst Egger, 28.6.2006, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Egger_Ernst_2006-06-28.pdf (3.12.2020).

Christian Klösch, Inventarnummer 1938. Provenienzforschung am Technischen Museum Wien, Wien 2015.

N. N., Egger, Ernst (1867-1944), Industrieller, in: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon ab 1815 1, Lfg. 3, 1956, 221f, URL: doi.org/10.1553/0x002813c3.

N. N., Siebzigster Geburtstag des Präsidenten Baurat Ing. Ernst Egger, in: Neue Freie Presse, 18.11.1936, 6, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nfp&datum=19361118&seite=6 (3.12.2020).

Publications by the person / institution

Ernst Egger, Das Edison'sche Leitungssystem in New-York, in: Zeitschrift für Elektrotechnik 10 (1892) 9, 395–398, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=zfe&datum=1892&page=417 (3.12.2020).

Archives

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, FLD, Zl. 15144, Ernst Egger.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, Hilfsfonds, Abgeltungsfonds 5862, Marianne Orssich.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 37927, Ernst Egger.

TMW-Archiv, PM Bernhard Egger.
TMW-Archiv, Korrespondenz 1938, PZ 2204/38.
TMW-Archiv, Korrespondenz 1938, PZ 2245/38.

WStLA, M.Abt. 119, A41, VEAV 245, 10. Bez., Ehrenfest-Egger.

GND: 143668501

VIAF: 169235387

Wikidata: Q98709425

Fürst, Leo

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:41:09 +0000

Fürst, Leo Leonhard Weidinger Sat, 02/27/2021 - 17:47

Leo Fürst

22 July 1873 Baden near Vienna – January 1941 Nice

In 1938, Leo Fürst, who lived at Maria-Theresien-Straße 16/4 in Vienna's 1st district, was director of the Evidenzbüro österreichischer Mineralölfirmen. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, unknown persons – according to the testimony of his nephew it was members of the SA – broke into his apartment and stole some of his art collection, including two etchings by Ferdinand Schmutzer and Isidor Kaufmann. Fürst himself was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1938 and detained in the prison at Rossauerlände, because he wanted to press charges for the theft. After his release, he fled in July 1938 first to Opatija, while his assets were expropriated by the German Reich. The Gestapo gave his coin collection (mostly coins of Austrian rulers), which were "reserved by the Führer" as objects of artistic or cultural value, in June 1938 to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna for safekeeping and cataloguing. In 1941, the KHM Coin Collection requested the entire collection of 873 objects from the "special representative" Hans Posse, who distributed 401 of the gold coins and 237 silver coins as a "Führer donation" to the coin collections in Graz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck. The 235 non-precious-metal coins were all given to the Vienna Coin Collection, 227 of which are deemed to have been lost in the war. In a letter of 24 March 1941 to Fritz Dworschak, First Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Posse mentioned eighteen gold coins from the Fürst collection, which were earmarked for the "Sonderauftrag". The transaction was never completed, however, and the coins remained in the KHM. At Dworschak's suggestion in 1941, the rest of the Fürst collection was to be given the Kress company in Munich for auctioning, the proceeds being used to cover the cost of setting up the Zentraldepot. There is no documentary evidence of this, however. In the same year, Fürst died in Nice, where he had fled from Opatija.

In 1986, his nephew applied to have the coin collection returned. According to the 2. Kunst- und Kulturgutbereinigungsgesetz (Second Art and Cultural Property Settlement Act), the owners of "heirless" art and cultural assets or their successors could assert their claims with the Austrian Ministry of Finance. The application was refused because at the time it was not known that a large part of the collection was in the KHM. Based on the provenance research by Herbert Haupt, in October 2000 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of 386 coins, 234 silver coins and one coin made of non-precious metal from the KHM Coin Collection to Leo Fürst's heirs. The 621 coins – not 624 has erroneously stated in the Advisory Board decision – were returned in summer 2002. In that year the Ferdinandeum Innsbruck restituted four coins and the Kärntner Landesmuseum three gold coins, and in 2004 the Joanneum Graz returned on gold ducat. The coins transferred to Salzburg are deemed to have been lost since 1945.

Keywords

"Sonderauftrag Münzen"

9 June 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Leo Fürst, 10.10.2000, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Fuerst_Leo_2000-10-10.pdf (3.12.2020).

Tiroler Landesmuseen, Provenienzforschung, Restitution, URL: www.tiroler-landesmuseen.at/?download=10729&ref=10677 (3.12.2020).

Universalmuseum Joanneum, Münzkabinett Schloss Eggenberg, Restituierte Objekte, An die Erben nach Leo Fürst, URL: www.museum-joanneum.at/muenzkabinett/ueber-uns/restitution/restituierte-objekte/an-die-erben-nach-leo-fuerst (3.12.2020).

N. N. (Redaktion), Münzsammlung Leo Fürst restituiert, in: Der Standard, 16.7.2002, URL: www.derstandard.at/story/1012222/muenzsammlung-leo-fuerst-restituiert (3.12.2020).

Karl Peitler, Zu den Restitutionen des Münzkabinetts am Universalmuseum Joanneum, in: Karin Leitner-Ruhe/Gudrun Danzer/Monika Binder-Krieglstein (Hg.), Restitutionsbericht 1999–2010 Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz 2010, 213–214, URL: www.museum-joanneum.at/fileadmin//user_upload/Presse/Aktuelle_Projekte/Archiv/2010/praesentation-des-re/Restitutionsbericht_01.pdf (3.12.2020).

Online-Edition der Karteien zum sogenannten Zentraldepot für beschlagnahmte Sammlungen in Wien, Sammlung L. F. im Katalog der Beschlagnahmungen, URL: www.zdk-online.org/c/171/ (3.12.2020).

Archives

BDA-Archiv, Restitutionsmaterialien, K. 35, M.1, PM Leo Fürst.

KHM-Archiv, 52/KL/1941, 105/KL/1941; XII 163; XIII 55.

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, FLD, Zl. 10338, Leo Fürst.

Jonas, Robert

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:43 +0000

Jonas, Robert Leonhard Weidinger Fri, 11/20/2020 - 13:01

Robert Jonas

5 December 1883 Vienna – 7 March 1952 Locarno, Switzerland

Robert Jonas was born in 1883 in Vienna, the son of Benjamin Jonas and his wife Flora, née Spitzer, from Ballasa-Gyarmat in northern Hungary. He completed his studies in 1904 at the Niedere und Höhere Fachschule at the k. k. Technischen Gewerbemuseum (Imperial Royal Applied Technology Museum) in Vienna. In 1905/06 he attended two courses at the Vienna University of Technology. In subsequent years he was no longer registered as a student. In 1906 he converted from Judaism to Protestantism and married Marianne Weiss on 5 August 1918. They had two children, Lili Marietta and Peter Julius, both of whom were baptized as Protestants. The family lived with Marianne's parents Julius and Berta at Dittesgasse 40 in the 18th district, and then from 1935 at Gustav-Tschermak-Gasse 14. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, the Jonas family, who were regarded as Jews in the meaning of the Nuremberg Laws, were subject to persecution. In his asset declaration, Robert Jonas stated that he was the manager of an Austrian Brown-Boveri factory. In autumn 1938, the family managed to escape to Switzerland. In 1941, pursuant to the Elfte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz (Eleventh Regulation on the Reich Citizenship Law) of 1941, the Nazi authorities expropriated their house and savings and stripped them of their citizenship. A short time after the deportation of Marianne's mother to Litzmannstadt ghetto in 1941, Obersturmbannführer Alois Brunner, head of the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) and hence instrumental in the deportation of Jews from Vienna to concentration and extermination camps, moved into their apartment. The Jonas family never returned to Austria. Robert Jonas died in 1952 at the age of sixty-nine.

In 1938, the Volkskundemuseum Wien (Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art Vienna) purchased a plywood box, ceramic jug and plate from Robert Jonas for 130 Reichsmarks. In view of their historical and ethnological interest, the two ceramic objects were displayed for several years in Schloss Gobelsburg and in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art Vienna. It was only during the digitization of the objects in the museum database and the systematic provenance research that the objects acquired from Robert Jonas came under suspicion in the meaning of the Art Restitution Act. In 2017 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended their restitution to the legal successors of Robert Jonas, and they were returned in May 2019.

Based on research by Claudia Spring.

Keywords

Company director

Nazi persecutee

Nazi asset expropriation

Technology

Lena Nothdurfter

21 November 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Robert Jonas, 6.7.2017, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Jonas_Robert_2017-07-06.pdf (3.12.2020).

Gabriele Anderl/Dirk Rupnow, Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution (= Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Historikerkommission. Vermögensentzug während der NS-Zeit sowie Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen seit 1945 in Österreich 20/1), Wien-München 2004, URL: hiko.univie.ac.at/PDF/20-1.pdf (3.12.2020).

Heidi Brunnbauer, Im Cottage von Währing/Döbling. Interessante Häuser – Interessante Menschen, Wien 2003.

Thomas Mang, "Gestapo-Leitstelle Wien – Mein Name ist Huber". Wer trug die lokale Verantwortung für den Mord an den Juden Wiens? Schriftenreihe des DÖW zu Widerstand, NS-Verfolgung und Nachkriegsaspekten, Münster 2003.

Archives

OeStA/AdR, Abgeltungsfonds 7226/2, Robert Jonas.
OeStA/AdR, EuReang, FLD 14123 Teil I, Robert Jonas.
OeStA/AdR, EuReang, VVSt, VA 18321, Robert Jonas.
OeStA/AdR, Hilfsfonds, Abgeltungsfonds 7226/2, Robert Jonas.

WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Robert Jonas, MA 8 – B-MEA-231742-2017.

Klinkhoff, Johann

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:11 +0000

Klinkhoff, Johann Leonhard Weidinger Tue, 03/09/2021 - 21:05

Johann (Hans) Klinkhoff

1 October 1882 Vienna – 11 November 1949 Salzburg

Johann, known as Hans, Klinkhoff was the illegitimate child of Emma Kikinis and Max Singer, official supplier of horses to the court. His mother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1902 and changed her surname and that of her three children from Kikinis or Singer to Klinkhoff. According to his family, Hans Klinkhoff completed studies at an unnamed technical university and in 1911 founded an engineering office and a commercial agency at Brandstätte 1 in Vienna's 1st district. During the First World War he was stationed with the Austrian navy in Pula. While he was there, he met the painter Ludwig Koch, who was working in the military press office. He had been commissioned to paint a patriotic portrait entitled The Emperor's Thanks, and Klinkhoff stood as a model for one of the figures. Until 1918 he sold reproductions of the picture (large print runs of postcards and prints) throughout the monarchy. Some of the proceeds went to the Gesellschaft vom österreichischen Silbernen Kreuz zur Fürsorge heimkehrender Krieger, an Austrian welfare fund for returning soldiers. After the war, he acquired the painting from Koch for his art collection. Between the wars, Klinkhoff expanded his company and specialized in equipment manufacture, control engineering and thermostats. As the only specialist company of its type in Austria, Klinkhoff-Apparatebau Ges.m.b.H. supplied the necessary measuring and control technology for the Amalienbad, Dianabad and numerous other Viennese swimming baths, as well as the Städtische Hallenschwimmbad in Innsbruck. Klinkhoff acquired a respectable fortune, property and buildings and, according to his son Walter, an impressive art collection, consisting mainly of conservative nineteenth-century art. As a result of the worldwide economic crisis, Klinkhoff's company experienced financial difficulties in the early 1930s. Klinkhoff attempted to rescue the company with the aid of a loan from bank director Hans Zeiszig sen. in return for the recruitment of his son Hans Zeiszig jun. as Prokurist (authorized signatory). Shortly after the annexation, Hans Klinkhoff was arrested for a few days and interrogated by the Gestapo but released again shortly afterwards. In April 1938 he fled with his wife Hermine (née Nass) and their eldest son Fritz to Milan, where his company had a branch office. The second son Walter had already moved to London but returned in early March to Hall in Tyrol for exercises as a reservist in the army. In the first days after the annexation, he managed to leave for Britain. In the meantime, Hans Zeiszig jun. was attempting to Aryanize the company in Vienna. As it was highly indebted, however, the temporary administrator declared it bankrupt in September 1938. Klinkhoff's villas in Vienna and Edlach near Reichenau an der Rax were sold and the proceeds added to the company's financial assets. In 1943 the Städtische Sammlungen Wien (now Wien Museum) purchased the painting The Emperor's Thanks "from assets seized by the Gestapo". Hans Klinkhoff, his wife Hermine and their son Fritz were able to continue from Italy to Switzerland and then to Britain, where they met up with the second son Walter. They were interned there in 1940and shipped to Canada. Hans Klinkhoff's mother Emma was the only member of the family to remain in Vienna, where she took her life on 24 March 1942 at the age of eighty-four, shortly before she was scheduled for deportation.

On 24 March 2009, the Vienna Restitution Commission decided unanimously that the painting The Emperor's Thanks should be restituted to Hans Klinkhoff's legal successors, who generously donated it to the Wien Museum. The whereabouts of the other artworks from the Klinkhoff collection remain unknown.

Keywords

29 May 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Zehnter Bericht des amtsführenden Stadtrates für Kultur und Wissenschaft über die gemäß dem Gemeinderatsbeschluss vom 29. April 1999 erfolgte Übereignung von Kunst- und Kulturgegenständen aus den Sammlungen der Museen der Stadt Wien sowie der Wienbibliothek im Rathaus vom 1. Februar 2010 (Restitutionsbericht 2009), URL: www.wienmuseum.at/fileadmin/user_upload/PDFs/Restitutionsbericht_2009.pdf (3.12.2020).

Gerhard Milchram/Michael Wladika, "Kaisers-Dank". Restituierte Erinnerung. Der Fall Klinkhoff im Wien Museum, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), … (k)ein Ende in Sicht. 20 Jahre Kunstrückgabegesetz in Österreich (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 8), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2018, 313–321, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201274.313.

Archives

Privatarchiv, Walter Klinkhoff, The Austrian Connection. My early life, unpubliziertes Manuskript, o. J.

NÖLA, NÖ-Statth., V-49g, Zl. XVII-452 ex 1904.

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 44278, Hans Klinkhoff.

Taufbuch Pfarre Alservorstadtkrankenhaus, 1. Jänner 1882–31. Dezember 1882, fol. 285, Taufeintrag Johann Singer mit Vermerk zur Namensänderung, URL: data.matricula-online.eu/de/oesterreich/wien/08-alservorstadtkrankenhaus/01-124/?pg=312 (3.12.2020).