Two organizations affiliated with the Secession building in Vienna where Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, Beethoven Frieze, is housed, have spoken out against the heirs of the work’s former owner. The heirs of Erich Lederer, who fled Vienna when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, filed a request with Austria’s Art Restitution Advisory Board under a law that regulates the return of Nazi-looted artwork. The claim was made possible after Austria expanded the law in 2009 to cover instances where previous owners were forced to sell their artworks for unreasonably low values following World War II.
In response to the heirs’ claims, the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession and Friends of the Secession filed a statement saying that after studying the historical record and their consciences they had determined that the “claimants are in the wrong” adding that restitution would “trivial real injustice and debase any other genuine claims.”
Lederer’s Klimt painting was seized by the Nazis and later returned following World War II. Austrian officials would only allow Lederer to export other restituted artworks if he sold Beethoven Frieze for $75,000; half of what Christie’s estimated the painting to be worth at the time.
