Franz Friedrich \u201cFritz\u201d Gr\u00fcnbaum<\/a>\u2018s art collection, he said in a Manhattan Supreme Court filing\u00a0asking a judge to force Christie\u2019s to share the information.<\/p>\nBefore he was killed in January 1941 at the Dachau Concentration Camp, the Nazis forced Gr\u00fcnbaum, 60, to sign a document giving his wife the authority to transfer his property.<\/p>\n
The Schiele works are considered \u201cred flags\u201d in the art collecting world, according to the lawsuit. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
The Nazis then stole his art collection, which included works by Austrian impressionist Egon Schiele, Vavra said in court papers.<\/p>\n
Heirs of the cabaret performer want information on who currently owns the paintings. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
The performer\u2019s art collections was stolen by the Nazis. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
Gr\u00fcnbaum was killed at the Dachau concentration camp. ullstein bild via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Christie\u2019s has previously sold six works by the Schiele from Gr\u00fcnbaum\u2019s collection \u2014 most selling for $1 million apiece, according to court papers. <\/p>\n
The Scheile artworks are at the center of a legal dispute. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
In July, the auction house told Vavra and another Gr\u00fcnbaum heir that a family in Switzerland reached out offering to \u201cpartner\u201d with the heirs to sell three Schiele paintings, Vavra said in the filing.<\/p>\n
\u201cExperts at Christie\u2019s have seen these three works and describe two of the works as being among the highest quality (and potentially most valuable) Scheile (sic) works they have seen,\u201d according to a Christie\u2019s email included in court papers.<\/p>\n
The paintings were not well known outside of Austria before the Nazis invaded. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
Schiele\u2019s art was not sold outside of Austria before the Nazis took over the country in 1938.<\/p>\n
The works \u201chave been considered to be \u2018red flag\u2019 artworks following World War II and very dangerous to collect or sell without ascertaining provenance,\u201d Vavra said in the legal papers.<\/p>\n
Vavra wants a judge to force the auction house to \u201cimmediately turn over\u201d all information \u201crelevant to possessors of artworks from the Gr\u00fcnbaum Collection (including all sales records, financial information, appraisals, expert reports, estimate and correspondence),\u201d so he can bring a lawsuit\u00a0seeking\u00a0restitution.<\/p>\n
Christie\u2019s said it: \u201chas established an unparalleled record of bringing objects with painful World-War-Two era histories to public sale by respecting the law, the ethics of restitution, and the principles put in place to support a successful outcome, as we are doing in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Czech man claims he\u2019s the rightful heir to paintings worth millions that once belonged to a Jewish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,6793,11957,2858,7983,229,88,3130,5871,60646,194,28833],"class_list":["post-88412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-austria","tag-christies","tag-court","tag-czech-republic","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-lawsuits","tag-metro","tag-nazis","tag-us-news","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}