Austria Gives Up On Looted Nazi Art

Austria's government said Thursday it cannot afford to buy back five Gustav Klimt paintings that a court has ordered returned to a California woman who says the Nazis stole them from her family.

Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer said the state desperately wanted to acquire the masterpieces — widely regarded as national treasures — but decided it could not afford the $300 million pricetag. Last month, an arbitration court awarded the paintings to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles.

"The paintings are immediately available for her to inherit," Gehrer said in a statement. She said the government's Council of Ministers could not find the cash in its budget to keep the paintings in Austria.

Gehrer said the government would inform Altmann's attorneys that it has no more interest in negotiating a purchase.

"We're simply unable" to buy the paintings, Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said. "Further negotiations are pointless."

Altmann's U.S. lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg, said Thursday he "respects and understands" the decision, but that Altmann still hoped to find a buyer in Austria and that he already had been contacted by prospective purchasers. He did not identify who had expressed interest.

Gehrer had proposed after the Jan. 16 court ruling that her country be allowed to continue displaying at least two of the best-known works. Even then, however, she had acknowledged that there was not enough money to buy them and that Austria was obliged to return them under laws mandating the restitution of art objects to Holocaust victims.

Altmann, 89, a retired Beverly Hills clothing boutique operator, was one of the heirs of the family that owned the paintings before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938. Although she waged a seven-year legal battle to recover them, she had also made clear that she preferred the works to remain on public display rather than disappear into a private collection.

Austria's decision to give up the artworks, which have been displayed for decades in Vienna's ornate Belvedere castle, represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis.

Gerbert Frodl, the Belvedere gallery's director, called Thursday's decision "an immense loss."

"These paintings rank among the most important works of Austrian art," he said, expressing "extraordinary regret that the republic did not purchase the pictures for Austria."

But the value of the paintings soared so high over the years that acquiring them would have cost four times the annual budget for Austria's national museums, said Wilfried Seipel, director of Vienna's Art History Museum. "Even sponsors were overtaxed by a demand of this magnitude," he was quoted as telling the Austria Press Agency.

Among the Klimt works is the gold-flecked "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," which has been widely replicated on souvenirs.

The other paintings are a lesser-known Bloch-Bauer portrait as well as "Apfelbaum" ("Apple Tree"), "Buchenwald/Birkenwald ("Beech Forest/Birch Forest) and "Haeuser in Unterach am Attersee" (Houses in Unterach on Attersee Lake").

Altmann is the niece of Bloch-Bauer. After Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, the five paintings remained in her family's possession. Her husband fled to Switzerland after the Nazis took over Austria. The Nazis then took the paintings and the Belvedere gallery was made the formal owner.

Austria was among the most fervent supporters of Adolf Hitler. Vienna was home to a vibrant Jewish community of some 200,000 before World War II; today, it numbers about 7,000.

The country has also begun paying compensation to Nazi victims from a $210 million fund endowed by the federal government, the city of Vienna and Austrian industries.

By William J. Kole