"Standing Woman" by Egon Schiele

Seven works of art by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele were returned Wednesday to the living relatives of Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum, whose art collection was looted by the Nazi regime. The repatriation was announced by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Homeland Security Investigations New York Special Agent-in-Charge Ivan Arvelo in a ceremony in the DA's offices in Lower Manhattan. One of Grünbaum's heirs is Timothy Reif, a judge at the United States Court of International Trade, who during remarks Wednesday thanked Bragg, Arvelo and Matthew Bogdanos, who is chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit and senior counsel for Bragg's office, before quoting Elie Wiesel. "'I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides,'" Reif stated, quoting Wiesel's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "Thank you for taking the right side of history," Reif said to Bragg and Arvelo. "Your accomplishment today is historic. The collaboration between your offices, led by Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, is unprecedented anywhere in this country and the world. You have solved crimes perpetrated over eight decades ago. Your recovery of these artworks reminds us once again that history's largest mass murder has long concealed history's greatest robbery." Grünbaum was murdered in January 1941 in Dachau and his wife later perished in a death camp in Minsk. Grünbaum, an Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer, owned hundreds of pieces of art, including more than 80 drawings by Schiele. The collection's whereabouts were unknown until they reappeared in the 1950s in a Swiss auction house in the 1950s and were sold. Grünbaum's heirs have attempted to reclaim the works from his vast collection for over 20 years. The Manhattan DA's Office in 1998 attempted to seize two different drawings from the collection through subpoena. That effort fell through as the works were in the city on loan and protected from seizure by law, Bogdanos said. But the office began a criminal investigation in December 2022, allowing law enforcement to issue warrants for seizure of the artworks. Bogdanos' office seized the drawings from the Museum of Modern Art, the Ronald Lauder Collection, the Morgan Library, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Serge and Vally Sabarsky Trust. The works were voluntarily surrendered by the estates and holding institutions after they were presented with evidence the art was stolen by Nazis, according to the DA's office. The pieces are valued between $780,000 and $2.7 million apiece. The works include a self-portrait (1910) in black chalk and watercolor, "Prostitute" (1912) in watercolor and pencil, and "Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Edith," (1915) in pencil. "Fritz Grünbaum was a man of incredible depth and spirit, and his memory lives on through the artworks that are finally being returned to his relatives," Bragg said in a statement. "I hope this moment can serve as a reminder that despite the horrific death and destruction caused by the Nazis, it is never too late to recover some of what we lost, honor the victims, and reflect on how their families are still impacted to this day."