Seven Schieles for the heirs of a Viennese cabaret star

The Austrian Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grünbaum collected more than 80 works by Egon Schiele. The Viennese dealer Otto Kallir had seen drawings in the Grünbaums’ apartment while preparing a 1928 exhibition. Ten years later, after the annexation of Austria, the Nazis arrested Fritz and sent him to Dachau. The evidence assembled by Manhattan prosecutors describes how he was forced to grant power of attorney to his wife Elisabeth, who was then compelled to surrender the collection. Fritz was murdered in Dachau in 1941.

A 1938 inventory established what the household had held. The works’ trail after the war led to Bern, where these seven reappeared through the Gutekunst & Klipstein gallery in 1956. Most of Grünbaum’s Schieles offered through the Swiss dealer were sold to Kallir, by then working in New York. The drawings eventually entered both private and public holdings.

After investigators presented their evidence in 2023, the Museum of Modern Art, the Morgan Library, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Ronald Lauder Collection and the Vally Sabarsky Trust surrendered the works. Seven were handed to Grünbaum’s heirs and trustees on 20 September. One, the illustrated Portrait of a Boy, was a preparatory study for an oil portrait. The ceremony returned that sheet and six others whose paths had separated decades earlier.