Late restitution of three paintings to the heirs of Max Oppenheimer
Der Standard (Olga Kronsteiner), November 12, 2024
German original: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000244587/spaete-restitution-dreier-gemaelde-an-die-erben-nach-max-oppenheimer
The return from the Vienna Museum (Wien-Museum) has now become public in the run-up to the auction at Dorotheum. The case had been known for decades
Head slightly tilted, one eye squinted, brush in one hand, palette in the other, Max Oppenheimer remains in a concentrated pose: a small table with painting utensils just squeezes between his spread legs and the easel. It is an impressive self-portrait that, like two other portraits painted by the artist, will be auctioned at Dorotheum on November 19.
What does the trio have in common? It was most recently housed in the Vienna Museum and was restituted this year “to the legal successors of Max Oppenheimer”, as has now been announced in the run-up to the auction. Official communication on this process would not take place until 2025, specifically via the restitution report submitted to the municipal council for a vote.
Unlike at federal level, where the Art Restitution Advisory Board publishes its resolutions promptly after the meetings of the Advisory Board, the City of Vienna publishes information once a year in the fall and thus after the reporting period of the previous year.
Restorer in the service of the Gestapo
As DER STANDARD found out from the office of the responsible city councillor Veronica Kaup-Hasler, the recommendation for restitution was made by the Vienna Restitution Commission in March on the basis of a detailed dossier from February. Late, but still, because the relevant coordinates of the case had been known for decades. The main protagonist was a certain Julius Fargel, a painting restorer who had joined the NSDAP in 1932 and was employed by the Vienna Municipal Collections from July 1939. He also worked as a master appraiser for the Dorotheum and the Gestapo. The Municipal Collections benefited enormously from his function for the Gestapo's administration office for Jewish removal goods (Vugesta) in particular: Fargel's low valuations enabled him to make favorable acquisitions, while he donated other objects, more than 200 in total.
In 2003, the Vienna Museum published a list on its website of those objects whose owners were not known beyond doubt at the time of the Nazi takeover in March 1938 and asked for any useful information. In the course of this, a decision was also made in principle that all objects that had come into the collection via Fargel should be restituted. The identification of the former owners and the search for their legal successors is still ongoing in some cases.
Plundered from Mopp's apartment
Marie-Agnes von Puttkamer published the circumstances surrounding Max Oppenheimer's deprivation in 1999 in the catalog raisonné of his paintings. When Mopp, as he renamed himself to match his signature in his later exile, “saw the Viennese police wearing swastika armbands when he looked out of the window of his studio in the Hofburg two days before the Anschluss, he understood immediately” - he took only his Amati violin, his passport and other small items and took the next train to Zurich.
His apartment in Neulinggasse with its French antiques and first editions of Mozart and Beethoven was looted, including all the paintings, drawings and prints that were not in his studio in the Hofburg. Mopp emigrated to the USA via Switzerland and arrived in New York in January 1939. In February, the restituted paintings were donated by Fargel to the municipal collections.
After the end of the Second World War, a few works stolen from Mopp's apartment turned up here and there in Vienna. With the help of his brother, he endeavored to recover them, but to no avail. A claim for the return of the three paintings in the municipal collections was never recorded. Presumably because he was more interested in selling the monumental painting The Philharmonic to a museum in his home town: begun in 1934, the triptych had accompanied him into exile in America; the three wooden panels on which the canvas had been mounted weighed 600 kg.
Charitable organizations as heirs
His wish was not to be fulfilled during his lifetime. It was not until months after his death in May 1954 that the responsible Federal Ministry decided to purchase it for the Federal Artotheque for 52,000 schillings. It has been on permanent loan to the Belvedere since 1979, mostly in the depot; the last time visitors were able to catch a glimpse of the imposing painting was in the summer of 2023 (exhibition Kolossal).
The unsigned self-portrait only made sporadic appearances: in 1994 as part of a solo exhibition at the Jewish Museum Vienna, from March 2019 to July 2022 as a loan to the Leopold Museum and most recently, until it was handed over to the Dorotheum in August, in the Vienna Museum's new exhibition.
The estimated value is between 160,000 and 220,000 euros, while the portraits of the Swiss publisher Martin Hürlimann and the sculptor and graphic artist Moissey Kogan are expected to fetch up to 30,000 euros each. The proceeds will benefit the general public in some way, as the legal successors are two Austrian charitable organizations that do not wish to be named. (Olga Kronsteiner, 11/12/2024)