Judaica

A draft providing for the restitution of Jewish-owned art pieces was adopted by the government and will be presented in parliament in October 1998.
All Jewish-owned art objects and paintings acquired illegally during the war and now in Austrian museums will have to be surrendered to their owners or direct heirs.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna carried out an inventory which showed that 900 pieces it acquired came in fact from Jewish owners who had to flee Austria or were killed in Nazi extermination camps. Among these are included two portraits by Frans Hals which belonged to the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family.
There is however a legal problem due to be solved since all Jewish-owned art pieces were acquired in different circumstances. Some were seized by Nazi authorities and given to museums and others had to be donated to State institutions following pressures on Jewish families which tried to flee abroad. As an example, several members of the Rothschild family were allowed to leave the country after being forced to leave many art treasures behind them.

There are also many art pieces which have been deposited in Austrian museums after their owners were not traced back. In that case, if there was no possibility to find their heirs, these pieces would be sold to the benefit of a charity trust.

The governmental decision has stirred violent reactions in extreme-right wing circles, notably from Joerg Haider, the leader of the Nationalist group who said that some three million Germans from the Sudeten region, expelled from South Czechoslovakia in 1945, suffered the same fate as the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and that there were entitled to claim war compensations.