France to return Gustav Klimt masterpiece looted by Nazis to Holocaust victim's heirs

The French government on Monday, March 15, announced that it will be returning a Nazi-looted Gustav Klimt landscape painting to its owners. This comes eighty years after it was stolen from a Jewish family in Austria in 1938. French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, during a news conference in Paris said, “the decision to return a major work from the public collections illustrates our commitment to the duty of justice and reparation vis-à-vis plundered families”.

(French Culture Roselyne Bachelot gestures as she stays next to a oil painting by Gustav Klimt painted between in 1905 called "Rosebushes under the Trees," during a ceremony at the Orsay museum in Paris, Monday, March 15, 2021. The French government hands over a Klimt painting to the grandchildren of the holocaust victim Nora Stiasny stolen by the Nazis during World War II. Image Credits: AP)

(French Culture Roselyne Bachelot speaks next to a oil painting by Gustav Klimt painted between in 1905 called "Rosebushes under the Trees," during a ceremony at the Orsay museum in Paris, Monday, March 15, 2021. Image Credits: AP)

Titled as, “Rosebushes under the Trees”, the painting is entirely a work of oil by the Austrian symbolist painter and has been in Paris' Musee d’Orsay museum for decades. The owner is a family of a holocaust victim. Bachelot-Narquin said that the  authorities did not initially identify the painting as something which was stolen by the nazis. However, the fact that it was stolen was established after French government-led investigations on the same. 

“It is in recent years that the true origin of the painting has been established”, said Bachelot-Narquin. She further added that it was “the only Gustav Klimt painting owned by France”. 

In another significant development, the US government in February, deported a 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to Germany. Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, was ordered removed from the US by a Tennessee court in February 2020, which was later upheld by the Board of Immigration Appeals in November 2020. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported Berger on Friday. Though Berger admitted serving at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, he will not face any charges due to lack of evidence.