Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze should not be returned, panel rules

Heirs claimed the Austrian government extorted the famous fresco

By Julia Michalska. Web only
Published online: 06 March 2015

Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, 1902, in the Secession building in Vienna

Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, 1902, a masterpiece of the Viennese Secession, should not be returned to the heirs of its original owner, the Austrian Art Restitution Advisory Board announced today, 6 March.

In October 2013, the heirs of Erich Lederer filed a claim accusing the Austrian government of extorting the work from Lederer after it was returned to him when the war ended. According to the heirs, the Austrian government would only grant Lederer export licenses for other works in his collection if he sold the frieze at a lower rate ($650,000). 

However, the panel concluded that Lederer voluntarily negotiated the price and that there was no close “temporal or causal link between the restitution of the work in 1946, the export ban proceedings and the [government’s] acquisition of the frieze in 1972”. It therefore recommended that Austria should not return the work to Lederer’s heirs.

Herwig Kempinger, the president of the Secession building where the work is located, said in a statement: “Leaving the frieze in its current place maintains the art-historical connection between building and work. The Secession is the most appropriate location for the presentation of this important work of Viennese Art Nouveau.” 

Klimt painted the 34-metre fresco onto the walls of the Secession for an exhibition paying homage to the German composer. The fresco was meant to be broken up after the exhibition closed, but it was preserved by the art collector Carl Reininghaus, who sold it to August Lederer in 1915. He bequeathed the work to his son Erich in 1935. After the Anschluss in 1938, the Nazis seized the frieze as well as other works in Lederer’s collection. The frieze was returned to the family in 1946. 

Austria’s minister of culture, Josef Ostermayer, is expected to follow the panel’s recommendation.