Austrian museum to return 2 Schiele works to Jewish heiress

VIENNA – A Vienna museum has agreed to give up two of five drawings by Austrian artist Egon Schiele that were at the centre of a dispute over Nazi-looted art.

Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer says the Leopold Museum and Jewish Community in Vienna reached what he called a “Solomonic solution” that will see the drawings returned to the heiress of Jewish businessman Karl Maylaender, who died in the Holocaust.

The exact circumstances under which Maylaender gave up the paintings before his deportation by the Nazis in 1941 are disputed.

Jewish community representative Erika Jakubovits says the heiress, Eva Zirker of New York, refused to sell the drawings “Seated boy with folded hands” and “Self-portrait with red hair and striped oversleeves” to the museum.

The three other drawings are staying in the museum.