Mahler’s Lawyer: The Significance of Austria’s Munch Restitution

This from Gert-Jan van den Bergh, attorney for Marina Mahler (granddaughter of the composer), in her successful claim for restitution by Austria of Munch‘s “Summer Night on the Beach”:
This is a total victory. The claim was a test of how well the restitution laws functions. We need to study the contents of the decision but understand that it has been based on the latest Restitution Law from 2001, in which a central role is given to the idea that remaining files leading to cases of “extreme injustice” need to be resolved. It is for the first time that this criterion has been applied to the restitution of artworks.
Van den Bergh provided the following details about the ownership history of the Munch:
In 1937 the painting had been given by Alma Mahler-Werfel as a loan to the Österreichische Gallery (now the Belvedere) in Vienna. Alma, since 1929 married to the Jewish writer Franz Werfel (her then third husband after Gustav Maher and Walter Gropius) had to flee Nazi Austria in 1938. Unbeknownst to her and thus without her approval, her Nazi stepfather, Carl Moll, whom she in her autobiography consistently called “her arch-enemy,” retrieved the work from the gallery and subsequently sold the work back to the museum at a ridiculously low price of 7.000 Reichsmark.
He added that the decision to return the work, announced on Wednesday by Austria’s minister of culture, Elisabeth Gehrer, “brings hope for pending and possible new cases involving similar restitution claims.” The Mahler claim had originally been denied in 1999 by Austria’s Art Restitution Commission.