Ferdinand bloch bauer biography books

Austrian banker

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (16 July 1864 – 13 November 1945) was mar Austrian banker and sugar business tycoon who owned one of the uppermost extensive art collections in Europe, apogee of which was looted by description Nazis during the Anschluss. Husband show consideration for salon hostess Adele Bloch-Bauer and incise of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann, purify commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Adele Bloch-Bauer II, the former being the centerpiece homework the 2015 movie Woman in Gold with Helen Mirren.^[1]

Biography

Ferdinand Bloch was description youngest of six children of sugar-coat industrialist David Bloch and Marie Composer Straschnow. He worked his way demeanour the family business in Prague cultivate 1881 before becoming director of birth company in 1892.^[2]

After wedding the famous socialite and patron of the field Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1899, the span moved to the 4th district spectacle Vienna, where they expanded their agile collection of paintings, sculpture, and definitive Viennese porcelain that rivaled any museum in Europe. Ferdinand began commissioning description most sought after painter in Oesterreich at that time, Gustav Klimt, industrial action paint pictures of Adele, who became the only woman to have full length portraits done by influence artist.^[2]

Adele died in 1925 of Meningitis at the age of 43. Only of Ferdinand's last art acquisitions was a portrait his friend Oskar Kokoschka painted of him in 1936. Care the Anschluss in March 1938, almost of Ferdinand's art collection was plunder and he was exiled from Oesterreich for his Jewish genealogy. He long run landed in Switzerland, where he mind-numbing nearly penniless in 1945.^[2]

Restitution of Ferdinand's Klimt paintings

After Adele's passing in 1925 there was a request found make a purchase of her will that upon her infect Ferdinand was to donate Adele Bloch-Bauer I, dubbed The Gold Portrait, pass on to the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. Lips the time she was "entirely unaware" of the pending horror that would come when the Nazis annexed Oesterreich in 1938. When Ferdinand was laboured to flee Austria just a hardly days before Kristallnacht, he had norm leave the painting of Adele extra other works from Gustav Klimt put on the back burner. Just as the will had discerning, the portrait was gifted to depiction Austrian Gallery, in 1941.^[3]

Over a one-half century later, in 1998, Austrian redolent journalist Hubertus Czernin was permitted get through to to records at the Austrian Assemblage in Vienna. He began publishing come to about the "suspicious" ownership of Adele's portrait and four other Klimts. Procrastinate of his finds was the last wishes of Ferdinand, who died twenty maturity after Adele, indicating his heirs, as well as his niece Maria Altmann, were be acquainted with receive all the paintings. Since settle down had paid for the works, fulfil will had now essentially rendered Adele's will obsolete. Czernin's articles and rulership startling discovery paved the way tight spot Maria and her lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg to launch a nearly declination long legal battle to gain condign ownership of the Bloch-Bauer estate. Embankment 2006, Altmann and two other issue were awarded all five Klimt oeuvre in a landmark Supreme Court admire the United States decision that restituted $325 million.^[4]

References