Bureaucracy Slows Sale of Jewish-Owned Works : Austria to Auction Off Nazi Art Plunder

The Austrian government is moving to auction off Jewish-owned art seized by the Nazis and stored in the vaults of a former monastery. Who will benefit from the sale is uncertain.

The government’s handling of the treasure has touched off protests, with critics charging that bumbling and bureaucracy have kept some of the valuables from their rightful owners.

Despite a 1969 law requiring that art works unclaimed or “heirless” be forfeited, Austrian authorities have yet to set a date for the auction.

Officials asked about the delay made conflicting statements, but all agreed that Austria does not want to derive any profit from property stolen by the Nazis from Austrian Jews.

Thousands of items--paintings, drawings, coins, books and other works of art--were first stored after the war in a salt mine and then taken to what used to be a Carthusian monastery at Mauerbach, south of Vienna.

No outsiders had been permitted to enter the premises since they might then be able to identify pieces of the lost treasure as their own.

But Hans Haider, cultural writer for Vienna’s Die Presse, reported that he became the first uninvolved person to get into the rooms with officials and to glance at pictures and other items stored on shelves.

“Legend collapses when one (sees) the pictures there,” he said. “Almost without exception these are paintings that might be found in any better upper-class quarters.” He said many would need restoration and some of the works had been leased to museums.

The government said the auction plan will be vigorously carried out for the benefit of some charitable organization. Official word came in the wake of a highly critical article recently published by ARTnews magazine.

In the article, Andrew Decker reported that some apparent heirs of the original owners felt Austrian authorities were not really interested in ultimate restitution.

Decker, who said he interviewed 128 people, branded the amount of property still held by the government “a legacy of shame.”

In Vienna, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Jewish Documentation Center, said “bureaucracy has ruined the good intentions of the law through a series of gimmicks.

“Much of what was claimed was not given back, because the owners were no longer alive and because their children could not answer all questions about the size and color of certain paintings.”

Winfried Bauernfeind, a senior official of the Finance Procuration agency, which deals with property claims to which the government is a party, rejected charges of official negligence or wrongdoing.

“Paintings were only returned in cases where we strongly believed that the claimant was the rightful owner or his heir,” Bauernfeind said. “Of course, there is no absolute certainty.”

He said that a 1972 deadline for receiving claims was extended and that proceedings, some of them in court, took many years and were almost complete by 1980. Bauernfeind did concede there are recurrent identification problems.

“Sometimes, different groups of people claimed a specific work of art,” he said. “There were even several states making claims.” He refused to name the states involved.

In a letter sent to the government last June, Ivan Hacker, president of the Jewish community and the Union of Resistance Fighters, named Jewish groups that he felt should benefit from the sale.

But there seems to be official indecision about whether the money should go to Jewish charities other than welfare organiztions.

Bruno Aigner, spokesman for Science and Research Minister Heinz Fischer, said at present there are still 3,000 books, 500 lesser-quality paintings and hundreds of drawings and coins in the Mauerbach storerooms under the jurisdiction of the federal Monuments Bureau.

Over the years, rumors have circulated that the trove contained works of Raphael, Michelangelo and other masters.