Heir at ‘peace’ as Munch to return

Ending a 60-year wait, the heir of composer Gustav Mahler will finally be reunited with a painting by Edvard Munch that the family says was taken unfairly from them after they fled the Nazis in 1938.

Marina Mahler, the renowned composer’s granddaughter, said Thursday that the long battle had left her “totally exhausted” but “feeling a huge sense of peace.”

“It’s a long, long story -- not only my story, but my grandmother’s story, the world’s story and a story about the horror of the last World War,” she said at her London home.

The case ended on Wednesday with an agreement by the Austrian culture ministry to return the Norwegian artist’s landscape “Summer Night on the Beach.”

Asked what she would do with the work that has been hanging in a gallery in Vienna, Mahler said, “I am going to sit in front of it and look at it for a long, long, long time.”