1998: Art Restitution Law
Return of looted artworks to their rightful owners
In 1997, several paintings by Egon Schiele from the Leopold Collection were confiscated in New York because suspicion arose that they had been taken from their Jewish owners during the Nazi period. As a result, a debate emerged in Austria on the handling of so-called Nazi looted art, and a new Art Restitution Law was passed in 1998. Since then, inventory inspections (provenance research) have been systematically carried out in all of Austria’s federal museums, and a significant number of artworks have been returned to their former owners or their heirs. The Restitution Law also takes into account artworks that remained in Austrian museums as “dedications” after 1945. It was a questionable postwar practice to demand the donation of individual works as a condition for the export of restituted artworks.
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