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Jenny Steiner (born July 11, 1863, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, as Eugenie Pulitzer; died March 2, 1958, in New York) was an Austro-Hungarian art collector, patron of the arts and factory owner expropriated under the Nazis.
Jenny Steiner, née Politzer or Pulitzer, was born in Budapest, the daughter of Siegmund Pulitzer and his wife Charlotte (1833-1920), [1] into a wealthy Jewish family of factory owners. Her sister was the Klimt supporter and confidante Serena (Sidonie), (married name Lederer); her great-uncle was Joseph Pulitzer, the American publisher and founder of the Pulitzer Prize. Her sister Aranka, (married name Munk), was murdered with her daughter Lola in the Litzmannstadt ghetto during the Holocaust. [2] [3]
Jenny Steiner married the Viennese manufacturer Wilhelm Steiner, co-owner of the silk manufacturer Gebrüder Steiner. [4] After the death of her husband in 1922, she continued to run the company alone with the support of her nephew Albert Steiner.
Jenny Steiner had five children with Wilhelm Steiner, four daughters and one son. The eldest daughter, Gertrude (Trude, * 1887), died of meningitis in 1900. Gustav Klimt painted a posthumous portrait of her in 1900, Portrait of Trude Steiner, which was looted by the Nazis. [5] Daisy was born in 1890; she had been married to Wilhelm Hellmann since 1912, with whom she had a large art collection of medieval art, old masters, contemporary paintings and more. Klara, born in 1901, was married twice and lived in the household of Jenny Steiner in Zedlitzgasse in Vienna until 1938. Anna, Klara's twin sister, was married three times. She had a daughter, Susanne, from her marriage to Paul Weiß. She also lived in Vienna until 1938. Jenny's son Georg died in 1926 at the age of 31.
Jenny Steiner's sisters Serena and Aranka had large collections of works by Gustav Klimt; [2] Serena herself, her mother Charlotte and her daughter Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt were portrayed by Klimt. [6] All three sisters, but especially Serena, had close relationships with Gustav Klimt; [7] they were also patrons of Egon Schiele. Serena's son Erich had drawing lessons with Schiele. All the sisters owned paintings by Klimt and Schiele.
After Austria merged with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss of 1938, Steiner and her family were persecuted due to their Jewish heritage. In 1938, Jenny Steiner fled with her daughters Daisy Hellmann and her husband and Anna Weinberg and a granddaughter to Paris, from there to Portugal and then to Brazil. [8] With the help of an affidavit from Josef Pulitzer, a cousin of Jenny's father, they made it to the USA. Her daughter Klara and her husband also managed to flee to the USA via Paris.
In addition to carpets and wall reliefs, furniture and paintings were confiscated and seized under the pretext of Reich flight tax debt. [9] Her art collection was auctioned off at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna starting in 1940.
Jenny Steiner died in New York in 1958; her grave is in the Old Jewish Section of the Vienna Central Cemetery (Gate 1, Group 7, Row 30, No. 134).
Jenny-Steiner-Weg in Vienna-Neubau was named after her in 2009.
Austria made restitution to Jews difficult for many decades, and even restituted objects deemed of cultural significance were often subject to an export ban which meant that the surviving family had no way to bring the artworks out of Austria. [10] It was not until the Art Restitution Act of 1998 and its amendment of 2009 that some of the looted works were finally returned to their rightful owners. Restitution was slow and numerous works are still missing, including the work Portrait of Trude Steiner by Gustav Klimt. Its whereabouts have been unknown since 1941. [11] The painting by Egon Schiele Häuser am Meer located in the Leopold Museum was the object of a settlement in 2012 after a long dispute. [12] [13] [14] The whereabouts of other works are still unknown. [15]
The heirs of Jenny Steiner have registered 62 search requests for lost artworks on the German Lost Art Foundation website for artworks by Klimt, Schiele, Isidor Kaufmann, Rudolf von Alt and many other artists. [16]
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.
Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was an Austrian Expressionist painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portraits. The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize Schiele's paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. Gustav Klimt, a figurative painter of the early 20th century, was a mentor to Schiele.
The Österreichische Galerie Belvedere is a museum housed in the Belvedere palace, in Vienna, Austria.
The Leopold Museum, housed in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria, is home to one of the largest collections of modern Austrian art, featuring artists such as Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl.
The Beethoven Frieze is a painting by Gustav Klimt on display in the Secession Building, Vienna, Austria.
Tobias G. Natter is an Austrian art historian and internationally renowned art expert with a particular expertise in "Vienna 1900".
Portrait of Wally is a 1912 oil painting by Austrian painter Egon Schiele of Walburga "Wally" Neuzil, a woman whom he met in 1911 when he was 21 and she was 17. She became his lover and model for several years, depicted in a number of Schiele's most striking paintings. The painting was obtained by Rudolf Leopold in 1954 and became part of the collection of the Leopold Museum when it was established by the Austrian government, purchasing 5,000 pieces that Leopold had owned. Near the end of a 1997–1998 exhibit of Schiele's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the painting's ownership (provenance) history was revealed in an article published in The New York Times. After the publication, the heirs of Lea Bondi Jaray, to whom the work had belonged before World War II, contacted the New York County District Attorney who issued a subpoena forbidding its return to Austria. The work was tied up in litigation for years by Bondi's heirs, who claimed that the painting was Nazi plunder and should have been returned to them.
Serena (Szeréna) Pulitzer Lederer was an Austro-Hungarian art collector and the spouse of the industrial magnate August Lederer, close friend of Gustav Klimt and instrumental in the constitution of the collection of Klimt's art pieces.
Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 was an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, running from 9 October 2013 through to 12 January 2014.
Galerie St. Etienne is a New York art gallery specializing in Austrian and German Expressionism, established in Vienna in 1939 by Otto Kallir. In 1923, Kallir founded the Neue Galerie in Vienna. Forced to leave Austria after the 1938 Nazi invasion, Kallir established his gallery in Paris as the Galerie St. Etienne, named after the Neue Galerie's location near Vienna's Cathedral of St. Stephen. In 1939, Kallir and his family left France for the United States, moving the Galerie St. Etienne to New York City. The gallery still exists, run by Otto Kallir's granddaughter Jane at 24 West 57th Street.
Otto Kallir was an Austrian-American art historian, author, publisher, and gallerist. He was awarded the Silbernes Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um das Land Wien in 1968.
Christian M. Nebehay was an Austrian art dealer, art collector and author. He became internationally known – particularly in the art world – for his works on Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
August Lederer, was an Austrian industrialist and art collector whose art collection was looted by Nazis. He helped promote the artists of the Vienna Secession, notably Gustav Klimt.
Serge Sabarsky was an art collector and art dealer of the 20th century.
Walburga "Wally" Neuzil was an Austrian nurse who was the lover and muse of the artist Egon Schiele between 1911 and 1915.
Daisy Hellmann (1890-1977) was a Viennese art patron and collector persecuted by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry.
Friedrich Maximilian Welz was an Austrian art dealer and Nazi Party member investigated for art looting.
Eleonore Stiasny also known as Nora Stiasny née Zuckerkandl was an Austrian Jewish art collector murdered in the Holocaust.
Portrait of Johanna Staude (1917–1918) is an unfinished painting by Gustav Klimt, depicting Johanna Staude, an Austrian divorcée who also modeled for Egon Schiele. She described her occupation as language teacher, and later, as a painter, although no works of her own are known. The Financial Times has described the Klimt painting as the culmination of his development as a portraitist, portraying "a new, post-war woman, self-aware, intelligent, modern, staring boldly out at us, sporting a fashionable short hair-cut and black feather boa". The painting was acquired by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in 1963.
Aranka Munk was a Viennese art collector murdered in the Holocaust.
A painting by Gustav Klimt recently returned to the heirs of a Jewish woman killed in the Holocaust will go on sale at Christie's in London in June and is expected to fetch 14-18 million pounds ($20-26 million). "Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III)," painted in 1917-18, is the third and final work in a series of three portraits commissioned by the Munk family of their daughter Ria.
Mrs Munk owned the painting until she was deported to a camp in Lodz, Poland, where she died in 1941
The Lederers subsequently formed the finest collection of Klimt's work in private hands.
all assets remained impounded as the flight tax authorities (Reichsfluchtsteuerstelle) attached them for non-payment of flighttax (Reichsfluchtsteuer) amounting to RM 1,500,000.00.
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[[Category:Women]] [[Category:1958 deaths]] [[Category:1863 births]] [[Category:Hungarian people]] [[Category:Austrian people]] [[Category:German emigrants to the United States]] [[Category:Patrons of the arts]] [[Category:20th-century businesspeople]] [[Category:People from Austria-Hungary]] [[Category:Art collectors]]
